Jesus of the Gaps

Jesus is the subject (and protagonist) of a number of new novels.

"Jesus is having a moment in literary fiction."

That's what Paula Cocozza, a feature writer for the British newspaper The Guardian said last year. She was commenting on the number of recent novels about Jesus. And, don't assume the authors are Christians. Philip Pullman, Colm Tóibín and Richard Beard are nonbelievers all. Naomi Alderman is Jewish. And J.M. Coetzee is described by some as a post-secularist, which seems to mean he's hard to define in terms of faith.

The books by these writers come on the heels of a couple by Anne Rice, the author of popular vampire stories who was a late-life convert into, and then back out of, Catholicism, and one by new ager Deepak Chopra. (See sidebar on page 70 for the novel titles.)

The word "novel" is important here, for it communicates that these books are fiction, or more precisely, historical fiction, but that means that, while the subject was a real person, the authors exercised artistic license. In fact, you can't avoid using...