Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years by Paula Fredriksen

by James Wallace Harris, 12/39/25

Ancient Christianities by Paula Fredriksen is a scholarly work that chronicles the evolution of Christian theology over its first half millennium. I would say this book is not for the faithful, but for readers who enjoy studying history. Paula Fredriksen is an American historian and scholar of early Christianity. She held the position of William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture at Boston University from 1990 to 2010. If you are considering reading Ancient Christianities, I highly recommend following the link to her name. Fredriksen has published several books on Jesus, Paul, early Christianity, and St. Augustine that I want to read.

I will not review Ancient Christianities; for that, I recommend reading Joseph Foltz’s review in Ancient Jew Review (May 14, 2025). Instead, I’m going to describe why I read this book.

I believe we are all brainwashed as children by our parents, family, teachers, peers, and churches. We can’t recall how we acquired our foundational beliefs because they were imprinted at a time when we understood little about reality. These beliefs are recorded so deeply in our minds that we seldom examine them. The amount of work it takes to explore this area of our personality is too great for most people.

There is a fascinating parallel between dredging up personal memories from our early minds and studying the history of the early formation of Christian theology. It’s impossible to know anything for sure about either. However, working with memory and history can be enlightening.

I gave up religion back in the mid-1960s, but I’ve never been able to erase everything that going to church as a child put in my head. However, I’ve always felt kindly towards the person we call Jesus. I assumed he discovered a new way of seeing the world that was more compassionate than was common over two thousand years ago.

Over the years, I’ve read many books by historians trying to discover who Jesus was and what he taught. I’ve concluded it is impossible to know what Jesus believed or preached, and Ancient Christianities only confirms this conclusion.

If you study all the various sects of Christianity and all its theologians, you will not find one common denominator. Whatever Jesus believed, it’s been obscured by thousands of new opinions. Some scholars claim that Jesus might not have existed at all, but was created to promote specific concepts. But we can’t even identify the first creator of Jesus, because the idea of Jesus has been recreated countless times over the last two thousand years.

Because Jesus didn’t write down his philosophy, we can’t say for sure what it was. The earliest writings about Jesus come from Paul, but we can’t trust them because Paul didn’t know Jesus. Paul wrote letters about Jesus twenty years after Jesus died. He says very little about Jesus the man. But that’s like you writing about someone you heard about who died in 2005.

The authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote decades later and told different stories about Jesus that don’t always match up. That’s like writing about someone you heard about who died in 1980.

The author of the Gospel of John wrote even later and went full gonzo on the story of Jesus.

Paul Fredriksen recounts how many other men wrote stories about Jesus in the following four hundred years. Everyone made something new up. And some of their ideas involve concepts as far out as those imagined by science fiction writers.

Ancient Christianities is about endlessly reinventing Jesus over five hundred years. Those ideas are so ancient, so deep in our collective unconsciousness, that they are like ideas that we acquired when we were four, and dwell in the darkness of our unconscious minds.

Every theologian and every historian has their own theory about Jesus’ identity. All we can do is pick the one we like the best, but we can never know.

I’ve always wanted to believe Jesus was the guy who came up with the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m currently leaning towards the idea that Jesus was a radical who wanted to overthrow the system. It’s not hard to picture him talking like the hotheads on the internet with big ideas. And that the Sermon on the Mount came from a later storyteller.

There’s a wonderful book, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. It’s based on the Jesus Seminar, where, over a decade, theologians and historians debated which passages in red in the New Testament were said by the historical Jesus. The Five Gospels is based on voting, and the results are color-coded. Even among experts, there is no complete agreement. We tend to advocate for what we want to believe. Confirmation bias is powerful.

Books like Ancient Christianities help us understand how commonly believed concepts evolved from specific people. (By the way, it’s all men.)

If you read enough history books about religion, you realize there is no divinity anywhere to be found. It’s all concepts created by men. Like the famous story by Carl Sagan, it’s turtles all the way down.

JWH

THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell

by James Wallace Harris, 12/27/25

There are some conservative Republicans who wish to censor history by forgetting events in America’s past. They worry that such history could make their children feel bad about themselves. They want to remember a past that makes America look great again. Please read Donald Trump’s executive order regarding this issue.

Karen Russell’s latest novel, The Antidote, philosophises why we need to remember everything, even things our ancestors did that make America look bad. Russell uses fantasy to educate us about reality. When my friend Annie first recommended that we read this novel together, the fantasy elements turned me off. As a life-long science fiction reader, I was in the mood to read realistic fiction for a change. The older I get, the more I want nonfiction, but I can’t give up fiction completely.

