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Jesus and Christ

About six years ago, i had a conversation on the stage of the National Theatre with Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the course of talking about "His Dark Materials", he said that he was curious to know why, although the story was plainly about a form of the Christian church,  there was nothing about Jesus in the book.

I said that he was right, there wasn't, and that I'd deal with Jesus later in another book. 

Well, the time has come. "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" will be published next April by Canongate as part of their Myths series. I've always been fascinated by the two parts of the name of Jesus Christ, and by the difference between them. Another thing that's interested me for a long time is the way in which the Christian church began to formulate its beliefs and establish a canon of scripture: there were many more gospels than four, but why were those four chosen and others left out? When did Paul begin to write his epistles? Was what he said different from what the gospels say? Do the gospels even agree with one another? Was there a difference between Jesus and Christ?

My version of the Jesus story doesn't attempt to solve these questions, but I hope readers will find it interesting. There will be various events and readings connected with the publication and I'll let you know all about them when the dates are settled.

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