Radical History: Greek Gods, Roman Emperors and Religion (with Tom Holland from The Rest Is History)

28:50And that's a quite good modern illustration of how he says that even Marx, which cast himself, or Marxism, which cast itself as a kind of repudiation of some fundamental, Marx was obviously a Jewish outcast who said, the poor ye will always have with thee, a bit like Jesus Christ. even Marx actually accepted the fundamental premise of Christianity which is that history is going somewhere. And I would say more than that he buys into its ethical and moral precepts as well because when you read Das Kapital it's presented as something that is scientific but the anger that Marx feels at the iniquities that he's describing so you know women and children being kicked out of their houses by rapacious landlords or uh distant colonies being exploited so that the bourgeoisie can have sugar with their tea there is a moral force to his anger about this that is not scientific because if you're purely scientific you say well say what i mean who cares there's exploitation that has no moral force at all it's just the way the world operates but he feels it very very deeply i think and so actually um i think at one point marx writes to engels and says that you know he says a good prophet must have a beard and of course you know they had great beards um i think there's a kind of um maybe almost a subliminal sense that his pretension towards scientific objective um analysis isn't actually true he is a you know he does have the spirit of a prophet and that sense that the first shall be last and the last shall be first you know as jesus says in the gospels i mean that is essentially the telos of the marxist understanding of history that at the end of days the poor and oppressed will inherit the earth that the rich will be cast down that the sheep and the goats will be divided out and the new jerusalem will be born on earth do you think i cannot you know you if if you study marx in the context the new jerusalem being communism by the way the new yes the the the class of society the class of society um and if you if you study marxism in the context of the 19th century perhaps you don't see that but if you study marxism in the context of that millennia history yeah yeah yeah and particularly in the context of other cultures, other civilizations, you know, Indian or Chinese or Japanese or whatever, or the civilizations of Greece or Rome or Egypt, then you see that very clearly, that Marx is clearly massively shaped by the Jewish and Christian inheritance.

31:34Do you think that religion answers enduring human needs in a way that secular thought never can? I mean, I think that millions of people live very happily in a secular society and don't really worry about the supernatural at all. However, what I would say is that I think John Gray is completely right that underpinning it all, there is always a kind of metaphysical sense. You can never entirely abstract yourself into a purely materialist state, I think. And I would say that that that modern day atheism is a kind of ultimate logical endpoint of trends within Christianity. What trends? Well, if you look at the Hebrew prophets, such an influence, I think, on Marx.

32:28um what one of the things that they are preaching is that um the idols that are worshipped by the babylonians or the egyptians or whatever are just stock and stone and that the um you know the springs or the groves on the top of hills that the there are no there are no gods manifest there there are no spirits there because there is only the one god um and so there is an inherent kind of skepticism towards the claims of people who worship in temples and set up idols and so on. And again, using idol is a, you know, that's a word that is freighted with Christian pejoratives. But when the Roman Empire becomes Christian, the Christians are the heirs of that tradition that you topple idols, that you banish superstition.

33:18And the Roman church is the heir of that. And then in the 16th century, the Protestant reformers are turning on the Roman church and say, well, you know, this is all superstition. You know, all your icons and so on, these are just idols. They have to be toppled. And in the French Revolution, the revolutionaries are turning on the whole structure of Christianity and saying the whole of Christianity is just superstition. We have to ban that. And that is something that runs right the way up into the present day. And I would say that someone like Richard Dawkins, you know, who is a guy who is so smart, he is aware of his positioning in this tradition.

33:59He's aware that he is the heir of Christian assumptions. But he is a much more confident evangelical than any Archbishop of Canterbury in my lifetime. I read the review. Because he is preaching good news that if you emancipate yourself from superstition, then you will lead a better life. Isn't that the Christian message? Isn't that semantic? gymnastics. I read, I remember the, I think the Charles Moore review of Richard Dawkins and the Spectator opened with the words that he's an evangelical. And it's true that if you evangelical is, you know, evangelism is a huge number of different things. But on the central point, Richard Dawkins is not an evangelical because he doesn't believe in spreading the word of God.

34:35He's spreading good news. He's spreading good news. God is a delusion. And if you accept that, then you will lead a better, happier life. But evangelism isn't just about any good news. It's about God's good news. No, it will. I mean, it is the idea. It is the idea that there is a proper way to understand the world and that buying into this, that to believing it, to accepting it, to opening your heart to it, banishing superstition, toppling idols will make you it will give meaning and purpose to your life in a way that that there was not before. and that is a particular tradition that you can trace back over the generations all the way back to Christianity, the beginnings of Christianity and before that back to the Hebrew prophets.