Throughout the first half of The Antidote, I was annoyed with all its fantastic elements. However, I eventually realized that Russell was using them as a plot device to get her readers to contemplate real history. Eventually, I felt Russell had read a great deal of American history that disturbed her, and she was using her novel to come to grips with why we shouldn’t forget that which many want to erase from American history books.

Memory is the main theme of this novel. Both personal memories and historical memory.

The Antidote makes a case against five crimes our ancestors committed. These tragic deeds explore the dimensions of greed. Each of these historical atrocities has been well-documented in nonfiction books I’ve read over the years. Reading the novel made me ask: Which has more impact, fiction or nonfiction? Listening to The Antidote made me feel closer to the suffering.

How many books have you read that deal with these historical events? Did you learn more from reading fiction or nonfiction?

  • How did we take land from the Native Americans?
  • How did we force Native Americans onto reservations and attempt to reeducate them with our culture and values?
  • How did poor farming practices cause the environmental catastrophe of the Dust Bowl?
  • How did we institutionalize unwed mothers and steal their babies?
  • How do we allow the murders of women to go uninvestigated and underreported?

The Antidote is primarily set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, in 1935, between two significant real events, the Black Sunday dust storm (April 14, 1935) and the Republican River flood (May 31-June 1, 1935). The story is told sequentially, but with flashbacks. We hear the story told from many voices. Four primary characters: The Antidote (Antonina Rossi, AKA, the Prairie Witch), Asphodel Oletsky (Del), Harp Oletsky (Del’s uncle), and Cleo Allfrey (photographer), along with two significant secondary characters, a cat and a scarecrow.

Antonina, a middle-aged woman, had been institutionalized at age 15 for being an unwed mother. Her son had been forcefully taken away from her. She makes her living as a vault, or prairie witch. Antonina can enter a trance while another person relates a memory they wish to forget. That process will erase the memory from the teller’s mind and store it in hers. Antonina gives them a written receipt that will trigger that memory, and she can reinstate it at a future time. Antonina does not remember what she vaults. She is paid for this service, but her clients consider her no better than a prostitute.

Asphodel “Del” Oletsky, a fifteen-year-old girl, just five feet tall, is the captain of Uz’s high school girls’ basketball team. Her mother was murdered when she was young, and she lives with her uncle Harp Oletsky. Cleo is a young black woman who travels the country documenting the depression for FDR’s government. The plot of the novel eventually brings them all together.

The novel begins with a roundup of jack rabbits and clubbing them to death. My father was born in Nebraska and was Del’s age in 1935. He told me stories about how the farmers would exterminate the jack rabbits. My mother also went to high school around this time and played basketball. My grandmother was on a basketball team in Indiana at the turn of the century.

My memories immediately made me connect with the story. We remember the good ones, but forget the bad ones.

The story then goes into catching a serial killer of young women. The sheriff even connects the killer to Del’s mother’s cold case. This murder mystery is the apparent backbone of the plot, but it’s not the real story.

The Antidote immediately triggered a memory of an article I recently read, “The Nurse Who Names the Dead” by Christa Hillstrom. The article was about Dawn Wilcox, who created a database to track the number of men killing women. She discovered that femicide goes vastly underreported. One of the truths of Russell’s novel is that she’s writing about evils that have always existed. Can we ever break the cycle?

Dust and evil color this novel with darkness. I listened to the audiobook edition, and it felt like I was watching an old black-and-white movie. I’d call it noir magical realism.

I admit, I had to push myself to keep listening for the first half of this book. I was just put off by the fantasy elements. But the characters grew on me. And by the middle of the story, I was hooked. The last half of the book often made me teary-eyed. For most of the novel, I felt Russell was too writerly, but when Harp gives his big speech near the end, I must say I was quite impressed with the writing and the description of the riot and storm.

Throughout this story, I kept thinking about the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Uz almost sounds like Oz. Plus, the story has a tornado and a talking scarecrow.

I wanted to connect the elements of this story with all the nonfiction books I’ve read that back up its fictional history. Especially, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan, plus the Ken Burns’ documentary, The Dust Bowl. However, I can’t remember where I read about the other issues in this book. My mind is getting old and tired.

