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David James Duncan on Making Up Jesus

The Brothers K (Bantam Books: July 1996), p. 61.

It’s funny how everybody has their own pet notion about Jesus and nobody’s pet notion seems to agree with anybody else’s. Grandawma, for instance, says He’s “just a defunct social reformer.” Then there’s Papa, who once said he’s God’s Son all right, and that He survived the crucifixion just fine, but that the two-thousand-year-old funeral service his cockeyed followers call Christianity probably made Him sorry he did. Meanwhile there’s Freddy, who’s six now, and who told me she saw Christ hiding under her bed one night, but that all He’d say to her was “Psst! Shhh! Pharisees!”