The Last Temptation of Christ (Ho teleftaios peirasmos) was first published in Greek by Difros in 1955, translated into English by P.A. Bien in 1960 (published by Simon & Schuster). The novel was immediately placed on the Vatican’s Index of Forbidden Books, condemned by the Greek Orthodox Church, and provoked decades of controversy that intensified with Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film adaptation.
Kazantzakis reimagines Jesus not as divine figure fulfilling a predetermined script but as a man — fully human, torn between his body’s desires and his spirit’s calling, terrified of his mission, and uncertain whether the voice commanding him is God’s or madness. This Jesus is afraid, lustful, angry, and doubting — and his ultimate choice to accept the cross is heroic precisely because it is a choice, not a destiny.
The “last temptation” occurs on the cross itself: Satan appears in the form of a guardian angel and offers Jesus an alternative — come down from the cross, live as an ordinary man, marry Mary Magdalene, have children, grow old. Jesus experiences this alternative life in his dying moments (a long, detailed hallucination of ordinary happiness) before rejecting it and choosing death. The novel’s argument is that the temptation of ordinary life — not sin, not evil, but simple human happiness — is the hardest thing to refuse for someone called to sacrifice.
Kazantzakis’s Christ is Nietzschean in one sense: he must overcome the human (specifically the body’s desire for life) to achieve the divine. But the novel is not anti-Christian — it takes Christ’s sacrifice more seriously than orthodox theology does by insisting that it cost everything, that it was not foreordained, and that its heroism lies precisely in the possibility that it could have been refused.
Collecting The Last Temptation of Christ
First edition in Greek (Difros, Athens, 1955): Paper wrappers.
Market values:
- First Greek edition: $150–$500
- First English edition (Simon & Schuster, 1960): $40–$120
- UK first (Bruno Cassirer, 1961): $30–$80
- Signed copies: $300–$800