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The story of Jesus has been proclaimed by Christians as "The Greatest Story Ever Told". Pullman in his story "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" makes the point that we can never know what happened especially when we were not present when a story was made. The story of Jesus Christ is a story. It was not sufficiently documented to be history, but even if it were to be taken as history for the sake of argument, Pullman's point was that history as told is not necessarily truth. Truth, he thinks, can be injected into history in any way the story teller wants it. When it travels far enough and is retold often enough, and is, above all, a good story, people will believe it. Christians may likely find this book heretical and blasphemous. If the very idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus gave birth to twins, naming one "Jesus" and the other "Christ", may be sufficient justification for a charge of heresy, then to say that it was Christ who betrayed Jesus to the Roman governor must surely carry the aggravated charge of blasphemy. However, this book is much more complex and complicated than that. Pullman did not write this book because he was an atheist with the intention of annoying Christians by disparaging Jesus Christ, God, and the Biblical account. He recaptured many of the teachings of Jesus - all taken from the Bible - and cast them in a context that made those teachings far more meaningful than they do coming straight from the Bible. His citation of the Lord's Prayer in the context that he had created would have moved many a Christian. It has many a teaching attributed to Jesus Christ that any man, Christian or atheist, will like to embrace. For example, "'Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive." Slowly and ominously, Pullman spun a version of the life and death of Jesus, explaining the necessity if not the veracity of miracles in the story of Jesus. If miracles do not happen in real life, they had to be created. And the greatest miracle of all was the Resurrection. Pullman's account was contrary to popular Christian belief that the Roman soldiers did not break the legs of Jesus to hasten his death (a conventional practice in the art of crucifixion at the time). I will not add the spoiler here so that the reader can enjoy the book even more. This is not a book that is proclaiming that the Bible was false, and it was made clear that the book was only a story. Pullman's is a story that we don't quite expect; but was the Biblical story of Jesus one that we do? The point that runs through it is that a good story is still a story. Its success depends on many factors, among them, the credulity of people and the desire to believe in miracles. It depends as much on the listener as it does on the storyteller. It depends, in other words, on you.