A Dozen Favorite Novels About Jesus
(ranked from least to most heretical)
Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist (2/10 on the heresy scale)
Lazarus Is Dead by Richard Beard (2.5/10 on the heresy scale)
The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis (3.5/10 on the heresy scale)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (4/10 on the heresy scale)
Quarantine by Jim Crace (5/10 on the heresy scale)
Pontius Pilate by Roger Caillois (5.5/10 on the heresy scale)
Jesus Christs by A.J. Langguth (6.5/10 on the heresy scale)
The Wandering Jew by Stefan Heym (7/10 on the heresy scale)
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago (7.5/10 on the heresy scale)
HIM by Geoff Ryman (8/10 on the heresy scale)
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman (8/10 on the heresy scale)
Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock (9/10 on the heresy scale)
(Finally, though this is a list of novels rather than short stories, I would be remiss if I failed to mention Jorge Luis Borges’s “Three Versions of Judas,” which plumbs Judas Iscariot’s “mysterious place in the economy of redemption” and proposes that he himself might have been the Incarnation: a 9/10 on the heresy scale, and a masterpiece.)
— December 19, 2023