You might take ["The Gospel According to Joe"] for yet another vulgarization of the Christ story. Well, you would be wrong. Yes, A. R. Gurney Jr. superimposes the story of Jesus on post-modern times. Joseph (a quondam salesman of storm windows) and Mary (a worker in a day care center) are sequestered in the barn of "a dude commune" where the infant Jesus is born. And thenceforth the little book consists of one calculated anachronism after another, sometimes with metaphorical confusion…. But Gurney is no more concerned with the Bible per se than George Orwell in "Animal Farm" was concerned with zoology. Gurney's search is for earthly, not spiritual illumination. To this end, he narrates the Gospel, through Joseph, as a commentary on the human family. The effect is warm, wry and as inconclusive as man's future.

Martin Levin, in a review of "The Gospel According to Joe...