Lady Hope and the validity of evidence

These days, I’m involved in a regular exchange of e-mails with Debra Rufini, whom some of you may remember as the author of a couple of rather ill-advised e-mails to PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. These were soundly fisked across the atheosphere, not least on this blog. Debra is, contrary to popular belief amongst those atheists who have heard of her, actually a bright and engaging conversationalist, and we’ve been chatting back and forth for a few months exploring our different viewpoints. Recently, we got into a discussion in which she noted that we both take our positions from different sources – she from, for example, Lee Strobel, and me from, for example, Charles Darwin. In doing so, Debra cited the story of Lady Hope and Darwin’s deathbed conversion as an example, pointing out that, since neither she nor I was there at the time, we can’t possibly know for certain what happened. I saw this as a good opportunity to look at ways one can assess a piece of evidence, and so composed the response that follows:

“With regards to the veracity of a source, firstly, one has to consider the quantity of evidence. In this particular instance, there are four main sources: the account of Lady Hope, printed in the Watchman Examiner newspaper, the writings of Darwin himself, and the seperate claims by Darwin’s son Francis and his daughter Henrietta that Lady Hope embellished or invented the story. To begin with, then, we have a single account in favour of the story balanced against three sources which contradict it. That in itself is relatively minor – after all, if truth was determined by majority, we would all be Chinese. However, it does demonstrate that there is only a single source to back up the story – if there were additional sources (say, a statement by another witness who was present, or some documents authored by Darwin in which he expressed similar views to those related in the story) then we could consider it substantially more plausible.

Second, we need to consider the motivation behind the source. The original story, published in an American Christian magazine with a distinct, conservative, anti-evolution slant was anonymous – it has become associated with Lady Elizabeth Hope purely because she was the most likely candidate for the “consecrated English Lady” of the story in Britain at the time. Assuming that Elizabeth Hope was the Lady in question, she herself was known to be (from various independent sources, including Burke’s Peerage) a fervent evangelical. Proving that Darwin had made a deathbed conversion would have been a potent weapon in the evangelical arsenal, so there is a clear motivation on the part of both Lady Hope and the publisher to emphasise and embellish the story. If true, it would be a real feather in their cap. By contrast, Francis and Henrietta (both members of the Church of England) published their claims in response to the story, rather than loudly trumpeting Darwin’s faith position at all opportunites – there’s no great gain for them to be found in proving their father an agnostic, especially since they lived in an era when atheism was still the mark of a social pariah.

Thirdly, we consider the content of the source. Here, there are notable discrepancies between Lady Hope’s account and what we know from independent verification to be true. She writes that Darwin asked her to hold a service in his summerhouse, “which seats about thirty people”, yet no such summerhouse existed on the property. There was a conservatory attached, but it would have held maybe ten people at a squeeze. There is no evidence (from parish records) that such a service ever took place. The language she places in Darwin’s mouth (in direct quotations) is at odds with his written works. All in all, the text of the article reads as though it were composed by someone who did not know Darwin intimately, and had little knowledge of the layout of his home. We should also take account of the fact that Darwin’s wife Emma habitually attended his bedside when he had visitors, and she was clearly not present at this meeting – an unusual (though not impossible) state of affairs.

Darwin’s own writings show that he was at least a convinced agnostic:

“By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, – and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, – that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, – that the Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously with the events, – that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye witnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many fake religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct.”

To find Darwin reading the Bible, expounding on its text with the learned disposition of a clergyman, and requesting Christian services be held on his property is highly at odds with what we know of the man from his own writing. If Lady Hope’s account is true, Darwin never spoke of these ideas to anyone else (including his immediate family) and never wrote about them. Why would he make his deathbed confession to a woman who was, if not a complete stranger, at least no more than a vague acquaintance, and then never mention it again before he died (the Lady Hope story takes place on “one of those glorious autumn afternoons”, but Darwin did not die until April, so he clearly survived for several months after her visit)? The account was not produced until more than 30 years after his death – why would Lady Hope have waited so long before revealing such a bombshell of a story? It makes more sense to consider the idea that she waited until long after any contradictory accounts could have arisen, and until she was in a different (and more sympathetic) country before telling her tale.

