Heresy

Title: Heresy – Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God
Author: Catherine Nixey
Publisher: Picador, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9781529040364
Pages: 364

Christianity is the world's largest religion in the matter of mass following. Even though it is splintered into numerous sects with mutually exclusive customs and rituals, there is an underlying unity as far as scriptures are concerned. There's universal agreement on the books included in the New Testament among all major sects and it gives an impression that there is uniformity on scriptures across the entire religion. In fact, this is far from the truth. There was a violent contest between various versions of the holy scriptures and a consensus was reached only in the fourth century CE on what ought to be sanctified as holy or to be condemned as apocryphal. Such omitted works contained extraordinary narratives especially of Jesus and Mary. Some of them portrayed Jesus as having a violent mind which exacted retribution for any slights committed against him. There are others which declare Jesus to be the rightful son of Joseph. As Christianity was elevated to the status of state religion of the Roman Empire after Constantine's reign, it crushed dissenting opinion, hunted out heresy and consigned the heretical texts to flames. The magnificent religious variety that had once flourished within the Roman Empire collapsed as a consequence. In its place an intolerant and virulent form of Christianity arose which exterminated paganism and even more, the heretics within the Christian fold. The Church became the greatest organised persecuting force in human history. This book summarizes Christianity's growth in the four centuries after Christ and the different flavours of religious thought available to the public. Catherine Nixey is a journalist and author. She currently writes for The Economist. Her best-selling first book, 'The Darkening Age' which described the growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire was reviewed earlier here.

At the outset, Nixey firmly establishes the idea that contrary to feelings of uniformity in the present world, there were many versions of the Christian holy texts in the ancient world, immediately after Jesus died. Some portrayed him as meek, mild and gentle, while others depicted him fierce, such as one who blinded critics and murdering those who merely bothered him. Almost every early Christian text offers a different or alternate view of the story that is familiar today. Many of these tales were similar to existing legends in paganism. At first, Christianity harped on its tales' similarity to existing beliefs, but when once it became more confident and then aggressive, it rejected the idea that it was similar to any of these other cults. It has also been supremely successful in wiping deviant narratives off from the public mind. Earlier texts that said Mary was not a virgin or that Joseph was Jesus' biological father were discarded when Christianity dominated the West. Yet, some traces of the original version rise up here and there from obscurity which goes unrecognized. A Christmas greeting card that shows an ox and a donkey at Christ's nativity or a scene that pictures Mary in a cave have taken motivation from these long-lost tales, because the New Testament does not mention them. The rich, yet ghoulish descriptions of hell are absent in the scriptures, but was widely prevalent in apocryphal books such as the Apocalypse of Peter or the Apocalypse of Paul. The Nativity Gospel of Thomas is another such book detailed in the text.

It's a common misconception among scholars that the pagan gods were/are nothing more than myths and only the monotheistic god can be spelled with a capital G. For centuries, there was a tacit agreement that the Greek and Roman gods fell into the category of history and mythology and is the subject matter of classicists while theologians handled Christianity. But Nixey boldly brackets Christianity with other ancient religions. These portrayed a world in which the pagan religions were ripe fruits waiting for someone to pluck them out and consume. The author refutes this fake notion. Contrary to the claims of Christian theologians, she confirms that the ancient world was not waiting for a saviour. In fact, it was suffering from an overdose of such men who claimed themselves to be sons of god and born of virgins. Apollonius of Tyana was one such character whose antecedents exactly matched that of Jesus. Ancient intellectuals reacted to tales of Jesus with contempt, boredom and barely concealed mirth at the inconsistencies. They also found disgusting and revolting the Christian ritual of ceremoniously drinking the blood and eating the body of the saviour. Jesus' healing miracles were eclipsed in the ancient world with that of Asclepius, who was also a son of god and a miracle worker. He also suffered a violent death and thereafter ascended to heaven. By the first century CE, to be revived from death was such a common phenomenon that it even merited a section in one of the earliest encyclopaedias. Pliny the Elder records a host of such stories and speculates on possible explanations for how it had happened. To the majority of ancient observers, Jesus was nothing more than a magician while many others thought him to be a charlatan. Making food appear from nothing was a staple of ancient magic. The virgin birth was also a contested idea in early times.

