Oh yes. I liked this a lot more than I did Cain. It explores a lot of the same ideas, obviously - not just the biblical themes, but also the same fundamental issues: the question of how to explain the presence of evil in a world that's supposed to be good, religion as a tool for power - not just between people, but since this is a story about the supposed Son of God, there's also the role played by the big man himself.
And so the despised fish with smooth skins, those that cannot be served at the table of the people of the Lord, were returned to the sea, many of them so accustomed to this by now that they no longer worried when caught in the nets, for they knew they would soon be back in the water and out of danger. With their fish mentality, they believed themselves the recipients of some special favor from the Creator, perhaps even of a special love, so that in time they came to consider themselves superior to other fish, for those in the boats must have committed grievous sins beneath the dark water for God to let them perish so mercilessly.
The basic story is the same: Jesus of Nazareth is conceived, born, narrowly escapes infanticide, grows up, learns that he's the son of God, gathers disciples, performs miracles, is tried and executed.
Of course, Saramago being Saramago (unless he's also a more pretentious Neil Gaiman, which is a distinct possibility) it's not that simple. Much like in Cain, he wants to use the story of God to pick the story of Man apart. It's probably easy to dismiss that as a polemic or a screed or use snooty words like "worldview", but I think there's a lot more to it than that. This is, after all, supposed to be the Greatest Story Ever Told, and whether or not one agrees with that, there's no denying that the story is intended to be the basis of an entire society and frequently used as such; the themes that aren't already in it to begin with have been inserted into it by 2,000 years of interpretation. There's very little in Western history or philosophy that can't be seen through the mirror of the Gospels.
Which is why Saramago casts his net wide. Jesus has barely been born before he's tackled power structures in language and gender roles, the power of tradition and religion, of guilt and duty, of the very fact that the characters are trapped in a story that's supposed to be magical, with miracles and angels and that-guy-over-there-is-probably-Satan, except God has stopped showing up in person at least to regular folks like Joseph and Mary. Which is kind of ironic, really.
Things might have been so in a golden age, when the wolf, rather than eat the lamb, would feed on wild herbs. But this is the age of iron, cruel and unfeeling. The time for miracles has either passed or not come yet, besides, miracles, genuine miracles, whatever people say, are not such a good idea, if it means destroying the very order of things in order to improve them.
Actually, Saramago really likes his irony. The whole story, of course, is one big cosmic joke; God impregnates a 16-year-old girl (or claims to, at any rate - like I said, Gaiman fans might very well enjoy both the themes and roles of gods, demons and angels in this) in order to further his own quest to rule more than just the Jews, and since he's God, nobody really has any say in the matter.
God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit.
Saramago wanders through Israel, and does a much better job of actually taking us there than in the no less polemical but far less imaginative Cain; out of clay (or well, ink, which adds up to the same thing) he creates life and sacrifices it, one eyebrow wryly raised and his mouth running in endless asides and ruminations, drifting from bedroom farce to deadly serious deconstruction of the entire idea of how a philosophy based on sin and virtue depends on evil to create good - and the more evil, the better we can tell ourselves we are.
You have learned nothing, begone with you.
