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Customer Reviews I found this book in the university library in the 90s. Astonishing how someone as devoted and dedicated as a nun can suddenly do an about turn to become a complete atheist. Insightful. --------------------- I bought and read this book about 40 years ago and I liked it so much that I still have the book with me. It is well researched and well thought out and enjoyable to read. As well as a criticism of Christianity and its dubious origins, it looks at the so-called historic evidence for the actual existence of Jesus and shows this 'evidence' to be flimsy indeed. It also describes the author's own journey from the starting point of her becoming a Carmelite nun to the point of her disbelieving in the claims of Christianity.
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PHYLLI S GRAHAM LESLIE FREWIN OF LONDON World Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form whatsoever. © Phyllis Graham and Leslie Frewin Publishers Limited, 1 974 First published in 1974 by Leslie Frewin Publishers Limited, Five Goodwin's Court, Saint Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4LL, England. This book is set in Pilgrim Printed and bound by The Compton Press Ltd., Compton Chamberlayne, Salisbury, Wiltshire To my Father and Mother in grateful remembrance and to Margery, my sister. CONTENTS I THE UNREAL ABSENCE 'The Bridegroom Was Invisible' 1 The Bridegroom Remains Invisible 17 Interlude - Implosion 35 II THE FIREMONGER 'The Worst Thing in the World' Hound of Hell 53 45 III HOMO INSIPIENS 'The Cloud of Unknowing' 65 Grovel Complex and Flea Mania 82 Megalomania 100 IV SEDUCER OF THE PEOPLE Aspects of the Great Hoax 109 V THE BARBARIC BACKGROUND Galilean Vortex . . . The Hooked Dagger 137 The Mysterious Fourth Sect of the Jews 152 Holy Shambles and Stinking Drains 166 Grand Guignol in Judaea 174 VI THE VACUUM AND THE VIOLENCE The Tragic Farce 181 ' Our Josephus' - with Relish 189 The jesus Drug - Then and Now 200 THE J E S U S HOAX VII 'TIME TO CONSIDER' EPILOGUE 227 APPENDIX 231 NOTES 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INDEX 207 259 257 For the proper way of confuting fools is not to use bare words, but to appeal to the things themselves that make against them. JOSE PHUS (From Flavius Josephus Against Apion, Book II, para. 8) I T HE U N REAL AB S E N CE The Bridegroom Was Invisible ']esu, the only thought of Thee With sweetness fills my breast' . . . Such bliss was mine- ere I was Thine. Would I had known the rest! BERNARD OF CLAIR V AUX (parodied) IT wAS ONE of those strange, unearthly weddings from which the Bridegroom is absent. Yet no one is disturbed on that account. His presence, though invisible, is taken for granted. The business of the Church goes on, regardless of the Absentee's long-broken promise to appear; and despite the quantities of blood that have flowed since then under the bridge of time. The ritual holds the awe and fascination of epochs far more remote. Mystery, magic, a virgin sacrificed on the altar of this god or that, or to some revered goddess, long before male arrogance assumed the monotheistic godhead. Th� rite, though perfumed with the odour of Christian sanctity, belongs to the childhood of man. And no one (except perhaps the na'ive or scared little bride) even wishes the Groom to materialise. Mystery is more enticing, and safer, when the veil is inscrutable. Against the black art of ages there is likely to be no popular rational appeal. In a twentieth-century setting waited the bride, a vision of . grace in white satin, veil, and orange blossom, orthodox train cascading in splendour over the altar steps. The