Well no, listen: the British Catherine Nixey He neither sports horns nor wields a trident. If she has them, this reporter and historian specialized in heresy has hidden them well before we enter the room. Although she admits that she lacks fingers on her hands to count the number of times she has been accused of harboring a singular grudge against Christianity. “When a hermit friend of my father found out that I was going to publish this book, he insisted that he had to stop me and get me back on the right path,” he jokes. But that, he whispers, was an impossible task. Not only because she declares herself an atheist – which is also – but because she defines herself as “a journalist who limits herself to telling little-known stories” with the aim of “surprising the general public.”
Those included in that new essay, ‘Heresy’ (Taurus), meet both requirements. Because yes, it is surprising that there was a prophet called Apollonius of Tyana whose life was similar to that of Jesusand so does some apocryphal gospels that record the strange test of virginity to which the Virgin Mary was subjected. “They wrote that a midwife put her finger in her vagina and that she pulled out her charred hand!” he explains. His, he says, is a work that runs through all these heretical passages; a way of making the general public understand that “there were many Jesus Christs and many primitive Christianities”, but that only one was the one that rose above the rest after two thousand years of councils and dilemmas.
–You have explained on many occasions that your mother was a nun and your father a monk. How did you meet and how did you decide to have a daughter?
It’s not as rare as it seems! [Ríe] Some people have written to me to tell me that they are in a similar situation. My mother had already renounced the Church when she met my father; At that time I was teaching at a Catholic school. There she met my father, who abandoned her shortly after as well.
–Is this book your particular ‘vendetta’ against Christianity?
Of course not. [Ríe] I think the Catholic church He has done amazing things, but I don’t write about them because there are already many books that mention them. I tell the unknown story. Furthermore, there was a time when it was difficult to do things without counting on the Church.
–What ‘surprising things’ could you list?
Many. I love the art of churches: the songs, the music, the vespers… Also the idea that one should try to improve one’s behavior. At its best, Christianity has gotten people to do good things. But I think people who read my book have this in mind. On the other hand, it also has negative things.
–He states in his work that there were many prophets in the 1st century AD and the life of one of them was very similar to that of Jesus Christ.
The parallelism with the Greek Apollonius of Tyana is astonishing. Both were born at the beginning of the millennium and were probably contemporaries. He said that his father was a god and his mother a mortal. And also that, when she became pregnant with him, a divine being appeared to her and told her that the baby would be a god made flesh and blood.
–He includes several of these ‘prophets’ in his work. Each one more bizarre.
There were many characters with these characteristics. The classical texts denigrated them and said that they were clones: they all had long hair, wore simple clothes and went barefoot or in sandals. Some put on wigs or hair extensions to look like a divine figure! The 2nd century Greek philosopher Celsus claimed that if you went to a market in the Eastern Roman Empire, you would find many of them. And he maintained that they all promised the same thing: to survive the end of the world. Although it was not something new. In the 4th century BC Herodotus collected the story of Zalmoxix, a turbulent guy who claimed that he was going to die and be resurrected and that whoever believed him would live for all eternity. He used a very cool trick: he hid in a cave for three years and then came back. Everyone thought he was a god!
–What did they say about their followers?
That they were stupid.
–Did they also say it about the first Christians?
Yes, because they wanted to end Christianity. They said that the Gospel was written in a sloppy way. But we are talking about the religion of some fishermen, and they wrote as such. They also did not believe in Mary’s virginity, they were convinced that she had become pregnant by a Roman legionary.
–The episode of the virginity test is truly crazy…
[Ríe] It is recorded in some apocryphal gospels. A woman arrives and, skeptical about whether Mary is a virgin, inserts her finger into her vagina. After that, his hand is charred.
The author, in an archive image
–He claims that there are several apocryphal gospels that have tiptoed through history.
It seems that the four gospels were the first, but no. They were those accepted by the Orthodox Church. The rest disappeared, although their translations remain. Many of them are integrated into current beliefs. An example is the Christmas image of the Bethlehem Portal with the ox and the mule. That doesn’t come in New Testament. And the same thing happens with the story that states that Mary arrived in Bethlehem on a donkey.
–Collect one of these texts in which it is stated that Jesus Christ sold his brother as a slave…
It’s surprising, of course. It’s Thomas’s. Although in the story he states that he was his twin brother, we will skip that part because it could refer to the fact that they looked alike on a physical level. This text explains that Jesus ordered Thomas to go to India to preach his word, but that he refused. Jesus then saw an Indian merchant passing by and sold Thomas to him as a slave to take with him. And it seems to have worked. But it is one of the many that exist, each one more crazy. Some claim there were dragons that worshiped Mary!
–He claims that, on one of his trips, Marco Polo found a curious Christian cult…
It’s towards the end of the book. It happened in Persia. Marco Polo He wrote that he found a branch of Christianity that worshiped fire. My conclusion is that we should talk about primitive Christianities, not a specific one, and that this evolved. There were Ophites, who worshiped the serpent of the Garden of Eden, or parishioners who got married, but decided to be celibate and adopt children.
–All these minority movements were overshadowed and disappeared in favor of the current idea.
It must be seen as something that has evolved, not as a final message that was set in stone. It all started with Constantine, he unified the religion. Who knows what would have happened if he had fallen under the influence of another group. The world may have been very different. What would have happened if Cleopatra had had her nose a few centimeters longer? Perhaps Caesar and Mark Antony would not have fallen in love with her and would have returned to Rome…
–So, Christianity discarded the ‘craziest’ and kept the best of each house?
[Ríe] Maybe, maybe. But I like heresies. It will be a matter of my nature.
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