The Modern Cult of Life and the Taboo of Death

The Modern Cult of Life and the Taboo of Death

I’ve entitled this piece, “The Cult of Life” as a contrast with ancient Malta which had a “Cult of Death”.

Malta’s Cult of Death

This is important because the “Cult of Death” was an extreme. As Malta suffered environmental degradation in ancient times, most particularly in drought and a diminished water supply, the people turned inward towards their ancestors, and a “Death Cult” which not only revered the dead, but increasingly built more elaborate architecture became a way of ignoring the issues of their present, leading to a virtual extinction of that population.

Pollen records and soil studies reveal that during the final centuries of the temple period, the islands suffered severe progressive deforestation and catastrophic soil erosion. This ecological strain culminated around 2500 BC during a broader Mediterranean climatic downturn which brought severe, prolonged drought. As crops failed, water supplies dwindled, and infant mortality spiked, the Temple People did not pivot to new agricultural techniques or seek outward migration. Instead, they doubled down on their monumental religion.

Building more elaborate tombs and temples offered a false sense of control over an uncontrollable environment. The architecture of death became an expensive, resource-heavy shield used to ignore the structural rot of the present

Ancient Malta handled the fear of environmental collapse by pretending the dead could fix it, but our society handles the fear of death by pretending it isn't happening. For me, at my age, I see death looming, and every year extra is a gift. But for many, death is something blocked off, kept at bay, and life is for the moment, and the moment alone.

People Die Elsewhere

And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits please
There's five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow
And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billie Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

(Ode to Billie Joe, song by Bobbie Gentry)

Sociologists and anthropologists often refer to the change which I have witnessed in my own lifetime as the "medicalisation and sanitization of death."

Here I want to explore how this has come about, and how it has completely transformed our relationship with dying, moving us from communal grieving to automated administration.

Historically, death was domestic. People died at home, and the "parlour" or living room was literally where the corpse was laid out for the community to visit (before the funeral industry rebranded these spaces as "funeral parlours").

Even now, with funeral parlours, there is an opportunity to visit an open coffin, though few do it. I have only ever done so once, when my beloved partner Annie died suddenly, and I wished to see her dead body one last time before her cremation. I had seen her dead before, on a bed in the hospital. I was profoundly affected by grief, and that is why I did so. But when my father died, I felt no such impulse, and yet I also wanted to write a tribute for the service which also mourned and grieved.

But for the most part, the dead that we know are elderly. The explosion of care homes and specialized hospital wards has in some ways privatized the end of life. We can visit, some do, some do not. They fear seeing in the dementia or the other signs of age and decay, their own future selves reflected back.

So death in such circumstances has becomes professionalized, clinical event managed by doctors and nurses, rather than a domestic event managed by family. By removing the dying from the household, society successfully managed to look away.

The Rise of "Direct Cremation" and Unattended Funerals

I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings (yeah, yeah)
I have no rival, no man can be my equal
Take me to the future of your world

(Queen, Princes of the Universe)

The "simple cremation" or direct cremation represents the ultimate optimization of this sanitization. Popularized significantly in recent years (and accelerated by the pandemic), direct cremation involves collecting the deceased, cremating them without a viewing or service, and returning the ashes in a box.

While financially efficient and low-stress, it strips away the collective "speed bump" that a funeral forces upon a community. Without a service, there is no designated time or place where people must stop their routines, stand in a room together, and confront the fact that someone is gone. Instead the advertisements promote using the money in a more beneficial way – have a party!

It reduces the messy, emotional climax of a human life to a logistical transaction. The ashes can be interned later, and a service or sorts can take place when that occurs. But internments are usually private family occasions, rather than collective mourning of a funeral. This is not mentioned in the advertisement, which concentrates more on how the money can be better spent having that party!

Traditional funerals are not just for the immediate family; they are a public acknowledgement of a loss. They draw in extended family, neighbours, old colleagues, and friends who also need to process the death. When the initial event is entirely private and unattended, that collective space for shared grief vanishes.

