For centuries now countless visual and literary artists have felt compelled to represent the figure of Jesus ‘anew’ for their own age. The first decade of the new millennium has already produced numerous re-imaginings of the New Testament narratives from all areas of the creative arts. The Gospels have been recreated by airport novelists such as Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer, as well as by literary authors such as C. K. Stead and Jim Crace. On stage, the figure of Christ has been portrayed by writers as well established as Edwin Morgan and by absolute newcomers such as Kate Betts, whose play, On the Third Day, won first prize in a reality TV show for aspiring dramatists. Film and television have been equally busy bringing Jesus to a wide and varied audience. In the last few years, those with a taste for the controversial and possessed of a strong stomach for violence could take in Mel Gibson's highly successful film The Passion of the Christ, while those of a more traditionalist inclination could enjoy the BBC's rather more sedate drama The Passion, which ran nightly on British television through Holy Week in 2008. Such examples provide the merest snapshot of the many modern versions of the story of Jesus available to today's readers and audiences, all produced in a period that has seen declining church attendance, waning religious instruction in schools and, as some would have it, the rise of fundamentalist atheism.

For many of today's generation, a reading or viewing of a biblical adaptation is likely to be their first encounter with the Scriptures. Indeed, they may well be more able to recite the Beatitudes according to Monty Python's Brian, or to outline the creation story as depicted in Robert Crumb's cartoon version of Genesis, than to recall their originals. Nowadays, then, the newly updated version of the Bible is dominant by dint of coming first, just as images of Hamlet contemplating suicide in television adverts or political cartoons are likely to come before any direct encounter their audience might have with the soliloquy on page or stage.