Most of us probably see Christian doctrine as a monolithic set of ideas that emerged within a few decades of the purported death of Jesus. “Common wisdom” also maintains that Christianity transformed the world for the better, spreading a message of tolerance and love soon after the Roman emperor Constantine began promoting the new religion early in the fourth century A.D. Both of these views are exposed as myths in Catherine Nixey‘s new book Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God (2024; the book appears to be called Heresy in the UK).
This is Nixey’s second book, following the successful The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, a bestseller that was translated into quite a few languages. Like Darkening Age, which I haven’t yet read, this one dispels myths about Christianity. Wikipedia describes The Darkening Age‘s thesis this way:
In the book, Nixey argues that early Christians deliberately destroyed classical Greek and Roman cultures and contributed to the loss of classical knowledge
Heretic has had mixed reviews, both glowing ones (e.g., here, here, and here), and critical ones (e.g., here and here). The critical reviews often argue that what Nixey says is well known, so she’s simply reiterating the accepted history of early Christianity while pretending she’s forged a new thesis. That doesn’t bother me too much, as I was unfamiliar with this history and thought it eye-opening regardless of its novelty. I found Andrew Copson’s review pretty fair; here’s the ending (Copson is head of Humanists UK):
In a way the strange thing is how novel the premise of the book might seem to its readers. Classicists have always known that the mediterranean world was full of god-men, miracles, and magic so why should it be shocking to read this now? A lot is down to a conspiracy of silence (Nixey calls it a ‘gentleman’s agreement’) between theologians and classicists or ancient historians is real. I once asked one of my ancient history tutors at university what he thought about the historical Jesus and he scoffed. ‘That’s myth – not history’, was his view. You might as well investigate whether Vespasian rose to the heavens as an eagle. But he never said that in print to my knowledge and certainly not in his lectures. Nixey’s book breaks an important taboo in a well-crafted and eminently readable combination of scholarship and polemic.
The book describes the many competing sects of early Christianity, some of which saw Jesus as either a magician or sorcerer (sometimes with a wand!), or a figure of fun, and followed alternative scriptures that were very different from the canonical texts we know today. In some, God is depicted as of uncertain sex (sometimes suckling Jesus), female, or even as more than one figure. Creation stories differ, and accounts about how Jesus’s mother got pregnant vary wildly.
What happened over time, as Nixey argues, is that Christianity coalesced around the present version, discarding other “noncanonical” gospels for various reasons. She argues further that there’s been a tacit agreement among Christians and theologians to downplay or erase these earlier versions, pretending that the current version of Christianity emerged sui generis as a monolith after Jesus’s death.
Now we already know that earlier gospels existed (Elaine Pagels has written at length about them), so perhaps there’s some justice in the criticism that Nixey is reiterating what’s already known. But for those of us who don’t know the history of Christianity (and that includes most Christians!), it’s worthwhile to discover how the diversity of Christian faiths has been pruned away to its present form.
Nixey’s other thesis is that the idea that earlier faiths of the Romans and others repressed the rise of Christianity is misguided and wrong. In fact, she says, it’s the reverse. Nixey gives many examples of how Christians themselves repressed other faiths, including torturing and killing their adherents and burning their books. And some sects of Christianity repressed others. Far from Christianity coming to the fore because of its message of love, it dominated via repression and the sword. I’m not a historian, so insofar as what Nixey says is true, I was edified, even if she reprised what’s already known.
One of the best aspects of Heretic is Nixey’s lively and informal prose, something unusual in books of this type. She’s an engaging writer, and I’ll give two examples. The first is in a discussion about how early Christians opposed the idea of a spherical Earth, claiming that people would have fallen off the part that was upside down (p. 246):
. . . However, the idea that a spherical earth is somehow ‘pagan’, and its opponents Christian, crops up in several other authors, too. The fourth-century Christian author Lactantius—a man whose intellect and education were rated highly enough that he was appointed as tutor to the son of the emperor Constantine—also considered the idea of a spherical earth to be pagan bunk. In a typically zesty passage, after Lacantius has laid into Socrates (‘ many of his actions are not only undeserving of praise, but also most deserving of censure’) and had a good go at Plato (his arguments are ‘impossible’ and ‘unjust’), Lactantius turns his attention to the idea of a spherical world.