The promise of a future party sounds appealing in an advert, but when the time comes, families are often still deep in raw grief. Organising an upbeat event can feel emotionally jarring or overwhelming. Consequently, many of these promised celebrations simply never happen, leaving a lingering sense of unaddressed closure.

Direct cremation works perfectly for families who actively want to separate the disposition of the body from the memorialisation. However, when it is chosen purely based on clever corporate marketing or a desire to keep things "tidy," the emotional cost to those left behind can be heavy. Grief is messy, and centuries of human history show that communal rituals exist precisely because we need them to navigate that emotional climax.

The Secularization of Language and Platitudes

I'll fly a star ship across the universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again and again and again
And again and again and again

(Highwayman, written by Jimmy Webb)

When traditional religious frameworks fell away, they took with them a vocabulary that, whatever one’s beliefs, was built to handle immense weight. Words like sin, redemption, mourning, dust to dust, and the soul had gravity.

Today’s secular, humanist approach often insists on a "celebration of life" rather than a funeral. While celebrating a life is beautiful, doing so exclusively can aggressively crowd out room for active, heavy grief.

The language of death is also sanitised. Platitudes replace the strong words of faith. We have phrases such as "they live on in our memories," "they are stargazing now," or "they’ve gained their wings". These act as linguistic shock absorbers. They buffer us against the stark, cold reality of absolute absence. They transform a physical, permanent loss into a soft, psychological sentiment.

The Fear of the "Messy"

Miss Marple: She wanted a normal woman's life. She wanted reality. You returned her to fairyland...
Miss Bradbury-Scott: ...and now...
Miss Marple: And now? She's safe now from any unsuitable princes. Sleeping Beauty Lies in the ruins... ...and flowers grow round her.
Miss Bradbury-Scott: Yes...yes.
Miss Marple: No, Miss Bradbury-Scott, she's a rotted corpse and there is no one to kiss her awake.

(Agatha Christie, Nemesis)

We live in an era obsessed with wellness, optimization, and life extension. In a culture that treats aging as a disease to be cured and bodies as biological machines to be optimized, death represents the ultimate systemic failure. Because we cannot optimize it, we hide it. The open coffin, the vigil, the viewing of the body are all part of the ritual of death which these forced people to look at a corpse and realize that they, too, are biological and temporary.

By removing the body entirely from the modern grieving process, we have managed to turn death into an abstract concept rather than a physical reality.

Hiding the body allows a wellness-obsessed society to maintain its delusion of control. If we don’t have to look at the physical failure of our biological optimization, we can pretend that death is something we can outmaneuver, delay indefinitely, or manage quietly without disrupting the machinery of daily life.

By choosing total convenience and "no fuss," we aren't just saving money or avoiding logistical hassle; we are actively shielding ourselves from the very thing that gives life its urgency and gravity: its absolute transience.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O thou who changest not, abide with me.

(Abide with Me, Hymn, Henry Lyte)

More Short Stories: Now thank we all our God

Now thank we all our God

In the closing years of the Thirty Years' War, the Saxon town of Eilenburg lay exhausted beneath the weight of suffering. Refugees crowded its narrow streets, having fled villages and farms devastated by soldiers who had marched across Germany for a generation. Scarcity was everywhere. Harvests had failed, prices had risen beyond the means of ordinary people, and disease spread rapidly among a population already weakened by hunger.

At the centre of this troubled town stood Martin Rinckart, Lutheran pastor of St Nicholas Church. Born in 1586, he had never imagined that his ministry would be shaped by such relentless tragedy. Yet year after year he had watched war draw ever closer until it seemed there was scarcely a family in Eilenburg untouched by grief.

Yet he refused to give into despair. In the midst of the darkness, God remained, God with the suffering, still there in the small acts of compassion from those his grace had touched. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, unseen yet present, they brought countless gifts of love. Everyone who shared their own meagre rations, who held hands and comforted the dying, who prayed for peace was a cause of thanksgiving as they reached out with heart and hands and voices.

