This novel takes a fictional cousin of Jesus (Simon) and tells the story from Simon’s eyes. It is an interesting take and the writing is quick and engaging.
Frail’s book works best when focused on Simon and his impressions of Jesus and the surrounding culture. Frail has obviously done a great deal of research into the times and casts the story of Jesus’s life against those times.
Remember: this is fiction. So, many of the things that happen to or with Jesus in this work are not recorded in the Bible, yet they don’t contradict the historical Jesus of the four gospels. Did Jesus really win a footrace? Not that we know of—but there’s no indication that he didn’t either—so this novel provides some interesting speculation into Jesus’s life outside the Bible and especially before he took up his public ministry.
What is going to strike most students of the Bible are the things that are left out. In telling the story of Jesus’s adolescent years, Frail leaves out the only story we actually have from those years: Jesus arguing with the teachers of the law when he was twelve (Luke 2:41ff), and in fact places Jesus in Egypt at this time. (It's possible that Jesus and his parents went to Jerusalem from Egypt, but the narrative doesn't indicate this.) And while there is a fictional cousin in the story, there is no mention of Jesus’s brothers and sisters (Mark 3:32). Most troubling to anyone who has read the Bible will be that Frail has Jesus performing a miracle before the wedding in Cana (which would seem to be a contradiction of John 2:11), and has Pilate giving a verdict that is not in keeping with that which he gives in the gospels (see Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23:22, and John 19), which depict him as being far less decisive than the Pilate of this novel.
If given a chance to read this book (it us currently available at infinitypublishing.com and will soon be in bookstores everywhere) some people are going to hate it and some will love it, for it will be the Jesus some seek, but go against the Jesus many expect. Frail focuses on Jesus’s message of love and peace (and abolition), yet doesn’t touch on Jesus’s declaration that his message would tear families apart. Jesus’s message to Gentiles in this novel will seem to some readers as being closer to Paul’s exposition of the gospel than that which Jesus proclaimed.
Still, if it opens up the times and the culture and sends the reader back to the gospels, then I would say it has done what it’s supposed to do. Give it a read and let me know what you think!
Typesetting, Grammar and the Like
