A reescrita do Novo Testamento e a crítica social em “A morte de Jesus”, de Eça de Queirós

This paper aims to analyze the rewriting of the New Testament and the social criticism in the short story “A morte de Jesus” [Jesus' Death] by Eça de Queirós, based mainly on critics such as Saraiva (1982), Bueno (2000) and Nery (2005). The author of Prosas Bárbaras approaches a well-known view of the religious text from the perspective of a fictional character not found in the Bible. Nevertheless, we note that this text presents a critical vision of the character Jesus, going beyond the canonical biblical version. Moreover, the society of the time of Christ is portrayed in a similar way to the one of the nineteenth century, highlighting the hypocrisy and the materialism present in these two societies. This suggests that as Eça reconstructs the past to tell a story known by the readership, he reflects about the nineteenth century.