Now thank we all our God
with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done,
in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers' arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.

From the window of the parsonage, Rinckart could see the rooftops stretching towards the river. Beyond them lay a landscape scarred by conflict, but it was the burdens within the town that weighed most heavily upon him. Thousands had sought refuge behind Eilenburg's walls, hoping to find safety from marauding armies. Instead, overcrowding had helped to bring plague and famine to their doors. Many days began and ended with funerals.

The Eilenburg Church Death Registers were maintained directly by the pastor and reached a peak in 1637 when Rinckart was forced to log 40 to 50 funerals a day. Plague stalked the streets, thousands of names were recorded, so many that they had to be buried in mass graves.

The church bells tolled so often that their sound seemed woven into the fabric of daily life. Where several ministers had once served the town, Rinckart increasingly found himself carrying the responsibility almost alone, comforting the bereaved, caring for the sick, and committing the dead to God's mercy.

Each of the city’s four pastors held ten or more funerals a day. One fled out of fear. One by one, the others died, and Rinckart buried them. Then his own dear wife was taken ill and died of the plague. He preached her funeral sermon just two days later, on May 10, 1637. For his sermon text, he chose Psalm 77, a psalm deeply rooted in agonizing grief and questioning God, which begins "I cry aloud to God... Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favour again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever?"

But that was not the final word, he knew well. God remained faithful, even beyond death, his promises a sure and certain guide for all who were perplexed by so much suffering and loss, even as he himself mourned one so dear to him. Out of that conviction grew words that would sustain generations yet unborn.

O may this bounteous God
through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts
and blessed peace to cheer us,
to keep us in his grace,
and guide us when perplexed,
and free us from all ills
of this world in the next.

Each week seemed darker than the last. Yet even amid such hardship, moments of grace still shone through the gloom. The famine following the 1637 plague was so extreme that historical records note thirty or forty people could be seen openly fighting in Eilenburg’s streets for a dead cat or crow. In response to this utter destitution, Rinckart systematically gave away virtually everything he owned. He divided his household's own meagre food rations to feed his starving neighbours, eventually mortgaging his future pastoral income to purchase basic provisions and clothing for the city's poorest refugees

By the late 1640s, over 8,000 citizens had died, hundreds of homes were completely destroyed, and the town council was reduced to just three surviving members. The population had lost almost every physical possession to plundering soldiers.

The Swedish army surrounded Eilenburg and demanded an unpayable, crushing ransom of 30,000 florins. Knowing the citizens had absolutely nothing left, Rinckart gathered his desperate congregation out in the open. He famously called out to them: “Come, my children, we can find no hearing, no mercy with men; let us take refuge with God.” The entire crowd fell to their knees in fervent prayer and began singing the hymn “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” (“When in the Hour of Utmost Need”)

Moved by the profound, humble display of faith amidst ruin, the Swedish commander relented and drastically lowered the levy.

One evening Rinckart returned home after another day of pastoral duties. The meal set before his family was modest, but they received it with gratitude. As they sat together, one of his daughters asked whether peace would ever come again to Germany. For a moment he was silent.

No one could know when the war would end. Too many treaties had failed, and too many promises had been broken. Yet as he looked around the table, seeing the faces of those he loved gathered safely beside him, he was reminded that God's gifts were not measured only in prosperity and success. They could also be found in perseverance, in fellowship, and in the quiet courage that carried people through adversity, strengthened by the Holy Spirit.

Later that night, after the household had retired to bed, Rinckart remained by the light of a single candle. Outside, the wind moved through the darkened streets of Eilenburg. Within the room, he took up his pen, shaping words that would become one of Christianity's most enduring hymns of thanksgiving.

"Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices."

When he finally laid down his pen, the suffering around him had not vanished. The war still raged, and Eilenburg's trials were not yet over. Nevertheless, Martin Rinckart had given the Church a hymn that would outlive both the conflict and the century that produced it.

