A World Full Of Gods

Unlike other histories of early Christianity, this book does not actually explain WHY Christianity became the state religion of the late Roman Empire. It does no more than say: these are the factors that contributed to its popularity and the rest was chance. Some reviewers see this as a weakness to the book, but I think it's just plain honest. The later Roman empire was not a democracy after all, so Constantine did not have to choose Christianity as the state religion. That he did so was crucial to the development of Christianity as a state and world religion.

There are two time travel chapters and one with a television show. It's these chapters that make this book controversial and made me use the word 'postmodern' in my introduction. But this is the best of postmodern: the out of time portrayals help us realize our own limitations as western, wealthy (anyone with an Internet connection is, on a worldwide scale, wealthy by definition) and modern people of our time.

Some reviewers have felt that entry level college students might take fiction for fact, but it's a very foolish college student who will take time travel as fact. I think that fact and fiction have been mixed in a way that is perfectly permissible and helpful to a felt understanding of what it was like to live in ancient Rome. Where the boundary between fiction and fact is not immediately clear, the footnotes do clarify. I needed that help with the repentant letter by Augustine on his death bed.

The imagined letters by academics to the author are a nice literary device that will help the reader realize the dimensions and subjectivity in academic discourse. That too is an educational aspect of this book that ought to be a help to university students, not a hinder.

The real Jesus was a Jew, the leader of a radical revisionist movement within Judaism. It seems improbable that he had any intention of founding a new religion. But after his execution, ordered by a combination of Jewish priests and Roman officials, the Jesus movement rapidly evolved into an independent religion, persecuted and protected by the Roman state. Three centuries later, against all the odds, the Roman emperor Constantine (306-37 CE) converted to Christianity. All his successors (except briefly Julian the Apostate, 361-63) were Christian. By the end of the fourth century, pagan rites had been banned and Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman state. Within four more centuries, the heartlands of early Christianity - Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and north Africa - had all become predominantly Muslim. Religious allegiance followed political power.

(p.1, A World Full of Gods, The Strange Triumph of Christianity, by Keith Hopkins, introduction)

This chapter is in the form of time travel. A contemporary couple travels back in time to Pompeii as it was just before one of the final eruptions of the Volcano Vesuvius. The chapter gives us the context of the Roman Empire in one local. The Roman Empire was very large, and like modern India, included a large variety of local and not so local religions. By submerging us, through our fantasy, in this pagan world we get to experience something of this world.

We attend a wedding, visit the baths and marvel at the sexual (yes, you read that right) illustrations on the walls. In fact, one of the strengths of this book is it's lack of politically correct censoring of the ancient sources. Where Jews are blamed in the ancient texts, this is repeated in the book with no moralizing at all. That is what people wrote, so that is what's shared here. The illustrations include reproductions of things that on a page like this I would not like to repeat.

It's hard to describe this chapter without quoting the author of it. His writing is so very good and engaging, yet to the point. So here goes:

"The Jesus Movement started as a small and radical revisionist movement within Judaism. This chapter explores another small Jewish Cult Group, the Qumram Covenanters, who wrote and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls. (p. 46)

This group is ascetic to the point of refusing the right of married men to sleep with their wives. It's an all-male group. The chapter starts with a simple history of the group as it appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then halfway through the chapter we switch to a description of a television show. It's a show about a show, to add more levels to the already multi-dimensional narrative. Confusingly enough the levels seem to mix too. I'm not sure I completely got this one. I tend to think it's the weakest fictional bit in the book. However, it does function reasonably well as a view in the world of the Qumram Covenanters and their difference from Judaism and Christianity - then and now.

And of course, and this must be one motive for writing this chapter, it gives context to the rest of the book: the religious atmosphere in which Christianity developed. Whereas chapter one helps us realize just how prominent sexuality was in ancient Pompeii (and probably elsewhere in the Roman Empire), chapter two shows us a glimpse of people who took to the opposite end of the spectrum.

