Category Archives: hypocrisy

Return To Sedra

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Here they are, the new Wunderkinds of the Christian circuit: Martin and Millicent Sedra (and a while lot of other Sedras too though I don’t know where they fit in the Great Scheme of Things. The Sedras are the new Wizards of Aus, running a megachurch in Sydney. According to their own press they’re having an impact for Christ around the globe (a pub down the East end.)

34 year old Pastor Martin is from Egypt where he was persecuted for his Christian faith and was forced into growing a beard and wearing expensive designer shades to conceal his identity. Millicent, his wife of almost 8 years, is much younger as you can see in the links but her age is kept secret to avoid any scandal criticism of her being too young to know what she is talking about. Or something. Her videos reveal her to be a young woman who has succeeded in exalting herself to a position of authority and influence while lacking any real experience of life and, indeed, wisdom.

Naturally both Millicent and her husband spout the usual stuff and nonsense about Jesus but also feel qualified to speak about the issues of the day: mental health (demonic); homosexuality (sin); pronouns (‘hell’s language’); women in power (‘Jezebel Spirit’); sex (for hetero-marriage only); Islam (fake. They’re really big on Islam.) Naturally and contrarily given their stance on women in power, Marty and Millie dispute the Bible’s position that a woman should neither hold authority over a man nor preach. After all, taking 1 Timothy 2:12 literally (as they claim they do the rest of the Bible) would prevent Millicent from doing her thing for the Lord and would surely cut off a lucrative revenue stream. The couple announced recently that Millie is pregnant with the couple’s first child. The news was greeted by some acolytes as a tumultuous and spiritually significant event.

The Sedras speak to millions, in stadia and across the Internet and have a massive influence over gullible people’s lives and beliefs. Yet what they are offering is dangerous clap-trap. Their followers worship them as great prophets and God’s agents in what are surely the end times. Jesus is returning soon! Hallelujah!

What is more likely to manifest soon is some controversy or other that even now is lying in wait. How many of the Sedras’ worshippers will then say they knew they were deceivers all along?

Jesus, Jesus and more Jesus

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You find me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Not, fortunately, in the water but on the world’s only ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2. Dennis and I have been in U.S., both in New York and Washington DC, on a diplomatic mission to the White House. Well, a tourist visit anyway. As I dislike flying (a slight understatement) we are sailing home on the ship. It is a much more dignified and pleasurable way to travel.

Our visit left me wondering how you guys over the pond that I currently find myself on, cope. Not with your president (though heaven knows that too) but with the proliferation of evangelical Christians.

While visiting the Washington Monument in DC we had a small book pressed on us by a young boy whose father(?) stood a little way off. The cover suggested it was about America’s 250th. Inside it was the fourth gospel and the letter to the Romans. It ended up in the trash alongside dozens of others.

On the Metro we were treated to songs about Jesus by a small group of musicians who knew a captive audience when they saw one.

Outside the Capitol we were accosted by a young man on an electric scooter who asked as he glided by, ‘Hey guys, do you know God loves you?’ (He didn’t hear our reply. Perhaps just as well.)

I mean, how do you put up with this?

Worse though was my Facebook feed. I know I’ve grumbled about this before, back home in England, when every other post is about Jesus. But in the U.S. it was worse. I would say 9 of every 10 items items were about him. (Fortunately there are fewer now that we’ve put a few nautical miles between us and the Land of the Free.) You can see a small sample of the hundreds of inanities I received up top.

I did venture to put comments on some of them (Dennis says I was just winding up the witless. Someone’s got to). Responses varied, telling me that,

as I didn’t know Jesus I had no right to comment;

I would one day soon be on my knees at His feet (I did tell them this was more than unlikely given the state of my knees);

the Bible doesn’t suggest women shouldn’t be preachers and Jesus doesn’t say Christians shouldn’t pray ostentatiously in public (both, of course, are the case);

homosexuality is a grievous sin (I assured them it was a lot of fun too). Christians shouldn’t attend same-sex weddings (this one was particularly sad as one Christian couple who commented said they wouldn’t be attending their daughter’s wedding to another woman. As result their daughter now wouldn’t take their calls. I advised them to go ahead and attend and that it’d be okay. Loving Christians™ then swarmed in and told me how evil I was for encouraging the couple to endorse sin.) 

I didn’t comment on the numerous posts I was unfortunate enough to receive about Creation, which happened exactly as recorded in Genesis; Noah building his ark and collecting animals to survive a worldwide flood and ‘Evilution’ being Satanic. I was informed too that the resurrection, the Bible as the infallible Word of God and Jesus coming back soon are not ‘up for debate’. I mean what would be the point? Sometimes though the level of ignorance was so staggering and I took it upon myself to mention it maybe once or twice. Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?

Amidst all this, I encountered a couple of new stars in the Christian fundament: Martin and Millicent Sedra, and I’ll share my thoughts on this pair next time.

