Coetzee finishes with this third story of the boy David after his extensive parable of the two previous installments: “The Childhood of Jesus” (2013), and “The Schooldays of Jesus (2017). All the three episodes show a personal interpretation of the figure of Jesus as an enigmatic man: the son of David, in his historical details, 2000 years ago, is now the son of God, using a different name for those who study his figure in the gospels.
Coetzee, in his book "The death of Jesus", highlights, if applicable, using domestic anecdotes of David, specific allusions to the figure of Jesus Christ: his unknown origin, his unwavering will before Agnes and Simon - who are not his biological parents -, his body which disappeared in the coffin which his friends had prepared for him, his secret message to humanity - which is none other than his own person, etc. It deals with a thousand more details, more easily recognizable to the readers who are familiar with the Gospels, details carefully written in order to always make possible, but improbable, the figure of this David- Jesus which corresponds to the Jesus of the Christian faith. Most of the allusions in the story direct the reader to a figure of Jesus drawn by liberal Protestantism.