35:22So can I... So I would say, I mean, the contrast to that is it seems to me that people like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and, you know, the four horsemen of atheism. Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Daniel Dennett and all of that, all those lads, that they were expressive of a culture that was still deeply Christian in its assumptions. But they accepted that. That this and God mattered to them. But we now live in a society where people don't care about any of this. They don't know about church. They don't know about any of the stories. They don't know about God. They're not interested in any of it.

35:59That, it seems to me, is properly to be post-Christian. If you are campaigning against the Christian God, then you are still in that sense part of the Christian tradition. Whereas if you don't give a toss about any of it, then you are properly post-Christian. So Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, in their various ways, are somewhat heroic figures to me. And Richard Dawkins being alive... I think to be an evangelist is heroic. Yeah. So Christopher Hitchens was acutely conscious. I think his mother, Yvonne, had a Jewish heritage and he wrote in one of his books that he was aware of his relation to this ancient argument by which he meant the battles over Judaism.

36:36On Richard Dawkins, he wrote a book called The Magic of Reality, and he wrote another book called The Blind Watchmaker, which tried to marvel at the astonishing intricacy of reality. And I just wonder whether or not you can do that without recourse to the supernatural. I went to India earlier this year for a very, very, very personal pilgrimage. It was for a BBC One documentary, and I went to the biggest pilgrimage mankind has ever known. It's called the Kumbh Mela, and you have 500 million people, pilgrims come and they sort of dip themselves in the Ganges. because every 12 years, the alignment of Jupiter, the sun, the moon and earth is such that you can see Jupiter up there.

37:10And this was the 12th 12 yearly one. So it was the most auspicious occasion for 144 years. And I went there because it was about grieving my dad. And Hindus believe that if you dip yourself in the river Ganges, you obtain moksha and you can emancipate seven generations forward and seven generations previous from the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. And I thought this sounds a cool thing to do. It was a nice thing for a son to do for his father and i thought it'd make my mom happy i went there not hindu but i tell you what he looking up as part of this vast vast community of pious people deeply imbued with a sense of the transcendent because they're part of this massive cosmic snooker you could see these you could see jupiter up there and this feeling that the water had had a sacred power and by sacred I mean it has some special kind of immaterial power numinous power I did feel a kind of energy which in my day-to-day secular life I lack and which I sort of thought maybe actually there is a deeper truth and it made me think the question about religion is not is it true you know are the Hindu gods you know was Ganesh the elephant god really ever around it's more kind of what is it that what is it about these epic fictions these epic stories that offers us such a consolation in this belief in things bigger than us else, but also this profound sense of membership.

38:35I mean, I live much of my life with the feeling that it was great to be emancipated from what I then saw as superstition and mumbo-jumbo. I was very hostile to all that. And I have lots of friends who are perfectly happy not to think about the supernatural, spiritual, religious dimension in any way. And some of them, that's because they are atheist in a positivist way, in a kind of evangelical way, in a sense that they feel that this is the key to happiness and that humanity would be in a much better state if religion could just be abolished. But lots of them, and I think actually the happiest, are those who don't think about it at all.

39:23They're not interested in those issues whatsoever. So I am hesitant to say that unless you have an interest in the supernatural, you're going to lead a terrible life. I just don't think that's true. I think there are lots of people for whom. However, having said that, our society is so unusual. I mean, unique. There's never been a society that is as uninterested and uninvolved in the dimension of the supernatural as ours. and because we're situated in the present um and in the world that we live in we are always tempted to assume that that's just the way it is and i think that is the kind of arrogance of evangelical atheists or secularists or whatever is to assume that what you know the the the contingent circumstances that surround them are therefore everlasting yeah or something that you can you can discover you know wherever you look in the past um and it would be perfect for everyone else they should go to the kumela and the kanjis and they'd realize or they should go to the vatican or they should go to any any of these places and they'd realize that we are as you say something of an exception i want to talk about where we are and in two contexts before we finish because you've been incredibly generous with your time and you're sticking around to answer some of our listeners many many many questions there's two things about where we live now how we live now one is about your sort of history of Islam and the origins of Islam and the reconciliation of Islam and the West.

40:47And I've really, really, really tried to read into this because a few years ago, I read a book called The West and the Rest by Roger Scruton. And he talked about how the fundamental difference between Islam and the West was the separation in the West between Roman secular law and Christianity and how in Islam, that separation didn't exist. But then you look at how Islam is actually practiced around the world. And there are many states from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Albania to Kazakhstan, where there is something of a separation. And then there are other places, Indonesia, where there is a sort of more of a mixed model.

