The Transmigration of Timothy Archer – Review
I wasn’t sure on which of my blogs that I should review The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. On one hand, Philip K. Dick is one of the 20th century’s greatest science fiction writers. On the other hand, this book is not really science fiction, and is actually quite theological.
This book is about Bishop Timothy Archer but his written from the perspective of his daughter-in-law. The bishop is a charismatic and celebrity religious figure, one of the top liberal theologians.
He has a crisis of faith as the translation of some Dead Sea Scrolls suggest that Jesus did not come up with some of the teachings attributed to him. The bishop concludes from this that Jesus couldn’t have been the Son of God.
As a person who has studied the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, I found this aspect interesting. And I will say that PKD did a good job of putting liberal scholarship on the lips of the bishop. He really did his homework.
In case you are wondering, while the Dead Sea Scrolls do provide some helpful background to the New Testament, none of them discredit the preaching of Jesus in any way.
The story follows the story of a wildly dysfunctional extended family: the bishop, his son and daughter-in-law, the bishop’s lover and her son. One of the problems I had with the novel is that none of the characters are completely likeable. The daughter-in-law has her moments but they were all annoying in their own way.
This book is the third of a trilogy and I will admit that I haven’t read the first two. But I didn’t really enjoy this book. It was depressing and I only finished the book because I was hoping it would get better.
I definitely will read more books by PKD but I probably won’t reread this one.