When all of this is taken into account, it seems highly unlikely that Darwin’s “conversion” ever took place – indeed, it seems rather implausible that he was even visited by Lady Hope (his daughter Henrietta claims that she never visited him during his last illness). The most likely explanation is that the story is a misremembered concoction written for the Christian equivalent of a tabloid – not a source in which one could place much credence.”

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Last night, a friend was telling us about a talk she attended on the subject of atheism. The panel were apparently keen to distance themselves from the “New Atheist” movement, particularly Richard Dawkins, as they felt that the movement’s direct and aggressive tactics were not conducive to opening up a dialogue with believers. Our friend got the impression that these three were trying to put themselves across as “cuddly atheists” (her words); harmless, innocuous, respectful of the rights of all people to believe and practice whatever crazy shite they might choose. In this way, the argument ran, they would be able to communicate to the religious that atheism is not a threat to their religion – far from it, in fact; we atheists are all about freedom of belief and expression. So, be you Catholic, Wiccan, Buddhist or Jew, we respect your choice, and we want you to know that we support your right to practice whatever religion you see fit.

Bollocks.

When your religion supports the murder of those not associated with it, I do not respect your religion. When your religion covers up an endemic culture of child abuse, I do not respect your religion. When your religion insists that you have a “God-given” right to occupy other people’s lands and kill the occupants thereof, I do not respect your religion. When your religion denies medical treatment to sick children, I do not respect your religion. When your religion dictates that a quarter of your population are sub-human untouchables, I do not respect your religion. When your religion claims that it’s okay for a man to marry and have sex with his 14-year old cousin, I do not respect your religion.

“Oh, but that’s just a few fringe lunatics – they don’t represent my religion.” Well actually, yes, yes they do. I’ve said this before, but it bears saying again – if you justify your own actions, good or bad, by recourse to your faith, then you validate that justification for anyone else who claims the same thing. You may find the Bible says: “love thy neighbour,” but if that’s the reason you lend him your lawnmower, you’re in no position to criticise Fred Phelps for his wholehearted endorsement of Leviticus 18:22. But the atrocities of religion rank very low in my list of reasons for atheism, and so I’m not overly concerned with demonstrating that every Muslim is in some way responsible for 9/11. More bewildering and, I must admit, infuriating to me is the utter absence of any credible evidence in favour of the claims of religion. Were someone to approach me in the street and tell me that invisible penguin-people were secretly running the world from their hidden base on the moon, I would most probably laugh in their face, and then arrange to have them sectioned. Yet when someone accosts me on my way to work to tell me that an invisible superman has been placated by the death of his own son (who was also him), and that if I don’t believe this I’m going to be set on fire for all of time by a guy who used to work for the invisible superman, but changed his mind, I am expected to say, “How fascinating! I’m afraid that I personally do not subscribe to your particular belief system, yet I wholeheartedly endorse your efforts and would be interested in entering into a future dialogue on the relative merits of our respective and equally valid ideas. This brief interaction has greatly enriched my day, and I thank you for sharing your thought-provoking perspective”? That isn’t going to happen, for the simple reason that there is really no discernable difference between what he claims and what the penguin-phobic nutter I encountered earlier thinks. Both are equally nonesensical, but one happens to have the backing of a large group of people who suffer from the shared delusion that it’s true.

I don’t, therefore, plan on confronting theists with respectful dialogue. Whilst I may respect them personally (andybeingachristian, whom some commentators may remember, is my oldest friend and a man of many great qualities, as well as being a very committed Christophile), the claims they make are only as good as the evidence they bring to the table, and if they can’t show me that, then they may as well be trying to tell me about the lunar penguin-men. A point of view does not merit respect simply because its acceptance is widespread, and a religion does not deserve to be feted just because it’s popular. Reality is the ultimate arbiter of Truth, and I will merrily rubbish, dismiss and mock any claim which isn’t based in said reality. In other words:

When your religion is nonsense, I do not respect your religion. I think that covers every theist out there…

Hey, Jude!

