Coetzee's novels about Jesus

David insists on going to see Dmitri, the man who has killed his beloved teacher. He states that only Dmitri and his mother's devious and wastrel brother know who he is, whereas Simón and Inés do not recognise him, do not understand him. This must be a reference to Mark 1:21-28 in which Jesus is recognised by unclean spirits that inhabited a man in the synagogue. They cried out: "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." Among all of the people that Jesus meets in his ministry he is first "known" by the evil spirits.

Coetzee has produced a novel that points to the very centre of the Gospel. David explains that he must go and see Dmitri because he has no bread, a clear Eucharistic reference in the face of Simón explaining that they have plenty of bread at the hospital. This reflects the confusion often found in the gospels between the figurative and the factual.

The gospels tell us that Jesus preferred to eat with tax collectors and sinners, much to the horror of the people of goodwill, the priests and the Pharisees. Jesus, and David in the novel, are alienated from the very people who nurture them (Mark 3:31) and they find companionship among the unrighteous, in David's case the heinous Dmitri. It is Dmitri who manifests the truth about humanity: that our souls are divided and that we are capable of terrible deeds. It is the recognition of that truth that establishes David/Jesus as the Messiah.

These are novels for our time. There is much evidence to suggest that our society has adopted a sentimental understanding of human nature that dismisses the divided hearts that beats in all our chests. It has become common to think that if our children are well brought up and well educated, particularly into the care for others, that we will produce a perfect race in which evil will be unknown. Failing that, we put our trust in legislation designed to mandate virtue. These novels are a warning that positive humanism results in dehumanisation because our true humanity is denied. We are already a very long way down the road in our prioritising of facts over meaning and our measurement of everything that reduces life to numbers. No wonder David/Jesus has a problem with arithmetic.

In an interesting episode the teacher from the Academy of Dance hides his sons from the census, as Simón hides David. These sons of the divine dance are not to be captured in the world of earthly numbers, just as Jesus escaped the census by being born in the manger.

Coetzee has exercised quite a deal of cunning in these two books. He obviously knows more about the Gospel than he lets on. His status as a Nobel laureate and his publishing two books with the name Jesus in the title sneaks under the radar of readers who would never read a book of theology or an overtly Christian novel. If only the Church were to possess his wit and intelligence!

My advice is to persist with these two books. They will puzzle you and frustrate you but at the end of Schooldays you will catch a glimpse of the things unseen. Is there another novel in the making: Perhaps the Adolescence of Jesus?