Gospel story as fiction

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 16

Gospel story as fiction

Witnesses to Jesus. By Mieczyslaw Malinski. Burns and Oates, 1982. 307 pp. $17.95. “Witnesses to Jesus.” says the publisher’s blurb, "is an impressive, revealing, and moving retelling of the Gospel story; and it has. in addition, the sharpness of characterisation and the narrative force of a novel.” Its author is a Polish Roman Catholic priest whose life of his friend, Karol Wojtyla, the present Pope, has also been published in English. At one level the book is highly readable. Taking the Gospels pretty much as they stand, deploying his imagination and writing skills to good advantage. Father Malinski attempts to depict Jesus as seen by Pilate, Judas, Annas, Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter, in chapters of quite substantial length. There is no point in denying that the chapters read well, move along briskly, and catch the reader’s attention by a fine blend of fact and fancy. Those who enjoy such religious fiction and are untroubled by the questions raised through applying critical procedures to the Gospels, will find this book captivating, moving, and effective. . It will not, however, appeal to aH readers, even to all within the Christian community. For some its flights of imagination may go too far to be credible even in a fictional context. Pilate’s wife discoursing on Plato’s “Phaedo” and

offering comparisons between the teachings of Jesus and Plato strains credulity a bit much. More seriously incidents such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the trial of Jesus, and the anti-Jewish feeling which raises its ugly head in the Gospels (and may well reflect the bitterness which ensued as Jews and Christians drew apart) are. by and large, taken for granted as “gospel truth." Where the Gospels do not provide information the author does not hesitate to fill the gaps. Thus Mary Magdalene becomes the woman “taken in adultery" in John 7:53 - 8:11. a passage in which she is never even mentioned. The recent edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, known as the “Common Version” because it is the joint work of Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars, remarks that this whole passage is. omitted by “the most ancient authorities" for the text of the Fourth Gospel.

The “critical” reader may well feel, therefore, that, admirable as are the author's intentions, and despite, his skills as a writer of religious fiction, this work fails to achieve its purpose because itstrains the Biblical texts and the reader’s imaginative powers to too great an extent. Father Malinski’s aim is to re-vivify Jesus for the modern reader. His attempt to do so is ingenious but the end does not always justify the means.—Colin Brown.