In my recent post on the Nephilim, I briefly cited the Epistle of Jude, the penultimate book of the New Testament, and one of the shortest books (only 25 verses) in the entire Bible. Jude is an interesting inclusion in the canon of the New Testament for a variety of reasons. It’s main claim to credibility is that it purports to be written by “Jude (Judas)… brother of James” (Jude 1:1) – since the James referred to was supposedly Jesus’ own brother, this would make Jude the “Judas” mentioned in Mark 6:3:

“Is he [Jesus] not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?”

In other words, ladies and gents, what we have here is a letter written by one of Jesus’ own siblings – a man who would have grown up with the Lord and spent substantial time in His company. What better credentials could there be for inclusion in the Bible?

Note, however, that the author of Jude never claims to be related to Jesus. Why would he establish his relationship with his brother James, but not mention that he was actually related to the Son of God? If you were a blood relative of Jesus, and wanted your views attended to by your brother’s fanbase, would you not be tempted to play up your credentials as a bona-fide member of Clan Christ? Maybe Jude is the humble type, although the tone of his writing suggests otherwise… More likely, the early Christians who put the New Testament together simply got the wrong Jude – verse 17 (“remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ”) shows that the author was writing in the post-Apostolic era, which would make it impossible for him to have been one of the Twelve Disciples (as listed in Luke 6:14-16).

Another reason for dating Jude substantially later than Jesus immediate family is verse 9. Here, Jude mentions the dispute between Archangel Michael and the devil over Moses body – in Jewish folklore, the devil tries to steal Moses body, but is prevented from doing so by the angel. Origen, Gelasius and other Church Fathers cite as the source of this verse a text called the Assumption of Moses, which, they assume, had been in circulation since ancient times. However, the partial text we have of the Assumption clearly describes events in the first century, and can be dated to around 70-75 CE at the earliest. If Origen and the other Fathers are correct, and Jude is indeed quoting from the Assumption of Moses, then his Epistle cannot have been written much earlier than the mid-70s, making him a contemporary of the Gospel-writer Mark. Given the short life-expectancy at the time, it’s pretty unlikely that one of Jesus siblings would have been around forty years after the Crucifixion – any that were would have been well into their dotage.

To further confuse the canonists, Jude quotes a couple of times from the Book of Enoch (Jude 1:6,14-15), which had already been established as non-canonical (although it was, and still is, included in the Bible of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). It was not a habit of the early Church to allow books which were not on its approved list into Scripture, and quoting from one of these non-standard texts was a pretty surefire way to get your submission handed back with a lot of red pen marks. One of the main reasons for rejecting the Epistle of Barnabas from the New Testament was that author’s use of Enoch as a source, so it’s curious that Jude made it in uncut. Clearly the writer’s nepotistic name-dropping in verse 1 had more than a few people fooled.

Jude, then, is an odd little addition to the Christian reading list, and as a result is probably one of the least-read books of the Bible. It’s worth a quick skim, though, partly for its brevity (it’s always good to find a book of the Bible that can be read in under a minute) but mostly for its excellent language, which is entertainingly hyperbolic and contains a fluid yet hectic passion. Take a couple of minutes to soak it up – then make your own mind up as to why it got voted in.

Oh, is it still the 1300s?

In the wake of the recent Connecticut “gay exorcism” video, in which a bunch of abusive fucknuckles attempt to “cure” a 16-year old boy of homosexuality by casting out the demons of gayness, it turns out the UK has it’s own share of half-baked medievalists as well. Reading stories like this really makes me despair of the human race – have we really failed to such an extent that superstitious imbeciles like John Ogbe-Ogbeide can say, straight-faced, “evil spirits are telling you what’s wrong is right, the opposite sex is not attractive”? Evil spirits? The only evil thing in this story is a bigoted and under-educated so-called pastor who thinks that his naïve, backward worldview somehow trumps both scientific research and other people’s human rights.