I had my pencil out during most of this chapter. Every bit of it seemed, as I was reading it, worthy of being reread, quoted etc. It's written as an ordinary history of early Christianity and starts out, again, very well:

The core of Christian belief was quite extraordinary. It is difficult for us now to recapture how very strange and offensive it must have seemed to pagans in the Roman world. Christians claimed that there was only one true God, who had sent his son, Jesus, the Messiah, both human and divine, into the Roman empire to save humanity from sin. Jesus had died, of his own free will, as a crucified animal, in Palestine. But Christ had not died. He was bodily resurrected from the dead and is now in heaven, passing just but merciful judgment on the living and the dead. In return for believing this, and for living a life free from sin, in deed and thought, and for meeting weekly to pray, Christianity offered its faithful the hope of salvation and immortality. Christ's undignified suffering and death on the cross became the new symbol of human salvation.
Gloss it as you will, the worship of a crucified criminal as the son of God, the divine exaltation of a humble human, the crucifixion of God, and the ethical message of achieving individual salvation through faith, virtue, and repentance constituted a radical break with pagan polytheism, animal sacrifice and temple worship. (p. 76)

Two more quotes:

... it is essential to appreciate that the early Christian message was understood differently then and now, if only because the whole context of understanding was different. (p. 78)

The very existence, from early on in Christian history, of brief statements of Christian beliefs set Christianity apart from Judaism and paganism. Put crudely, the contrast is that Christianity became a religion of belief, whereas Judaism and paganism were religions predominantly of traditional practice, with settled adherents. Judaism was the religion of a nation, with few converts in each generation, and few expulsions. Pagans (as we usually conceptualize them) simply did what they had always done. But during the first three centuries C.E., a combination of factors - the integration of diverse cultures within the Roman empire into a single political entity, large-scale migration to cities and the evolution of mystery cults - stimulated religious syncretism, and increased fluidity in religious attachment. For the first time in Mediterranean history, religion had become a matter of choice, not of birth. (p. 80)

The chapter goes on describing how Judaism and Christianity grew apart, how important guilt, sin and forgiveness were to the individual Christian, what early institutions were like and how Christians dreamed of a unified church way before there was one. In this chapter the history of the emergence of the New Testament is also started, which is a theme throughout the rest of the book. It includes the theme of martyrs in the early church and tells us that there were way fewer martyrs than there were people who admired them.

In this chapter we get introduced to the variety of stories told about Jesus and his family. The chapter is named after Judas Thomas who is sometimes portrayed a simply one of Jesus's brothers, but also sometimes as his twin. However the chapter isn't merely about him, it's also about how the themes from Jesus's life get transplanted into the themes of other Christian teachers. We also meet Andrew who converts the wife and brother of a governor.

This chapter is mainly an illustration of the fact that in the first centuries of our era Christianity didn't yet have a precisely defined canon. It's mythology wasn't fixed and there was no central authority to do so just yet. Though there were many who dreamed of imposing that central authority.

Our time travelers are now in Egypt, under Roman rule, during the second century.

James and Mary have a lovers quarrel and James resorts to local magic to get her back. He does get her back, but soon after he gets captured by the authorities and Mary has to save him.

We get another glimpse of the world around early Christianity. Remember that Augustine lived in Egypt a few centuries later. We get a glimpse of temple life, of marriage between siblings, of rituals people perform and the reasons for performing them.

This chapter is a series of fictional letters. First a letter by the author to a university college. Then a letter by a recently converted Christian, Macarius, to his confessor. He writes about a dinner party at which he had to defend Christianity against Judaism and Paganism. He was hardly successful and writes not only what he said, but also what he should have said. Included is a ghost story of the time. The next letter is from that author's college back to the author, sharing some theological objections to this story. Then Macarius's confessor replies with even more of what should have been said. Then a Jewish professor replies to the whole thing as well.

The whole gives us an idea of the cultural tensions of the time, and of religious academia at present.

The focus of this chapter is on religious choice in the Roman world and on competition between religions, as mirrored in different stories about how the universe began. Stories about creation served as a metaphorical map on which competing religious leaders - Jews, pagans, Christians, Gnostics, and Manichees - drew their particular versions of belief. Understanding the origins of the world was a symbol for understanding the nature of divinity and of humanity, and for revealing the ethical rules by which humans should conduct their lives in order to gain salvation. (p. 245)

We meet with various interpretations of Genesis that now seem outlandish. It doesn't really matter whether the interpretation was originally Jewish, Christian, Gnostic or even Manichean: it all seems weird.

This is, again, a chapter of ordinary history. And, again, I've noted almost the whole text as important. It's this chapter that made my teacher recommend this book as a good hypothesis on Gnosticism. But confusingly, the chapter treats Gnosticism as mainly Jewish and Christian, whereas my teacher felt it was a wider movement than that. The problem is, partly, that the texts which survived are probably only part of the whole. And those that did survive do not all have a Christian or Jewish background.

We get the now famous history of the Nag Hammadi library found by two peasants in Egypt in 1945. We get a summary of Gnostic beliefs, which some authors on Gnosticism have said is impossible to do: there is too much variety in Gnostic stories.

