DTG Reviews... Dominion by Tom Holland
Added 2024-05-24 07:52:55 +0000 UTCWe take a look at the popular history book Dominion by Tom Holland from The Rest is History. Holland thinks almost everything in the West, especially things considered good, can be traced back to Christianity, which we think might be slightly overstating things. Join us to find out why.
Comments
Thanks for the reccos!
Guruspod 2
2024-05-30 23:28:36 +0000 UTCContinuing in the vein of grand narratives… the Davids’ Dawn of Everything! I remember you two mentioning it at one point. I have since read it and would appreciate a critical reflection.
Neil DH
2024-05-30 03:02:17 +0000 UTCSo much information! I’m enjoying it very much but have no analytical skills other than knowing it’s a popular science book and that I will never have the capacity to get at the hard science of it. I’m very much aware that I am the target audience for the book as a middle aged feminist. I hope men read it too. I would love to hear DTG break it down! I really enjoyed their discussion of Immune and enjoyed reading that as well.
Nell Van Vorst
2024-05-29 10:29:06 +0000 UTCMy sister has that. Neither of us has read it yet.
Linda Sears
2024-05-28 23:52:08 +0000 UTCOh I have read that. It was really interesting!
Emma
2024-05-28 22:56:28 +0000 UTCBook recommendation: Eve (how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution) by Cat Bohannon.
Nell Van Vorst
2024-05-28 19:25:16 +0000 UTCLooking forward to the audio release. As a discerning adult, I have been able to enjoy the output of a pair of white, middle-aged public schoolboys raised on Blyton, Buckeridge and Flashman without feeling the need to take out a Telegraph sub, vote Tory or call for the fortification of the English South coast. I have never encountered a historian who didn’t have a personal axe to grind. Even Marxists find Hobsbawm a bit much at times.
Sean Donnelly
2024-05-28 16:53:06 +0000 UTCThis wasnt dissimilar from Matt and Chris discussing how many hit points Jesus would have in a game of Dungeons and Dragons ;-)))
Paul Hanrahan
2024-05-28 10:05:37 +0000 UTCYep! Just need to edit. Sooooon...
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-05-27 07:25:26 +0000 UTCEven invisible things may cast a shadow.... https://youtube.com/shorts/R-ydPnWykzg?si=sUM23jczlJSedCDn
Anne Stephens
2024-05-26 20:00:10 +0000 UTCMassively been looking forward to this. Will there be an audio version?
Jacob_3BP
2024-05-26 12:27:46 +0000 UTCcan Matt please blow some rings next time 😮💨
peta austen
2024-05-25 23:59:29 +0000 UTCbig red flag
David Noble
2024-05-25 23:26:25 +0000 UTCoh god fucking damnit, really?
Franz Pökler
2024-05-25 17:44:53 +0000 UTCHere is a section from Bitch for those who may be interested. https://www.thedailybeast.com/maybe-we-reconsider-that-matriarchal-murderer-the-meerkat
Linda Sears
2024-05-25 13:02:20 +0000 UTCThis book about Frank Herbert's work (now free online) covers Paul Atreides versus standard hero myth arcs. The hero myth stuff is mostly in chapter 4 I think. https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/index.csp . It references a few other works on the subject.
Jake
2024-05-25 12:09:20 +0000 UTCThanks for the review of Tom’s book. I enjoy their podcast too but the book does sound a little dodgy. Did you blokes listen to their episode on Sci-Fi/ Fantasy franchises that were influenced by the Roman Empire? Tom claimed that Paul Atreides has a similar ‘hero myth’ arc to King Arthur and Luke Skywalker… Am I missing something here, isn’t one of the Dune themes: ‘don’t fall for heroes or charismatic leaders’?
Shane Partington
2024-05-25 02:40:53 +0000 UTCSome future book suggestions to review: How to Speak Whale by Tom Mustill and Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke. The second option is polemical, but it is also very funny and filled with bizarre facts.
Linda Sears
2024-05-24 22:16:56 +0000 UTCAgreed. The late Medieval/Renaissance Christian culture reveals many Greco-Roman influences, which makes studying those times far more interesting. Plato, Aristotle, and Virgil, for example, all got “virtuous pagan” status. And one of the first operas, itself an attempt to revive Greek theatre, was about Orpheus. I get the feeling that the aristocracy of Europe found Ancient Greek and Roman culture far more entertaining. Plus, they could dress up and pretend to be deities like Apollo and not be seen as sacrilegious.