As with so many other issues, the members of this particular Pentecostal denomination are falling back of faith to defend their own personal prejudices. Ogbe-Ogbeide can’t deal with the idea that there are people out there who are different to him, and so, fearful that he might one day be raped in the arse by an unexorcised gay man (who would no doubt have AIDS and would probably be a child-molester and a sheep-fucker as well, because it’s all the same thing really, isn’t it?), has decided to protect his precious chocolate starfish by using the Word of the Lord to banish those evil demons of the queer. Whatever floats your boat, Johnny, but as soon as you start extending your personal phobias into the wider community, you cease to be just a rather pathetic and paranoid individual and start to become an abuser. Veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell states that, “There needs to be a thorough investigation of all the churches who are doing these exorcisms,” and I couldn’t agree more. Banishing non-existent demons in violent and distressing rituals is a human rights violation, pure and simple, and the sooner Social Services start a case file on Mr Ogbe-Ogbeide the better for everyone.

Heelloooo, Canada!

Apparently, I’m a big hit in Cobourg, Ontario – right behind Hemant in the top atheist blogs list. Cheers, Canadian fans, and especially John Draper, owner of The Cobourg Atheist. It’s nice to be popular.

Should you want to find out more about my followers in Ontario’s Feel Good Town, why not check out the town’s blog, investigate its fascinating history, or plan your next holiday there? Cobourg, Ontario – proof that Canadians really do have better taste than their southern neighbours.

You couldn’t make this shit up. Oh, wait –

Many of my recent posts have focussed on the tendency of Biblical writers and readers to re-write or re-interpret history to further their own agenda. This is a popular technique in the faith, but it isn’t a habit that’s just restricted to Christianity. Scientology is probably the most notable example of a religion that ignores actual history in favour of something their founder made up, but even L. Ron Hubbard’s mad sci-fi ravings pale beside the – ahem – “imagination” of Dwight York, founder of the religious/political movement of Nuwaubianism.

Like a strange mirror-image of the white-supremacist movement, characterised by the ignorant screeds of StormFront, Nuwaubianism promotes an alternative view of history in which “Nubians” are the master-race. Examining his defence of this position is tricky, since there appear to be several contradictory arguments which York uses interchangeably, ranging from the claim that white people were originally genetically-engineered soldiers, “created to fight other invading races, to protect the God race Negroids,” to the idea that Nubians are of extraterrestrial origin, descended from strange “Ether-9” beings with green skin (apparently, their green skin rusted in our oxygen-rich atmosphere, turning them brown). Alternatively, he also puts an ironic spin on the standard racist interpretation of the “Sons of Noah” myth, claiming that yes, black races were descended from Ham, via his son Kush, but that white races could also trace their ancestry back to Ham, via his leprous son Canaan. Then there’s the idea that white men are descended from dogs:

“The pale man originated from the Caucasus mountains, where there was very little plant life and not much means for salt. This condition forced him to rob the Nubian female of her chastity in order to keep his seed alive, it’s called integration. The Caucasian woman who was left in the mountains, resorted to lying with and having sex with beasts: such as the jackal, which is an ancestor of today’s dog. The phrase “dog is man’s best friend” came from this situation. The dog would lick the festered sores of the leper and clean them for him. His seed was kept alive because the Caucasian woman and the jackal mated. This is where you get people who possess an animalistic nature.” Dwight York, The Melaninite Children

It’s all a bit confusing: am I a science experiment gone wrong, an alien slave, a leper or a sort of hybrid dog-man? Please, Mr York, make your mind up – I’ll never get my family tree worked out at this rate!