My friend Linda and I often talk about how humans repeat the same crimes throughout history. In recent months, we’ve focused on how greed is the primary driver of evil. As you read The Antidote (if you do), think about how greed motivates people to do what they do. We’re all greedy to a degree, and that might be a survival mechanism, but there seems to be a point when more greed makes us evil. I see that everywhere.

I’m also watching The American Revolution by Ken Burns. It brings up many things that some Republicans would like the world to forget. Like I said, we don’t change. But we should ask, what are we doing now that people in the future will wish to forget that we did?

The Antidote by Karen Russell was on 11 best-books-of-the-year lists for 2025.

JWH

“Racing Mount Pleasant” by Racing Mount Pleasant

by James Wallace Harris

I discovered Racing Mount Pleasant while watching Best New Albums of 2025 – Ranked by Katie from Cordes Records in Australia. She inspired me to watch other YouTubers report on their favorite new albums of 2025. I’ve collected all their recommendations into a Spotify playlist “2025 Albums to Try.”

Of all the albums I’ve tried, Racing Mount Pleasant is my favorite. It’s by a group, Racing Mount Pleasant. To make it even more confusing, my favorite song on this album is “Racing Mount Pleasant.”

Racing Mount Pleasant currently has seven members and was formerly known as Kingfisher. According to Wikipedia, the lineup consists:

  • Sam DuBose – vocals, guitar
  • Callum Roberts – trumpet
  • Connor Hoyt – alto saxophone
  • Samuel Uribe Botero – tenor saxophone
  • Kaysen Chown – strings
  • Tyler Thenstedt – bass, vocals
  • Casey Cheatham – drums, vocals

I’m currently obsessed with their song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” Phil Spector was famous for producing a Wall of Sound back in the 1960s. Spector got this sound by using a rotating lineup of over two dozen studio musicians, now known as the Wrecking Crew.

I mention this because Racing Mount Pleasant feels like a rock orchestra. I love their sound, especially the song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” You can hear the album version on YouTube:

I love this song. I’ve been playing it over and over for weeks. I used it as a test song for my review of the Fiio K13 R2R DAC. However, as I listened to the music played through five different DACs using three different sound systems, I was amazed by the diverse textures the instruments made. I wanted to know which instruments produced which sounds. That’s when I began researching the song and found out the band had seven members. But what really helped was finding this video of the band playing “Racing Mount Pleasant.”

I loved this album so much that I bought it on vinyl. That’s rare for me. I might even get it on CD. The music is so dense that it feels like it’s coming from a giant orchestra. The band plays at a relentless pace, projecting a sense of joy.

Most of my fellow baby boomers are stuck in the past musically. Most of the time, so am I. But for some reason, a few of us have stayed on the trail, hoping to find new artists. Discovering Racing Mount Pleasant is one of those discoveries that makes trying all those thousands of albums over the past seven decades pay off.

JWH

DAC Compare: Fiio K13 R2R vs. Geshelli J2 vs. AudioLab 6000A

by James Wallace Harris, 12/20/25

On the surface, this essay might appear to be about audio equipment, but it’s really about wants and desires, perception and marketing, the limits of our senses.

A DAC is a Digital-to-Analog converter. Most people own several, even though they might be unfamiliar with the acronym. They are critical to audiophiles because they determine how well digital files are recreated as analog sound in your amplifier and speakers.

For most music listeners, the DAC is built into their computers, smartphones, amplifiers, or CD players. Some audiophiles will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on an external DAC, hoping to hear details in their music that are not produced by integrated DACs.

I’m not really an audiophile. Maybe I’m a half-ass audiophile. I do want to hear music in all its richness, but I just don’t want to spend the kind of bucks that audiophiles are willing to part with.

Some audiophiles are purists and shun digital recordings. They want vinyl records that were produced with analog equipment and to play their LPs on analog amplifiers. This route requires no DAC. I’ve spent a modest amount of money pursuing the analog sound, and it’s always been elusive. Watching YouTube videos from analog purists makes me think I’d find sonic greatness if I’d only shell out a few thousand dollars more.

On the other hand, other audiophiles who embrace digital technology claim that if you spend enough money, you will hear more details from every note and instrument, from a larger three-dimensional soundstage, and experience greater sonic textures and thrills.

For over a decade, I’ve been chasing three mirages. The first is analog sound, the second is high-resolution music, and the third is better DACs. I gave up on vinyl because it was never apparent that analog sounded superior to digital, even after much testing. I gave up on high-resolution music because it only sounded slightly better than CD quality, and only if I concentrated mightily hard. However, I’m still a sucker for DAC hucksters.