And from the Epilogue (p. 279):
This is a story about how ideas are born, and how they die. It is also a story about how they survive. It is about how ancient stories linger, and divine whispers persist. It is about how religions change and change again, as they travel, and age, and spread into other lands, and other ages. It is about how long memory is, and how short. It is about what was, and what might have been. It is also about what is. And it is about why, when midwinter falls, and cribs are set out, an ox and an ass stand and watch over the baby Jesus in the manger. (p. 279).
The breezy prose does not denote a lack of scholarship: the book is heavily documented and footnoted.
I’d recommend Heretic for its combination of history and fine writing. You can find the Amazon site by clicking on the cover below. (The title, by the way, refers to the way that the dominant form of Christianity prevailed by deeming adherent to other faith as heretics.)
Here’s Nixey in 2018. She was the daughter of a monk and a nun:
Thank you so much for drawing this book to our attention. “The Darkening Age” was an eye-opener for me; although I knew some of the information, I had never seen it put together the way she did. It certainly dispelled any myths that early Christianity was a benevolent, tolerant religion.
Have you ever wondered how easily believers exclaim ‘God is Love’ without any deeper thought? An example of how the difficult bits get chipped away perhaps.
I posted this on Bluesky recently:
I recently went after a pastor at Medium for his “God is love” nonsense. The god of That Book is a psychopath. Didn’t the “Almighty” call for the murder of certain newborns and infants? I’m referring to the passages about the Amalekites. That’s psychopathic behavior in my book.
You’re being far too kind.
Psychopathy/sociopathy is a well-studied mental illness where the patient does not see any special difference between people and other things. So of course they always treat people as things, with regard only for how these particular things can be useful for particular purposes. The whole realm of people being ‘ends’ not ‘means’ is completely foreign to them. Psychopaths do not have a choice about this. It’s a severe perceptual failure, not a moral one.
Any god has powers of choice far greater than any human. Any creator of humans clearly knows the difference between humans and the rest of creation. YHWH isn’t a psychopath. He’s a sadist.
“Sadist” works for me.
And I like your comment about psychopaths: “a severe perceptual failure, not a moral one.” Very good.
Technically speaking, psychopathy is a personality dimension rather than a mental illness per se. Psychopaths take pleasure from tormenting others – for example the most reliable predictor of adult psychopathy is intentional cruelty to animals in childhood. What you are describing as a “perceptual failure” is more in line with the “externally oriented thinking” associated with many (not all) people on the autism spectrum, who may lack empathy toward humans and other animals but do not tend to engage in intentional cruelty.
As for the Biblical god, he reads more like a pathological narcissist to me.
“Breezy prose” is always welcome for just about any book!
While I’m here, I’d like to leave a plug for the movie “Heretic,” starring Hugh Grant. The ending is a bit much and over the top, but the bulk of the movie is about Hugh Grant raking two young women over the coals about their religious beliefs. The women play missionaries who stop by Grant’s cottage. He welcomes them in and then starts challenging them to think about their beliefs. Grant’s character is really good at this! Great dialogue writing.
And then, without giving anything anyway, the movie turns dark and sinister. No surprise there because the movie is technically a “horror” movie, but any skeptic or atheist will like the movie a lot. And given how atheistic the movie is, I’m surprised that it got made! Anyway, highly recommended, as they say in the movie biz.
Thanks for the recommendation. IMDB users agree (7.0/10). As does Richard Scheib, one my go-to critics for sci-fi and horror movies, who gives it 4 our of 4 stars. Part of his IMDB review:
Yes, “doing no more than talking.” I like that “contradictions of expectation.” That’s good. And Hugh Grant is just excellent. I suppose most of us are used to seeing him in things like “Notting Hill” (love that movie), but he demonstrates with “Heretic” that he can do something quite…different.
