In The Second Book of Prophets, Malayalam writer Benyamin recasts Jesus Christ as an anguished revolutionary; the novel exposes how every liberation risks leading to the ‘crocodile-den of another slavery’’
In the Malayalam writer Benyamin’s 2020 novel Body and Blood (translated into English by Swarup BR), there’s a great passage where one of the main characters, Rithu, is doing some translation work for her father, reading stories about a real-life priest called Alvares.
Sick of the dictatorial tyranny of the Portuguese, Alvares turns his back on the Church and decides to serve the poor and the helpless in his own individual capacity, without the heft of organised religion behind him. Rithu’s dilemma is what Benyamin presents before the reader as well: a difficult choice between following the words of your religious leader, and following one’s own heart. Alvares chose to follow his heart, at great personal cost.
In his latest novel, Benyamin goes to the very source of the dilemma, so to speak. The Second Book of Prophets (Simon & Schuster India) is a radical re-imagining of the lives of Jesus Christ as well as other Biblical figures such as John the Baptist, Lazarus, or indeed, Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea and the man who ordered the crucifixion of Christ. In the novel, Jesus is less soft-spoken saviour and more angry young man, a true revolutionary who is anguished at society’s treatment of his fellow men.
An allegory about revolution
The novel sees Benyamin changing his prose style slightly, adding a layer of archaic usages to the ‘dramatic realism’ that marks his narratives. The style is intended to transport the reader back centuries, but the author can also be quite blunt and direct when he wants to be. For example, in the chapter called ‘Revelations’, when we meet Jesus for the first time, he is alone in the desert and plagued with self-doubt. Notice how his inner voice is both second-guessing him and foreshadowing the future vulnerabilities of his own followers.
“Why are you wandering in these cursed lands? What are you hoping to attain that you didn’t gain in the restful moments of your own home? What difference can the extremity of solitude make? Indeed, what change can you bring to this world? The liberation of the Jew, the liberation of mankind — how ludicrous these terms sound! Mere views, crafted by purposeless minds loath to be satisfied by days and nights of labour. For a man burdened with agony and suffering, there is no dream of liberation. He knows that every journey towards liberation leads to the crocodile-den of another slavery. There is nothing but his daily afflictions there too.”
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That line about how every liberation leads to a “crocodile-den of another slavery” is really what The Second Book of Prophets is all about. It is an allegory about revolution and how societies rise and fall, wrapped up around a religious fable. Take, for instance, how Benyamin tackles the issue of Jesus’ miracles. In The Second Book of Prophets, the ‘miracles’ are acts of social subversion; Jesus witnessing acts of blatant injustice, especially against “the lowborn”, the poor and the otherwise vulnerable.
The wedding feast as a miracle
The famous wedding feast, where Jesus is supposed to have made wine from water, is perhaps the most deliciously re-cast miracle in this book. According to the chapter ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’ what actually happened was that Jesus saw the lowborn being deprived of wine at the feast, when everyone else was drinking heartily. Jesus immediately decides to sit and eat with the lowborn and also demand that wine be served to every single person at the feast, regardless of wealth or lineage.
“Four rounds of feasting had passed. The next was reserved for the low-born. ‘Come, friends, let us sit with them,’ said Jesus, inviting his disciples. For the onlookers, it was nothing short of a miracle. For the first time in their lives, a Davidian was sharing the feast with the low-born! The people never imagined such a thing could happen, not even in their dreams. And now, right before their eyes… Some looked askance at Jesus. Was he mad? Ananias came running, looking horrified. ‘My dearest friend, what are you doing? What about your family’s stature in society? Are you going to eat with these fellows? Come inside — I’m going to serve you specially.’”
Notice how cleverly the phrase “nothing short of a miracle” is deployed in the passage above. This phrase tells us some important truth about the way mythology is created. During Christ’s era, would people have accepted a story about him taking a moral stand at a wedding, until the hosts bowed and served everyone wine? More to the point, would such a story have spread with the same vigour as the water-to-wine miracle? The “editorial” choice to paint the wedding feast as a miracle is a sort of negotiation tactic, when you think about it.
Strands of bleak humour
Throughout known human history it has proven difficult to propagate certain truths that are necessary but also unpalatable for the dominant sections of society. By sublimating dissent into a religious phenomenon (i.e. a miracle), the first drafters of the Bible were using a negotiation tactic in order to have their voices heard far and wide. Similar patterns of ‘negotiating’ are also observed in folktales and fairytales around the world, where spinsters and willful women are transformed into gorgons and witches and so on.
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Benyamin also has this wonderful writerly quality of being extremely funny while depicting decidedly serious things. In many passages here where Pontius Pilate or others are talking about Jews as a monolith, reflecting the racialized rhetoric of the age. Benyamin makes sure that we understand the scale of the bigotry while also noting the bleak humour of the situation. In one scene, Pontius Pilate meets the overweight, perpetually-eating King Herod Antipas, and marvels at the latter’s gluttony.
“No wonder he is obese! Pilate thought wryly to himself, observing Antipas’ gluttony. ‘Did you get this from Rome?’ asked Antipas, biting into a luscious fruit. ‘Yes,’ replied Pilate, amused. Antipas seemed perfectly suited to rule the Jews, who were obsessed not only with religion, but also with food! An utterly ravenous hunger was on display here—not just from one person, but from many generations. He was stuffing food into his mouth with both hands, tucking some into his pockets for later, and scrambling for more…curious!”
A parallel with Jose Saramago
There have been several novels and short stories down the years that have reinterpreted Biblical stories along different literary routes. Anatole France’s short story ‘The Procurator of Judea’ (1892) is a very well-known one, which the translator Ministhy S. cites as background reading in her introduction here — the story shows us how Pilate ironically retained very little memory of the most consequential day of his life (the day of the Crucifixion). Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ (1960) is a humanising portrayal of the savior, ultimately a novel about doubt, especially self-doubt.
But the novel I was reminded of while reading The Second Book of Prophets is Jose Saramago’s excellent The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. In both books, Jesus is presented not just as a spiritual/religious figure but also as a pragmatic, supremely skilled philosopher-of-the-people, capable of molding his message according to the audience in question.
And in both books, Jesus receives powerful hints about all the evil that Christians would go on to unleash upon the world. Large-scale dissenting movements often tragically go on to resemble the tyranny they once sought to replace — both Saramago and Benyamin understand this historical truth, and their novels shine brighter because of it.