Lies, Damn Lies and More Lies (Part four of a three part rant)

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I turned 71 last month. I know, I know, I don’t look it. I certainly don’t feel it. I feel no older than I did in my 40s, mentally at least. The body’s a little creakier than in was then. Another change I’ve noticed is how less tolerant I’ve become. I’m intolerant these days of other people’s crap including but not limited to Christians attempts to convince others that their superstition is the real deal, and Jesus will return any time soon. Here are a few more examples of the crap* we’re presented with everyday here in the UK:

  • Mass uncontrolled immigration is good for the country;
  • Digital ID cards for everyone will help control immigration;
  • Science is ‘settled’ about whatever agenda our leaders are promoting;
  • Climate change can be reversed;
  • Net zero is achievable and worth the vast expense it entails;
  • Outlawing the use of air conditioning, underfloor heating, bathroom radiators and tumble dryers will help achieve net zero;
  • We need to return to Christian values;
  • Jesus will never let you down;
  • Islam is a peace-loving religion;
  • Muslims deserve special protections. Jews, Christians, atheists and any number of others don’t;
  • Racism is exhibited only by white people. Other groups are not really capable of it;
  • Social media is the root of all evil;
  • Free speech causes most of society’s problems and must be controlled;
  • Wealth needs to be redistributed to achieve an equal socialist state;
  • When ordinary people object to being told lies they’re ‘far right’ and ‘divisive’. When the Left respond violently in support of the same lies we need to understand their frustrations.
  • The best way to secure peace is to go to war;
  • The NHS provides the best heath care in the world, and it’s free!
  • All cultures are equally valid;
  • Ordinary people know nothing. Elite leaders know best.

Since I reached teenage, I’ve endured six decades of this kind of propaganda. In the last couple of decades I’ve become so much more wary of it. It is all so much spin, manipulation, untruths. My bullshit detector is alerted whenever I hear a politician speak, a Christian apologist spout or the main stream media promote the same old agenda.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know what’s ‘really’ going on, but I do understand why some people resort to their own explanations. They feel that whatever they’re told almost always feels a little ‘off’, doesn’t quite ring true. Invariably and at best it’s half-truths, the available evidence – if you can be bothered to hunt it down – failing to support the narrative.

I’m not interested any more. I – we – have been lied to too many times to accept anything at face value any more. It isn’t unreasonable to call it all out as crap. The onus is on those making the pronouncements to demonstrate they’re right, telling the truth, and not just blind-siding us with more spin and propaganda. We need only call it out for the crap it is. Let them do the work. They won’t of course and there’s not much we can do about that. But we don’t have to go along with it any more.

*I can supply links to all of these or you can Google them for yourselves. The point is they’re all real. 

Sorry For Any Inconvenience (a rant, part three)

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More meaningless phrases that are used unthinkingly. I hate the lot of them!

We are closed today/unable to provide the service you’ve paid for, etc. We apologise for the inconvenience.

The hell you do. You couldn’t care less about what your withdrawal of your service means to your customers or you’d have done everything in your power to prevent it. And to suppose I’m only mildly ‘inconvenienced’ by your slipshod ways, not to mention your glib apology, is to underestimate the trouble you’ve put me to.

‘Your reaction is abuse’. 

Anything remotely assertive is now regarded as abuse. The term has been degraded the extent that those who are genuinely abused – physically, sexually or emotionally – are now on a par with those dealing with a dissatisfied customer in a shop or an obstructive bureaucrat down the phone (assuming you can speak to a real person these days). Of course, it’s best to be calm and civil when trying to resolve a problem, but a little forcefulness is occasionally necessary. These days you’ll have strayed into ‘abuse’ if you make your point with anything other than submissive meekness. As Spectator columnist Mark Mason put it (after I originally drafted this post), a claim of abuse ‘has become a go-to argument of the grievance generation. Express the slightest irritation with them for being irritating and you’re the one in the wrong’. (Is this post abusive? Probably.)

Shit, as in ‘I’ll just collect my shit’ or ‘I need to get my shit together’. The imagery is gross – you do know what shit is, don’t you? – and if you have such low regard for your belongings or your thoughts maybe you should think twice and about telling us about it. There are plenty of other decent and less revolting words for your stuff and your psychological state and to aver them for ‘shit’ is downright lazy

And while I’m having still ranting, let me have a go at the f word. I’m sick to death of it. I do occasionally use it myself, particularly in totally rational disputes with technology, but I get weary of hearing it in snatches of conversation I hear while walking in the street, where every other word is the f-word or one of its derivatives. It is used by parents in the presence of their children and, worse, when addressing them. I deplore its use on TV and in films where it’s added to give more force to dialogue or insight into how a character’s feeling. Any half-decent actor could and should convey emotion or urgency or whatever without the need for superfluous swear words. ‘I want you out of my life, ‘ delivered by a competent actor conveys more personal anguish and naked pain than ‘I want you out of my f***ing life,’ which conveys only anger and reflects the scriptwriter’s societal conditioning that compels him or her to include the f word because that’s what people in the street do. Scriptwriters need to trust their actors far more than they do and cut out the needless profanity. Shakespeare never found the need to include it in any of his 37 plays. ‘Is this a dagger I see before me’ would have been robbed of its power if the bard had seen fit to stick a ‘fucking’ in there somewhere. Likewise, comedians who think a line is made funnier by adding the f word to it; if the line is funny, it’s funny without it. If it’s not funny, adding fuck won’t make it funny. Let’s have less of the f word and more considered writing and genuine funniness.

