NotaBene е електронно списание за философски и политически науки. Повече за нас
The proposed article is devoted to the philosophical aspects of the artistic image of Christ built by Nikolay Raynov in his 1919 novel "Between the Desert and Life". The text has several parts, the first two of which analyze the issues related to the public response, which receive both the religious and philosophical beliefs of the writer and his artistic talent. Understandably, the emphasis is on illuminating Raynov's ideological worldview, on his public image of a mystic, esoteric, and Nietzschean. Comments are presented both by theologians and religious thinkers in Bulgaria and by secular intellectuals from the interwar period. Attention is focused on three philosophical studies of Nikolay Raynov, published in a collection from 1925 entitled "Today and Tomorrow". Their general theosophical attitude is discussed.
The following parts of the text are devoted to the novel "Between the Desert and Life", respectively as: a novel about Christ, a novel against Christ, an apocryphal novel, a historical novel – these definitions are the result of the summaries of the numerous and varied reviews from the Bulgarian intellectual public about it. The last part is devoted to the actual philosophical aspects of the image of Christ, to the comparison of the writer's views with Gnosticism. The conclusion is that despite its non-canonical nature, the image of Jesus created by Nikolay Raynov is an image of a sublime and full of humanity sufferer, and the novel is by no means a hoax of Christianity.