This novel retells the life of Jesus as a historical and political story set in Judea under Herod and the Roman Empire. Graves imagines Jesus as a claimant to the throne of the Jewish kingdom and places him amid dynastic rivalries, religious factions and Roman rule. The narrator is a fictional observer who pieces the story together. Graves mixes ancient scholarship with his own speculative theories, and the result is an unconventional and often provocative reading of the Gospel story. It was controversial on publication and is best approached as imaginative fiction rather than as history.