For generations to come, Christians would sing his words in times of celebration and in seasons of hardship, finding in them the same conviction that had sustained their author: that even in the darkest chapters of history, God's grace remains present, and his blessings continue to accompany his people, yesterday, today, and for evermore.

It would be translated into English in 1858 by Catherine Winkworth as “Now Thank We All Our God.” She believed historic German chorales offered profound spiritual resilience to comfort and strengthen English Christians facing modern suffering.

She lived in Manchester, seeing the industrial boom, but the dark side of that prosperity, with the devastating poverty, gruelling factory conditions, and overcrowding. Following that came the ravages of cholera outbreaks in cities, where there was a climate of grief and anxiety that mirrored the plague-ridden Germany of Martin Rinckart.

Living through the aftermath of the First World War and the rise of Nazi Germany, the theologian Karl Barth explicitly named "Now Thank We All Our God" (Nun danket alle Gott) as his favourite hymn.

To Barth, sin and suffering are real, but they are ultimately defeated by the reality of God's "Yes" to humanity. Just as the hymn's original author Martin Rinckart penned these words of praise while burying dozens of plague victims a day during the Thirty Years' War, Barth lived through the horrors of World War I and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Barth championed the hymn because it models a radical, defiant faith: it chooses to boldly proclaim "Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices" even when the world around us is in absolute chaos. It would be a hymn of gratitude sung at his funeral.

Across centuries marked by plague, poverty, war and tyranny, each generation discovered anew the truth Rinckart had expressed in song: gratitude is not the denial of suffering, but an act of faith that God's grace is greater than it.

All praise and thanks to God
the Father now be given,
the Son and Spirit blest,
who reign in highest heaven
the one eternal God,
whom heaven and earth adore;
for thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.

Samhain Journey

I wanted to write something with a reflective, almost philosophical quality, blending Samhain imagery with Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and existence in a new kind of existence, a renewal or new creation. Pythagoras provides an unexpected but effective bridge from change to permanence through mathematical and musical patterns. 

I wanted to show how identity is pattern rather than substance. The water changes but the waterfall remains; notes pass away but the melody survives; the body dies but something of the self continues. That is a very Pythagorean way of approaching the mystery of death, and it fits the Samhain theme of crossing boundaries between worlds.

Samhain Journey

Death leaves like a bird in flight
A soul departing from body cold
Drawn over towards a shining light
Time of change for young or old

The waterfall changes every day
And yet is looks the same as well
Here is a mystery of death’s way
Transmigration’s ancient spell

Pythagoras saw numbers strange
And harmonies in musical note
Patterns endure with every change
The mystery in the song he wrote

Journey’s end is a new beginning
A phoenix reborn in fire singing

Stamps for Le Centenaire de La Société Jersiaise (1973)

Stamps for Le Centenaire de La Société Jersiaise (1973)

La Société Jersiaise exists to preserve and to record as much as possible of Jersey's archaeology, history and natural history. With a membership now approaching 2,000, it celebrates its centenary in January 1973. In St. Helier, it has a large Museum containing many exhibits, an art gallery and a well stocked library which is available to students and to Members of La Société. Excursions to places of archaeological and historical interest and lectures for Members are also arranged. La Société owns La Hougue Bie, one of the finest Neolithic Tombs in Western Europe which is surmounted by two medieval chapels and whose grounds contain an Agricultural Museum and also one relating to the German Occupation of the Island 1940-1945.

2 ½ p stamp - Jersey Silver Wine Cup and Christening Cup

Jersey made silver carries no hall mark, date stamp or sovereign's head. It generally shows a maker's mark, though not always, usually incorporating his initials. Most of it was made in the eighteenth century, and up to about 1820, and it now has great rarity value in world markets.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1695, which caused the flight from France of hundreds of thousands of French Protestants in search of religious toleration, brought many silversmiths to Jersey and Guernsey, and they were mainly the makers of our fine Island silver.

The wine cup shown is of a type designed for use in Church, but which also appeared in private houses. The so-called christening cup is of a pattern unique to Jersey.

