Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist, and writing science fiction and speculative literature is a hobby for him. The Gospel of Afranius is his first work, written in 1995, for which he received the “Big Zilant” award in Kazan. However, he became widely known to science fiction fans in 1999 with the release of The Last Ringbearer, which completely reinterprets the events of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I would argue that Yeskov laid the groundwork for this approach in The Gospel of Afranius.
This book is an attempt to view the death and ascension of Christ through the lens of cold logic. The “novella” essentially consists of two parts. In the first, the author tries to assess the known facts and inconsistencies in the story as we know it from surviving sources and the Bible, making it more of an analytical essay.
In the second part of The Gospel of Afranius, we see a sort of literary game where the author, based on known facts, attempts to craft a story in the style of spy novels and films. I emphasize—it’s in the spirit of fiction about secret services, because neither I nor Yeskov claim to know how real intelligence agencies operate (perhaps unless we’re talking about “dinosaur intelligence agencies”). But we’ve all seen Bond and Stierlitz films.
The book isn’t quite a typical novel, as the events are presented through Afranius’ report, the mastermind behind the secret operations under the Judean procurator. Everything we now know about Christ’s miracles and ascension is presented as elements of a carefully designed operation that eventually unraveled, not going according to plan.
Believers might consider such a work blasphemous (as the church once reacted to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code), but for me, it’s a fascinating “what if” scenario. Though Afranius’ modern tone might feel off, it can be forgiven within the narrative’s framework.
I’ve read the book twice now, and it still feels like an intriguing detective story, where you know the ending but the details captivate you.
The book concludes with an essay titled Our Answer to Fukuyama, where Yeskov attempts to predict the future of science and society. Although it once earned a prize from the Strugatsky brothers, I find it dry in style and quite debatable in its content. But that’s a matter of personal preference.
My rating: 4+/5
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