“How did these 12 men, perennially slow on the uptake, manage to turn the teachings of an obscure Galilean Jew into the most widely dispersed religion in history? This is the question Tom Bissell looks to answer, or at least grapple with, in Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve.”
“The other aspect of the book is knottier. In between the sketches of crypts and bearded priests, Bissell carries out a deep, double-backing work of biblical exegesis as he culls the New Testament, early church histories, and countless apocryphal texts for mention of the exploits of the 12 apostles.”
“You can feel him straining in these sections, trying to hold all of these competing accounts together, and it’s strangely affecting. Despite Bissell’s lack of religious belief — or because of it, perhaps — he wants to get this account of Christianity’s origins as right as he can, and his disappointment is palpable as he comes to realize he’ll never wholly succeed.”
“Some of these accounts are new and revelatory, even to readers acquainted with church history. The Thomas Christians of India, for instance, were entirely new to me. This sect traces its lineage back nearly two thousand years to an offshoot of the Syriac church founded by the apostle Thomas. Indeed, when Portuguese merchants first arrived on the subcontinent in the 15th century, they were shocked to discover Indians practicing a form of Christianity that bore a strong resemblance to Arianism, a branch of theology that held unorthodox views about the divinity of Jesus. When the Council of Nicea declared Arianism heretical in 325, they were unaware that Christianity had reached as far as India, and so the Thomas Christians were able to practice their faith more or less unnoticed for a thousand years.”
“It is this unknowable aspect of the religion’s origins — its dark matter, if you will — that animates Bissell’s thinking most strongly, and which he pursues through a welter of primary and secondary sources.”
“I have never wanted proof from religion, finding the drama of belief more thrilling.”
“The story of this journey was told in much greater detail by his walking companion at the time, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, who chronicled their travels in a book called A Sense of Direction in which Bissell figures as a comic foil.”
“I was similarly affected when I made the same pilgrimage in college, during a semester abroad. I knew almost nothing about Saint James and his posthumous journey (having been raised in an atmosphere of ahistorical evangelicalism and educated at an intensely cerebral Reformed institution); uninterested in the finer points of doctrine, I was just happy to be an ignorant pilgrim who showed devotion by simply walking, day after day.”
“At the end of this book about stories of unquestionable meaning, if questionable veracity, Bissell wonders, “What if a story was enough for a thing to be?” Enough? How can anything, or anyone, wish to be more?”