3p stamp - Gold Torque

The gold torque of Jersey is among the finest found in the British Isles, second only to the great torque of Tara in Ireland. It is 141 cm, or 4' 72" long, with a diameter of 1.5 cm, and weighs 24 ozs. (Troy). It is of nearly pure gold, cruciform and twisted in cross section. When found it was loosely coiled, and it may have been worn in this form, and was probably the ceremonial belt or collar of a Bronze Age Chief, in about 1,000 B.C. It was dug up in St. Helier in 1 889 when foundations for a house were being made. It is unlikely that it was made in Jersey.

7 ½ p stamp - Royal Seal of Charles II

Charles I was executed on January 30th 1649, the news being confirmed in Jersey on February 17th. Sir George de Carteret, Bailiff and Lieutenant-Governor, immediately ordered that Charles II be proclaimed King. The proclamation, signed by twenty-five Jerseymen, was read in the Market Place.

Later that year, Charles II, recognised as King only in Jersey, visited Elizabeth Castle, and whilst there he signed various documents, some carrying his Great Seal, examples of which are almost unknown outside Jersey at this date. The impression shown is on a contract selling to Helier de Carteret the fief "qui fut a l'Eveque d'Avranches". This fief, which is land on which the Seigneur could claim certain rights and dues, is situated in the parishes of Trinity and St. Mary.

It is interesting to know that the Charles II Royal Seal bears the date 1648 although Charles I was executed in January 1649. This is because until 1751 when it was changed by Act of Parliament to January 1st the year in both England and Jersey began on March 25th. The actual proclamation of Charles II in Jersey is dated 1648.

9p stamp - Armorican Bronze Coins

Gauls fleeing from the advancing Romans in Armorica (Brittany) in about 55 B.C. brought their wealth in coins and buried it in Jersey, usually on high ground. Several hoards have been dug up on widely dispersed sites, numbering in all many thousand coins. Most of them are made of bronze with some incidental silver content, some of silver and some of gold. All carry on the obverse an impressionistic profile of the head of Apollo, as derived from the gold stater of Philip of Macedon.

The reverse shows various treatments of a winged victory, chariot and charioteer, from the reverse of the same gold stater.

Technical Details

Printed on white unwatermarked paper with coloured silk fibres and special gumming for tropical climates by the photogravure process of Courvoisiers, La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland. Stamp size: the format will be 26 mm by 37.5 mm and the perforation size 112 by 114. Printed in sheets of 50, 5 stamps per row and 10 rows. Artwork designs produced by Gordon Drummond of Bognor Regis.

Printed at The House of Questa, London, England.

 

Guernsey in 1974 – Part 6

Guernsey in 1974 – Part 6

This is an extract from Peter Haining’s guide book of 1974, which is as much interest today for the historian as to the tourist, as many of the places and industries described in his book have long vanished. Please do not take it as a current guide. Modern day differences are also given in italics.

Bays for bathing – Part 2

Petit Bot: A very popular and picturesque beach which has two beautiful, wooded valleys converging almost on its beach. There are three actual roads to the shore which provide a variety of views, but for those in a hurry there is a Mini-bus service from the main bus route. The beach is pebbly at full tide, but as this recedes sandy areas are revealed. Bathing is excellent. The main “‘sight”’ in the area is on the Route de la Fallaise—an old farmhouse whose occupiers had the job of keeping watch for the approach of pirates. On the shore is a tearoom, the Old Mill and floats and deck chairs for hire. For the explorer there is the unusually shaped cavern known as “Dog Cave”.

Today, standard vehicular access is essentially via narrow, winding lanes descending into the valley. To manage traffic in the summer, the main descent route operates on a strict one-way system. Furthermore, there is no dedicated mini-bus service to the shore. Visitors using public transit must take standard Guernsey bus routes (such as routes 91, 92, 93, 94, or 95), exit at the main road stop at La Bourg or near the Forest Stores, and walk approximately 1.5 km down the steep hill to the beach.