Mind you, Dwight himself seems to be having some problems figuring out his own ancestry. His birth certificate shows he was born in Boston, although he claims to have been born in the Sudan. His father, according to said birth certificate, is David Piper York, although Dwight claims his real father is Al Haadi Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi, making him a descendant of Muhammad Ahmad, the Sudanese religious leader. Unfortunately, Dwight would also quite like to claim descent from “Ben” York of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which is made rather tricky if he disowns David Piper York as his father. To get around the problem, York claims that his mother and “step”-father were actually second cousins, this granting him “Ben” York’s bloodline through his mother. Of course, given that Dwight York also claims to be an alien from the planet Rizq, one has to wonder how much all this geneology really matters… It’s handy that he comes from a different planet, since this grants him access to useful technology like the NIBIRU spacecraft, into which he is secretly collecting the 144,000 Chosen Few to train them for the upcoming war against Lucifer. The Nuwaubian Rapture has apparently been going on since 2003, although to date, nobody has noticed. A possible reason for this is that the extraterrestrials have been secretly beaming images into the heads of Hollywood filmmakers, so that their films can be used to discredit people who know the truth. Another explanation could be that it’s all a big load of bollocks. Guess which alternative the Nuwaubians prefer?

Listing the other insanities of Dwight York would take more space and time than I have available, but here are a few of my favourites:

• Disco music was invented by the devil
• Nikola Tesla came from Venus
• Aborted foetuses survive and live in the sewers, where they are being trained as an army
• The world’s heads of state are planning to flee to Mars when the Apocalypes kicks in
• York is the only human who still has a functional barathary gland, meaning that he has telepathic and telekinetic powers. Everyone else’s barathary gland has been disabled.
• Many African-Americans are actually descended from Native American Moors, who travelled to North America before the Pleistocene land bridges collapsed (about 15,000 years ago)
• Dr Seuss books serve as an indoctrination into Satanism

Today’s final fun fact about Dwight York: he may well be the most prolific child-molester in US history. When he was being prosecuted for fucking four-year-olds, prosecutors actually had to cut back the number of counts listed from over a thousand to around 200, since they felt the actual scale of his atrocities was too great for a jury to take seriously. He will be spending the rest of his life in a prison cell, although naturally his followers still claim the whole thing was a set-up, perpetrated by the white Satanists. Nuwaubianism does not look as though it will rot in jail with its founder, which is a pity, since a more abhorrent and dehumanising belief system would be hard to envisage.

Who were the Nephilim?

“There were giants (nephilim in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
Genesis 6:4

Just about all ancient religions feature legendary characters who are the offspring of humans and gods. Some of the most obvious examples are Herakles (son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene), Cuchullain (son of the Celtic god Lugh), Gilgamesh (whose mother was the goddess Ninsun), the Japanese Emperor Jimmu (grandson of the sea-god Ryujin and great-great-great grandson of Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun) and Achilles (son of the nymph Thetis). The authors of the Bible would obviously have difficulty incorporating this feature into their mythology, since their god Yahweh was not given to physical interaction with His subjects, and was hardly one to brook other deities, even demigods, in His neck of the woods. Thus, they dropped in these few verses in Genesis, implying the existence of a race of legendary giants back in pre-Flood days. The origin of these giants, the Nephilim, is expanded upon in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, which tells of how a group of angels, led by one Semjaza, found the newly created mortal women rather appealing, and decided to engage in a bit of seed-sowing of their own. Naturally, God finds out and zaps all the randy angels off to Hell. Given that He now has a bunch of superhuman giants running about the place, He decides the best course of action would be – can you guess? – to flood the whole fucking world. Overkill? Yahweh would say He was “being thorough.”

