RoboJesus

Oh goody. A new book has been released about the Really Real Jesus, written by Paul Verhoeven, director of such classics as Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Robocop. Naturally, it is a scholarly work, and will serve as a springboard for a movie version — directed by Paul Verhoeven:

In an interview with MTV, the Dutch film-maker reveals that his newly-translated book, Jesus of Nazareth, is intended as a staging post on the path to a movie version. Verhoeven wants to tell a story free from suggestions of miracles, and bereft of the crucifixion and resurrection scenes often seen in previous films depicting Jesus’s life. The director prefers a humanist, scholarly approach, and will focus on his subject’s ethical teachings.

“To start with a book would be more honest and illuminating than a movie,” the director told MTV News. “I’m not sure I would immediately jump on a Jesus-film train. I might take my time and do something else first and then consider if I could find a way. When you read the book, you can see there is a film there. Jesus, in my opinion, was much more dangerous, adventurous than normally shown.”

So what was so “dangerous” and “adventurous” about him? Big Hollywood quotes from a precis of the book on Amazon: 

Verhoeven constructs a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves.

See? Scholarly! It’s got blockbuster written all over it.

[H/t CMR]