41:22And I was very struck. I listened to a podcast called Trigonometry, which is absolutely riveting. I've listened to lots and lots of episodes. And you used a very interesting phrase in this context, very hedged. You know, you're very conscious of, I think, not saying anything which can be misinterpreted. You use your words very very carefully but you said that unique islam is uniquely indigestible to the western imagination what did you mean to western society to western society so um the revolution that happens in the 11th century where in europe in in with with the gregorian revolution it it establishes this sense of a division between the let's call it ultimately the secular and the religious this idea that there is a space where religion doesn't apply islam does not have that but islam is the last revelation it's humanity's last chance it's because the hadith are the word of god yeah but the the um there is no aspect of human society where the the divine is not present and not providing guidance for people and so therefore it is taken for granted in the Islamic world really up until the early 19th century that you don't even conceptualize the division.

42:41There isn't a sense of, you know, I mean, you can't imagine what you can't conceptualize. And so the intrusion of the European empires onto the Islamic world is a profoundly traumatic experience for the Muslim world with which it is still struggling to cope. And really there have been two strategies to deal with it. And one is to accommodate to the idea of the secular. So, you know, you go to the mosque in the way that you might go to a church, but you, you know, you lead your life and you eat pork or whatever you want to do. You know, in the way that a Christian might go to church, but then do whatever he or she wants to do the rest of the time.

43:32And the other way is, and it's really telling that this word fundamentalism originates as a Protestant reaction to modernity. But you go fundamentalist and you say, well, everything about modernity is evil and terrible and the secular is terrible. And we have to go back and we have to kind of resurrect the primal order of doing things, the framework of instructions that we've been given by God. But the problem is that you can't go back. So just as fundamentalist Protestants are very, very modern, you know, they're not going back to the way that Protestants thought in the 16th century because you can't do that.

44:11And likewise, fundamentalist Muslims, whether it's the Islamic State or whatever, are not going back to how it was in the early days of the heirs of the prophet because they are living in the 21st century. It's not possible. But if there is not this separation between the secular and religione in the Islamic, there's no conceptualization of it in Islamic history. Isn't it quite sort of all the more admirable that there are lots of Muslim democracies, for instance, that there are lots of democracy, Islamic societies, which are not theocracies? There are some that are, but there are some that aren't.

44:48Isn't that sort of an intellectual leap, which is quite praiseworthy? Well, it depends where you're standing. I mean, if you think that democracy is an ideal more important than the rule of God, then yes, it is. But if you think the other way, then no, it isn't.

45:08I really hope you're enjoying my conversation with Tom Holland if you are please do us a favour and subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds that way you won't miss future episodes and if you do subscribe just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on and that way you'll get an alert whenever we publish a new episode so you'll never miss out and if you really really want to help us why not give us a little five star rating and that will help other people discover our podcast. And who knows, we might even challenge the rest is history for top spot in the podcast charts. Not that we care about that sort of thing.

45:41Anyway, back to Tom Holland.

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47:12If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

47:56You said earlier about whatever we're living through now. What are we living through now? Or maybe it's the job of a future historian to make sense of this. Well, it took people who lived through the 16th and 17th centuries, about a century and a half, to work out that they've been living through something called the Reformation. And it took Catholics about, it wasn't until the 19th century that Catholics started using the word the Reformation to describe the process. And I think we are living through something analogous to that. I think that, I mean, I'm gearing up to write a book about the 1960s in which I will be framing them as the equivalent of the 1520s.

48:34You know, the age in which Luther's ideas really started creating havoc through Catholic Europe. and the decades that followed the 1520s saw the emergence of an identity that in time would come to be called protestant and it saw the emergence of a counter-reformation process which created modern catholicism which was something very different from what had existed before the reformation and i think we're going through something analogous what did the 1960s give us other than tom holland well it it effectively it reduced the the vast christian inheritance which in you know for for for generations and generations going back in the case of britain to um you know the the arrival of christianity in britain um it it transmuted that inheritance into a vibe, I think.

49:29So there are, you know, the muscle memory of these instincts and these ethics and these morals remains. But without scriptural guidance, without theological guidance, they're emancipated from that and they can go in all kinds of different directions. And so it seems to me that the culture wars are basically an attempt to try and work out what form these ideas, now that they have been kind of liberated from the kind of the bedrock of the theology and the scripture that gave birth to them, what form should they take? Do you not think that there were moral benefits from the quote unquote permissive society?

50:09Yes, I do, because I grew up with it. But one of the things that... And if you're a gay person in Britain today, you might have... Of course. So one of the things that made me think that this would be an interesting book to write and that what happened in the 60s really is convulsive is that during the last World Cup in Qatar, there was a lot of anger in Britain on the part of commentators, players involved with the England football team about Qatari laws on same-sex relationships. And it was felt, I think, that the right, the moral thing to do was protest against these laws. But when England staged the World Cup in 1966, homosexuality had been, well, let's call it same-sex relations, had essentially been illegal for a millennium and more in that country.

