# Historical fiction about Jesus sans ax to grind?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-fiction-about-jesus-sans-ax-to-grind/274850>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [November 15, 2004, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-fiction-about-jesus-sans-ax-to-grind/274850 "2004-11-15T13:47:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-fiction-about-jesus-sans-ax-to-grind/274850/21 "2004-11-16T15:48:06Z")

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Nobody writes about Jesus without having an axe to grind.

And thus I submit these…

MAN OF NAZARETH by Anthony Burgess- he wrote it while writing the screenplay for JESUS OF NAZARETH, but this is the POV of a skeptical contemporary admirer of JC. I was hoping that Burgess’ touch would result in “A Clockwork Jesus” but we weren’t that lucky _L_ Alas, it’s out of print but I keep checking used bookstores. I did recently find his sequel KINGDOM OF THE WICKED (written while doing the A.D. miniseries screenplay).

and two perspectives from the same author decades apart-

as a right-wing Catholic in the 1950s, Taylor Caldwell wrote DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN, a novel about Luke the Physician, with a lot of Jesus flashbacks.

and as a religiously-disillusioned crotchety conservative mind-science reincarnationist in the late 1970s, she wrote with Jess Stearn, I, JUDAS- a novelized autobiography of one J. Iscariot…

I resonate with PHYSICIAN a lot more.

Both seem to be out of print.

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