AFTER angering the Vatican with the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, the children’s author, is to launch an assault on Christianity in a story that denies Jesus was the son of God.
Pullman will claim that Christ emerged from the “fervid imagination” of St Paul, the apostle, and spawned a religion that has inspired some to “fanatical bigotry”.
Although full details of the plot are being kept under wraps, the book’s title, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, gives a strong indication of Pullman’s views.
“For every man or woman who has been led to goodness by a church, and I know there have been many, there has been another who has been inspired by the same church to a rancid and fanatical bigotry for which the only fitting word is evil,” Pullman said.
“The more [power the church] has, the worse it behaves — without exception.”
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The book, which will be published by Canongate next spring, is a retelling of the story of Jesus, drawing on the Bible for characters, locations and events.
Pullman accepts the existence of a holy man called Jesus, but argues that Christ, or the son of God, was “an invention” of St Paul.
“By the time the Gospels were written down, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether different and extraordinary,” he said.
“Paul was a literary and imaginative genius, who has had more influence on the world than anybody else, including Jesus. He had this great ability to persuade others and his rhetorical skills have been convincing people for 2,000 years.”
Pullman first raised the ire of both Anglican and Catholic churches in his allegorical trilogy His Dark Materials. Set in a parallel universe, the books feature a young girl called Lyra who falls victim to a brainwashing organisation called the Magisterium, which many readers equated with the Vatican.
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David McGough, the Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, said: “There is no evidence that Paul influenced the Gospels. No respectable scriptural scholar would have anything to do with [Pullman’s] theory.”