Book Review: Christ Actually by James Carroll

James Carroll wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read, Constantine’s Sword, which follows the history of Christianity through the present day and shows how anti-Semitism became ingrained within the religion.

This work, Christ Actually, takes its mission statement in the present day, but really only focuses on the first two hundred years of Christianity (or Christology), from the life of Jesus through the actual break from Judaism. Like Constantine’s Sword, if focuses on the choices that produced Christianity’s built-in anti-Semitism. Unlike Constantine’s Sword, it’s harder to follow.

As mentioned above, Carroll sets the theme in the present day, saying how we live in an increasingly secular age, and it’s hard to argue with that since no God stepped in to avert the Holocaust or atomic bombs, showing that we have the capacity to kill ourselves as a species. With that in mind, he says the only way to save Christianity in a secular age is to re-examine who Jesus actually was and how we know Him (or him, which is one of the points of the book). Not a perfect argument…but acceptable.

One thing Carroll sets out from the start is that, unlike recent authors of “historical Jesus” books, he does believe in the divinity of Jesus; he mentions that there were “messiahs” all over the Holy Land during the time of Roman conquest, but the fact that Jesus was able to attract followers and create a movement proves that he was special (again, not perfect…but enough to move the story along). For those not familiar with the author, Carroll is a former Catholic priest who severed ties with the church after realizing how much anti-Semitism was built into it.

From there, Carroll begins his examination proper, with a central argument: Jesus was Jewish. While this is common knowledge, it is not always thought of in the proper context (more on that later). What that really means is that when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he was baptized into Judaism. When he told his disciples to pray, he was asking them to pray to Yahweh, the Jewish God of the Old Testament. And when he “died for our sins”, the sins were those of the Jewish people. It was only later that these facts were distorted – once the “Jewish Christians” had become a separate Church.

Carroll then proceeds to provide arguments and evidence, but in a muddled and circular way, with many items repeated constantly and no sense of cohesion, with points jumping across centuries. It was only in the middle of the book that I realized the analysis was being told chronologically by Jesus’s known life, but since there are few first-person written records available, that means going from this Gospel written in 60AD, to this council in 307AD, to this war in 110AD, etc.

While the points are a bit all over the place and can be repeated over and over, they are indeed interesting. One of the two major sub-themes is how closely aligned what we refer to as Judaism and Christianity were for decades after Jesus’s death. After all, at the time of his death, they were just two of many factions of Judaism, all of which held the Temple in Jerusalem sacred, and all of which were held under the thumb of Rome.

The major turning point came in the second war with Rome around 70AD. Rome’s objective was to eliminate all Jews from Jerusalem, give Jerusalem a Roman name, and rededicate the Temple into a temple for Jupiter. Rome faced fierce opposition from most Jewish factions (and any Jews who did not feel compelled to fight faced fierce opposition from the Zealots), but allowed two groups to leave the war peacefully. The first group was the Pharisees (sound familiar), who felt they could keep the Temple alive through rabbinical study; their beliefs eventually became what we now call “Judaism” (after the elimination of most other Jewish factions). The second group, the Jewish Christians, felt that the temple was no longer necessary after Jesus’s death. They were still a Jewish faction then, but eventually became separate Christians.

It is this separation that informs the second major sub-theme – how the factions separated, and how anti-Semitism was then ingrained within Christianity. Much of this has to do with the Gospels – how they were written, and more importantly when. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel accepted within the New Testament, was written a few decades after Jesus’s death, with the possibility of some of his disciples contributing to the story. This Gospel reaches out to fellow Jews, couching Jesus’s actions as a continuation of the Book of Daniel. The other three accepted Gospels, however, were written after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD, when the two remaining Jewish factions were most at odds with each other – the Pharisees believing the Temple had to be restored, the Jewish Christians believing it was no longer necessary. Those three Gospels took this into account and wrote the story of Jesus’s life in greater contrast to the Temple, as well as the Pharisees (who are name-checked as Jesus’s opponents very often despite being only a minor faction during the time Jesus was alive). They also make Jesus’s divinity and placement “at the right hand of the father” more explicit, which ran counter to the traditional Jewish view that there was only one God, not a triumvirate.

Also explored are the “Pauline Letters”, with only a handful of them having been authenticated as being written by Saint Paul. This is key because Paul was killed in Rome in the 60s AD – prior to the destruction of the Temple and the creation of the Church. In the letters Paul actually wrote, he is accommodating to Jews as well as women, and mentions only local religious positions; in the letters only attributed to Paul, the language is harsh against both Jews and women, and Church positions such as bishops (which did not exist while Paul was alive) were mentioned.

Carroll concludes the book by saying that with all this said, the best way to save Christianity within a secular world is to be like the authentic Christ, a person who was loving to all people, who lived to serve, who worked with the lame and unclean and disparaged. That is the best way to continue the tradition.

Again, this is a pretty muddled book, and while these points are all interesting I’m not sure that they ever truly come together. The book is a bit of a slog, but it was an interesting enough examination regardless. Seven out of ten hot dogs.