Heresy

Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God

By: Catherine Nixey

Narrated by: Lalla Ward

'Heresy is a brilliant book' - The Times
'Enthralling' - The Sunday Telegraph

‘In the beginning was the Word,’ says the Gospel of John. This sentence – and the words of all four gospels – is central to the teachings of the Christian church and has shaped Western art, literature and language, and the Western mind.

Yet in the years after the death of Christ there was not merely one word, nor any consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. There were many different Jesuses, among them the aggressive Jesus who scorned his parents and crippled those who opposed him, the Jesus who sold his twin into slavery and the Jesus who had someone crucified in his stead.

Moreover, in the early years of the first millennium there were many other saviours, 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.

Now, in Heresy, Catherine Nixey tells their extraordinary story, one of contingency, chance and plurality. It is a story about what might have been.

Critic reviews

Heresy is a brilliant book - sometimes frightening, occasionally funny, frequently unsettling and always a thrill to read. It probes painfully into the pathology of belief.

Enthralling . . . Heresy illuminates a forgotten world - and it's an absolute pleasure to read.

Enthralling ... What shines through is a kind of exasperated love for the tradition in which she was raised and an impossible-to-suppress laugh at the idea of a Virgin Mary who blasts out flames from every orifice as if it were some kind of Marvel superpower. (Kathryn Hughes)

‘Brilliant, forthright and challenging … a fine book for those who like to think differently; it’s an enlightening, provocative, sharp exegesis of religious, and consequently human, history’

[Nixey] has a magpie-like eye for the gold in any story. As such, Heresy is a joy to read. Page after page is studded with fascinating gems and well-crafted phrases, laced with Nixey’s dry humour. The strangeness of the ancient world is on full display.

Wide-ranging, smartly conceived and imaginatively written … Heresy is a sparkling, entertaining, thought-provoking book. In an age of quasi-universal intellectual conformism, heresy may be our best chance to remain sane.

How on earth could an ancient Greek word meaning 'choice' come to be used exclusively negatively to mean heresy? Catherine Nixey, expert in the darkening age of Late Antique religiosity, has all the answers, brilliantly resurrecting a teeming plurality of non-canonical, non-orthodox, and above all allegedly non-Christian ideas and practices with cool intellectual clarity and vivid literary skill. (Paul Cartledge, author of The Spartans and Thermopylae)

I cannot praise Nixey highly enough for her eloquence, narrative gifts and scholarly rigour. A must-read for anyone interested in why some ideas succeed as dramatically as they do. (Matthew D'Ancona)

The best non-fiction kindles interest in a subject that you were not interested in before. Catherine Nixey achieves that in Heresy . . . It 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.