Volume 25, Number 16 · October 26, 1978
The Quest for the Magical Jesus
By Frank Kermode
Jesus the Magician
by Morton Smith
Harper and Row, 222 pp., $12.95
Most of us have a passion for secret history, for the real dirt concealed by the official version. There is a gross justification for our interest, for experience shows that official versions almost invariably have a lot to hide; and there is a subtler one, which is that the most truth-seeking of narratives has to achieve consonances and Illusions of simple causality which are incompatible with a desire to tell all. Of course, the story we want—absolutely candid, free of the guilt and bias of the official version—is itself subject to similar distortions and omissions, and just as incapable of bridging the gap between the written text and something that is supposed to have actually happened. But we want it all the same ('So that's how it really was! Now that makes more sense') and believe it because it was suppressed, and is therefore more fun to believe; or because, since it reveals error and duplicity in something else, it seems to be ex officio on the side of truth.
Review, 2566 words
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