The Gospel According to the Son (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Norman Mailer
- First Published: 1997
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The first century
- Setting: Palestine
- Principal Characters: Jesus Christ
- Genres: Long fiction, Biographical fiction
- Subjects: Preaching, Ambition, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Biblical times, Jesus Christ, Prophecy or prophets, Apprentices
- Locales: Palestine
There are two obvious ways a reviewer could choose to discuss a first-person novel about Jesus Christ by Norman Mailer. One could discuss it as a late addition to Mailer’s huge, varied, and ambitious body of work. Or one could compare and contrast it to what is known, on one hand, and believed, on the other, about Jesus: that is, one could measure Mailer’s “take” on Jesus against the New Testament, the few known noncanonical accounts of his life, and the accreted traditions of Jesus’ followers over two thousand years. (For an excellent scholarly summary of what is historically...
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