Since Covid, I’ve been hearing reviews of R2R DACs, and I’ve been hankering to own one. Unfortunately, R2R DACs were more expensive than the more common Delta-sigma DACs. Then Fiio came out with the K11 R2R headphone amp/DAC for $159. I thought I’d buy one and see if there really was a difference. Before I could pull the trigger, Fiio came out with the K13 R2R headphone amp/DAC for $320 that claimed to be even better. So I bought one for my birthday.

A couple of years ago, I purchased the Geshelli Labs J2 DAC with upgraded Sparkos SS3602  op-amps and AK4499 DAC because the Cheap Audioman had convinced me it was the best Delta-sigma DAC for under a $1000. (It was just over $500 with the upgrades, so I thought, what a bargain.)

I already owned an AudioLab 6000A because of Darko Audio. It has an ES9018K2M DAC. It sounded great to me, but watching audio equipment reviews online leaves a never-ending desire to explore those greater musical dimensions they claim they can hear.

When I got the Geshelli Labs J2, I thought I heard more detail. After a year, I became tired of having to get up to turn on the J2 before turning on my AudioLab 6000A with a remote. I removed the J2 and used the DAC in the AudioLab 6000A. I wasn’t really sure I could hear a difference anymore. I never could decide if the external J2 sounded better than the internal DAC of the 6000A.

But I kept listening to reviews. Many of my favorite reviewers went through countless DACs, apparently searching for audiophile nirvana. Some claimed that DACs costing $5000 or $10,000 would get me there.

Reviewers consistently claimed R2R DACs had the smooth sound of analog music, projecting larger soundstages. I felt the soundstage for the AudioLab 6000A was as large as my den, but then what did I know? Maybe it wasn’t.

I wasn’t willing to risk my retirement savings on a $5,000 DAC. Some reviewers were honest enough to admit that those expensive DACs didn’t reveal their riches unless your amplifier and speakers also cost at least $5,000.

I decided I just had to hear an R2R DAC to see if I could actually hear a difference, so I bought the Fiio K13 R2R.

To be honest, I was disappointed with what I heard using it as a K13 R2R headphone amp. The music sounded far more exciting through my Sennheiser 560S headphones and Fiio K5 Pro headphone amplifier. The music presented by the K13 was very nice, but it was missing all those exciting details I heard from the ESS Sabre DAC of the K5 Pro.

I’m not unhappy with the K13. Its smooth sound, especially on female vocals, is quite pleasant. However, for headphone listening, I especially enjoy the details.

I then hooked up the K13 and J2 to the AudioLab 6000A’s analog inputs. I also compared the sound from the AudioLab 6000 CD transport using its internal DAC. The R2R DAC did sound smooth and pleasant. And I’ve been enjoying it for days. It’s just fine, but I don’t think I’m an R2R person after all.

Here’s the thing: there are differences between the three DACs, but do they really matter? My bedroom stereo, using a Bluesound Powernode 2i and Klipsch RP-5000F speakers, sounds the richest, most detailed, and dimensional of all my systems. However, I think that’s due to the room. My main stereo is in the den. It doesn’t have a back wall, because it opens into a dining area and kitchen. One wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, and the other two walls have wrap-around windows near the ceiling.

I’m sure the rooms make a bigger difference than the DACs. And I imagine the Polk Reference Series R-500 speakers sound different from the Klipsch.

For years, my only source of music was a clock radio. It had only one speaker. It was no larger than three inches in diameter. I loved that radio, and the music I first heard on it from 1962 to 1968 has stuck with me my whole life.

The most excitement I got from listening to music this year wasn’t from the equipment, but from consciously trying new music I hadn’t heard before that was created in the last ten years. Spotify estimated my age from the music I played to be 28.

I do know the DAC in my $89 Wiim Mini sounds bad. But it seems any DAC costing over $200, despite its technology, sounds pretty damn good. Maybe if I spent more than $2000, I would hear a difference, but would it be a night-and-day difference? I don’t know. Unless I win a mega lottery, I ain’t going to find out.

In my testing, playing a CD through the AudioLab 6000A sounded the best by far. But I’m not ready to go back to CDs.

I think watching audiophile reviewers on YouTube is making me dissatisfied with my equipment. I have to wonder if the differences they hear are really psychological or physiological?

I’ve found that what makes the biggest difference is volume. Listening at 85 decibels makes my stereo systems sound great. At 85 decibels, I hear more details with a larger soundstage by using any of my DACs.

