This British journalist and scholar delves deeply into the many different theologies that characterized the Christian Church in the early years, mostly up to about 400 A.D., but with some discussion of the Crusades and modern times as well.
There were many almost unbelievable atrocities committed in the name of Christ and extensive borrowing of mythological events from other extant religions of the area, mostly Europe and North Africa. I am amazed at what impossibilities otherwise quite rational people are prepared to believe when religion is involved.
The inventiveness of cruelty to dispatch perceived enemies sometimes makes the gas chambers of the Holocaust look unimaginative. Once Constantine endorsed Christianity, intolerance of even minute doctrinal dissidence was a reason enough to kill with abandon.
A couple quotes may give you a sense of this erudite book.
“The Infancy Gospel of James or The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, were routinely ignored by scholars well into the second half of the twentieth century. … It is understandable that some Christian may have wished to ignore them- but is intellectually indefensible to do so. Do so, and you are not writing history but theology with dates.”
“… to try to understand Mithraism from the few scraps of writings and archeology that remain is.. like attempting to understand Christianity by reading a single atheist magazine and looking at the ground plans of a church.”
39 pages of bibliography, 32 pages of notes and an extensive index testifies to the scholarship involved in producing this book, if real scholars of religion need more ammunition. I am not one of them.
3.5/5
Thanks, Andra.
The Passionate Reader 