The Also Ran

 I had all but convinced myself that I'd win the poetry competition in which, against my better betting judgement, I re-invested £10 on myself and my best four poems of recent years. One should always stick to the plan, the plan in this case being that its harmless enough entering free poetry competitions but as soon as any money is involved, it's better off on a horse or might as well be in a lottery.

Come to think of it, in my relatively successful but very occasional poetry competition career the prizes have all come in free-to-enter affairs and all entry feees have been cash thrown away in vainglorious efforts at microscopic celebrity. One only has to look at the litany of winners in Poetry News each quarter to know that winning a minor prize is no big deal. By now, you'd think, most poets must have one.

Not to worry. I looked up the three winners and found they were respectable enough at what they did without finding it necessary to buy their books. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. I might have received orders for my micro pamphlet. I wouldn't have had the nerve to take money for them. I've read the poems and enjoy them very much. It doesn't matter to me whether anybody else reads them or not.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch. A.N. Wilson impresses as much with his Paul as he did with his Jesus. I'm no theologist. As with Economics, and probably Sociology, I'm less than convinced that Theology constitutes an academic subject. All three 'disciplines' are surely no more than a lot of old hokum that belong alongside Astrology, Palmistry and Bingo for all the intellectual rigour they demand.

But rigour is what Wilson appears to bring to unravelling the complexities of early Christianity which has only become exponentially more and more involved since Paul's time. One of the few things I took from my ill-advised venture into 'A' level History was a grasp of what the Reformation, Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation were; who Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and the Jesuists were. I might also have had a looser idea of Con-substantiation and Transubstantiation.

Neither Paul, or Jesus before him it seems, had any concept of 'Christianity'. They were Jews and at most only offering yet another variant of Judaism. But things get out of hand. It could have been much simpler if Saul had not gone to Damascus on his way to persecute a few more emerging off-beats and had a funny five minutes.

It's not just Wilson's impressive insight into the evidence of the New Testament that makes his book so thrilling, it's the very fact that he has such a labyrynthine welter burden of sects, doctrines and wild superstitions at his disposal, not least the 'gift' of 'speaking in tongues' which is the sort of charlatanry that in comparison might begin to make the likes of Trump, Boris, Putin, Jacob and Liz Truss seem like almost passable empirical rationalists.

No. Wilson's purpose might have been to re-habilitate Paul to some extent by contextualizing his contribution to the outbreak of Christianity. If I feel as if I want to side with the Jews, there is more than enough for them to answer for. One of the most interesting things about books from other periods and cultures is the way one can glimpse ways of life organized with entirely different priorities, whether it be Rembrandt's life, Shakespeare's or Handel's. 

What comes out of Wilson's Paul is quite what an astounding human invention religion was. The amount of imagination, creativity and commitment that has gone into Christianity, without its precursors ever having intended that it should, is wildly off the scale and has proved horrifically cruel and destructive. And that's before it is multiplied by Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and all the other religions. I tend to think that Buddhism might be kinder than most but I don't know for sure.

Religion has a longer history, one might think, than other human achievements like the moon landings, music, the wheel, the Theory of Relativity or sport but surely it had much the most significant legacy, especially as it quite clearly was just made up but, somehow, caught on.