Not the Stuff of Sermons : JESUS: A Life, <i> By A.N. Wilson (W.W. Norton: $22.95; 256 pp.)</i>

“So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But (Thomas) said to them, ‘Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ ”

--John 20:25

The best part about the reenactment of Christ’s passion is when he ascends into heaven, as he did last summer in the Ozarks.

Not that it surprised the faithful present. They knew the Lord would rise because the Bible, with great power and authority, had said so.

And so the actor playing Jesus, having bid his post-mortem goodbys to the disciples and others following his crucifixion and blinding resurrection, levitated amid Handelian strains as far as pulleys and wires would allow. It was left to the audience’s imagination to carry the Cosmic Christ on the rest of his journey from Eureka Springs, Ark., to the heavenly realms above to take his place at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

Some in the amphitheater audience gasped in awe at the sight of it.

A. N. Wilson merely groans, albeit respectfully, at what he concludes has been 2,000 years of religious invention. He no longer believes--at least not in the canonically authorized version of Jesus.

In his new book, “Jesus: A Life,” the English literary critic, C. S. Lewis biographer and ex-Christian turns his sights and writing skills on Jesus, the Jewish holy man who changed the course of history and who was, in turn, changed by history.

Finding the real Jesus isn’t easy. Many scholars say the search, given the thin threads of evidence available, is virtually hopeless. “We shall never recapture his features, his look, or the sound of his voice,” Wilson agrees, “but there are moments in the New Testament where one has the sensation of having only just missed the Presence. It is like walking into a room which a person has only just left, and seeing evidence of their presence--the impression of a head against a cushion, a glass half-empty by the chair, a cigarette still smoldering in the ash-tray.”

The smoldering evidence for Wilson points not to a Jesus born in a manger and worshiped by adoring cows, or ascending into heaven accompanied by angelic choirs, but to a Jewish Hasid (holy man) who was faithful to the God of the Jews, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But this Jesus was also revolutionary in his liberating view of women, an egalitarian who preached that the Kingdom of God was within. This is the Jesus who opened his arms to the fallen--to the hated tax collectors, the homeless, the harlot. This is the Jesus who, were he alive today, would reach out to the homeless at Second and Main, curled in squalor in front of the locked doors of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, or holed away in cardboard boxes on Los Angeles Street.

Here was the wandering exorcist who loved children and broke bread with friends but, despite the fervent imaginings of Paul of Tarsus, never could have conceived of himself as the Second Person of the Trinity.

There have been many historical Jesuses of late, among them John Dominic Crossan’s recent “The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.” Wilson’s is yet another.

Among Wilson’s findings--some more speculative than others--are:

* Jesus did not institute the Christian Eucharist as it is known today. A devout Jew would never have envisioned founding a religion.

* The Apostle Paul is the true founder of Christianity.

* The resurrection is a “whopping lie.” The Risen Christ, as opposed to the historical Jesus, is “an invention of Paul’s religious genius.”

* Jesus was probably married. The miracle at the wedding at Cana in which Jesus was said to change water into wine may have been an echo of Jesus’ own wedding.

* The story of the virginal conception of Jesus probably was unknown to the earliest Christian communities.

* Jesus would not have understood the concept of original sin.

* The man at the tomb on the first Easter whom Mary Magdalen first mistook as the gardener and moments later believed was Jesus may actually have been Jesus’ brother, James.

* The “servant of the high priest” who accompanied Judas in leading authorities to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane may have been the Apostle Paul himself before his conversion. How else, Wilson asks, can one explain Paul’s “obsession” with the crucifixion if, as most scholars agree, Paul and Jesus had never met?

* Jesus probably was not put on trial before the Jewish high priest and Sanhedrin. At most, he was questioned. It was the Romans, not the Jews, who were responsible for Jesus’ condemnation. By unfairly blaming the Jews, the Gospel stories precipitated 2,000 years of Christian antisemitism.

* Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking God to spare him from the cup of death but nonetheless bowing to God’s will, is a literary creation. If Jesus prayed while his disciples slept, who jotted down a transcript of the conversation?

This is not the stuff of Sunday sermons.

Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.

It is not to say the failure of churches to directly address the issues is necessarily cynical. There are several possible explanations.

The first is that the Gospel accounts and the Epistles are essentially true.

The second is that although the Bible is not in any rigorous sense history as it is understood today, it contains great truths that are sufficient in themselves to enlighten and point the way to a full and moral life.

For example, Wilson scoffs at the notion of Jesus’ physical Ascension into heaven. Given the state of scientific knowledge today, Wilson chortles, a literal interpretation of Scripture would have placed Jesus in Earth orbit.

Many Christians, however, would argue that the Ascension story speaks not of space travel but of transcendence, of good overcoming evil, of life overcoming death.

Wilson does not discount the metaphorical truth in the story. Myth, after all, serves a purpose. “The words of Jesus,” Wilson writes, “have extraordinary power. They continue to change human lives.”

Third, cynics may argue that it is not in the interest of the church as an institution to offend the faithful, to raise doubts that in the end would or could lead to its own demise. Indeed, some of the biblical stories and words attributed to Jesus are widely viewed as discouraging inquiry.

Believers are told that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must do so as a child, with childlike faith. They are admonished not to be doubting Thomases.

Finally, some Christians may not want to hear modern Biblical scholarship and exegeses that may challenge traditional views of the Scriptures. In a world gone mad with questioning and fallen symbols, not to mention falling stocks, can they be blamed for wanting to cling to the faith as it has been given them? Can they be faulted for pushing aside that one still voice of skepticism and suspending rational inquiry?

Like Jesus, Wilson says, those who have ears, let them hear. It will not be easy listening. It wasn’t for Wilson.

Despite his disclaimer that the book was intended not as a spiritual autobiography but a dispassionate account of Jesus, the book offers a glimpse into Wilson’s quest for truth and the pain he experienced when faith fell beneath the weight of inquiry.

“It was a slow, and in my case, as it happens, painful process, to discard a belief in Christianity,” Wilson writes, “and when I did so, I did not feel it was honest to continue to call myself a Christian, to attend churches which addressed Jesus as if he was alive, to recite creeds which acknowledged Jesus as Lord and Judge of the world.”

Who is this man Jesus who, willingly or unwilling, has changed the course of history and laid claim to the lives of millions who call themselves Christians?

Many, unlike Thomas, do not need to place their hands into the wounds to be convinced.

For others, those who pray with the distraught father in Mark, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief”; for the doubting Thomas who knows that the unexamined life is not worth living; for those who dare to force the moment to a crisis, “Jesus: A Life” is a place to begin a troublesome and eventful journey. It is a journey whose final destination is known only to, shall we say, God?