The ironic thing is, of course, that drowning everything on the face of the planet (bar Noah’s family and a hastily assembled floating bestiary) doesn’t seem to have worked. In Numbers 13, the Israelite spies whom Moses sent to Canaan report that, yes, there’s milk and honey and all kinds of sweet shit over there, but also:

“…we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” Numbers 13:33

Giants, you say? Well, they can’t be the same giants as before, since all those big buggers drowned in the Flood, surely? Except that the Hebrew word used in Numbers is “nephilim” – that’s the same “nephilim” as is used to describe the half-angelic beings who were causing so much ruckus prior to Noah’s little boat trip. The Hebrew language has a number of other words for “giant” – “rephaim”is the one most commonly used to describe the giants they encountered in Canaan – so it’s telling that the spies specify that they saw “nephilim”, and not another sort of giant. Nowhere else in the entire Bible, save in the earlier Genesis passage, is the word “nephilim” featured, so there’s a clear link between the spies’ report and the angelic progeny of pre-Flood days. It looks as though these giants were bloody good swimmers.

Trying to get around this problem, the Book of Jubilees (also apocryphal) claims that God allowed the survival of one-tenth of the Nephilim, in order that they might act as demons and tempt humanity to sin. Cheers for that, God! Of course, if the whole point of the Flood was to cleanse the world of wrongdoing, allowing a group of sinners to stick around and perpetuate their evil scheming might somewhat hinder its effectiveness… You could have thought it through a little better, that’s all I’m saying.

So if the Nephilim managed to walk away from the Flood, what else might have survived? Unicorns, possibly? Perhaps the Yeti is actually a pre-Flood creature that managed to survive by climbing to high altitudes in the mountains. Maybe there are still a few dragons out there, who knows? Or – and here’s a really wild and out-there proposition – could it be that the antediluvian Nephilim, the Canaanite giants and the very Flood itself were all pre-existing mythic fictions woven together by the Judean editors of the seventh century BCE, to try and create a meaningful history for the state of Judah?

Now that’s a crazy idea!

It’s more than just lesbian seagulls, you know…

“It’s not natural!” is the rallying cry of the Proposition 8 hate-campaigners, homophobes and bigots alike. Well, Dr Nathan Bailey of (ironically enough) the University of California has news for you – not only is it natural, it’s also widespread throughout the animal kingdom, and may well confer evolutionary advantages. Homosexual behaviour has long been reported in some animal species – bonobos, dolphins and seagulls, principally – but Dr Bailey’s recent research shows that, far from being an aberrant activity restricted to just a few species, homosexuality is in fact common in nature, from fruit flies on upwards. Writing in the journal Trends In Ecology And Evolution, he suggests that same-sex behaviour may be influenced by natural selection across species, and might in fact be an advanced adaptive strategy. It looks as though the gay-bashing fundegelicals may be obliged to find themselves a new, more appropriate slogan – might I venture to suggest, “We’re a bunch of throwbacks who’ll hate anything different from ourselves!” Admittedly, it’s more difficult to fit on a placard, but you can’t fault it for accuracy.

Genesis for geeks

About once every two years or so, I have a bit of a Tolkien splurge, in which I read the books (including commentaries), watch the (extended special-edition) films and generally experience a sort of nerd-nirvana over the space of a few days. I started reading the Silmarillion this morning, effectively the King James Bible for Elves, and it struck me that Tolkien had dreamed up a creation myth that was, in many ways, more coherent and sensible than the equivalents of modern religions.