The middle of the chapter enters Mani, the founder of a now dead world religion: Manichaeism. It's important precisely because it did once spread over most of the known world. There were Manicheans from Spain to China. Another reason why Manichaeism was important is that Augustine was a Manichean for nine years, before he became a Christian. Augustine is the central character in the last part of this chapter. First we get his refutations of the Manicheans, then his nightmare: a fictional account of what he should have felt about persecuting non-Christians.

Jesus was the Son of God, human and divine. We know very little about his life. Nor did the writers of the Gospels, though at least two of them were alleged to have been his disciples and so, close acquaintances. But the disciples of were reportedly illiterate, so they could not have been the authors of the gospels, as critics both pagan and Christian saw in antiquity. So in a narrow sense, the gospels of Matthew, John, Thomas, and Philip are religious fakes. That lessens their factual but not their historical value, or their religious truth. Belief validity is quite separate from fact correctness, and religious history is more concerned with representations than with facts. The gospels tell us what some ancient Christians thought and believed about Jesus. (p. 287)

This will perhaps be the hardest chapter to read for Christians. It's an analysis of the miracles, the theology of early Christian authors: both within what was to become the New Testament, and outside it. One of the points of this chapter is that the gospels quoted the Hebrew Bible (what was to become the Old Testament) extensively. The Gospel of Thomas is compared to the canonical gospels and comes out as being least 'Christian'. There's a reason it wasn't in the final New Testament. Comparing texts is a good exercise. For instance:

The traditional English Lord's Prayer is a mixture of Matthew and Luke, because it is a translation of the text of an ancient Greek manuscript which has a longer version of Luke (a version that harmonized the text of Luke and Matthew). Even in antiquity, the texts of the gospels were open to emendations and additions. The texts that we have, and translate, is not necessarily the original text, but the closest scholars can get to it. The variants reflect the diversity of ancient Christianities. (p. 317)

Katinka Hesselink has been fascinated with religion for as long as she can remember. She started studying theosophy and the world religions in earnest when she was 19. She loves reading books about any and all the spiritual traditions, and reviews them online.

She even did a stint of university studying World Religion, specializing in Buddhism and Indian religions.

She has gathered inspiring quotes and informative articles on Buddhism, Sufism, Mystic Christianity and of course theosophy on her website Katinka Hesselink Net. On her popular spiritual blog All Considering she shares her knowledge, experiences and thoughts on spiritual topics.

"We start in ancient Pompeii. Two modern time travelers report what they've seen during a brief stay, timed just before the eruption of Vesuvius. By this tactic, I wanted to share the liveliness, pervasiveness, and passion of paganism through texts and artifacts. But inevitably, we see the Roman world only through modern eyes; the alien culture of ancient Rome has to be interpreted by us. Time travelers stand for one version of history, fictionalized in order to expose the difficulties which all historians face in recreating the past. But time travelers have a restricted view; they can report only what we already know. I'm far too inhibited an academic to make things up. This is not a novel, even if it has a few novel-like characteristics. And in a letter incorporated into the text of the book, one of my liberal colleagues roundly criticizes the whole experiment: innovative perhaps, rambunctious, but from an intellectual standpoint fatally flawed. Even the endnotes, which cautiously document every step and most words, can't fend off her criticism.

The second chapter tries to go one better. But the problem is slightly different: how to evoke the flavor of an obsessional sect of fervently committed Jews from Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947? The tiny Qumran sect of ascetic males opens a small window on the religious ferment in Roman Palestine in the first century, before the Jewish rebellion of 66-73 CE. These Jews were not proto-Christians - far from it, though they shared with Jewish Christians both religious passion and hopes about the Messiah(s). They highlight the intense religiosity in Palestine during the period in which Christianity first arose. But the Dead Sea Scrolls are repetitive and difficult to understand. So here I try to capture both the intensity of their religious passion and the difficulty of reporting it now, by using a quintessentially modern idiom, a TV drama, in which all that we see/read is mediated by a simplifying process of (mis)interpretation. This TV play is set partly in ancient Rome, partly in the modern world. The Qumran myth is replayed, as all old myths should be, with ancient and modern players, and with authentic words. But in the modern medium, much is also changed; there are, for example, slippages of time and character. That too is unlikely to please my critical colleagues. So they too are given a voice, though only after the show is over. For me, the hero of this play is the TV camera itself, which, like a historical source, arbitrarily selects what it chooses to show, never lies, and never understands.

