The makers of Seaspiracy and Cowspiracy are back. The offer is another profoundly disturbing film detailing the industrial abuse of our animal kin. Expect more horrific carelessness and exploitation on a mass scale. 

Only this time, Kip Andersen and Kameron Waters not only go global but look back in time. “This is plausibly the most significant new discovery about Jesus Christ, in the last 2,000 years,” says the breathless blurb.

Which is a shame. 

[Spoiler alert - don't read further if you don't want to know what has supposedly been suppressed for 2000 years...]

I consider 8 claims leading to the big reveal, which in a nutshell is that Jesus died as a result of vegetarian activism:
1. When Jesus cleansed the Temple, he didn't say "den of thieves" but "den of violence", highlighting the holy site turned slaughterhouse.
2. That incident led directly to his death because he upset the authorities.
3. Jesus wasn't from Nazareth because Nazareth didn't exist.
4. Instead, Jesus was a Nazarene, part of a vegetarian sect.
5. The stories of Jesus eating fish in the gospels are misleading.
6. Jesus was into pythagorean mysticism, hence the reference to 153 fish.
7. Jesus's brother, James, was a vegetarian.
8. The church, and Paul in particular, suppressed early Christian vegetarianism.

In short, “the most significant new discovery about Jesus Christ, in the last 2,000 years” is no such thing. Which is actually no surprise. Maybe I should have expected nothing less than fudge and the amplification of pretty much non-existent scandal. Conspiracy sells in a post-Christianising world trying to shake free of its origins, like a rebellious teenager. 

But the mass slaughter at the heart of the documentary matters enormously. Compromised, the message is needlessly weakened.

For more on Mark, and in particular his work on early Christianity and the significance of Jesus using the ideas of Owen Barfield, friend of CS Lewis, see http://www.markvernon.com/consciousness.

For more on Christspiracy see https://www.christspiracy.com