51:07And it's not until the Wolfenden report that the process is set in train, which now culminates in a situation where to view same-sex relationships as somehow iniquitous or evil is the extremist position. Within the space of a lifetime, that is a massive, massive change, a massive moral process of evolution. and I think we tend not to recognize it because you know it's like being a frog in a slowly heating saucepan you don't if you're if you're in the slowly heating water you tend not to notice it but it is a really massive process of change and I think that when people look back at this period say in 100 or 200 years time they will go wow that was really extraordinary I mean what what a process of change that was and how fast it was that's why my so fast my uh phrase is that um and the old team on the other side of the glass of her, there's a few times, so they'll be bored of it and they might even cut it out, is that people used to write books 10 years ago.

52:07When we were playing cricket together and you were trying to hit sixes, mostly unsuccessfully, people kept writing books about the great acceleration. And I think acceleration, which is the rate of change of speed, isn't quite good enough. The rate of change of acceleration is jerks. And I think we're living through the age of jerks. Well, we're living through, as the Protestant reformers did, with the printing press kicking in. And it took time for the printing press to kick in. And we are having, you know, again, it's about how ideas are propagated and consumed. And I think it's not a coincidence that this new reformation, whatever you want to call it, is accelerating as technology accelerates.

52:49Absolutely. It's just that what happened rather slowly in the age of Gutenberg happens very quickly in the age of Zuckerberg. Yes. Final thought. Let's rescue. I like that formula. Think about it. Might have said it before somewhere. Who knows? Can we please make a joint effort, not only to play the same cricket side, but also to rescue the word radical? I adore the word radical. I think it's got a beautiful poetry about it. When I was a student, I remember my Don had sat an exam where if you sit an exam at the All Souls College in Oxford, you get one word, you have to write about it for three hours.

53:23And his one word was radical. And it comes from the Latin radix for root. It has a sense of going back to the root of things. And I feel it's been somewhat hijacked, particularly in the context of terrorism. People talk about being radicalised now. What do you understand the word radical to mean? And is there a case for rescuing the idea of being radical? And I say that as someone who's sympathetic with those people who try to press, through radical ideas, press history forward. Well, I mean, the meaning of words obviously evolves. They're never stable. And they can have broad shades of meaning.

53:58so the idea of you know it comes from the idea of a root um and it's increasingly over well kind of since the reformation really so over the 17th 18th century the idea of um the root is what matters and the the show of you know flowers or weeds or whatever on the surface is less important So I think that for me, radical.

54:27It's something that is cast by those who see themselves as radical as a positive, that you are you're diving down, you're looking at what really matters, you're going after the things that are really substantive. but it's also a reaction against something that is perceived as i mean either reactionary or or irrelevant or unimportant it's it's both progressive and reactive and to be radical you have to have something that isn't radical to react against so there is a kind of inherent sense of opposition hardwired into the word. And I think it's interesting that at the moment, it has a very strong positive sense as well as a very negative sense.

55:15So, I mean, you had Theresa May saying that her manifesto was radical. And when you have Theresa May saying that she's a radical, every politician says that, you know, they're radical. I'd love to have a politician that say, actually, we're going to have a really boring manifesto, but it's going to work. would be a really refreshing change because just slapping radical on a manifesto it's a to me it's an absolute warning that it's it's going to be a terrible manifesto and obviously there is also the pejorative sense and you kind of say you know radical islam or whatever where you push things to such an extreme that essentially it seems to be detonating everything that that that most people would count as normality put it on a podcast you can have a great conversation with tom holland And it's such a joy spending time with you, Tom.

56:02I should spend more time listening to your great podcast. You very kindly said that you're going to stick around. We have had a lot of questions, and you're going to stick around and answer a few of those, which is heroic, because we've already spent a long time together. But in the meantime, what do you think are our chances of displacing you at the top of the charts? Oh, I think a matter of time. Well, in that case, Tom Holland, thank you very much. Thank you.

56:29That is it for now. But remember, Tom is going to be back with me on Monday answering your Radical questions. Thank you so much to each and every one of you who sent questions in. By the way, to make sure you don't miss that or future conversations, please subscribe to Radical with Amol Rajan on BBC Sounds. And remember, you can also watch episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan on iPlayer. We will speak to you next week. Thanks so much for your time. Bye.

57:02Dominic, we got some very, very exciting news, haven't we? The Rest is History is back on BBC Sounds. That is right, Tom. We literally could not be more excited. We are thrilled to say that you can get your fill of all things historical and indeed all things Rest is History on BBC Sounds. So we kick off with Boudicca and the great high drama of Roman Britain. We have violence and chaos on the streets of Paris during the French Revolution. We have the rise of Richard Nixon. We have the assassination of Martin Luther King. We've basically got all the history, haven't we, Tom? We really have. So if you want to listen to that, just search for The Rest is History on BBC Sounds.

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59:40If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.