A number of bloggers I read regularly have been through a dry patch and here is no exception. Very unusual to have a week pass without a post and apologies are proffered. Brain full of stuff, none of it very edifying or indeed publishable. The interesting issues worth reflecting upon sometimes become so interwoven with identifiable people that sensitivity (I know, I know) and libel lawyers start whispering in the dark.
In the midst of this I read a book. A good thing. I am a great fan of Canongate as a publisher. Anything I haven't heard of generates a greater chance of being picked up if it has their name on it.
They have a series called Doubt and in it writers play with popular myths. Forget for the moment to be offended by the idea that Jesus last days on earth are in any sense myth and imagine this. There is another Gospel. It was written by Malchus, the guy who has his ear cut off in the Garden of Gethsemane. It offers a subtly different slant on the death of Jesus.
An academic finds this Gospel inside a broken statue in a looted Iraq museum. He translates it and publishes it. Most of The Fire Gospel is about what then happens to him. His name? Theo.
The Fire Gospel is by Michael Faber.
'We try our best to tell a story, so that others might be led towards Jesus, but Jesus is not a story. He is the end of all stories.' (The Gospel of Malchus)
3 comments:
I enjoyed Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White - and shall give this one a try. Sounds VG.
After a week I was thinking about sending out a search party, so glad of signs of life. The demands of the public gaze one way and another?
Faber sounds worth a try. Thanks.
glad your back - a week silence from a clergyperson must be a record!!!
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