Christ the Tiger
Anthony Burgess on his novel Man of Nazareth.
Man of Nazareth, the novel from which Franco Zeffirelli’s television series Jesus of Nazareth was adapted, was published in New York in 1979. It’s a remarkable piece of fiction, not least because the story of Jesus is retold by a sceptical, rationalist narrator who does not believe in miracles or the divinity of Christ.
At various points in its gestation, Burgess’s novel about the life of Jesus had several working titles, including ‘The Fifth Gospel’, ‘Christ the Tiger’ (taken from the poem ‘Gerontion’ by T.S. Eliot) and ‘Jesus Christ and the Love Game’ – the last of these being the title under which it was published in Spanish in 1978.
For complicated reasons, the English-language version of the novel was slow to appear in print. The French edition, published in Paris by Robert Laffont, had appeared two years earlier in 1977.
One of the distinctive features of the French edition, translated by Georges Belmont and Hortense Chabrier, is that it includes a foreword by Burgess, apparently written for French readers, which did not appear in the subsequent English edition. In this piece, Burgess discusses his sources and makes a bold statement about his personal beliefs at this point in the 1970s. He also reveals the extent to which his thinking about religion had been shaped by the writing of the French structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Although Man of Nazareth is well known to readers in French, Spanish and Italian, the English version of the novel has been out of print since 1979. We hope to bring news of a new English edition in the near future. In the meantime, we are pleased to announce that the first German translation will be published in time for Christmas 2025.
Although the original English text of Burgess’s foreword to Man of Nazareth is missing from the Foundation’s archive, we have retranslated the French text, and this is the first time that it has been published in English.
We are very pleased to offer this illuminating piece to readers of Anthony Burgess News, as a sort of early Christmas present.
Anthony Burgess News will return on 10 January 2025. A very Merry Christmas from all at the Burgess Foundation.
‘About a Novel on Jesus Christ’ by Anthony Burgess
The only excuse for writing yet another book about Jesus Christ is, probably, to suggest new facts, new truths, a new interpretation. From a biographical point of view, everything has been said definitively in the four gospels. In principle, a novel can only be a retelling of the story, aiming at sensationalism, trying to prove, for example, that Christ was actually Judas, or that it was Pontius Pilate who was crucified, and Christ who, disguised as a centurion, pierced his side with a spear. My novel, alas, does not aim to reinvent anything. It follows the narrative of the gospels, except that it tries to fill, with plausible invention, the large gap in Jesus’ life between his bar mitzvah and the beginning of his mission. Thus, I make him a married man, then a childless widower. But my attempt at revolution ends there.
As for the part of the story which is derived from the Gospels, my main objective has been to characterize the figure of Christ, as well as that of each disciple, to portray them as true human beings with individual qualities and distinctive ways of speaking. Christ does not resemble the small man of tradition, meek as a lamb, humble, sickly. He is tall and strong, with a powerful voice, a sort of tiger in physique, if not a giant. One characteristic which is arrived at through simple deduction is that he had a voice that drew its power from a large chest and enormous lung capacity. Hand in hand with this hypothesis, I take a certain satisfaction in seeing a man in full physical bloom who renounces his strength in favour of tolerance and love.
I have also tried to reformulate what the Church has been teaching for two millennia – but, it seems, without putting the necessary energy into it. If Christ is, by his sacrifice, the redeemer of humanity’s sins, he must also be the Son of God, since only God made flesh can provide the victim capable of appeasing the God-spirit, in whose eyes sin is an intolerable blemish (aesthetically? ethically? Neither of these terms fits exactly). Now, if God can become flesh, it seems logical that flesh can become bread and wine.
The Eucharist, as proposed by Christ, is denied by reformed versions of Christianity, including, apparently, Catholicism since Pope John XXIII. At least the ecumenical movement seems ready to accept the Eucharist as a pure ceremony, rejecting the tradition of transubstantiation. This book emphasizes the logical character of the Eucharist. It also highlights the beauty of a sort of divine structure (God as Claude Lévi-Strauss). The precursor born of a woman who was no longer of childbearing age. The redeemer born of a virgin.
God becomes flesh.
Flesh becomes bread and wine.
Above all, I wanted to propose that there is no hope for humanity except through personal regeneration. That is to say, through the virtues of kindness, love, and forgiveness of one’s enemies. Political reform is hopeless. The cross is the symbol of the State, the State of Caesar or the President of the French Republic. The way of Christ (the Way of the Cross) is the only viable one, even from a practical and non-mystical point of view.
Monaco, 7 June 1977
© International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Find out more
If you would like more Christmas-themed Burgess content, you can listen to our podcast episode in which he reads A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:
You can also listen to our podcast episode about fictional representations of Jesus: