Product Description

King Jesus, long out of print, is one of the most controversial historical novels of all time. In it, Robert Graves has summoned his superb narrative powers, his painstaking scholarship, his wit and unsurpassed ability to recreate the past, to produce a magnificant portrayal of the life of Christ on earth.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151595 in Books
• Published on: 1981-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 424 pages

Review
"My solution to the problem of Jesus's nativity implies a rejection of tke mystical Virgin Birth doctrine, which no longer has the same force in religious polemics as it had in Justin's day; to the mass of people nowadays the choice is between a Jesus bom in the ordinary course ofnature and one as mythical as Perseus and Prometheus."--From the Author's Commentary

"This is not reading for the easily shocked; it definitely presents Jesus as a sage and a poet, if not divine. It moves, as does all Mr. Graves' writing, at a brilliant fast pace, and with a tremendous style."--Kikus Reviews

"Mr. Graves is a poet; both the knowledge of a scholar and the imagination of a poet are brought to bear upon Jesus as child, boy, and man. The book is a bold speculative adventure."--Harold Brighouse, Manchester Guardian
-- Review

Review
"My solution to the problem of Jesus's nativity implies a rejection of tke mystical Virgin Birth doctrine, which no longer has the same force in religious polemics as it had in Justin's day; to the mass of people nowadays the choice is between a Jesus bom in the ordinary course ofnature and one as mythical as Perseus and Prometheus."--From the Author's Commentary

"This is not reading for the easily shocked; it definitely presents Jesus as a sage and a poet, if not divine. It moves, as does all Mr. Graves' writing, at a brilliant fast pace, and with a tremendous style."--Kikus Reviews

"Mr. Graves is a poet; both the knowledge of a scholar and the imagination of a poet are brought to bear upon Jesus as child, boy, and man. The book is a bold speculative adventure."--Harold Brighouse, Manchester Guardian

About the Author
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a British poet, novelist, translator, and critic. His many books include the historical novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, the autobiography Good-bye to All That, and the mythic/literary studies The White Goddess and The Greek Myths.

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Customer Reviews

The Jewish plot
Graves begins by giving us a wide panoramic vista of society, geopolitics, and the religious context of the world in which the Jesus myth was born. With his great erudition about the Ancient world, its religions and myths, it is much easier to understand the real background of the Gospels. A Jewish world profoundly divided, with plenty of sects and cults, in a Palestine dominated by the Romans. The Jews yearn for the arrival of the Messiah, who will free them from the Evil Empire. From there, Graves develops a bold thesis: given the political and dynastic conflicts facing the Jews, a conspiracy is devised in order to beget a totally legitimate heir to the throne, one who has all the credentials to lead his people to freedom. As other reviewers have pointed out, Graves's thesis is based on the myth of the Triple or White Godess (about which Graves himself was an erudite, as shown in his complex book "The White Goddess").

The said heir must be the husband of the youngest descendant from the maternal lineage of Michal, which represented the maternal continuity of King David's lineage. This would be the truly legitimate succession. That young woman is Mary, the youngest daughter of Joachim and Hanna. Simeon, the Supreme Priest, convinces Antipater, Herod's eldest son, to secretly marry Mary, so that he may legitimately claim the throne of Israel after the death of his ruthless father. After the secret wedding, Mary is then officially given in marriage (a mock one) to an old widower called Joseph, who agrees to the farce. Herod learns something about this conspiracy and plans to kill every boy under four from the Davidian lineage. Of course, Joseph and his family flee to Egypt. There, the future Messiah spends years of deep learning under the guide of Simeon. The script of the Gospels follows, but according to Graves's thesis. Jospeh and his family return, not to Judaea, but to Galilee. In order to fulfill the requisites of the Triple Godedess's myth, Jesus is married to another Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and he is formally anointed as King of the Jesus (since Antipater has died also). So Jesus begins his minstery, gathering followers and provoking the establishent. He suffers persecutions. But turns out Jesus, at the beginning, is not really preaching anything much new: his novelty consists in a radical return to original Judaism, updated to a different society, but free of all the rigidities, pomp, and hypocrisy of Pharisees and Saducees. Jesus inherits the religion of the Essenes, radical conservatives who preach austerity and the simple life. Little by little Jesus alienates and infuriates the Jewish leadership and his perception of his ministry and mission changes.

This is where the story really changes from the Gospels: according to Graves, the original intention of the plot is changed: Jesus will no longer be a political, religious, and military leader who will overthrow the Romans and preside over a new Jewish Golden Age, but he will be the sacrificed offering to the White Goddess, so that her cult might reign. This also won't happen: Jesus's sacrifice will not usher in the religion of the goddess, but Christianity. Strange are God's ways. It is precisely this change which alienates some of Jesus's original followers, like Judas, a man totally committed to the overthrowing of the Romans. When Jesus starts changing from leader to redemptor, the plot becomes sort of lika a Greek tragedy, until the well-known and bloody end.