In the ancient ages, heresy didn't have the negative attributes which it possesses today. The term 'heresy' comes from the Greek word 'haireo' which means 'I choose'. Within just fifty years of Christianity's ascendancy, choice became no longer a praiseworthy attribute, but a poison. Religious heresy was unheard of before the arrival of the messianic religion. Within a century after Jesus' death, Christian writers had begun inveighing against choice or more particularly, heresy. Early and medieval Christians were even ready to kill to stamp out heresy at any cost. Nixey points to the short Albigensian crusade to prove this point. Pope Innocent III exhorted to attack the followers of heresy 'in the name of the God of peace and love'! Thousands were massacred in the French town of Beziers. Unable to distinguish between heretic and believer, the soldiers asked for advice. The abbot asked to kill them all, 'for the Lord knows them that are his' (p. 157). Such propensity for indiscriminate slaughter stems from unalloyed religious bigotry and one example can be indicated from Mughal history as well. Akbar fought Maharana Pratap of Mewar in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576. The Mughal forces were commanded by Raja Man Singh I of Amber, who fought alongside the Mughal commander Asaf Khan. When fierce fighting began, it became incredibly difficult to distinguish between the Kachhwaha Rajputs supporting the Mughals and the Sisodia Rajputs fighting them. Abdul Qadir Badauni records in his memoir Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh that he asked Khan how the Mughal warriors were supposed to distinguish between them. Asaf Khan famously replied: “Shoot at whomsoever you like, on whichever side they may be killed, it will be a gain to Islam”.

This book provides one more angle of how Christianity grew and eclipsed all other religions. What is seen played out was that if the tolerant tolerate the intolerant, then the intolerant will wipe out the tolerant over a period of time. This is a crucial lesson of all time and a stark warning to modern secular societies which tolerate anachronistic and savage religious practises of starkly intolerant religions in the name of plurality and diversity. Roman persecution of Christians was light and ineffective because Christianity actually grew over the period. And they adopted repression only when Christians abused the Roman gods or refused to participate in civic rituals that have no underlying religious sanctity. The Christian persecution of other religions was more brutal and mindlessly cruel because the other religions went extinct as a result. Constantine ordered that many pagan temples should have their doors removed, their roof claddings taken off, their sacred idols taken away and their gilding smelted down and added to the treasury. What was very different about Constantine was not that he promoted Christianity, which was unremarkable. What was different was that he reigned for three decades while his rebellious nephew and successor Julian did for only two years. His longevity changed history. Within fifty years of Christianity's ascent, laws forbidding heresy appeared. Just to convene a meeting of heretics was punished with flogging with leaden whips and exile. Offending books were burnt.

The author very effectively illustrates how Christianity snuffed out the spirit of inquiry from the minds of the intellectuals in its growth phase. Only when the religious temper mellowed a little by the end of the Middle Ages did the quest for knowledge was rekindled from the ashes. John Chrysostom argued that there was no need of curiosity for the true Christian, because 'where there is faith, there is no need for investigation'. St. Augustine, who was one of the greatest intellectuals of all time yet Christian, condemned the quest of knowledge as 'unhealthy curiosity' which leads to all kinds of ills. Men are led to investigate the secrets of nature, which is irrelevant to their lives. They wish to gain it merely for the sake of knowing. Hence, this 'curiosity' draw man off from the one true object of contemplation, which is god. Religious comparison was common. Classical authors observed and readily admitted similarities between their religion and others. But Christian authors adopted a novel explanation that the similarity was the work of Satan to deceive ordinary men. If Asclepius or Apollonius healed people and raised the dead, it was because they were incarnations of the devil, they argued. For a long time, the world had no knowledge of the alternative scriptures, because mainstream Christianity had so completely taken them out of view. The ancient texts recovered from Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 contained many heretical texts that present alternate versions of Christian stories which are now taken at face value and without any challenge. The Catholic Church prepared a comprehensive Index of Prohibited Books in 1557 which continued to be updated till 1966.

It's always a delight to read one of Nixey's books which are appropriately researched and provide a glimpse of an entirely new vista which lay hidden in plain sight. She replaces those pages torn away from history by organized religion and helps readers evaluate concepts which were taken for granted. This book contains several interesting pictures of sculptures and paintings - some of which are very old - that corroborates the author's arguments. Nixey's paraprosdokian approach (you better look up this term in Google!) is an extremely enjoyable experience for the readers. She describes an incident and the end of the passage takes an unexpected turn which leave the readers wide-mouthed. In this book, she describes a miraculous healer who was claimed to be a god on earth and waking up a dead girl. At the end of the paragraph, this person turns out to be not Jesus, but Apollonius of Tyana. In the previous book 'The Darkening Age', she describes a group of religious zealots in Syria breaking into a temple and smashing the idols there. Everyone thinks them to be Muslim bigots of ISIS, but it was in fact early Christians destroying pagan temples in the fourth century or so.

This book is very highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star