This book, despite the uproar so many people made about the movie, is a great fictional tale of what Jesus and his friends might have been like. The book opens up with a tortured Jesus, as the carpenter, building crosses to crucify God's prophets. His reasoning is he wants God to hate him to leave him alone and stop calling him to lead a spiritual revolution and save mankind. One of my favorite parts of the book is an episode where Jesus and this companions are on the way to Yerusalem to see John the Baptist and Philip can't stop fretting about his sheep. There's a very comical dialog that ends with everyone telling him to let the wolves eat them for all we care. You can feel how high everyone is riding on this psychological rearrangement that Jesus has experienced. Also there's a very interesting take on Jesus' and Judas's relationship, in where Jesus has picked Judas to betray him because he's the strongest one of the bunch. Judas is very reluctant to do so but Jesus explains to him that if he really loves him he must. It has never ceased to amaze me how many people hate Judas but if he had not fulfilled his assigned task where would Christianity be today? Personally I think he should have been made a saint! Kazantzakis also nails to the page the fear struck into the companions once Jesus has been arrested. It' very obvious that Kazantzakis spent many hours becoming familiar with the historical time that this happened in as well as what little we know about the historical Jesus. It's also obvious Kazantzakis has a deeper understanding about all of this than the people who protested the movie. That uproar was regarding (in case you were in a coma when the movie came out) Jesus' getting married to Mary Magdalene, having sex with her, and raising a family. These people missed the mark (which is the English translation of Aramaic meaning to sin). Neither the book or the movie implies that this happened, only in Jesus' mind as Satan's last attempt to thwart God, and isn't that where all temptation awaits?