THE LIE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

A historical novel offers a very different Jesus from the one in the New Testament.

Schwartz’s Jesus narrates the story himself and opens it with a volley of stunning revelations. Jesus of Gennesareth refers to himself as the Hasmonean king of Israel, holed up in the mountain fortress of Masada in C.E. 73 as the place is besieged by Romans. He’s almost 80 years old, and his crucifixion half a century earlier gave rise to the story of Jesus of Nazareth—a tale that was subsequently enlarged into the familiar New Testament narrative. This text hid the fact that the true son of God was alive and well. Having leveled these bombshells, this Jesus then tells his story, starting with attending a bar mitzvah and learning that his cousin John, son of Zacharias, was the Hasmonean king. Jesus also discovers that the title will come to him on his relative’s death. In the pages that follow, the author retells the traditional story—the disciples, Mary Magdalene, the clashes with the Romans, and so on—from a radically different perspective. This culminates in an imaginative version of the crucifixion in which Schwartz deftly shows how Jesus is secretly drugged unconscious and taken down alive in order to heal and escape with his wife and disciples. Throughout, the author presents readers with an intriguing protagonist. This Jesus fervently believes in his own lessons of peace and tolerance. He hopes to continue preaching even while the legend of Jesus of Nazareth steadily grows, expanding to include outlandish miracle stories and claims of a virgin birth. Jesus of Gennesareth is dismayed by all this: “I was amazed that pagans would require such strange things to believe the messages I had taught.” Unfortunately, he quickly finds himself back in conflict with the Romans, stuck in Masada with a society of his faithful plus a core of Jewish zealots, all of whom are doomed to die when the siege succeeds. Schwartz tells this riveting story clearly and succinctly but with a paucity of rich details. Many of his readers will doubtless be wishing the inventive tale had a great deal more specifics and complexity.

A gripping, if thin, alternate history narrative with a rebellious Jesus.