Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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Throughout Holland manages to avoid superficiality as much as possible for a book of popular history and introduces some bona fide theological concepts and crucial ideas. He served two years as the Chair of the Society of Authors; as Chair of the PLR Advisory Committee and was on the committee of the Classical Association. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. He describes crucifixion as one of the most terrible deaths one can suffer, which must be true in general but if Jesus really did only spend six hours on the cross, as the New Testament reports, he was luckier than most victims, who thrashed around for days.

Certainly those readers who are already predisposed against Christianity will and indeed have been particularly critical on this score. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to ‘the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome’. This time the author takes on the very broad concept of Western thought and culture and how it has been influenced by Christian values. If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, then Dominion is a very great book indeed . Indeed, his characterisation of St Paul does seem to be questionable in some areas and it is surprising that we hear more of Paul rather than of Christ himself even if Paul was a key transmitter of the Christian message.His translation of Herodotus was published in 2013 by Penguin Classics and followed in 2016 by a history of Æthelstan published under the Penguin Monarchs series, and in 2019 Æthelflæd England's Forgotten Founder as a Ladybird Expert Book. Christianity is the most enduring and influential legacy of the ancient world, and its emergence the single most transformative development in Western history. At first I gave this 3 stars as it was good but a bit all over the place (I had trouble with the jumps in logic throughout), then I thought a bit more about it and I gave it 4 stars as it made a good point and ultimately I agreed with the premise (even as an atheist, this was not difficult).

Paul willingly put this manifesto into practice by abandoning his privileges, including the rights of Roman citizenship. The people who recognised the radical nature of Christianity championing the weak against the strong were its enemies — Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade, Thomas Huxley, Goebbels — and they despised it on that account. A hierarchy of victimhood that could be summed up as” the last shall be first and the last first” In 2017 Harvey Weinstein a movie mogul had allegations brought against him for harassment , rape and assault by eighty women.But those dismissive of religion, for which I have some sympathy, should understand that many of their valued concepts of equality, emancipation and liberalism originate in Christianity. Holland has all the talents of an accomplished novelist: a gift for narrative, a lively sense of drama and a fine ear for the rhythm of a sentence -- Terry Eagleton * Guardian * If great books encourage you to look at the world in an entirely new way, then Dominion is a very great book indeed . What this book may do is persuade others to recognise the revolutionary character of the beliefs that our generation is hastening to discard. To many feminists and advocates of gay rights, Christianity seemed the opponent representing bigotry, injustice and persecution.

It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those which triumph is to be taken for granted. As he says, “the trace elements of Christianity continued to infuse people’s morals and presumptions so utterly that many failed even to detect their presence. Krafft-Ebing rather than condemning sodomy saw Christianity’s great contribution to civilisation: lifelong monogamy.The aim is twofold: to make the reader appreciate just how novel and uncanny were Christian teachings when they first appeared in the world; and to make ourselves, and all that we take for granted, appear similarly strange in consequence. Holland claims that the multiple injustices suffered by marginalised individuals in recent years has created an awakening which has its origins in Christianity. Ranging in time from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC to the on-going migration crisis in Europe today, and from Nebuchadnezzar to the Beatles, it will explore just what it was that made Christianity so revolutionary and disruptive; how completely it came to saturate the mind-set of Latin Christendom; and why, in a West that has become increasingly doubtful of religion’s claims, so many of its instincts remain irredeemably Christian. Recommended to anyone looking to get a new perspective on how western culture was and continues to be this day shaped by a death of a single man in a remote backwater of the Roman empire in the year 786 ab urbe condita. It should be read as an enjoyable introduction to both Christian history and a challenge to reflect on why we think the way we do - a challenge that is all the more interesting knowing that Holland himself had previously thought that our values owed more to pre-Christian classical values than Christian ones and all the more poignant when we consider how part of his reflection occurred whilst walking through a ruined town in Syria only lately liberated from Islamic State fighters who had been crucifying and taking slaves.

He has written and presented a number of TV documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, on subjects ranging from religion to dinosaurs. Holland further argues that concepts now usually considered non-religious or universal, such as secularism, liberalism, science, socialism and Marxism, revolution, feminism, and even homosexuality, "are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed", [6] [7] [8] and that the influence of Christianity on Western civilization has been so complete "that it has come to be hidden from view". Tom Holland has previously written several historical studies on Rome, Greece, Persia and Islam, including Rubicon, Persian Fire, and In the Shadow of the Sword. The adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine facilitated the dissemination throughout the Latin world and the vastness of the empire meant that this was inclusive of many peoples.In this way, both Catholics and atheists might together critique Holland and perhaps mischievously suggest that he is being influenced by his own Protestant background? Jonathan Sumption, writing for The Spectator, opined the book was "sustained with all the breadth, originality and erudition that we have come to associate with Holland’s writing. The book runs as a story through time and this chronological format does help the flow of the book but I do wonder whether a format based on themes might have brought greater clarity to the main argument (i. Holland gives thoughtful treatment to Christian progressive values over a wide range of moral questions.