The third chapter, on the evolution of early Christianity as a revolutionary movement, is a conventional, objective analysis. This "objectivity" is the product of my unbeliever's distance from the Christian sources; but then, this unbeliever stance might not seem "objective" to believers. Indeed, what would an objective account of early Christianity look like? This chapter concentrates on the evolution of the New Testament, on the growth of an orthodox tradition of belief, on orthodox Christians' increasing efforts to impose a unity of faith through a hierarchy of priests and the canonical New Testament. It finishes with a study of persecutions and martyrs, which partly subverts convention by arguing that the Roman state largely protected Christians. And it argues that Christian Martyr Acts, which are dramatic accounts of Christians' trials and sufferings, functioned more as an alternative than as a stimulus to martyrdom. Reading about martyrs' bravery and faith recreated the performance, with only vicarious suffering.

The fourth chapter, called "Jesus and His Twin Brother," retells some of the religious stories from the secret (apocryphal), nonorthodox writings which from the second century onward supplemented the New Testament. And Jesus' twin brother is an icon for Christian religious inventiveness. Some Christians, at least, thought they needed to pursue salvation by enlarging the divine within themselves. They needed an intermediary between their own inadequate humanity and the transcendently divine Jesus. Jesus' twin brother is a symbol of believers' need to search for God within themselves. The chapter is split round a letter from a German academic who trenchantly objects to the infantilization produced in the reader by these stories. Stories, he claims, are no substitute for rigorous intellectual analysis. Religious history, if not religion, is too serious for stories. But in the Roman world, stories, not analysis, were the stuff of religious persuasion. And storytelling used to be the stuff of history.

The second half of the book has a similar structure. We begin again with our two time travelers, Martha and James. But this time they visit Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor (Turkey) to see something of the variety of pagan practice and religious passion. It's a radically different world, of disease, dirt, and animal sacrifice, of temples, professional priests, magic, blood, violence, short lives, and long stories. Romantically, we often imagine Greece and Rome as our cultural ancestors. We tend to forget that the strangely alien cultures of Egypt and Syria were important parts of the Roman empire and cradles of early Christianity. Suitably, in a story about religion, at the end of the chapter James is unjustly arrested, thrown into prison, summarily tried by a Roman judge, and strung up to be tortured. But in the nick of time he is saved by a miracle of modern science. This naive fiction invites the reader to reflect on the difference between the unbelievable, the believable, and the believed. Some early Christians believed that Jesus too did not actually suffer on the cross, but escaped by a magical illusion.

Chapter Six comprises a "previously unpublished" letter written by a recent convert to Christianity in the early third century seeking advice from a more experienced believer. The new Christian, Macarius, has (unwisely) accepted a dinner party invitation from an old friend, still pagan. At dinner they all discuss religion, and the pagans take the opportunity to offload all their pent-up criticisms of upstart Christianity. Ancients were not as kindly as modern liberals. Much of what they say is probably untrue, but that did not necessarily reduce its force; besides, Macarius probably exaggerates Christian virtues. Even so, he doesn't manage to say all that he wanted to, and subsequently thinks of. To add insult to injury, at dinner he is seated next to a Jew (as though there were no difference) who comforts him by giving his scurrilous account of Jesus' life: all pure invention. Long before the evening ends, most of the guests have turned from serious discussion to ghost stories and dancing girls. Macarius leaves bruised, but with his convictions undiminished.

Chapter Seven recreates the rival, semi-Christian universes of Gnostics and Manichees by retelling their versions of creation. In creation, we see the nature of God(s) and of the humans they made. Stories of creation set the stage for the first interaction between God and humans. They allow believers to explore the nature(s) of God(s) and humanity. And since practically no one nowadays is either Gnostic or Manichee, they provide us with an ideal template for perceiving how believers construct God(s) and their religion's foundation myths. For Gnostics and Manichees, one basic problem was, why did a good and omnipotent God allow evil into the world? The Gnostics' typical answer was that it was a tragic and stupid mistake, committed by God's youngest daughter, Sophia-Wisdom. Manichees saw world history as a continuous struggle between the forces of Light and Dark, good and evil. Orthodox Christians eventually followed Augustine in considering evil as humans' fatal flaw, inherited by all of us from Adam and Eve. The chapter ends with Augustine's deathbed nightmare, previously unrecorded, in which he dreams scarily that some of his beliefs were ill founded.

