Behold the Man is a
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by
Michael MoorcockMichael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
. It originally appeared as a
novellaA novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
in a 1966 issue of
New WorldsNew Worlds was a British science fiction magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971...
; later, Moorcock produced an expanded version which was first published in 1969 by
Allison & BusbyAllison & Busby is a British publishing house, set up by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby in 1967. The company has built up a reputation as a leading independent publisher....
.. The title derives from the
Gospel of JohnThe Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
, Chapter 19, Verse 5: "Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And
PilatePontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...
said to them
Behold the ManEcce Homo are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the , when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The original Greek is Ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος . The King James Version translates the phrase...
."
In the novel, Moorcock weaves an
existentialistExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
tale about
Karl GlogauerKarl Glogauer is the protagonist of two novels by Michael Moorcock, and a secondary character in additional novels and short stories. In Behold the Man, he acts as a surrogate Christ after travelling to 28 AD in a time machine...
, a man who travels from the year 1970 in a
time machineTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
to
28Year 28 was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Nerva...
AD, where he hopes to meet the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Plot summary
The story begins with Karl's violent arrival in the Holy Land of AD 28, where his time machine, a womblike, fluid-filled sphere, cracks open and becomes useless. By interpolating numerous memories and flashbacks, Moorcock tells the parallel story of Karl's troubled past in 20th century London, and tries to explain why he's willing to risk everything to meet Jesus. We learn that Karl has chronic problems with women, homosexual tendencies, an interest in the ideas of
JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, and many
neurosesNeurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
, including a
messiah complexA messiah complex is a state of mind in which an individual holds a belief they are, or are destined to become, a savior. The messiah complex does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ....
.
Karl, badly injured during his journey, crawls halfway out of the time machine, then faints.
John the BaptistJohn the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
and a group of
EssenesThe Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...
find him there, and take him back to their community, where they care for him for some time. Since the Essenes witnessed his miraculous arrival in the time machine, John decides Karl must be a magus, and asks him to help lead a revolt against the occupying
RomansAncient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. When he asks Karl to baptise him, however, the latter panics and flees into the desert, where he wanders alone, hallucinating from heat and thirst.
He then makes his way to
NazarethNazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
in search of Jesus. When he finds Mary and
JosephSaint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....
, Mary turns out to be little more than a whore, and Joseph, a bitter old man, sneers openly at her claim to have been impregnated by an angel. Worse, their child Jesus is a profoundly
retardedMental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
hunchbackHunchback may refer to one of the following.*A derogatory term for a person who has severe kyphosis*The Hunchback of Notre Dame*Hunchback , an arcade and computer game from the 1980s*The Hunchback, a 1914 film featuring Lillian Gish...
who incessantly repeats the only word he knows:
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Karl, however, is so deeply committed to the idea of a real, historical Jesus that, at this point, he himself begins to step into the role, gathering followers, repeating what parables he can recall, and using psychological tricks to simulate miracles. When there's no food, he shows the people how to pretend to eat to take their minds off their hunger; when he encounters illness caused by
hysteriaHysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
, he cures it. Gradually, it becomes known that his name is Jesus of Nazareth.
In the end, determined to live the story of Jesus to its decidedly bitter end, he orders a puzzled
JudasJudas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...
to betray him to the Romans, and
dies on the crossCrucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
. His last, agonized words, however, are not
Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani, but the phonetically similar English
it's a lie....it's a lie...let me down...
After Karl's death on the cross, the body is stolen by a doctor who believed the body had magical properties, leading to rumors that he did not die. The doctor is disappointed when the body begins to rot as any normal human would.
Awards and nominations
Behold the Man, in its short form, won the
Nebula AwardThe Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
for best novella in 1967.