Jesus Fanfiction

I was going through the library a while back and happened to be looking through the theology section, which is my favorite (possibly other than the music section). Anyway, I was going through shelves books on the New Testament, and happened to find one called "The Man Who Dared to be God," by Robert Norwood.  I opened it to the prologue:
"Once upon a time, an aging Greek doctor of medicine and surgery wrote a little book for a young college man. The doctor's name was Luke. He wrote his book for Theophilus. The book was about Jesus."

I was intrigued. I couldn't help but read some more and find about about this groundbreaking work of original theology and history. This book is addressed to Theophilus whom the author of the book says "is on every campus, is in every fraternity of North America," which startled me, because I assumed it was a children's book when I first looked through it. However, it apparently is written to every fraternity in North America.

Theophilus, sadly, didn't quite understand what Luke had to say about Jesus, because he sees "a pale, tortured body of a man on a cross, pictured by bits of colored glass above the chapel altar, and wonders of Jesus looked like that!" (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the sentence).  Well, Norwood certainly has something to say about this image- "Theophilis, Jesus did not look like that." He them proceeds to write some facts about Jesus that I didn't know:

"He was a young athlete from the hills of Galilee.  He was every inch a man, [and] Jesus is still a man....he comes down all the ways of the world. He is browned by the sun. He hair has its same red gold. His beard crisps and curls below his laughing, musical lips."

I was very surprised to learn that Jesus had red-gold hair, but it's later described in the book as a lion's mane of hair, which I have always associated with the color yellow, but as I have never spent much time around lions, I am not positive. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, he is described as a "tall golden man in a white robe; his flowing hair, like a lion's mane, crowned with a snowy turban".  So, not only was Jesus tall and golden, but he also wore white turbans.

So obviously either Luke was inaccurate with the description of Jesus, or Theophilus has terrible interpretation skillz. Naturally, Jesus isn't the only man described as being quite the manly lion in the Bible...his father Joseph wasn't too bad, either.
"Joseph was a notable man. He was tall and sturdy. The hair of his head and of his full beard was a golden brown. His eyes were deepset and blue. Sometimes those eyes were veiled with the mist of dreams, sometimes they twinkled and shone with fun. He was a man of moods. His voice was deep. He had a habit of talking into his beard, that tumbled from an obstinate chin, halfway down his broad breast. His hands were square, but they were nervous and sensitive."

We can see from this passage where Jesus got his sensitivity towards other people's troubles, because from what we can see in the description of Joseph's hands, he is probably a sensitive man, as well.

Norwood goes on to describe the life of Jesus growing up with his best friend Simon the Rock. I flipped to a random page to find an iconic quote from Peter, and found this: "Jesus, I don't understand you." That pretty much remains constant throughout the whole book (the Bible, too).  Jesus performs miracles, tries to get his disciples to understand that he does, in fact, have to die, and we have a scene involving Judas breaking down and crying. "[He] embraced Jesus with the arms of love, saying, 'Though you were not the Messiah and only a man like me, I should love you to the death, my sweet friend, my beloved one!' As Judas wept in Jesus' arms, the Master caressed him."

I don't recall this scene from the Gospels-- I certainly don't think it's in Luke, in any case. It seems to be a sort of humanistic catharsis here, where Judas represents Theophilus, who is sad and confused as to why Jesus has to die.

The last scene the author leaves us with is Jesus dying on the cross, the people around him taunting him. But, "To these taunts, Jesus made no reply. He had not heard them; he was lost in memories of a night of stars and a cool wind and a mother's croodling song:
Little boy Jesus,
Tell what you are--
Moondrift and a white cloud
Caught on a star!"


I don't think I will quote the whole song. It's four verses, and that would take up a lot of space, and I've probably written far too much on this odd excuse for a book. Interestingly, there are questions and notes all over the margins, and every other paragraph is underlined or starred, so I guess some persevering soul dogged his/her way through this entire book for some paper that I hope she/he did ok on. I really do.

And for all of you college students out there, Theophilus is actually not a five year old, but a college student who is on YOUR campus! That is, if your campus has a fraternity. In any case, give him this book so that he can get a better idea of what Luke was really talking about.


(The Man Who Dared to be God , by Robert Norwood, Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1929.)