After that, convenience matters. Audiophiles claim that separate components sound better than all-in-one units. Calling up albums on my phone via Spotify is just too damn convenient. Powering on with a remote is too damn convenient. I wish I could power up my integrated amplifiers with my iPhone and ditch the remote.

My advice. Spend a middling amount on an integrated system and play it loud.

JWH

Past-Present-Future As It Relates to Fiction-Nonfiction-Fantasy-SF

by James Wallace Harris, 12/12/25

I’ve been contemplating how robot minds could succeed at explaining reality if they didn’t suffer the errors and hallucinations that current AIs do. Current AI minds evolve from training on massive amounts of words and images created by humans stored as digital files. Computer programs can’t tell fiction from fact based on our language. It’s no wonder they hallucinate. And like humans, they feel they must always have an answer, even if it’s wrong.

What if robots were trained on what they see with their own senses without using human language? Would robots develop their own language that described reality with greater accuracy than humans do with our languages?

Animals interact successfully with reality without language. But we doubt they are sentient in the way we are. But just how good is our awareness of reality if we constantly distort it with hallucinations and delusions? What if robots could develop consciousness that is more accurately self-aware of reality?

Even though we feel like a being inside a body, peering out at reality with five senses, we know that’s not true. Our senses recreate a model of reality that we experience. We enhance that experience with language. However, language is the source of all our delusions and hallucinations.

The primary illusion we all experience is time. We think there is a past, present, and future. There is only now. We remember what was, and imagine what will be, but we do that with language. Unfortunately, language is limited, misleading, and confusing.

Take, for instance, events in the New Testament. Thousands, if not millions, of books have been written on specific events that happened over two thousand years ago. It’s endless speculation trying to describe what happened in a now that no longer exists. Even describing an event that occurred just one year ago is impossible to recreate in words. Yet, we never stop trying.

To compound our delusions is fiction. We love fiction. Most of us spend hours a day consuming fiction—novels, television shows, movies, video games, plays, comics, songs, poetry, manga, fake news, lies, etc. Often, fiction is about recreating past events. Because we can’t accurately describe the past, we constantly create new hallucinations about it.

Then there is fantasy and science fiction. More and more, we love to create stories based on imagination and speculation. Fantasy exists outside of time and space, while science fiction attempts to imagine what the future might be like based on extrapolation and speculation.

My guess is that any robot (or being) that perceives reality without delusions will not use language and have a very different concept of time. Is that even possible? We know animals succeed at this, but we doubt how conscious they are of reality.

Because robots will have senses that take in digital data, they could use playback to replace language. Instead of one robot communicating to another robot, “I saw a rabbit,” they could just transmit a recording of what they saw. Like humans, robots will have to model reality in their heads. Their umwelt will create a sensorium they interact with. Their perception of now, like ours, will be slightly delayed.

However, they could recreate the past by playing a recording that filled their sensorium with old data recordings. The conscious experience would be indistinguishable from using current data. And if they wanted, they could generate data that speculated on the future.

Evidently, all beings, biological or cybernetic, must experience reality as a recreation in their minds. In other words, no entity sees reality directly. We all interact with it in a recreation.

Looking at things this way makes me wonder about consuming fiction. We’re already two layers deep in artificial reality. The first is our sensorium/umwelt, which we feel is reality. And the second is language, which we think explains reality, but doesn’t. Fiction just adds another layer of delusion. Mimetic fiction tries to describe reality, but fantasy and science fiction add yet another layer of delusion.

Humans who practice Zen Buddhism try to tune out all the illusions. However, they talk about a higher state of consciousness called enlightenment. Is that just looking at reality without delusion, or is it a new way of perceiving reality?

Humans claim we are the crown of creation because our minds elevate us over the animals, but is intelligence or consciousness really superior?

We apparently exist in a reality that is constantly evolving. Will consciousness be something reality tries and then abandons? Will robots with artificial intelligence become the next stage in this evolutionary process?

If we’re a failure, why copy us? Shouldn’t we build robots that are superior to us? Right now, AI is created by modeling the processes of our brains. Maybe we should rethink that. But if we build robots that have a higher state of consciousness, couldn’t we also reengineer our brains and create Human Mind 2.0?

What would that involve? We’d have to overcome the limitations of language. We’d also have to find ways to eliminate delusions and hallucinations. Can we consciously choose to do those things?

JWH