This article was published in The Textbook Letter for March-April 2000.
It accompanied a review of Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum,
a book in which Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes advanced a scheme
for converting America's public schools into religious-indoctrination centers.

Fostering Fundamentalism

William J. Bennetta

I haven't been able to check those allegations, for Nord and Haynes haven't identified the two texts. However, I have examined the treatment of Jesus and of early Christianity in four world-history textbooks that were being sold to schools at the time when Taking Religion Seriously was written. The four texts are the 1994 version of Glencoe's World History: The Human Experience, the 1995 version of Glencoe's Human Heritage: A World History, the 1997 version of Prentice Hall World History: Connections to Today and the 1997 version of McDougal Littell's Heath World History: Perspectives on the Past [see note 1, below]. My major findings are these:

• In every text, Jesus commands much more space than Eleanor of Aquitaine does.

• In The Human Experience, in Prentice Hall World History and in Heath World History, the material about Jesus is concentrated in one place while references to Stalin are scattered through several chapters -- and as a result, the quantity of space given to Stalin cannot be compared directly with the quantity given to Jesus. In Human Heritage, Stalin appears in only one passage, and that passage occupies half of page 611 and half of page 612. In the same textbook, material about Jesus fills all of page 246, part of page 247, all of page 248, and half of page 249.

• In every text, the material about Jesus has been contrived to deny history, to deny historical scholarship, and to conceal everything that scholars have deduced about Jesus and about the origins of Christian scripture. In every text, the material about Jesus serves to only to foster fundamentalism and fundamentalist beliefs.

This last point is the most important, by far, and it deserves some elaboration.

In all four of the textbooks that I have inspected, the Jesus of history is conflated with the Jesus of legend. The Jesus of history (the "historical Jesus," as New Testament scholars often call him) is a man who evidently lived in Palestine some 2,000 years ago. The Jesus of legend is a figure who appears in the four canonized gospels of the New Testament, in various other gospels as well, and in subsidiary stories and folktales that are too profuse to count. The distinction between the historical Jesus and the legendary Jesus pervades New Testament scholarship, but the writers of The Human Experience, of Human Heritage, of Prentice Hall World History and of Heath World History have hidden it. They have depicted the legendary Jesus as a real person, they have presented New Testament tales as matters of fact, and they have ignored more than a century's worth of scholarly research. Here is more information about their deceptive maneuvers:

• The writers of Human Heritage present pseudohistorical tales and claims about Jesus without citing any sources -- they don't disclose that they have taken their "history" from some of the New Testament gospels. The writers of The Human Experience and Heath World History cite the New Testament, and the writers of Prentice Hall World History cite "the Gospels," but they don't provide any information about how the New Testament or its gospels originated. Moreover, none of these three books furnishes any information about any of the other gospels -- the gospels that haven't been canonized. All three books lead students to believe that the canonical gospels are the only ones that ever have existed.

• To create the impression that the New Testament's gospels are accurate accounts of real events, the writers of Heath World History and Prentice Hall World History use deceptive words and phrases. In Heath World History, for example, students read that Jesus's most famous sermon was "recorded" in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This implies that the Gospel of St. Matthew is a first-hand report and a primary source. In truth, it is no such thing.

• To strengthen the impression that New Testament tales are reliable reports of real happenings, the writers of Heath World History and Prentice Hall World History lead students to imagine that the New Testament is internally coherent and consistent. For example, the writers of Heath World History claim that "the story of Jesus' life" comes primarily from the four canonical gospels: The writers thus imply that the New Testament is a unitary document from which a single story ("the" story) of Jesus can be extracted. That implication is false. (The canonical gospels can't be fused into a single story, because the canonical gospels sometimes contradict each other outright.) In the same way, the writers of Heath World History tell students that "According to the Gospels, Jesus' follower Mary Magdalene visited Jesus' tomb [two days after he had died] and found his body gone." That is a lie. Among the canonized gospels, only the Gospel of St. John ascribes the discovery of the empty tomb to one person. (The other canonized gospels tell contradictory stories [note 2] in which the discovery of the empty tomb is attributed to two persons or more.) A similar lie appears in Prentice Hall World History -- students read that "According to the Gospels, an angel had told Jesus' mother, Mary, that she would give birth to the messiah." Here's the truth: Among the canonical gospels, only the Gospel of St. Luke has a story in which an angel appears to Mary, tells her she will be impregnated supernaturally, and tells her she will bear a son who will be a "holy thing." There is no analogous narrative in the Gospel of St. Mark or the Gospel of St. John. The Gospel of St. Matthew has a story about an angelic annunciation, but it is radically different from the story in Luke. In Matthew, Mary is already pregnant when the angel appears, and the angel delivers his news not to Mary but to her husband.

• The belief that Jesus was born in Bethlehem appears in three textbooks, but it never is analyzed. In Human Heritage and in Prentice Hall World History, it is simply presented as if it were a fact! In Heath World History, it is blurred by a lie: "According to the Gospels, Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem . . . ." (In truth, only two gospels say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and only the Gospel of St. Luke tries to explain why Jesus's parents were in Bethlehem at the time. The ostensible explanation is fanciful and anachronistic.)

• The writers of all four texts have refused even to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls, let alone providing any discussion of what the Scrolls may tell us about the two Jesuses.

I suspect that Nord and Haynes would have liked these texts and would have been pleased to see how the writers have spurned history in favor of religious indoctrination.

Notes

1. Heath World History was originally published by D.C. Heath and Company. [return to text]

2. See Matthew 28, Mark 16, and Luke 24. [return to text]

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.

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