And then there was the Word

What kind of research did you do to write the book? How did the book come about?
I read the gospels and the epistles of Paul in the New Testament,of course,and I read a good many of the so-called apocryphal gospels — documents that didn’t make it into the official canon of scripture. I also read some modern scholarship,principally the works of Geza Vermes,the foremost Jesus scholar of the present day. But I didn’t want to get too bound up with scholarship; this was a work of imagination,not history or theology,and I needed just enough material for my imagination to work with,and not so much as to smother it.

You’ve ruffled the Church’s feathers once before with His Dark Materials — they thought it was anti-Christian. How do you react to their outrage against the trilogy and this book?
Although some individual Christians were outraged,there was no corporate condemnation of the book or of me. I think that proves that the Church is adult enough and confident enough now to allow a certain amount of dissent and criticism. Some of the warmest and most generous responses I’ve had,both to His Dark Materials and to the Jesus book,have been from Christians.

You’ve written the book in a fable format,not unlike the Holy Bible . Did you want it to be as close to the Bible in terms of narrative? How did you choose the way you were going to tell this story?
I wanted it to be simple and clear in tone. I wasn’t trying to imitate the style of the Bible in any way. Your word ‘fable’ is a good one: I think a fable is exactly what it is. It’s not a new gospel or anything like that.

When did you stop believing in God? What brought that about?
I just grew out of belief,I think. Little by little it became incredible,and impossible to believe. There was no dramatic moment of conversion,simply the natural ebbing-away of a tide going out.