Linda Sears
2024-05-24 19:28:28 +0000 UTCI generally get round to listening to most episodes of The Rest is History so am really familiar with Tom Holland's ideas .... which Dominic Sandbrook tends to tease him about, which is why I like listening. Archeology does tend to contradict this view of history because new religion tends to fit over or directly contradict the existing tradition. Yule/Christmas, and North/South v. East/West burials, for example. There is a back and forth conversation, adaptation and then an attempt to standardise or redefine the religion every few centuries. I am really not sure at all that a Medieval peasant's understanding and practice of Christianity would be anything like what Christians say and do today. I am not sure that the former would recognise what the second was doing.
Nina Davies
2024-05-24 18:47:51 +0000 UTCDominion is not an appealing book to me at all, and what you two have said about it confirms that I don’t need to read it. 😂 One point you made was that when he writes about things you know well, it showed how he was misrepresenting stuff. This is something that has been a huge red flag for me with a lot of people/ideas. Everything sounds convincing until they talk about something where you have some expertise, and then suddenly you realise they have no idea what they are talking about, but speak with absolute conviction anyway. For me, it immediately casts a shadow over everything else they are saying, and it’s a real sign of a galaxy brain guru.
Intergalactic Panda Wrangler
2024-05-24 18:45:46 +0000 UTCI’m glad Matt mentioned Osiris. As well as being god of the Nile and vegetation, he was also god of the afterlife. Every year the Egyptians ritually reenacted his death and resurrection by the Nile river. My favorite part of the story is when Isis brings his many parts back together so that they can have sex, leading to the miraculous birth of their baby Horus. Images of Isis with baby Horus are not unlike Mary with baby Jesus.
Linda Sears
2024-05-24 17:48:44 +0000 UTCLawrence Buell’s ‘Emerson’ might be a good book for you to review. (History of public intellectuals in America. The “self-reliance” myth. Sensemaking.) I’d like to hear how your gurometre scores people from different eras or why it wouldn’t work.
Dada de Broglie
2024-05-24 16:45:20 +0000 UTCFor podcasts — there’s also In Our Time (Religion). Covers pretty much all the topics Holland does but always with a panel of scholars and you are left to make your own conclusions.
Maytree
2024-05-24 16:17:57 +0000 UTCThe part where you were talking about Tolkein's mixed motivations reminded me of reading Beowulf back in college. It was based on Non-Christian Germanic mythology (probably orally transmitted for centuries), but it was later written down by an Anglo Saxon Christian monk who added Christian elements into the work to create a syncretic text, so that Grendel can be described as a descendant of Cain while also just being a mean troll-like monster, similar to what one finds in Icelandic/Norse sagas. I find it very odd how militant Christianity uses metaphors of God's followers as mighty soldiers and crusaders for God, which makes me think that warrior cultural ideas of the "pagans" shaped Christianity as well.
Linda Sears
2024-05-24 15:45:05 +0000 UTCFor more popular antidotes to Holland and the Enlightenment period, Charles Freeman's books, and Ritchie Richardson's recent book on the Enlightenment (Holland approved even!) are deeper works for popular consumption with less bias. Also, an entertaining read/listen that really gets to the heart of a specific example in how Christianity and the Enlightenment collide, but without such a strong taking sides, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, by Dennis Rasmussen.
Maytree
2024-05-24 14:51:10 +0000 UTCRichard C. Miller ("Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity"); Robyn Faith Walsh ("Origins of Early Christian-Literature)"; and the collection "Stoicism in Early Christianity" are all contemporary scholarly works that show that New Testament stories, theological underpinnings, and prescribed virtues are derived in large part from Hellenism, not just Judaism, and certainly not 'out of nowhere'. One finds in the ancient world around the Mediterranean alone, the characters and tropes that make up core aspects of early Christianity, including the very ideas of 'turning the other cheek,' universal love for humanity, and so on. As Tom Holland would say -- "the air that the authors of the NT breathed" was inescapably Homer, Virgil, etc., and the mythologies and literary tropes that the NT authors -- who were amongst the select few in that ancient world that were educated in written Greek -- were "swimming in" at the time. The way Holland sees the world, perhaps it would make sense therefore for contemporary Christians, as well as the rest of the Western world, to carry around a debt of gratitude to our inescapable Greco-Roman/Egyption etc. roots.
