Aesthetic merit is a subjective assessment, to an extent, I'm sure you agree. Some people adore Flaubert and William Faulkner, others deem them too verbose and flowery. Some critics regard Ernest Hemingway's style as much too simplistic, coarse and dumbed-down, while others regard it as an incredible literary achievement. Taste in literature varies.
That said, I think your being rather unfair to the original source material. Most commentators have recognised the underlying story as powerful, stirring and moving - which is the reason why it remains the most widely read and known tale from Greco-Roman antiquity and also why there are so many regurgitations of it in popular novels (like Jon Snow, Harry Potter, Aragorn and Gandalf, Superman, John Conner in Terminator etc.).
Why, for instance, did Albert Einstein - himself a Jewish atheist - contend that,
"As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene...No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus. Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus."
("What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,"The Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 26, 1929, p. 17.)
Now, Einstein was a scientist and not a literary critic. But I'm sure we'd both agree that he was a genius in intellect and not likely to have found the story compelling if it were as boring as you argue, since his biographers note that he had very refined artistic tastes.
The
Gospel of Luke-Acts (which is the account of Jesus's life most people are superficially familiar with), is widely considered by scholars of Koine Greek to be a literary masterpiece. After St. Paul, Luke's work accounts for the largest section of the New Testament and certainly the biggest chunk dealing with the biography of Jesus, hence why the popular understanding of Jesus is essentially the Lukan one.
Whomever wrote the text is considered to have great narrative flair, an erudite prose style and evocative imagery by those competent in this field of study. Mitchell Reddish, for instance, opines that Luke was a "
gifted literary artist [who] writes with skill and creativity, crafting a Gospel that is sophisticated". Daniel J. Harrington and Edmund Gordon have likewise stated, "
Luke was able to express his vision with great artistic skill," praising in particular, "
the literary beauty of his Gospel and its compelling portrait of Jesus".
This is the consensus opinion amongst scholars. Professor Denis MacDonald has written an entire series of academic studies on the topic of,
The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts noting, "
Modern readers rightly view the New Testament Gospels and Acts as the foundational narratives of the Christian religion, but in their day these writings were avant-garde, imaginative, even revolutionary. Their literary creativity becomes transparent in comparison with writings about Jesus earlier than Mark" (p.1).
Unless these eminent scholars are all rubbish at their jobs, I'd venture to suggest that there must be truth to what they are saying.
Then it's rather odd that the film universally hailed by critics as "
a neorealist adaptation that is frequently cited as the genre's masterpiece", is also the most "
austere, realistic, literal adaptation of the first gospel (made in 1964 by the great gay communist poet and film-maker who was murdered 38 years ago) and the cinema's most impressive biblical movie to date".
Pasolini used the Gospel of Matthew
verbatim for the script's dialogue. No one has focused on one gospel so literally and realistically, and shorn of religious presuppositions being read into the text, yet's its viewed as a work of artistic genius.
Again, either these critics are terrible at their job or they must be getting something right.
Also see:
The Art of the Cinema -- The Gospel According to St. Matthew: The Outside Looking In
I have yet to see a compelling film about the Christ story as told from a Christian filmmaker. They range from blasé attempts to present the Biblical narrative as "history" -- and I mean this both as a criticism of rigid dogmatism and a criticism of the style they are often told in, one of boring high school history lessons lacking flavour and constructed like an overlong textbook devoid of pictures -- to glorified torture porn disguised as piety that should shock and appal for all the wrong reasons.
I have, however, seen several accounts of the Bible told by secular filmmakers that are utterly fascinating, full of metaphor and imagery, that examine their source material -- in particular, the Christ character -- through a lens more appropriate to examining a historical figure who still has an impact on today's world...Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew is another movie, this one made by an atheist, that examined Jesus from a Marxist context, that looked truly at the message of radical socialism and free love, and asked us what we can take from the story. While it is flavoured with mythological undertones, the movie never descends into the literal fundamentalism that modern Bible movies so often drown under.
Pasolini was primarily a poet, and, believing in the lyrical value of the Gospel of Matthew, he lifted all his dialogue directly from the source material. There is no embellishment to the fantastical elements of the story...
Terry Eagleton, also an atheist, described Jesus as a revolutionary in his book, "Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate." For Eagleton, Jesus was a radical who placed the poor, the broken and the outcast at the centre of his revolution against the politics of the time. These outcasts, those abused by the system and (rightly) dissatisfied with it were to be the new rebels, so to speak, the driving force behind a new social system, and from there in the centre, he could spread his message outward and establish a new, socialist society that looked after all of its members with equal consideration. To Eagleton, Jesus became a political figure, one who threatened the power and as a result was politically executed, becoming a martyr and proving his own point that society was broken and in need of change.
For Pasolini, Jesus was also a revolutionary, one who viewed society as broken and in urgent need of remaking, and who sought to do so by blessing the poor, the outcast and the sinners, and condemning the rich, pious and hypocritical...
There is no need to recount the plot as Pasolini follows Matthew precisely, adamantly adhering to what he considered its artistic value. What stands out then is his neorealism and simplistic imagery.