Jesuit priest accuses Philip Pullman of waging war on Christianity.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

A Jesuit priest and bible scholar has written a fierce response to Philip Pullman's retelling of the life of Jesus, claiming that the author distorted history to reinforce his own unfavourable views about institutional Christianity.

Father Gerald O'Collins, author of over 50 books and professor of theology at the Gregorian University in Rome for over 30 years, will publish a book later this month taking on Pullman's assertion, in his novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ , that "this is a story".

Pullman's bestselling book, published in March, gives Jesus a manipulative twin brother, Christ, who eventually betrays him. The miracles of the gospels are given plausible …