trevor j major

For skeptics like Bart Ehrman, the key to undermining the Christian faith is to undermine the Christian text. After all, faith “comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”[1] But what if we are not really hearing the word of Christ? What if we are really hearing the word of power-hungry men who conspired to give us their particular spin on the person and nature of Jesus Christ?

Peter famously confessed that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[2] Christians make that same confession today. In the greater context of the New Testament, we come to understand that Christ’s sonship is tied inextricably to His deity.[3] God the Father sent His Son into the world so that we could believe what Peter and the rest of the apostles believed.[4] But what, exactly, did Peter believe?

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The King James Version of the Bible is the epitome of staid, conservative traditionalism – that, at least, is how it often looks to us precisely 400 years after its publication. In fact, the KJV capped a sequence of social upheavals that took the English Bible from the dark and secret underground of a persecuted reform movement to the bright light of official and popular acceptance.
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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) is a monumental achievement. It’s author, Edward Gibbon, blazed new territory by delving into primary sources and documenting every aspect of his work. Along with other Enlightenment figures, such as David Hume and William Robertson, Gibbon set the standard for modern historical studies. Unlike the other epic histories of his generation, however, the Decline and Fall is still cited widely and authoritatively. One recent history text stops short of Rome’s demise and simply points the reader to Gibbon’s “magisterial treatment.”[1]

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Church bashing, pagan priestesses, and religious pluralism – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1982) has it all. Offering yet another take on the Arthurian legend, Bradley’s fantasy has been praised for its feminist narrative and honored with its own miniseries on basic cable (2001).

The strongest women of Avalon – all devotees of the mother goddess – hold the destiny of the High King in their hands while fending off the dual threats of Saxon invasion and Christian conversion. The “official” version of the new religion gaining ground in Arthur’s world is cold, misogynistic, hypocritical, and meddlesome. Not all is gloom and doom, however. Bradley, in the voice of Morgaine, offers hope by uniting the two religions under one Gnostic banner. If Morgaine has her way, the most enlightened heirs of Camelot will understand that the Christian God and the Celtic goddess are male and female aspects of a single, nameless Divine. The good old days are behind us, she laments, but the goddess survives in the guise of Mary, mother of Jesus.

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Although we often associate Medieval Europe with feudalism, there were pockets of republicanism on the margins and in the mountains. These communities retained some independence from the empires that encroached upon their lands. A classic case in point is Switzerland. In 1291, representatives from three republics assembled on the field of Rutli to sign a covenant uniting them against Austrian imperial control. Other city states and regions joined the Swiss Confederation over the ensuing centuries.

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