For those that haven’t delved into the Silmarillion (it’s the least read of Tolkien’s three major works), the basic myth goes like this: Before the beginning of Time, Iluvatar, a sort of loose Yahweh-analogue, brings forth from his mind a host of heavenly beings called the Ainur. Being somewhat bored with the silence and nothingness of the Void in which the find themselves, the Ainur have a bit of a sing-song, with Iluvatar as the divine conductor, and from this delightful chorale they form Time, Space and the World. Unfortunately, one of the Ainur, Melkor by name, is a bit on the arrogant side, and tries to weave his own themes into the music. He’s either tone-deaf or a fan of John Cage, since his tunes are atonal and dissonant, and they cause the existence of fire and ice and hardship and suffering and general bad stuff. Iluvatar, smug bugger that he is, claims that all this will help emphasise the glory of creation, and goes on to point out how pretty snowflakes are, which wouldn’t have existed without Melkor’s icy cold. Fair point, but I imagine few of the Elves who later died from hypothermia during the icy crossing of Helcaraxe would have thought, as they gasped out their last breaths on the ice, “Blimey, these snowflakes are pretty…” It’s a novel solution to the Problem of Evil, which clearly puzzled Elven as well as human philosophers, but still not a terribly satisfactory one. But I digress. Having sung Middle-Earth into existence, a bunch of the Ainur go to live there – including Melkor – and make up a sort of Olympian-style pantheon; there’s a god of the air, a sea-god, a fertility goddess, a god of death and so on. This pantheon then have a massive ruck with Melkor, causing all manner of property damage and resulting in landscape features such as mountains and steppes, before finally capturing him and retreating to the mythic island of Valinor. When the Elves eventually turn up, the earthbound Ainur (now known as the Valar) coax most of them to come and live in Valinor, where they live in bliss – at least until the evidently-rather-short-sighted Valar decide to let Melkor out again, which results in all sorts of disastrous shenanigans…

As a creation myth goes, it’s a pretty good one. It covers the age-old Problem of Evil (falling back on the adversarial Satan figure as the principal cause of suffering, but also side-stepping the issue slightly by making Iluvatar a hands-off, deist sort of god), it establishes why certain landscape features exists (mountains were thrown up during the battle with Melkor, the Isle of Balar is the remnant of a larger island which the Valar snapped off to use as a transport to Valinor) and it establishes causes for natural phenomena (storms at sea are the result of Osse being a capricious sea-god, the Sun and Moon are the last remaining flowers of the Two Trees, carried by two of the Ainur). Not only that, but thanks to the immortality of the Elves, many of the characters mentioned are still alive in the time of the Lord of the Rings narrative (Galadriel, played with supernatural elegance by Cate Blanchett in the films, lived in Valinor and hung out with the Valar in her early days), thus providing eyewitness accounts of the gods and their doings. As with many fictional worlds with their own deities, atheism is non-existent, being a foolish position in light of the obvious existence of gods and angels. Frodo, hanging out with Gandalf, might not have suspected that the beardy-weirdy with the pointy hat was actually a Maiar (a sort of Ainur-lite spirit thing), but the guy clearly had abilities which were not to be accounted for by natural science. As for nasty Sauron, how many natural creatures manifest as a giant fiery eyeball? The necessary adjustments to biology alone beggar belief.

For Frodo and company, religious belief was not necessarily central to their lives (neither Iluvatar nor the Valar demanded adherence to any particular system of ritual, nor did they even require faith), but evidence of the gods was available from any sufficiently ancient Elf, or by wandering into Mordor and throwing rocks at the big flaming eye-on-a-stick. Not so in the real world, where the only evidence for God is a book that claims to tell the story of the deity’s deeds in the ancient past. Given that the Silmarillion is exactly the same thing, why are we not building temples to Iluvatar and his merry band of all-singing, all-dancing Ainur?

Jesus of where?

If you travel to the Holy Land, you can take one of many Bible-themed tours to see the noteworthy sites from the narratives of Christianity. Naturally, one of the key stops on these sightseeing excursions is the town (now a thriving city) of Nazareth, on the slopes of Galilee. Here you can visit the Church of the Annunciation, where Jesus’ conception was announced; Saint Mary’s Well, where Mary went to draw water; the Basilica of Christ the Adolescent, which commemorates Jesus’ stroppy teenage years and acne; and a host of other religious sites tied to the idea that Jesus spent much of his early life in the town. The Galilean tourist board love it, since only Jerusalem and Bethlehem can rival Nazareth’s draw for the Christian dollar. For this reason, they keep quiet about one fairly fundamental part of Nazareth’s history: namely, the date it was founded.

