We follow Christ as a suffering and fearful character through his confusion over his identity and growing belief in his own divinity, ending with a prolonged period of temptation as Satan seems to offer Jesus a chance to escape crucifixion and live a long life with wives and a family.

Only a handful of literary critics have taken up Last Temptation itself, which is a rich and complex work that offers a fictionalized account of the adult life of Jesus, beginning with his life as a carpenter in Nazareth and leading through his ministry and crucifixion. Regardless of the controversy surrounding the novel, however, the work itself has received very little critical attention in English rather, scholarship has focused primarily on the Christian reaction to the book and the public reception of Martin Scorsese's 1988 film adaptation. 1 Given Kazantzakis' depiction of the human frailty of Jesus and his revisionist portrayal of Judas as one of the most loyal disciples, the novel was, in many cases, labeled blasphemous. In the United States, Christian fundamentalists sought to have the work removed from libraries.

Labeling the novel blasphemous, the Roman Catholic Church placed it on their list of forbidden books and the Greek Orthodox Church in Athens attempted unsuccessfully to excommunicate its author. The 1955 publication of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ was met with religious controversy.

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