I look forward to reading these books, thank you for the tip! I’m puzzled by your statement, early on, “Like Heretic, which I haven’t yet read, this one…” Is that a typo? Your piece reads like a review, especially your conclusions/recommendations, which would sound very hollow if indeed you’ve not read the book.
Yes, a typo. I’ve fixed it, thanks.
Both of Nixey’s books are excellent. While the information contained in Heretic may be common knowledge to scholars of religious beliefs, much of the book’s content was new to me. Whenever a Christian tells me that Christianity is a religion of love and tolerance I just tell them to read Nixey’s two books and get back to me.
Seconding (thirding) the recommendations for both Heresy (aka Heretics) and The Darkening Age.
Seems bizarre to criticise a book aimed at the popular market for saying things that are well known to scholars but little known by the general public. Isn’t that exactly what books like this are supposed to be doing?
See also The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss.
I would like to see her debate Bart Ehrman, author of Love Thy Stranger. In his book he tries to show that Jesus expanded the circle of those who one should care. Not just family and friends but strangers from distant lands,whether you liked them or not. And that the care should not just be prayer but material goods or efforts that would make a difference, even if they were difficult to carry out. He himself is no longer a Christian but he actively supports causes he believes help those in need. He goes into other areas of Jesus teaching that he thinks were unfortunately changed by early Christians, such as forgiveness vs atonement. He does not whitewash the terrible things done in the name of Christianity.
I suppose Nixey would respond that, well, the “loving Jesus” we know wasn’t pruned away because the message was amiable. There were lots of Jesuses that weren’t so loving, so a debate in this case might be fruitless.
In one of Bart Ehrman’s books (it may have been “Lost Christianities”) he discusses the fact that in the early days of the faith there were multiple views of the nature of Jesus: He was a fully human man who was “adopted” by God; he was fully divine, not human at all; he was a flesh-and-blood man who had a divine spirit enter him; and he was both divine and human (the view that won out). The competing views were retroactively branded “heresies” by the winner. Ehrman calls the view that won “proto-orthodoxy” and points out that it wasn’t the only game in town.
I have not read the book, but plan to do so. Just a point about the idea that Christianity repressed other faiths: It is certainly true about Judaism in the Roman Empire. Prior to Constantine’ official conversion of Rome to Christianity, the Jewish community in Rome was tolerated. It had existed in Rome since before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C. E. Once Constantine converted and made Christianity the official religion of the empire, life became far more difficult for the Jews who began to suffer persecution. And I imagine that that was also the case for the worshipers of the Roman pantheon.
I enjoyed Nixey’s first book and I’m looking forward to Heresy now that it’s in paperback. Your closing line on Nixey’s parentage made me laugh out loud.
“A lot is down to a conspiracy of silence (Nixey calls it a ‘gentleman’s agreement’) between theologians and classicists or ancient historians is real.”
When I was deep into the historicity of Jesus debate, I remember being struck by this, and how science – a discipline of skepticism, observation, and evidence – was so very different from theology.
First principles play absolute zero part in theology – there are only sacrosanct narratives which are bolstered by endless subjective interpretations of rehashed materiel. The last thing one would see in a modern Divinity School today would be real research into Mythicism, and the last thing one would see in a Church would be an expert guest lecturer who would offer real scholarship that would undermine the homilies that parishioners take on faith.
Even to this day, Bart Ehrman – a product of a religious undergrad College and a Divinity School – shows no indication of having even read the peer-reviewed Mythicism literature.
Science does exactly the opposite – experts and specialists are constantly asked to speak to the public, and lay people are hungry to learn, especially when new research topples previous frameworks and Theories.
When I taught at a highly selective university, I was continually amazed by how little our undergraduates knew about the history of Christianity. Most of them thought that early Christians accepted something like their version of Protestantism, and had no idea that there had even been a Reformation.
I hear this frequently Mr. Cransdale and I believe it to be true.
I myself – as a (mixed) Jewish atheist don’t know much about Christianity.
I do, however, know quite a lot about Islam. Amusingly enough, lots of Muslims don’t know much about Islam, and virtually no non-Muslims know about it: I think this is a problem.