You probably know the oft-repeated assertion that there is no historical evidence for Jesus outside the Gospels (Ebon Musings has a good introductory three-part essay on the subject). Well, much the same holds true for the town of Nazareth. With the exception of the Gospellers, no ancient source exists that can attest to Nazareth’s existence before 70 CE. This is surprising, since we have substantial evidence for other towns around Galilee (Josephus, writing around 75 CE, lists 45 Galilean settlements, and the Old Testament lists as many as 63 – none of them called Nazareth), and excavations of those sites show continuous occupation during the Gospel period and earlier. By contrast, the earliest artefacts from Nazareth date to 200 CE or later, and the earliest possible date for the tombs in the Nazerite basin (in which the city is sited) is during the Jewish-Roman Wars, from 70-132 CE. All of this suggests that the city is younger than might be evidenced by the Bible – too young, in fact, to have been the site of Jesus’ childhood.

Why, then, would the Gospel writers set their story in a place that likely hadn’t been built in the lifetime of their subject? There are two primary theories. The first, and most popular, is that Jesus was not actually a Nazerene (a person from Nazareth), but a Nazirite (a member of the Nazirite sect). The Nazirites were Jews who engaged in a particularly ascetic relationship with their god, abstaining from alcohol and sex. They were noted for not cutting the hair on their heads, Samson in the Old Testament being the principal example (the prophet Samuel was also a Nazirite). It is also worth noting that the nazirite vow was not necessarily a lifelong commitment – one could join the sect for a period of as little as 30 days – so Jesus could easily have been a Nazirite at some point in his life without having to continue the practice in his later ministry.

If Jesus had in fact taken a nazirite vow, then what we see in the Gospels is a simple case of misinterpretation. Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the four, mentions Jesus as a Nazarinos, a Greek title which might mean either Nazerene or Nazirite. Matthew, taking Mark as his source, reads “Nazerene”, and so embellishes the information to make it more definite for his readers:

“And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” (Matthew 2:23)

Nazareth presumably existed as an established settlement by Matthew’s time (80-90 CE), and so it seemed obvious to him that Mark intended to show Jesus as coming from that city.

An alternative interpretation is that Matthew has flowed his usual pattern of trying to shoehorn the story of Jesus’ life into an Old Testament prophecy. This occurs throughout the first Gospel, and is directly responsible for such stories as the Virgin Birth (concocted by Matthew to fulfil Isaiah 7:14), Jesus’ genealogy (intended to fulfil Genesis 12:1-3 and Genesis 22:18), the journey to Bethlehem (fulfils Micah 5:2), the Massacre of the Innocents (Jeremiah 31:15), the entry to Jerusalem (Zechariah 9:9), the price of Judas’ betrayal (Zechariah 11:12) and loads more. The author’s decision to put Jesus in Nazareth may have been vaguely connected to Isaiah 9:1, but it is more likely due to a pun. That clever Matthew and his humorous plays-on-words!

This theory was advanced by the Church Father Eusebius (of “lying for Jesus” fame), and is based around a passage in Isaiah which describes the so-called “Tree of Jesse”. In Isaiah 11 we read:

“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11:1)

The Hebrew word for “branch” in this passage is “netser”, which, given the lack of vowels in ancient Hebrew, would have been written as NSR. Matthew, keen to nail prophetic relevance onto every aspect of Jesus’ existence, fills in the blanks and gets NaSoRene – the rest just requires a bit of semantic juggleing, and then – hey presto! – suddenly Jesus is the Branch of Jesse, and thus fulfils yet another prophecy from Matthew’s favourite OT book.

A third possible explanation, related to the Nazirite one, is that Jesus was in fact the proponent of a pre-Christian Gnostic group called (in Hebrew) the Notzrim. This makes extra sense when one considers that John the Baptist was widely regarded to be a member of the Notzrim cult, and even more so when the Greek translation of Notzrim – Νασαραίοι (Nasaraioi) – is brought into play. This is remarkably close to the Greek word used in Matthew (Νασαραίοσ / Nazoraios) which is translated in the quotation above as “Nazerene”. Could it be that Jesus was in fact a Gnostic, as so many have claimed? It certainly seems more likely than the idea that he grew up in a town which didn’t exist…