His last, agonized words, however, are not Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani, but the phonetically similar English it's a lie. In the end, determined to live the story of Jesus to its decidedly bitter end, he orders a puzzled Judas to betray him to the Romans, and dies on the cross.

Gradually, it becomes known that his name is Jesus of Nazareth. When there's no food, he shows the people how to pretend to eat to take their minds off their hunger when he encounters illness caused by hysteria, he cures it. Karl, however, is so deeply committed to the idea of a real, historical Jesus that, at this point, he himself begins to step into the role, gathering followers - carefully choosing ones whose names are identical with those attested in the Gospels, repeating what parables he can recall, and using psychological tricks to simulate miracles. Worse, their child Jesus is a profoundly intellectually disabled hunchback who incessantly repeats the only word he knows: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. When he finds Mary and Joseph, Mary turns out to be little more than a whore, and Joseph, a bitter old man, sneers openly at her claim to have been impregnated by an angel. He then makes his way to Nazareth in search of Jesus. When he asks Karl to baptise him, however, the latter panics and flees into the desert, where he wanders alone, hallucinating from heat and thirst. Since the Essenes witnessed his miraculous arrival in the time machine, John decides Karl must be a magus, and asks him to help lead a revolt against the occupying Romans. John the Baptist and a group of Essenes find him there, and take him back to their community, where they care for him for some time. Karl, badly injured during his journey, crawls halfway out of the time machine, then faints. In the story, Karl has chronic problems with women, homosexual tendencies, an interest in the ideas of Jung, and many neuroses, including a messiah complex. By interpolating numerous memories and flashbacks, Moorcock tells the parallel story of Karl's troubled past in 20th century London, and tries to explain why he's willing to risk everything to meet Jesus. The story begins with Karl's violent arrival in the Holy Land of AD 28, where his time machine, a womb-like, fluid-filled sphere, cracks open and becomes useless. In the novel, Moorcock weaves an existentialist tale about Karl Glogauer, a man who travels from the year 1970 in a time machine to 28 AD, where he hopes to meet the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The title derives from the Gospel of John, Chapter 19, Verse 5: 'Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. It originally appeared as a novella in a 1966 issue of New Worlds later, Moorcock produced an expanded version which was first published in 1969 by Allison & Busby (one of the first books published by the company). Behold the Man (1969) is a science fiction novel by British writer Michael Moorcock.

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock