The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple

In his introduction, Carse (Breakfast at the Victory) asks: ""Are we warranted in resuming the early Christian practice of writing gospels as a way of presenting the mystery and the meaning of the life of Jesus?"" This book is his answer. Not a novel in the fashion of Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ, Carse's book follows the structure of the canonical Gospels, but its picture of Jesus is very different than that presented by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The ""beloved disciple"" who narrates this gospel is the Samaritan woman of the canonical Gospels, and she is portrayed as having known Jesus more intimately than any of his other disciples. When a group of Jesus' followers approaches her with their own gospels, she produces a parchment scroll, her gospel, which offers corrections to their accounts. The beloved disciple paints a portrait of Jesus as a fully human teacher who is not a miracle-worker or a messiah. In one section, for example, Jesus declares that ""love is not necessary... we are truly neighbors only when we can live together without loving each other."" At his trial, Jesus declares: ""If I am sent by God, so are you.... So are these."" The gospel of the beloved disciple ends with Jesus hanging on the cross, mouth full of buzzing flies and ""the smell of carrion about him."" Carse's gospel de-Christianizes Jesus in an effort to enable Jesus' human foibles and qualities to speak more universally to readers seeking to balance moral goodness with human flaws. (Dec.)