The Petit Bôt Tea Room still operates right by the slipway and serves as a popular stop for drinks, ice cream, and light lunches. It occupies a building with deep historic roots as a former mill (remnants of the old stream and waterwheel structure can still be seen nearby). However, commercial hires for beach floats and deck chairs are no longer standard operational facilities on the shore; modern visitors generally bring their own gear or rent paddleboards/kayaks during peak summer operations.

Portelet: This is a typical fisherman’s harbour, but it also has a stretch of sand which provides good bathing for all including the very young. The rocks in the cove are ideal for the pool fisherman. The harbour itself is not very old and has never been much used except by a few small boats and by seamen seeking that Channel Island delicacy, the ormer. The Hanois Lighthouse on Petit Hanois is just round the coast from Portelet and when erected in 1862 prevented many ships from going to their doom—as they had in the past—on the treacherous rocks around Pleinmont Point. Among those who praised the building of the lighthouse was Victor Hugo who mentions it at some length in Toilers of the Sea.

This is completely true. During his 15-year exile on Guernsey, Victor Hugo was a passionate campaigner for social and maritime safety. He publicly advocated for the construction of Les Hanois Lighthouse to stop the frequent shipwrecks. He heavily featured the lighthouse, Pleinmont, and the treacherous reefs in his 1866 novel Toilers of the Sea (Les Travailleurs de la mer), even using the Hanois rocks as a focal setting for a deliberate shipwreck plot point in the book.

Rocquaine Bay: A wide sweep of bay liberally scattered with rocks which make bathing only really safe when the tide is in. The road runs along the shore and there are many suitable spots for parking and numerous cafes. Because much of the land is low-lying, dykes have been built and during the winter months these take a tremendous pounding from the westerly gales. Just off Les Paysans Road there is an interesting 12-foot-high pillar of granite called la Longue Roque. It is in fact and ancient menhir and there is a legend that it is frequented by fairies. Until quite recently, the local people burned a Guy at its base every November 5th. Witchcraft is also associated with the bay, and the centre for this was the white tower of Fort Grey which stands on its own lonely promontory. The area is also dotted with gun sites built by the Germans during their occupation.

Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church: A Comment

Robin Gill and John Craven of The Centre for Anglican History and Theology at the Universities of Kent and Christ Church Canterbury have published this report:

Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church: A Report on the Church of England

I think one of the key statements is this:

"In the 21st century dioceses in the Church of England almost doubled their number of administrators (including some 220 on safeguarding alone), while the number of parish clergy almost halved, and churchgoing continued to decline."

But the same trend can be seen in the public sector, with the growth of administrative roles compared to front-line staff:

Economists and public policy experts point to several systemic drivers that mimic the trends seen in the Church of England. 

(1) Modern governments face immense regulatory, legal, and risk-management pressures. Just as the Church added roughly 220 roles dedicated strictly to safeguarding, public sector agencies must continuously hire staff for compliance, equity, audit, health and safety, and data protection (e.g., GDPR)

(2) In what researchers call the “New Public Bureaucracy,” internal organizational changes frequently concentrate new hiring in advisory, policymaking, and accountability-facing functions. Frontline workers (like teachers, nurses, or police officers) are increasingly managed by expanding layers of coordinators and corporate planners

How can this be changed?

Church governing bodies (such as the Church of England’s General Synod) can pass legislation that legally caps the percentage of church income that can be spent on central diocesan staff, human resources, and non-parochial officers. By enforcing an institutional “frontline-first” spending ratio, money is legally protected for local rectories, curates, and neighborhood outreach programs.

Advocacy groups like Save the Parish point out that the Church of England effectively replicates its legal, financial, HR, and safeguarding structures 42 times over—once for each individual diocese. This duplication creates a massive administrative overhead, costing an aggregate of over £150 million annually across the dioceses.

Instead of 42 separate HR payroll systems, 42 IT infrastructures, and 42 distinct legal teams, the Church could operate 4 or 5 regional administrative hubs. The savings could be instantly redirected toward funding frontline parish priests.

Proofs and Refutations in Historical Jesus Research – Part 5

Proofs and Refutations in Historical Jesus Research – Part 5

Dale Allison Jr.

