BOOK REVIEW: The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay

The Gospel According to Hay

The Butcher is a man who wanders in shame and grief. Years ago, he was recruited to assist in the Culling, the mass slaughter of newborns ordered by King Herod to ensure the new future king rumored to have recently been born will never usurp him. With the weight of countless dead children on his shoulder, he begins hearing a voice. It tells him that the one who escaped the Culling has to be put down to prevent a disastrous future.

The Lord will guide my hand.

The Butcher of Nazareth is a novel in the tradition of Biblical retellings. In this case, David Scott Hay gives a very dark and disturbing take on the beginnings of the ministry of Jesus. It’s both appropriate and a bit reductive to call the title character a serial killer.

The Butcher is both a man who’s crushed by the weight of the world and the seeming absence of God, and a man with a tendency to give himself over to wrath. He wants to repent for his part in the Culling, but finds himself thwarted nearly every single time. Sometimes by circumstances, sometimes by his own actions.

The Butcher’s point of view is highly unreliable. He’s severely traumatized. It’s easy to read many of his visions as the delusions of somebody unstable. However, he still encounters things that aren’t easy to explain as delusions, such a the one-horned goat that follows him around and constantly makes trouble for him.

This is a brutal book, and all of it feels realistic, or at least plausible. One of the Butcher’s first encounters is with a young man gored by the goat that will follow him through the rest of the narrative. The young man’s injuries, his suffering, and a midwife’s attempt to treat his wounds are all told in vivid, bloody detail.

I have to go into some spoilers in order to discuss the part of the book I found most fascinating, so be warned.

The Butcher’s journey eventually brings him to Jesus. The Jesus he meets is overweight, constantly eating honey, engaged to Mary Magdalene, and well-loved by his community. He’s a happy man who spends his days tending his beehives and swimming with Magdalene. The arrival of the Butcher turns his life upside down.

This is like an inversion of The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Kazantzakis viewed Jesus as tortured all his life by his mission, and the greatest temptation the Devil could give him was to live as a normal human. Here, Hay imagines a Jesus who has a happy, successful life and, much like the Buddha leaving his life of privilege, has to lose it to begin his ministry. He isn’t just tempted by the world, but lives in it as any human. He has to leave it behind to complete his mission, his lips now tasting the absence of honey and women.

The Butcher of Nazareth is a phenomenal novel. It’s a thought-provoking, profound story told with succinct but vivid prose. Hay’s retelling of the Gospel is dark, violent, and brings a fascinating new prospective. This is easily one of the best novels that I’ve read recently and I highly recommend it.

Buy The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay here.

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