Review of “Alternate Jesus”

     Fictional Review of Fictional Book

          “Alternate Jesus”

 

          Every so often, there comes a book which shakes the world. Such books incite revolutions, topple empires, destroy religions, spread mass insanity, and spark genocidal wars. Fortunately, Alternate Jesus is not such a book.

          In Alternate Jesus, the author asks the question; what if Jesus of Nazareth had never been crucified? How would world history been different? The author gives two answers; two “alternate worlds” in which Jesus lived. Unfortunately, only one of those worlds is convincing to this reviewer.

          The book has two parts: King Of The Jews, and What Is Truth? In Part One, Jesus seizes control of his environment by secular means; in Part Two, Jesus takes a more spiritual approach. Part One is all too convincing, for its message is “power corrupts”. In contrast, Part Two is mystical, not dramatic. It teaches that “truth shall set you free”, but it deliberately does not tell us what truth is.

          King Of The Jews starts in the conquered city of Rome, where King Jesus had just successfully ended his Crusade Against Empire. With the defeated Roman Emperor at the mercy of his Zealots, he proclaims himself Prophet, Messiah, and God-Emperor of the World. The chronicler wryly comments, “That was his high point.” We then see the Emperor Jesus play out, within his reign, the entire history of the medieval Church, including censorship, fraud, repression, corruption, witch-hunts, and wars. It ends with the Emperor Jesus’s death and the collapse of his theocratic tyranny.

          What Is Truth? shows Jesus as an old man, teaching Torah to his students – among whom we find the Roman Ambassador to Judea. The story is a dialog between old Rabbi Jesus and his students, friends, and rivals; they ask each other what truth is. In a style similar to Plato’s dialogs, Jesus draws out from all participants their own ideas as to the nature of truth, and in return his students draw out his own views. This part of the book is lyrical, philosophical, and mystical; and therefore lacks the spectacular drama of Part One.

          The book, as a whole, lacks balance. King Of The Jews is a critique of the historic Christian Church, and as such all too effective. After such a powerful indictment, What Is Truth? seems thin by comparison. It is for more for poets, priests, and philosophers than for the rest of us.

          The difficulty is partly due to the nature of the subject. It is easy to write political satire for the masses, but far less easy to present ecstatic mystical theology in terms that relate to the average reader’s life. Neither Dante nor Milton could describe their Heavens as vividly as their Hells. This difficulty is compounded in a secular age such as ours.

          Another difficulty is due to the nature of history. Alternate Jesus is an alternate-world story, so it’s subject to the epistemological limits of such stories. We of this world-line can visualize the world-line of King Of The Jews because it is a lesser line than ours; it contains less information. The opposite is true for the world-line of What Is Truth?; it is a greater world than our own, one of higher content, and for this reason we cannot know it fully.

          God-emperors have risen and fallen many times; there is nothing new in that old tale. But in our world, Jesus died young, and so we do not know what he would have preached, had he lived to old age. For this reason, What Is Truth? falls short. It ends with mystery; one must fill in details for oneself. It ends with silence, as King Of The Jews ends with noise. In both we see reflected the tragedy of our own world-line’s Jesus, who died before he could tell us all he had to say.