From an atheist perspective (I’m assuming with you, just b/c you’re at WEIT)… does it matter if people don’t know the precepts/history of their or other religions?
I think about that a bit.
regards,
D.A.
NYC🗽
Are you familiar with Danny Burmawi who wrote “Islam Israel and the West”? He says his book is “a forensic exposure of Islam as political theology, its war on Israel, and it’s threat to Western civilization.” He also has a substack which is full of interesting and new (to me, and probably like you say many Muslims) explanations about Islam and why it is the way it is. His latest on substack May 10 “What broke the Muslim mind”
I recently read Burmawi’s book and thought it was excellent. I have recommended it to all my family members and friends.
David Anderson asks whether it matters if people don’t know the precepts of their own or other religions. I think it is a good thing for Americans to know Lincoln’s second inaugural and to understand how it was shaped by his pondering some central Christian ideas, and to see also how Frederick Douglass’s religious thought shaped his work.
It’s no longer ignorance of history that is the chief concern. We have lost a shared language—and with it the ability to understand much of Western literature and art. Dante and Milton hail from alien lands. Shakespeare’s biblical allusions go undetected. Eliot becomes a wasteland of understanding. Other Modernists may fare no better. Even a Steinbeck risks being misunderstood. Surely the Sistine Chapel will be seen as overtly religious, but what of “David” or others’ use of symbols more subtle and suggestive? Even the Jewish Chagall made powerful use of the crucifix. Does the intensifying ignorance now strip his work of its power?
Nicaea and Trent? 1054 and 1453? Luther, Calvin, and the Counter-Reformation? If only we were so lucky. Today, many elite students cannot understand the Exodus language of the civil rights era. They cannot grasp the heritage bound up in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. They cannot tell you what the Ten Commandments are, let alone understand the cultural weight they long carried. Perhaps some have no lament for this loss of cultural competence. I think it is too early to tell the full consequences. The test will be whether a generation shorn of its cultural heritage and history can pass along art and institutions worthy of the name. The last pagan generation offered similar laments. Were they wrong?
That’s interesting. Most of the nonbelievers I know recognize that Christian theology evolved over a long time to get to what we have now. There were those who rejected the idea of the Trinity. Some thought that the god of the Hebrew bible and the god of Jesus were different: the god of the Hebrew bible being wicked and vengeful and the Christian god being kind and loving. How could they be the same god?
Even now there might be radical differences: don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the Trinity? And then there are the Mormons.
Of course they’re all the same: there is exactly one empty set, usually denoted by {}.
Excellent; that made me laugh.
I’ve read both of the Nixey books mentioned and quite enjoyed them. The two “bad” reviews cited are from a Christian organization (so no surprise there) and (oddly) a site that is maintained by someone who purports to be an atheist, and who professes not to be a historian while still running a website focused on… history. Right. I don’t know if any of his arguments are valid, but he very much seems like a self-absorbed outlier.
Any book dealing with religion is always going to incite strong responses, especially where it is not supportive of claims made by the religion under discussion. One could argue that Nixey is trying to be a provocateur, but I don’t think so. I think she is merely trying to shine a light on aspects of Christianity that are not commonly known in modern society. It’s a worthy undertaking.
I agree that Nixey’s books are written in a “breezy” easy-to-read sort of way. That fact might make some think they are lightweight or non-scholarly, but this is off-base. As noted above, the books are both well researched and documented. I think she’s just trying to reach a larger audience. I wish her success.
My all-time favorite treatise on early Christianity is Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Thank you for this book recommendation. I just borrowed the audio version from my library and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it is narrated by Lalla Ward, who was married to Richard Dawkins for many years.
I read Nixey’s first book, “The Darkening Age,” and greatly enjoyed it. I will be sure to check out her new one. Another recent book along the same lines I can recommend is Paula Fredricksen’s “Ancient Christianities: The First 500 Years”. Bart Ehrman has also published many books about these subjects. My two favorites are “Lost Christianities” and “Lost Scriptures”. Ehrman also has tons of YouTube videos on various aspects of early Christianity.