The After Life Of Brian
By Julian Doyle
Many people, including myself have watched Monty Python’s Life of Brian and have enjoyed the Monty Python work and what followed in their careers. This delves deeply beyond the famous/infamous film and will suit fans of it, especially since its author, Julian Doyle has worked on the filming of the Life of Brian.
Blurb
In the 8th November 1979, Monty Python’s movie ‘Life of Brian’ was released to hymn singing protestors, but went on to break box office records. Julian Doyle the film’s editor threatens to re-ignite the furore by revealing the many scenes that undercut the story of Jesus as normally presented to us. While the Python’s treated Jesus with respect, the protestors missed the real reason the Pythons, should have been visited by the Spanish Inquisition and burnt at the stake.
While the Python’s were just out to make a comedy, and succeeded as it was voted Britain’s top comedy of all time!
But because they are all well educated individuals they took events in the film to their logical conclusions. And those conclusions were explosive! Even images, like putting skeleton’s on crosses, questions the Jesus story, where they make a cross, Jesus carries it to Golgotha, they dig a hole and nail him up, but after just a few hours, he drops dead, and is taken down. What an incredible waste of time and money to kill a criminal. The idea that every Sabbath, the Romans army took down Jewish criminals is absurd. No, put the criminal on show to rot in agony till he is a skeleton, that makes sense.
Then there is the stoning scene. In the Bible Jesus is found guilty by the Sanhedrin and sentenced to death. They then stone him and his body is hung on a tree as demanded by Deuteronomy 21:22. Whops! That is the story in two Jewish documents. No the Gospels say, they don’t stone him? They take him to a reluctant Pilate who says:
“Take him and judge him by your own law,” (John 18:29)
Pilate is quite right, he is no judge of Jewish blasphemy laws. But look at the excuse the Chief Priests make:
But we have no right to execute anyone,”
What? If there was such a rule how come Pilate does not know about it? And if the Sanhedrin, did stone a blasphemer, what punishment would Pilate inflict? A good spanking!? But forget it because straight after this the Sanhedrin stone Stephen! ‘The elders dragged Stephen out of the city, and began stoning him (Acts 7) Did anyone complain that the stoning in the movie was wrong? No of course not, because it is so obvious that stoning was not banned by the Romans.
So there is something strange about the crucifixion of Jesus, that we discovered when we tried to crucify the Pythons.
In the film, Brian is in Jerusalem in Judea, and so is Jesus, curing lepers there. This is confirmed by John’s Gospel that places Jesus in Jerusalem most of the time. But we are told Jesus functioned in Galilee and finds his first disciples, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew by the sea of Galilee and they are fishermen who leave their employ on a whim. But this is totally contradicted by John 1:40, which says these same brothers, are followers of the Baptist who meet Jesus in Judea where they live. And in ‘Acts, 10:39 Peter is actually reported as saying: ‘Now I, and those with me, can witness to everything he did throughout the countryside of Judea and in Jerusalem itself.’ Biblical expert, Professor Eisenman confirms: ‘A great deal of trouble is taken by these writers to get Jesus to Galilee.’ And the answer to all this becomes obvious once you study ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’.
Every scene in the film reveals some tantalizing information to investigate, and it all began when Julian Doyle watched the Python’s being crucified, and realized something was seriously wrong. And so began the research that has resulted in this book, that only a very naughty boy, would have dared to write.
Review
The After Life of Brian delves deeply into the hard facts of what is depicted in Life of Brian, especially when it comes to the crucifix. The author, Julian Doyle has clearly done a lot of research into historical events and the science of them too.
It’s a rather meaty book with some references back to the film, but mostly its delving into what has been uncovered by Doyle in the attempt to separate fact from fiction.
There are certain references to the film, but not lots, but its subject matter and the origins of inspiration for this book are clear and the style of writing is fine. It’s perhaps out to do a bit of what The Life of Brian did with its shock factor of that time, but there are many Christians who now like that film and will understand the book, after all there have been studies into certain things around Jesus before that can be accepted by the open-minded Christian and the in-depth research and lengths it goes to can be interesting and appreciated.
A bit more Monty Pythonesque humour would have been good. There is some humour, but it truly is more fact than I expected. It was fine though and piques enough curiosity to keep going with it and history and how we see thing in present times is often fascinating.
The After Life of Brian is an interesting read of what is discovered in research, not “Spamalot”.
Bookmarks and Stages by Lou 