To intend that one approach toward understanding a literary work is enough to encompass the understanding of a novel, a poem, or a play is to limit this very understanding. The multiplicity of theoretical approaches available always implies continuities and discontinuities among them and these overlapping and gaps must be taken into consideration. It means that to choose a certain line of thought does not automatically exclude all the others because when such a choice is justified, it is necessary to establish a dialogue with the other lines to evaluate in what sense they broaden or restrict a critical analysis. The choice for which approach to use, though, becomes a hard task. It requires a minimum previous knowledge of the range of critical theories available and to adapt them to the objectives of one's criticism. In the case of Saramago's, Vidal's and Mailer's novels, there is a similarity among them that may justify a critical study: they are all rewritings of the gospels, offering other views of Jesus Christ's life. A possible objective of a critical analysis of these novels could be a comparative study between them and the biblical narratives, as an attempt to provide, explain and understand the relations that link those texts. Concerning probable critical theories which could support this analysis, one important aspect to be considered is that those theories must regard as relevant the concept of intertextuality, since the corn of the analysis is the relation between the three novels and the Bible. Thus, objectivist theories such as New Criticism and Russian Formalism wouldn't be suitable as main support, since they postulate that the meaning of a literary work is to be found in a close reading of it, without any external relations. To recognize intertextuality relations among texts is to imply that their understanding is interdependent and this idea refutes entirely the New Critic's view that the poetic object is "a unique system of internal relations" (Adams, 1992: 2). This view and the idea of intertextuality go in opposite ways, since the former "closes  the literary work and the latter opens it up. Nevertheless, some concepts developed by Russian formalists such as Shklovsky's idea of "defamiliarization  could be useful to apply to the three novels, because by rewriting a new gospel the authors somehow defamiliarize, that is, "make fresh, strange, different what is familiar and known" (Cuddon, 1991: 226): the official version of the gospels presented in the Bible. Thus, in spite of disregarding external references to the literary work, Russian formalism offers important devices to analyze the narrative structure. The distinction between plot and story, Tomashevsky's concept of "motif