By David Strom
SAN DIEGO–For someone who does not know much about the birth of Christianity, The Liars’ Gospel provided easy access into those biblical times. The author, Naomi Alderman, a British award winning writer, gives what I believe to be a Jewish view of the times. She reimagines the life of Jesus, from the points of view of four people closest to him before and after his death.
This is the story of Yehoshuah (Jesus), who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories. His mother Miryam (Mary) grieves, his friend Iehuda from Qeriot (Judas Iscariot) loses his faith, the High Priest Caiaphas of the Temple tries to keep the peace, and a rebel named Bar-Avo (Barabbas) strives to bring that peace tumbling down.
Each brings a different perspective. None is quite what the gospels would lead us to expect. Miryam, for instance, is certainly no virgin, nor has it ever crossed her mind that her son might be the son of God. It is a year after the crucifixion, and such are the depths of her wretchedness that she can barely bring herself to think about her first-born at all. In a lacerating study of despair, Alderman portrays a woman who feels herself doubly bereaved: not only by the death of Yehoshuah, but by his rejection of her and the rejection by Joseph her husband who divorced her, while Jesus was still alive. “Her heart is a stone. Her mouth is a closed door.” The metaphor is typical of Alderman’s method. Brilliantly evocative in its own right, it also casts her grief as a rejection of what the followers of Yehoshuah are already interpreting as the supreme miracle of the resurrection. Now, a year after Yehoshuah’s death his mother flashes between grief and rage while trouble brews between her village and the occupying soldiers. Alderman’s account may tell us something about occupying soldiers and the hatred that it stirs up among the occupied today.
Iehuda of Qeriot (Judas) was once very close with Yehoshuah. After most of the followers were asleep, Iehuda and Yehoshuah would talk late into the night about what Yehoshuah did that day, the people he healed and didn’t heal, and why he would help some and not others. After traveling with him and the other early disciples, he became disillusioned with Yehoshuah and some of his ideas. It bothered him greatly that he thought Yehoshuah was beginning to act like and believe that he might be the messiah after all. Iehuda felt there was only one God and that this itinerant preacher was arrogant enough to believe he was God’s messenger on earth.
Iehudah lost his faith in Yehoshuah as messiah because he viewed Jesus as being in love with himself. Eventually, he even lost this last remnant of faith. With his faith gone and believing Yehoshuah was now a grave threat to the people of Israel, he gladly turned Yehoshuah over to the Romans.
Caiaphas, High Priest at this historical period, was always trying to please two different opposing sources of possible power. His greatest wish and acts were aimed at maintaining the fragile peace between Rome and the Israelite people. In the best of times this is a hard feat to accomplish, and it was not the best of times. It was a time of political power play and brutal tyranny between Pontius Pilate, the surrogate dictator appointed by Rome, and the Jewish masses. Men and women took to the streets, like now, to protest their lack of rights. And dictators put them down with iron-fisted force, just as dictators do even today.
While all of this is taking place, Caiaphas has his own personal family problems. He believes his wife, a well educated woman, has another man in her life; a man she may have had sex with. His wife, daughter of a much-loved former High Priest, Annas, knows that her dalliance would lead to embarrassment of the high Priest and could possibly lead to her death.
Caiaphas resolved this situation, but is now faced with what to do with this itinerant preacher Yehoshuah. The priestly high court decides to have Yehoshuah crucified. On the day that the crucifixion is take place, Bar-Avo is also to be crucified. But it doesn’t happen that way. Pontius Pilate, the much-hated Prefect of Judea, plays a game with the two condemned men. Pilate lets the assembled crowd choose which of the two men should be spared. Bar-Avo has many of his followers in the throng to witness his death by crucifixion and they vote loudly to spare his life and not Yehosuah’s.
That was a wonderful reprieve for Bar-Avo, but not for the Romans. Bar-Avo was already a rebel fighter, what some would call a freedom fighter today, who went on to murder many Roman soldiers over his lifetime.
The Romans had to send a Roman legion to put down Bar-Avo rebellion/insurrection long years after the crucifixion of Yehoshuah. Titus, the legion leader, never understood why this small band of people would fight so hard to maintain their religion and way of life. Every act of brutality hardens the people a little further, making the next uprising more violent. “Even to speak of trusting Rome now, of wanting peace with Rome, is to forget the murdered sons… The thing has no end. Or, no end but one.” They knew they would lose and yet they persisted in the struggle. Why?
They were waiting for the messiah who would bring peace to the world and lion and the lamb would lie down together in harmony. And so many Jews, then and now, know that the world has had many false messiahs, even into the present century.
Naomi Alderman with her new novel has given us a fascinating Jewish version of the gospel. Alderman’s Yehoshuah is a Jewish interpretation of Jesus, the creation of a Jewish novelist. The Liars’ Gospel is highly recommended.
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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at david.strom@sdjewishworld.com