The Last Temptation of Christ

I read this long ago.I would recommend it to anyone I read it to the end and could never understand what all the hoopla was about. My guess was that most people never finished the book.

Love Kazantzkis. Not quite as good as Zorba the Greek. The trippy ending made me realize why the Catholic church banned it.

I understand the controversy - but love it as a piece of spiritual fiction. The book works on the premise that Christ had a dual nature - both man and God - and as all of us who have lived as men understand, there are daily pleasures and desires, but they may be inconsistent with being God. The other premise that makes the book so good - and the spiritual victory so amazing...more

I understand the controversy - but love it as a piece of spiritual fiction. The book works on the premise that Christ had a dual nature - both man and God - and as all of us who have lived as men understand, there are daily pleasures and desires, but they may be inconsistent with being God. The other premise that makes the book so good - and the spiritual victory so amazing - is that for Christ to truly be a savior, he has to choose to die on the cross. The book never gets into controversies that other, more popular authors address - Christ never takes a lover - but it does imagine that he must have knowledge of the joys of family life, and life of the flesh, if he understands what he is giving up to be the Messiah.   hide

The Christ depicted here is the kind of Christ one wouldn't volunteer to befriend.