The Gospel of the Twin - Ron Cooper

Author: Ron Cooper

Narrator: Charles Henderson

Genre: Retelling

Rating: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: Imaginative, for sure. Traditional believers will find it controversial as well. I read it as pure fiction and hence wasn’t bothered much by the content. The book works in some ways but doesn’t meet the standards that the blurb claims.

Story:

The story of Jesus, from his childhood to his initiation into preaching, the crucifixion and the resurrection, and finally the spread of his beliefs. All this is narrated through the point of view of his “twin brother” Thomas. The first person narrative is written when Thomas is eighty and wants the world to understand the enigma behind his famous twin.

Though this can be called a biblical story, it is more a creative retelling than a faithful narration. Thus there is a lot of inventive filling in the blanks for explaining the miracles and even the resurrection. The basic idea in the book is that Jesus was a regular human being who intended to be a political rebel against the Roman government. But he wasn’t ready to go against them with swords, rather with his words. Thus he begins preaching for a peaceful change. Thus the entire biblical story turns into one of Machiavellian politics and conspiracies. There are some elements of satire and humour but the overall impact is more of a shrewd politico-dramatic thriller.

As a practising Christian, I have read the New Testament a few times. Hence comparing and contrasting the story here with the story there was quite easy. There are a lot of familiar elements you will find in this book: the turning of water into wine at Cana, the baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus’s relation with John the Baptist, the various parables, and so on. Most are given the political spin that suits the focus of this tale very well. However, a few of the writing decisions were confusing for me. Why, for instance was Joseph turned into a stonecutter? His being a carpenter as mentioned in the Bible would not have affected the story at all. Mary is shown to be a very religious yet superstitious young woman who conducts arcane rituals to ward off evil. As a religious person, she would have known that those rituals go against the first tenet that God gave to Moses: you shall have no other gods before me. Also, why did their children call Mary as “Mother” but Joseph as “Joseph”? On the positive side, Mary Magdalene gets a prime place in the narrative and I loved the role placed on her shoulders in this retelling.

The surprise element for me in the story was the extent to which India and Indian culture makes an appearance in the narrative. Of course, I don’t know why this caught me unawares. Thomas is believed to have travelled to India circa 50 AD. He was killed with a spear on a mount near what is today Chennai city and some of his relics remain here in the San Thome Cathedral Basilica at Chennai. So yes, India would obviously be a part of Thomas’s story. But…. and this is a huge BUT…. the Indian content in the story is either stereotypical or inaccurate. (Ironic, isn’t it, that the Christian in me wasn’t offended but the Indian in me is annoyed?) The regular references to "Indian religion" irritated me. There is a lot of content which is absolutely unrelated to the biblical elements and are yet part of the book. References to Indian whores and to locals with skin the colour of coal were infuriating. There is a mention of Thomas marrying a “black” daughter of a Brahmin because no one else would marry her. I can’t exactly call this a “white saviour” attitude because Thomas wasn’t white, but it felt the same way. There is a comparison made between Jesus and Buddha, which makes some sense but was taken too far. Then there are the factual inaccuracies. Thomas is said to have arrived to India through the “place of the seven islands”, which is an obvious reference to Mumbai. However, Mumbai wasn’t a port in Thomas’s time and he made his way to India through Kerala, which is much further south on the west coast of the country. Then there’s a line that says that locals in South India drank a tea made by boiling some leaves in water. India wasn’t a tea-drinking nation until the British came here and set up tea estates. So this fact is off by many centuries. Basically, a major chunk of the Indian content seemed highly exaggerated to me.

The plot keeps going ahead at a steady pace but the Indian elements that keep coming up at random points damaged the core focus of the story and distracted me a lot. Also, some of the words sounded anachronistic. (“Roman police”?) The word “cubit” is highly overused in the story. I was so fed up of hearing it. If this were a Kindle copy, I would have hit the search button to find out the exact number of references to the measuring unit.

My faith isn’t dependent on such retellings, so I just distanced myself from my belief system and read this as a novel. If, however, you can’t compartmentalise the believer in you from the reader in you, you might be too enraged by the content because it is quite blasphemous. I was better prepared for the scandalous Christian fictionalisation than the hackneyed Indian one because the latter was totally uncalled for.

The audiobook clocks at 9 hrs 20 min and is narrated by Charles Henderson. He does an excellent job and his voice suits that of Thomas wonderfully. He also doesn’t go out of his way to provide distinct accents for the multitudinous characters but just reads them in a natural way. I enjoyed his narration.

All in all, 3 stars from me. I liked this fictional twist to “the greatest story ever told” but I wish it had stuck to the gospel narrative and not added Indian masalas.

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook at my request from Audiobooks.com and these are my honest thoughts about it.