Jesus Unbound

A fictional tale details the life of Jesus, from boyhood to crucifixion and beyond.

In this historical novel, Malmed (Carmen’s Journey, 2015) gives his version of the Jesus story, starting with the figure as an inquisitive lad who questions his father about religious practices such as animal sacrifice. Later, “out of the blue,” Jesus announces he will go “into the wilderness to think.” Following religious studies in Egypt, Jesus spends time with Judas. They visit Essenes who want to reform corrupt religious practices, such as Sadducee priests raking in exorbitant sums for their services in Jerusalem. Judas and other sicarii murder and maim some Roman soldiers. Jesus meets Zealots—“an underground guerrilla force” of Jews resisting the Roman occupation—and returns to Nazareth to preach but is met with derision and notes that “a prophet is without honor in his own land.” He ponders taking up carpentry or teaching because his “chosen career path had a large roadblock in it.” As the Pax Romana wears thin, Jesus enters Jerusalem and disrupts the moneylenders at the Temple. The Romans seize Jesus and question Judas about whether Jesus is a Zealot, ultimately executing Judas but trying to make it look like a suicide. After Jewish leaders refuse to implicate Jesus as a revolutionary, he appears before Pontius Pilate, who orders him crucified. Following Jesus’ death, his body mysteriously disappears. Ten years later, a local teacher named Isaac interviews the elderly scholar Nicodemus about Jesus’ mission and whereabouts. The author raises some superb questions about Jesus’ life and purpose. But Malmed delivers too much creaky exposition, compounding the problem by repeating pedagogical asides, such as an exploration of who the Zealots were, the intricacies of Jewish coins, and the explanation that Herod’s family converted to Judaism, rather than seamlessly weaving facts into the book’s action and dialogue. The latter is often stilted, trite, and anachronistic. Jesus says things like “Whoa! I don’t like that one bit” and “Tomorrow is another day.” Malmed is at his strongest when he attempts to explain Jesus’ aims, but even here his conclusions, voiced via a Q-and-A between Isaac and Nicodemus, are vague.

A peculiarly colorless portrait of Jesus that lacks the insights of a nonfiction inquiry into the biblical figure or the poetry and power of the New Testament.