by Niall Gooch, The Critic
Alice Roberts distorts her material by an excessive and indiscriminately applied hermeneutic of suspicion
Towards the end of Domination, Alice Roberts describes the Apostle Paul as “anti-intellectual”, based on her reading of the First Letter to the Corinthians and its insistence that Christ has rendered foolish the wisdom of this world.
This is a daring assessment of a man who received a rabbinical training amongst the vibrant intellectual culture of the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora, debated all comers in the forums of various Greek cities, and effectively defended himself in Roman courts, as well as writing the book of Romans, a densely argued and innovative explication of Christian moral theology.
But perhaps Roberts — a multi-talented TV presenter, scientist and anatomist, who has written a book about the cultural and political evolution of the late Roman Empire — is making the point that people can be highly accomplished in certain domains, and still produce extremely flawed work in another.
The first quarter of the book is genuinely fascinating: a well-informed survey of recent archaeological discoveries at early medieval sites in the west of the British Isles. The already knowledgeable reader might learn a good deal about the cultural and commercial links between Wales, the West Country and north-west France in the 4th to 6th centuries. But even in this section an anti-Christian polemical edge creeps in, and that soon becomes the dominant tone.