Review: The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kanzantzakis
My Quick Take: After starting strong, this book challenged my persistence to read to the end. I loved some of the themes, though at times I was bothered by the author’s choices in depicting them. *** “The foundations of the world were shaken because man’s heart was shaken, crushed under the stones which men called Jerusalem, under the prophecies, the Second Comings, the anathemas, under the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the rich who ate, the poor who were hungry, and under the Lord Jehovah, from whose beard and moustaches the blood of mankind had been running for centuries upon centuries into the abyss.” I first read this book when I was in my late teens, and I remember appreciating it. The novel has been dogged by controversy, banned in different places by different institutions, and Kazantzakis was subject to an attempted excommunication by the Greek Orthodox Church. It’s all because he chooses to imagine Jesus struggling with the temptations of the flesh: the longing to have a wife, ...