Maytree
2024-05-24 14:37:26 +0000 UTCBook reviews! Great idea
Minotaurus Rex
2024-05-24 14:25:40 +0000 UTCExcellent work guys. Holland says he was inspired to write the book based on an epiphany, comparing his actual every-day values to Islamic values when writing on Islam history, and then reflecting on his lifelong fascination and idolization with Roman history and culture. This is the motivation that provides the selection of anecdotes and the glue connecting them in his book, and it seems to come through in place of more sound scholarly/rigorous history.
Maytree
2024-05-24 14:19:11 +0000 UTCBefore I proceed- one of my heuristics cf Destiny right to reply- is have the ‘ick’ for anything blurbed by Douglas Murray ( if true) and to lesser extent anything by Tom Holland ( not that one 🕷️) as I reckon him, Sam Harris and wee Dougie would get on like a house on fire. But open mind and all that….
Brainbiter
2024-05-24 14:17:15 +0000 UTCAnd a glowing blurb from Douglas Murray 🙃
Erland Hvittfeldt
2024-05-24 13:41:02 +0000 UTCSounds interesting but I'll wait for the audio version. Reminds me of reading Inventing the individual by Larry Siedentop which had a similar theme.
Erland Hvittfeldt
2024-05-24 13:40:23 +0000 UTCIt’s too bad the early Christians didn’t just chuck Revelations. By the way, have you ever read Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover? She grew up in a survivalist family in Idaho and never went to school until she was 17.
Linda Sears
2024-05-24 13:11:22 +0000 UTCDoes the analysis include his reciprocated love for Douglas Murray?
john statham
2024-05-24 09:55:31 +0000 UTCYou might be over doing religious books for now. But my next read is Armageddon. Which is relevant to this convo about whether Religion is really influencing western culture. Bart Ehrman argues that Revelation is the most dangerous book in the bible because the way contemporary Christians misinterpret it is directly influencing politics and events in the middle east. Of course one can't downplay the role of oil. But I think it's an interesting idea to explore. https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-What-Bible-Really-about/dp/B0B4TVM25C/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2P2ZBPIARV7H&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.kb26Mlv3B3xcIAaXQ1HSedEx9ZOndYPP6Uy9uyXPvvIT8YeNI0tkLRoJMvVaMBu4Sx-qr3NarTNuiD3LT8O2j6lhlwduRlY97UyG1eKAP4T8c5PoaPDV4riL5LfBiyL5-iaBJEuf7kwIwIHUyPI8io2wkFFGuRek4JrYf_zyLvp90xd84d7Gbmgf0b9xLA9nOLhG1yAcTz1ms6GLC087jQ.0uImOG_07abZIbqzgA53mnAapZulTW1QrlLDZKDyitU&dib_tag=se&keywords=armageddon+bart+ehrman&qid=1716543439&sprefix=Armageddon+bart%2Caps%2C371&sr=8-1
Emma
2024-05-24 09:40:52 +0000 UTChttps://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Jews-Changed-Everyone-History/dp/0385482493
Emma
2024-05-24 09:35:17 +0000 UTCGood review. I think I'll give this book a skip. I remember reading a couple of books with similar ideas 'The gift of the jews' and its sequel when I was at Uni and rethinking my super religious upbringing. Andof course I bought it hook line and sinker. My critical thinking skills have improved since then! But ironically I think this particular philosophy is meant to be a bit of a gate way drug into Christianity. Or at least cultural Christianity. But for me it functioned the opposite way as a sort of soft landing on the way out of religious fundamentalism. So maybe it's not true but it was comforting for me.
Emma
2024-05-24 09:33:18 +0000 UTCI have a friend who swears by this book, should be interesting!
Reinert
2024-05-24 09:14:43 +0000 UTCIs this coming to the podcast feed too?
PaulBFB
2024-05-24 09:05:51 +0000 UTCOooh can't wait
PaulBFB
2024-05-24 08:36:56 +0000 UTCI'm about halfway through Dominion, so this is gonna be a good listen.
Andreas Haukenes
2024-05-24 07:58:57 +0000 UTC