The final chapter is a study of Jesus, not so much of the historical Jesus as of the many and varied Jesuses of history, constructed over time. Jesus, I argue, is not just, nor even primarily, a historical person. Rather, like the sacred heroes of other great religions, he is a mirage, an image in believers' minds, shaped but not confined by the images projected in the canonical gospels. To be sure, his canonical historicity is part, but only part, of the image. But as with all beliefs, most is imagination and inspiration. History here is a history of representations, not of facts. So, ancient Christians constructed many Jesuses, as modern believers still do. Fixation on any particular version as the true Jesus is more a matter of believer choice than of historical truth or falsity. "

(pp 3-6, A World Full of Gods, The Strange Triumph of Christianity, by Keith Hopkins, introduction)

A Course in Miracles - famous quotes and sayings

One of the deepest hyped spiritual books of the late 20th century is 'a Course in Miracles' (also known as ACIM). It uses Christian symbols and imagery, but...

Best Jiddu Krishnamurti Books

Krishnamurti's books were usually compiled by others from his talks. Below you will find introductions to his work, but also deeper philosophic reflection...

Yoga Sutras by Patanjali - Science of Yoga - Taimni

A very scholarly translation and commentary on THE yoga classic: the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali. Taimni not only explains each sutra, but also puts them in ...

Tao Te Ching, Lao tzu, Taoism

Very inspiring. About leadership, living life and letting things be (that you can't control anyhow). This lens has quotes from the Tao Te Ching and information...

The Bhagavad Gita, Juan Mascaro translation: quotes

The Bhagavad Gita has been translated into Western languages numerous times.
The translation I present to you here is by Juan Mascaro, who was as much a ...

Buddhist Goddesses Art by Romio Shrestha

I got 'Goddesses of the celestial gallery' for my birthday (2010). It was quite a chore to take it home: it's almost as tall as this desk! (aka Poster size)...

The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Ravi Ravindra

The yoga sutras are two thousand year old spiritual classic. In India every spiritual teacher of any note has written a commentary on it. Ravi Ravindra is the...

Existential Psychotherapy, Irvin D. Yalom

This lens is dedicated to my mom. She's a humanistic psychotherapist and Irvin D. Yalom is one of her heroes. The smile on her face when I picked out this...

Man The Measure Of All Things

Deep, engaging and insightful interpretation of Blavatsky's 'The Secret Doctrine'.
'Man the measure of all things' is one of those books I've heard about ...

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure

Great book if you want to go to India yourself - especially if you're interested in India as the home of spirituality.
I read the book in one go: couldn't...

Best Ken Wilber Books

Books by Ken Wilber who writes on psychology, philosophy, mysticism, ecology, and spiritual evolution. He has been described as New Age, although his ...

The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy

It unites science and religion in a unique synthesis. Changed my life and my world view completely. Contains many of the themes of the modern New Age ...

Blavatsky Collected Writings and Books

The best series of occult and spiritual literature ever. This lens contains links to all Blavatsky's books and articles. Read The Secret Doctrine, Isis ...

Reflections on an Ageless Wisdom: A Commentary on The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett

The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett is one of the books that is central to theosophical literature. I read, and reread it a lot, in the early years of my being...

Buddhist Texts Through the Ages

There are a lot of Books about Buddhism out there. Most of them focus on Buddhism for modern people: what's relevant today. That's fine, in fact that's ...

You're Not Going Crazy...You're Just Waking Up! Michael Mirdad

This book will be an inspiration to anybody who has had a troublesome life. To anybody who is dealing with major issues that make you feel like you're losing...

Strength out of suffering - France Pastorelli

France Pastorelli tells her moving story: that of a mother, a musician, whose life turned to deep suffering because of heart problems. She turned her illnes...

Creative Evolution by Amit Goswami PhD

Inspiring integration of the latest in physics with a spiritual perspective. Convincing in the point that since consciousness is part of the universe now (in...

Best Isaac Asimov Robot Books in Order

I love science fiction. Especially the works of Frank Herbert (the Dune universe) and Isaac Asimov. I've read he felt he was writing mainly for boys.. but...

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo

Reviewed in the West as the only decent biography of Sri Aurobindo Goshe, from politician, to poet and guru. This guy lived a fascinating life and Peter ...

Unfinished Autobiography by Alice A. Bailey

I'm not really into Alice Bailey's work, nor into that of 'The Tibetan', but this autobiography is great. Funny, full of self knowledge and simply fascinating...

Marion Zimmer Bradley

A review of her work and life
Her famous 'Mists of Avalon' rewrote the story of King Arthur and Camelot from the female perspective. In all her literary work...

Consciousness: an Introduction, by Susan Blackmore

Fascinating. I bought this book because I first heard of this author as a former parapsychologist. It's always good to read books by those whom you disagree...

The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky: review

This is the version of The Voice of the Silence that I keep reading - and which I give to anyone who is interested. It doesn't only have Blavatsky's original...