SOURCE: "Advertisements for Himself," in The New York Times Book Review, May 15, 1997, pp. 4, 6-8.

In the following review, Kermode offers a favorable assessment of The Gospel According to the Son, which he concludes is "a book of considerable intellectual force."

To read the surviving ancient examples of apocryphal gospels is to see how impressive the canonical ones usually are. The apocrypha, sometimes clever, sometimes silly, try to elaborate or continue those originals, thus following, with varying degrees of irresponsibility, the example of the Evangelists themselves. All manner of strange things are said to have happened to Judas; for instance, that the silver he gained by treachery he lost by gambling. Pilate, converted to Christianity, may seek to persuade the emperor Tiberius of the divinity of Christ, and even be accepted as a saint. Such things occur in apocryphal gospels. Norman Mailer has added to the genre a modern...