Not just a river in Egypt

Mary Magdalene, David Irving and Mohammed. Watch me weave them together into a seamless whole.

I've recently finished According to Mary by Marianne Fredriksson, a novel of the life of Mary Magdalene from early orphaned childhood to middle age. Jesus is crucified and missing-presumed-ascended; Paul is writing his letters to the Corinthians; Mary, uncomfortably aware of how much the former disciples of Jesus resent her, is lying low in Antioch but is eventually persuaded to write down her memories in what becomes the apocryphal Gospel of Mary. (And in a nice touch of irony, she is also called upon to translate Peter's semi-literate letters into decent Greek, paving the way for their inclusion in scripture too.) The gist of the book is that she and Jesus were lovers and that his revolutionary views on the equality of women were anathema to the male-based followers. By the time Jesus was off the scene, and Peter and Paul were on it, poor Mary didn't have a chance. Cue two thousand years of patriarchal hegemony.

So far, so Da Vinci Code, but better written and based more closely on what we know, however much you may disagree with the conclusions. Which I do. But I will also admit that an oft-repeated quote of Jesus from the Gospel of Mary - "Make no rules of life on this which I have revealed to you; write no laws as the lawmakers do" - does sound like something he would have said. In other words, although I end up where I started - not believing Jesus and Mary had a sexual relationship - I have been sufficiently challenged to work out why I believe this, and thus my faith is strengthened and enriched.

Now, David Irving, right-wing nutter who famously didn't believe the Holocaust happened until a likely jail sentence hove into view and suddenly he discovered some documents that suggested in fact it did. Happen. I may well believe different if I had relatives or friends who had died in the death camps, but I can't help thinking the very fact of denying the Holocaust says all that needs to be said about the speaker. Do you need to bung them into jail too? Because we shouldn't just be taking it on faith that the Holocaust happened. The recent history of the former Yugoslavia shows all too well that new Holocausts can occur all too easily. Every generation needs to study and re-examine the evidence to show that the Holocaust did happen, and to prevent them from slipping into complacency that it could never happen again. And to do that, you need to be able to ask: "did it really happen?" Whereupon you look at the evidence, and you say, "yes, it did." And you are duly warned.

Belief based on blind faith and no evidence, even if it is correct belief, is only correct by accident, and we have no way of knowing that it is correct.

And Mohammed ... yes, it's those cartoons again, which are now claiming Muslim lives as other Muslims go a-rioting. Yes, those cartoons slandered him. So show us how they slandered him. Convince us. Win our minds. Don't just knee-jerk.

Mary Magdalene, David Irving and Mohammed. See how easy that was?