
- 384 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"A brilliant book...illuminates a forgotten world." —The Times, Best of the Year
"Heretic tells a moreish intellectual story and shakes up your understanding of Western history. At the same time, somewhat improbably, it supplies at least one good joke per paragraph; you have to keep turning back to enjoy them again." ―The Economist, Best of the Year
From a celebrated classicist and author of The Darkening Age (“[a] ballista-bolt of a book”—New York Times Book Review), a biography of the many, diverse variations of Jesus who thrived in early Christian traditions—and how they were lost until just one “true” Christ survived.
Contrary to the teachings of the church today, in the first several centuries of Christianity’s existence, there was no consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. Instead, there were many different Christs. One had a twin brother and traveled to India; another consorted with dragons. One particularly terrifying Christ scorned his parents and killed those who opposed him.
Moreover, in the early years of the first millennium there were many other saviors, many sons of gods who healed the sick and cured the lame. But as Christianity spread, they were pronounced unacceptable – even heretical – and they faded from view.
Heretic unearths the different versions of Christ who existed in the minds of early Christians, and the process of evolution—and elimination—by which Jesus became the singular figure we know today.
“Heretic has the mother lode of tales too hot for Christendom. Nixey has carefully wrung out a number of apocryphal texts for scandal.” —Harper's Magazine
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Prologue
- Introduction
- Author’s Note
- One: Antichrist
- Two: To Heal the Blind and Cure the Lame
- Three: The Falsehoods of the Magicians
- Four: Serpent’s Blood and Eye of Ape
- Five: The Product of Insanity
- Six: What Would Jesus Do?
- Seven: On Sardines and Resurrections
- Eight: Fruit from a Dunghill
- Nine: Go Into All the World
- Ten: In Eden
- Eleven: The Birth of Heresy
- Twelve: On Laws
- Thirteen: The Breeds of Heretical Monsters
- Fourteen: Like Grains of Sand
- Fifteen: On the Other Origin of the World
- Sixteen: To Unweave the Rainbow
- Seventeen: St Augustine and the Spider
- Eighteen: To Extirpate the Adversaries of Faith
- Nineteen: That No Memorial Be Left
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
- Photo Section
- About the Author
- About Mariner Books
- Also by Catherine Nixey
- Copyright
- About the Publisher