Heresy: The Christian Truth

[Laan Yaa Mo]

This might be an interesting book for those who like ancient history as the author of the book uncovers some fascinating truths that once again demonstrate to the victor go the spoils. The book is 'Heresy' written by Catherine Nixey.

“In the beginning was the word.” So says the Gospel of John. The idea is central to modern Christianity: a single truth — incontrovertible, all-powerful, unique. According to scripture, Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Yet back then there were many ways, many truths, many different lives. In the beginning, Catherine Nixey writes, “there was not… a single story, resonant and unchallenged. There were many words, many stories.”

Nixey is perhaps an unlikely apostate. Her father was once a monk; her mother a nun. They left religious orders to marry, but never left God. Catherine was at first a dutiful Christian who attended church every Sunday and gave up chocolate for Lent. She eventually lost her faith, but “long after I stopped believing in the truth of the Christian God, I still believed in the truth of Christian history”. She then started questioning, diligently seeking out the stories the Church has, over time, suppressed. For the Church, history is a container of inconvenient truths. It is dangerous. Historical works were banned to create “The Word”, a single story of Jesus.

Heresy explains how that single Christian truth emerged and how competing stories were eradicated. “It is,” Nixey writes, “about how religions change and change again, as they travel, and age, and spread into other lands … It is about what was, and what might have been.” Heresy is a brilliant book — sometimes frightening, occasionally funny, frequently unsettling and always a thrill to read. It probes painfully into the pathology of belief.

Nixey, an Economist journalist and the author of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, reveals how in ancient Rome there were many people like Jesus and many versions of Jesus himself. The religious world was a marketplace and Christianity was just one of many spiritual products on offer. Nixey rejects the idea that this “benighted pagan world was waiting for its saviour. On the contrary, it was suffering from an overabundance of such men; and almost nothing about Christianity struck any ancient observers as the slightest bit novel.”

The philosopher Celsus complained that there were so many would-be saviours roaming the streets that it was difficult to decide which doom-monger to believe. The names of these mystics have mostly been erased by time, but one stands out. The career of Apollonius closely parallels that of Jesus, his contemporary. Before his birth, his mother was visited by a god. He, like Jesus, had a talent for minor miracles such as turning water into wine. Both men apparently raised the dead. Both were persecuted and put on trial by the Romans. Jesus was crucified; Apollonius simply vanished from the courtroom before he could be executed. Feeling threatened by the Apollonius story, Christian authors eventually labelled him an antichrist.

The plethora of prophets is understandable given the fragile nature of life. Promises of milk and honey were attractive because both were scarce. Plagues of locusts were relatable. We marvel at Roman medicine, but average life expectancy was just 25 years. Most ailments seemed mysterious and otherworldly, so it was perfectly sensible to seek out a saviour rather than a doctor. “A great deal of ancient religion,” Nixey writes, “was little more than healthcare with a halo.” Jesus might have healed the lame and brought sight to the blind, but so did a lot of other guys. Curing those ailments was also easy to fake; we tend not to read about amputated limbs miraculously growing back.

The line between magic and religion was not clearly drawn. Both used candles, smoke, relics and incantations. Early depictions of Jesus show him holding what looks disturbingly like a wand. The Romans, spoilt for choice, had trouble deciding which saviour or magician to believe. Apsethus, a 2nd-century mystic from Libya, addressed this problem by training parrots to fly into a crowd, squawking: “Apsethus is a god.” His detractors captured the birds and trained them to squawk denouncements of their former master.

Saint Thomas the Apostle — in some accounts he is described as the twin brother of Jesus
ALAMY

In addition to the abundance of saviours in Roman times, there were myriad versions of Jesus. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, from the 2nd century AD, tells of a young Jesus who had a habit of killing his playmates when they interfered with his games. Angry neighbours showed up at his house, beseeching Mary and Joseph. “Teach him to bless and not to curse,” they demanded, “for he is killing our children.” Eventually an exasperated Joseph instructed Mary to keep Jesus indoors “for all those who provoke him die”.

We have become accustomed to a single story of Jesus with the result that other versions seem bizarre. In the Ethiopian text Book of the Cock Jesus resurrects a cockerel from his bowl of chicken soup. In another text Mary breathes fire. In the 3rd-century Acts of Thomas Jesus sells his twin into slavery. And then there’s the Jesus who despises babies since they “become either lunatics or half-withered or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytics or idiots”.

Another apocryphal gospel tells of how Jesus tricked someone into taking his place on the cross, then joked about his cleverness. Jesus is sometimes arrogant, often cruel and, occasionally, not of human form. Many of these gospels have difficulty with the idea of virgin birth, especially since Jesus supposedly materialised in Mary’s womb fully formed. How did he get there? One ancient text proposes a solution: Jesus entered through Mary’s ear.

There is, perhaps understandably, an obsession with Mary’s vagina — what went in and what came out. One account tells of a woman who takes it upon herself to determine whether Mary’s hymen remains intact. She inserts her finger and, Nixey writes, “the response of [Mary’s] vagina is unambiguous, for Salome’s hand is suddenly burned off”.

All these stories, Nixey admits, make for “splendidly entertaining history”. That’s certainly true. I’ve read quite a few treatises on religion, but none so enjoyable. I found myself rereading beautifully crafted sentences simply to savour their cadence. While Nixey clearly seeks to entertain, she never loses sight of her central purpose, which is to analyse how a uniform story of Jesus slowly emerged. Nor does she ever feel the need to embellish since the evidence is already so delightfully bizarre. That is the nature of ancient texts. “Like fossils,” Nixey writes, “[their] phrases were clearly shaped by another world, in which milk and honey were paradise and a lost sheep a disaster, a world of dust and ashes, of serpents and scorpions, and of famine and fear — a world whose phrases taste, today, strange and foreign on the tongue.”

In the beginning, there were many words. Christianity in ancient Rome was more like a field of competing saplings than a single, solid oak. That changed in AD312 when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, making it in effect the state religion. At the time, only about 10 per cent of Roman citizens were Christians. A central truth was defined and tiny differences labelled heresy. Christians persecuted other Christians. Gates were closed, minds slammed shut, books burnt.

Nixey reminds us that, in those days of Christian diversity, there were Novations, Sabbatians, Valentinians, Priscillianists, Enthusiasts and dozens of other sects, each of which told its own version of the Jesus story. Each believed that it alone was the true church. Eventually just one story emerged, not because it was necessarily true, but because its adherents were powerful. Other sects were then eradicated, their gospels erased. As in war, the victor wrote the word.

Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God by Catherine Nixey (Picador, 364pp; £25). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/here ... -p6cdhj708

[glalt]

I have a dislike of organized greedy religions. I'm not an atheist or a religion hater. I recognize that religion gives some people comfort. That group doesn't include me. My God didn't write any fairytale books. Man wrote those books.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

I'm an atheist; however, I still enjoy historical articles like this one.

[tamada]

I'm an atheist; however, I still enjoy historical articles like this one.

Thanks for the post and the link LYM. That's my reading material for my next foreign trip.

[jackspratt]

My thanks also, Uncle.

Your OP was an interesting read, leading me to look further. I note it is available as an eBook.

[tamada]

My thanks also, Uncle.

Your OP was an interesting read, leading me to look further. I note it is available as an eBook.

It is already? ¿dónde está?