The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

In this provocative retelling of the New Testament, Philip Pullman presents Jesus and his twin brother Christ as two men with radically different temperaments and motives. Jesus is the good man — gentle, devout, and genuinely believing in his divine calling; Christ is the scoundrel — calculating, ambitious, and willing to use his brother's story to build a power for himself. As their paths converge toward the events of the Passion, the novel asks whether the man the world calls the Messiah is the one who actually deserves the name.