The Last Temptation Of Christ Essay, Research Paper

When we think of the life of Jesus Christ, our chief beginning is the Bible. This great literary work does an first-class occupation of portraying Him as God s chosen Messiah. He is really accepting of His occupation and is unfastened to the agony He endures throughout His life and during His decease. Jesus has ever been the pious, chaste adult male that people have come to cognize of all time since the Bible was written. He ever resisted enticement, ne’er feared immorality, and ne’er one time doubted that God was non His male parent, nor did He of all time sin.

Looking at Jesus life through the point of view of the Bible is, in many ways, incorrect. In the Bible, Jesus is God made homo, non merely human entirely. Because of His deity, He easy avoids all the maladies of the universe. Near the terminal of His life, He merely has one minute of diffidence. This minute comes while He is on the cross. This glance of Jesus humanity, though alleviating to the reader, does non to the full uncover His character to us.

In Nikos Kazantzakis The Last Temptation of Christ, the character of Jesus Christ is revealed to us as non God as human, but human as homo. Jesus journey to Golgotha was much more hard than we thought. Not merely that concluding journey, where He was humiliated and tortured in forepart of the people He loved so dearly, but the journey of his whole life, from get downing to stop. It began from the minute He was born. Kazantzakis brightly reveals Jesus to us in a new visible radiation by making something so dissident and controversial. He does something that has ne’er been conceived by any other adult male on the face of this Earth. This evil title, this blasphemous act that he performs is the humanisation of Jesus the Christ. He does this by implementing the emotion of fright within Him.

Fear is a characteristic that all worlds have. Jesus, harmonizing to the Bible, ne’er possessed this feature. However, we learn that Jesus did hold this quality. It is through the personification of the hereafter Messiah that we learn of Jesus mistakes. Jesus does non desire to be the Chosen One for God ; He does non desire to carry through all of the workss that God wishes. Alternatively, He inquiries his motivations for even puting out on the missions He does.

Even in the beginning of the narrative when God is seeking to talk to Him, Jesus rejects Him by stating:

Yes, yes, I m afraid You want me to stand up and talk, make you? What can I state, how can I state it? I can t, I tell you! I m illiterate What did you state? The land of Eden I don t attention about the land of Eden

( Kazantzakis, 28 ) .

He farther rejects God in this scene by stating that he wishes God would take person other than him. This shows that Jesus was afraid of accepting the mission of God right off. He is emotional in his protestations to God. He is excessively frightened to carry through his mission.

Even Mary does non wilfully accept God s program for Jesus. She responds by stating, I want my boy a adult male like everyone else, nil more, nil less ( 64 ) .

The overmastering facet of Jesus fright is that He does non to the full recognize He is afraid until he is on

the route to Capernaum. On the manner at that place, he meets up with Mary Magdalene, who is a prostitute. When He enters her chamber, she has merely had intercourse with several work forces and is lying in her bed, naked. When He asks her to retrieve when they were kids, she replies by stating:

What sort of a adult male are you? Still drooling? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You ne’er had the bravery to stand up by yourself like a adult male and non trust on anyone. If you re non hanging on to your female parent s apron strings, you re hanging to mine, or God s. You can t stand by yourself, because you re scared. You don t daring look maintain into your ain psyche or into your organic structure for that affair because you re frightened! Scared, scared ( 91 ) !

This quotation mark from Mary sums up the feelings that Jesus is presently holding. He doesn Ts have the bravery to do the base God has asked of Him. He doesn t expression into his psyche or organic structure to recognize that he has the possible to carry through this responsibility. It takes the blowing up of a prostitute for Him to recognize that he must go on his journey and carry through God s petition. This is dry because it is a wickedness to be in the presence of a prostitute, much less to have abuse from one.

Subsequently on, Jesus journey becomes more hard. When it does, He one time once more uncertainties himself. He fears what the result of His journey will be. When Jacob asks Him who sent Him, Jesus answers by stating that He doesn T know. The astonishing thing in this scene is that He hesitates for a 2nd. He starts to believe that it was the Satan that sent Him, and non God. However, when Jacob starts to advert the centurion, Jesus rapidly agrees with that construct in his ideas.

Afterwards, He continues to oppugn himself, and His fright shows. This happens when He starts inquiring why he has behaved so cowardly, and why He lacked the bravery to go the route He chose. Later on, when He is in the presence of God, He claims non to be a prophesier that will non cognize what to state. One of the most powerful quotation marks is, God did non anoint my lips with combustion coals, did non project his bolt of lightning in to my bowels to do me fire, hotfoot frenzied into the streets and get down to shout ( 127-128 ) .

These illustrations further prove that Jesus was non as willing to accept God s program for him. He was discerning, nervous, and most of all, fearful. What moves us about this fright is the fact that it makes Jesus human. Because of this one emotion, we are able to associate to how Jesus felt at the beginning and terminal of His life. Kazantzakis succeeded, non merely in doing us see the whole character of Jesus, but to see the human facet of Jesus. By making so we feel even greater compassion non for the Divine turned adult male, but adult male entirely. Jesus was a human being and He was merely making what was right. He had his uncertainties, denials, and uncertainnesss, but in the terminal He was able to get the better of all.

In the terminal, it is Kazantzakis chef-d’oeuvre that brings Jesus closer to us than the Bible of all time could. By humanising Jesus, and doing him more relatable to us, The Last Temptation of Christ does a better occupation of uncovering the full character of Jesus, and beef uping many individuals beliefs about his deity.