The evolution of the "later" Dale Allison Jr. ,crystallized in books like Constructing Jesus (2010), The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (2009), and his culmination of thoughts in Interpreting Jesus (2025), presents the most methodologically honest journey in the field

If early Allison was a strict, hyper-focused textual surgeon defending Albert Schweitzer’s apocalyptic Jesus, the later Allison has stepped back to look at the entire landscape through the lens of cognitive science, psychology, and cross-cultural anthropology.

A Lakatosian critic looking at the later Dale Allison would point to three key transformations that define his modern framework:

The Dynamic "Lemma-Incorporation" of Cognitive Psychology

Early in his career, Allison used traditional text-critical tools to test verses. But then he did something very un-academic: he aggressively looked at outside fields to test his own assumptions. He immersed himself in the scientific study of human memory, eye-witness testimonies, and trauma psychology.

Instead of abandoning his historical project when memory studies proved that humans constantly distort details, Allison used lemma-incorporation to completely redesign his research blueprint:

• The New Blueprint: He conceded that the Gospels are full of "made-believe" details, misremembered sequences, and altered quotes. But instead of falling into the ultra-literary camp’s view that it’s all a fictional riddle, he argued that human memory is highly reliable at preserving the "gist" or the broad impression of an impactful person.

• The Lakatosian Shift: He shifted his "Hard Core" from “We can know exactly what Jesus said on a Tuesday” to “We can know the recurring macro-patterns that run through the whole tradition.” If the "gist" of an apocalyptic prophet, an intense exorcist, and a radical boundary-breaker repeatedly shows up across all layers, that is where history resides.

Moving from "Rigid" to "Contingent" Eschatology

The defining hallmark of early Allison (Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet) was that Jesus confidently predicted a literal, cosmic, supernatural end to history within his generation.

When confronted with various Gospel texts where Jesus talks about the Kingdom growing slowly like a seed, or implying an indefinite delay, early Allison tended to "monster-bar" those texts as late fabrications by a disappointed church trying to cope with the delay

In Interpreting Jesus (2025), later Allison elegantly adjusted his "protective belt" by introducing "contingent eschatology":

• He realized that 1st-century Jewish prophets didn't always operate with fixed, robotic timelines.

• He argued that Jesus initially expected an immediate cosmic climax, but when Israel largely rejected his message, Jesus’s own expectations modified over time. He began to foresee a tragic interim period where he would have to suffer and die before the final climax arrived. By moving from rigid dogmatism to a fluid, evolving human psychology for Jesus, his theory became vastly more realistic and harder to falsify.

Radical Cross-Cultural Heuristics

Later Allison has largely broken out of the insular sandbox of normal biblical studies. To test if his portrait of Jesus makes sense, he uses a cross-cultural comparative method. He stacks Jesus up against documented prophetic and millenarian movements from across modern history—Native American ghost dancers, Sudanese prophets, and charismatic millenarian groups.

A Lakatosian critic would praise this as a highly progressive move. Instead of keeping Jesus trapped in an academic museum, Allison uses real-world anthropological data to show that when human groups are gripped by intense apocalyptic expectations, they behave exactly like the early Jesus movement did: they abandon families, ditch economic security, practice radical asceticism, and experience shared visionary phenomena.

A Lakatosian critic would say that Dale Allison has built the most intellectually bulletproof and self-aware research program in the field today.

Unlike N.T. Wright, who uses Lakatosian defenses to ensure history always perfectly matches his orthodox faith, and unlike Walsh and Mills, who use special pleading to turn a messy oral text into an elite literary game, later Allison operates with a brutal, refreshing humility. He explicitly states that his reconstructions are just a "hypothesis" and a "thought experiment". 

By building fallibility, memory decay, and human psychological shifts directly into the core of his theory, he has created a model of the historical Jesus that is incredibly resilient, deeply human, and completely unaligned with any modern political or theological agenda.

Next week:

An Outlier: C.S. Lewis