This book is a great novel about the deepest-rooted myth of humanity: the birth of Christianity. Graves's Jesus is a very complex character, rude, disconcerting and little likable. His theology sounds simple but is in fact confusing. When this confusion is added to the already complex web of cults and sects existing in Palestine, the end develops in an inevitable way. Sharp, bold, and provocative, Graves points to a fictional but believable theory of the story whose History will never be known: where, how, by whom, why, the powerful myth of the Jewish Messiah become Universal Saviour was created.

The Gospel of Robert Graves
Robert Graves knew that the Gospels were essentially historical novels with a religious subject & themes. Like historical novels, they were a blend of history & myth, fact & fiction. But Graves' novel about Jesus is more than just another fairy tale or Homer's Illiad. It is a history of myth that explains in much detail the pagan origins of Christianity. However, the picture that Graves paints is different in detail from the picture of Jesus given to us by Pauline Christianity. Rather, Graves tries to give us a portrait of the Herodian era that existed before & during the life of Jesus. This was an era in which a pre-pharasaical, virulent, pagan-hating (despite it's own pagan roots), caste system of Judaic monotheism promoted a single, masculine, deity to the exclusion of all others (in particular, feminine deities) & was forced to accomodate the old paganism of the Greeks (which they tried to destroy, but failed) & the new paganism of the Romans (Greco/Roman) while under the control of an unpopular vassal state. It is a colonial Rome that became the protectors of this Gentile population which resented their forced Jewish conversion under the Maccabees & the Hasmonean Jews. Much of this Greek ethnic population, both pagan & converted, resided in protected areas directly administered by Rome called a decapolis where they could worship in freedom & prosper economically without being subject to second class status & Jewish religious authority which predominated in the Jewish tetrarchies. Hence, the narrator of the story, Agabus the Decapolitan, is a supposed metropolitan administrator for one of these "pagan" enclaves. Ironically, Jesus' ministry begins & grows in the decapolis around the Sea of Galilee where he is protected from rival Herodian rulers. But the rivalry, in question, stems from Jesus not only having been an ancestor of King David, on his mother's side, but also from having been born into the Herodian royal family & it's intrigues, on his father's side. In other words, Graves rejects the so called virgin birth of Jesus because the immaculate conception was a view that was not held by the early Jewish Christian followers of Jesus & his divinity was not "universally" proclaimed until the Roman Emperor Constantine & the Council of Nicea formulated the nature of that divinity, i.e. the Trinity (itself derived from Egyptian/Sumerian paganism & Greek metaphysical philosophy). This is essentially a book about the politics of religion. But it also tries to show the character of Jesus at the crossroads of the politics & religion, of his time. Jesus isn't just a Jewish scholar par excellence or a rabbi who's job (unlike the Sadducees) was to preach in synagogues set up to minister to those excluded from the temples, i.e. converts & patrilineal Jews (like Herod the Great). He is also a man on a mission with a rightful claim to being the high priest/king that is the Jewish, as opposed to the Christian, messiah who is "a" son of God & not "the" son of God & who's divinity is achieved through the inseparability of his word to his works & deeds.

Quid est veritas?
Martin Scorsese originally wanted to film King Jesus until Barbara Hershey put a copy of the extraordinarily beautiful and moving Last Temptation of Christ into his hands.

And he would have had his work cut out for him had he tackled Graves' astonishing novel, for it is so thick with archeaological information, as well as Biblical scholarship, that the result is a beguiling combination of hard-nosed history book and old-fashioned sandal and robe epic.

Devotees of the Galilean Jew who caused all this need not worry, Jesus stays a virgin and is never shown having sex with anyone. But he does indeed set up his own betrayal, with the help of Judas ("what you must do, do quickly"), and the most potentially damaging angle is the fact that Graves asserts that Jesus was indeed the heir to the throne of Jerusalem; hence Pilate's sign, INRI, placed over the Cross is no longer a bad joke, but a crime and slap in the face to Jesus' ancestry.

Ultimately, though, the novel's main theme is the conflict between Monotheism (masculine) and Polytheism (feminine) and in the end, Monotheism wins out... or does it? With stories of Jesus walking on water and healing the sick and raising the dead, and being raised from the dead himself, just as if he was one of the many other magical pagan gods running about the Mediterranean at the time, did Monotheism really win after all?

Great, but difficult, stuff. I've read it five times in order to fully get Graves' strange vision. King Jesus is like unearthing a golden treasure from the dusty caves of Qumran. Mysterious, and probably retaining all of its mysteries, but valuable nonetheless.