The Last Temptation of Christ

Just finished reading The Last Temptation of Christ. Curious experience. At first I disliked the book, not on the basis of ideology or any perceived sense of blasphemy in the content, but merely because I did not like the style of the writing. Of course one has to keep in mind that this is a translation from Greek and no doubt loses as much in the process as any other translation. The vernacular in language, in conversation seemed to suffer the most, as it seemed archaic to the point of being a bit funny. At some points the disciples sounded more like Irishmen arguing in a bar room than first century Jews. I suppose I should take a peak at another translation in the future (one of the many, many things I will never get around to, I'm certain).

Frankly, I was teetering on the edge of putting the book down and re-reading Mark Twain's Puddin' Head Wilson instead, when a providential (in hindsight) set of accidents occurred; to whit, the dog ran into the table in the yard, the table fell over, the book bounced through the grass, ejected its marker on the way, and when I retrieved it I could only hazard a rough guess as to where I had been in my reading.

What I found was that in the space of what cannot have been too very many pages, Jesus himself had transformed, between this reading and the last, from a cowardly, tormented, self-absorbed youth to Christ--and the sight of Him, the Christ I know, was like strength and sweetness admixed, refreshing, reviving, reassuring.

How very hard it is, I realized, to look upon Jesus yet undiscovered, yet unfinished, still struggling through all the weaknesses of life, of the flesh, of the ego, of fear and pain and desire. There is as little comfort to be had in this as in watching another man suffer a seizure, or in hearing the rantings of a schizophrenic in response to his invisible voices.

Power gone awry, power unfocused, power uncomprehending is terror itself.

Yet here, having passed through the scourging and crucifixion of life in the flesh, was Jesus the Christ, suddenly comprehending all things and all mankind, leading now, serenely confident, God Himself, the good shepherd, on the road to peace unto death and forever after, world without end.

As I understand it, Kazantzakis, after The Temptation appeared in print, was excommunicated from the orthodox church. This in itself seems odder by leaps and bounds than his flights of imagination and invention as set down in his book--for the content is, if nothing else, astoundingly and unapologetically orthodox in its conclusions--even to the point of having Matthew himself write his gospel while actually in the company of Jesus. This is a notion rejected nowadays by many churches, and most certainly rejected by most scholars and seminarians. No, they say--it cannot have been so--the gospel could not have been written earlier than 60 years after the crucifixion.

Blasphemy? No. The blasphemy lies s in not thinking, not challenging oneself, not struggling to comprehend, not searching the heart--and Kazantzakis was guilty of none of these.