Rant over.

Newspeak (part two of a rant)

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I’ve been considering the changing meaning of words. I acknowledge that this happens over time: language evolves like everything else. My concern here is the deliberate redefining of words to suit a given (political) agenda. This often underhanded stretching of words to give them new meanings, actually diminishes them and renders them dangerous. 

As part of its definition, Merrian-Webster describes racism as ‘behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster ‘the belief in racial superiority): discrimination, prejudice, or violence against people because of their race.’

Violence, it seems to me, is hardly ever justified. I have detested it since I was a child. There can be no doubt that violence is sometimes motivated by racial hatred, but like all the words I’m dealing with here, racism as an accusation is overused to the point of meaninglessness. While other nations – the Scandinavian countries, the US, Scotland and Wales – proudly fly their national flags practically everywhere, here in the UK it has been deemed to be racist by some on the Left. It’s common for the Ukranian, Palestinian, Scottish, Welsh and LGBT flags to be flown here, why are the English and Union flags now considered to be racist? It might, at a stretch be that they are divisive, but then aren’t all flags? Isn’t that what they’re for, to declare a national identity that is distinct from that of other states? The British flag is no more ‘racist’ than any other. Neither is expressing genuine concern for immigration, which is dismissed by those who’ve failed to control it, as racist. How can it be when those coming into Britain are from a variety of ‘races’, many white and European?

It’s racist, and hateful too, say ‘community leaders’ and white liberals, to object to the treatment of women within Islam, or first-cousin marriage or frequently expressed anti-Semitism. ‘Racism’ in these instances is an attempt to shut down discussion and censure those with legitimate concerns. Similarly, for fear of being considered racist, authorities have failed to investigate (hateful) criminal activities by ethnic minorities. And while it’s become clichéd to say it, criticism of Islam and its practices is not racist: Islam is a religion, not a race, its practitioners drawn from a range of ethnicities. The true meaning of racism has been lost. Those who suffer from it abandoned in the transition of the word into meaninglessness.

My 95 year old mother was in hospital recently. She struggled to understand what some of the nurses were saying to her, either about her condition or treatment or something else. She didn’t know which because, between her deteriorating hearing, the mouth coverings some nurses wore and the accents of those from other ethnicities, she couldn’t understand them. What she couldn’t do, she felt, was say this to them. In Britain today it is regarded as racist to tell someone from another culture you can’t understand them. So she didn’t, nor did she mention the problem to any other of the medical team for fear of being thought racist. This is where we are in today’s Britain.

Advice

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Image sourced here

Good news, everybody. The UK Government has released its ‘advice’ to help us all avoid ‘anti-Muslim hostility’. Thank God we have such intellectual giants as Keir Starmer to advise us on such matters. We must not, it turns out, treat Muslims ‘as a collective group’ with ‘fixed negative characteristics’.

This, it also turns out, is what human beings do with every group that exists, and every group that has ever existed, since the beginning of time. We lump people of comparable beliefs and behaviours together no matter how much each category protests they represent a multitude of nuanced perspectives: Jews, Christians, LGB, Trans, environmentalists, Mormons, atheists, feminists, Rastafarians, teachers, sinners, billionaires, politicians, Americans, journalists, the Right, the Left… They’re all subject to criticism as ‘collective groups’. This is often on the basis of the bad behaviour of a few of their ‘community’, or of a caricature of what a member of these groups is perceived to be (as a gay person, I speak from being on the receiving end of this kind of condemnation). It’s neither fair nor reasonable to do this, I agree, but it is what happens. But now we are ‘advised’ we must not do it of Muslims. Don’t criticise Muslims as a whole just because some of them are inclined to blow people up. Don’t criticise them collectively for the pronouncements of extremist preachers. Don’t even criticise them for the practices of the majority.

Okay. But shouldn’t that also extend to all the other ‘communities’ I’ve mentioned? Yes, and it would in an ideal world. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. While we continue to judge Christians as a whole, on the basis of the hypocrisy of some, LGB people because of the excesses of a few and Jews because of the actions of their state (Muslims and their trendy left-wing supporters do exactly this in the case of Jews), then why can we not judge Muslims similarly? You’d have to ask Starmer that. But don’t expect him to give you a straight answer.

Oh, and how long before this ‘advice’ becomes law? 

Pray With More Urgency

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‘Try Praying’ it says on the back of the buses in the UK. Let’s pray for peace says the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Reverend Sarah Mullalley:

…let us pray and call with renewed urgency for an end to the violence and destruction in the Middle East and the Gulf… May all people of the region receive the peace, justice and freedom they long for.

It’d be nice, wouldn’t it, if the world was at peace. I’m just not sure how praying ‘with renewed urgency’ as Ms Doolally puts it will make much difference. Or praying at all. She might as well beseech her flock to keep happy thoughts uppermost in their minds. The peace she yearns for is not, obviously, for Ukraine and other of the world’s conflict hot-spots. Only a week before the Archbishop beseeched The Lord for an end to (selective) violence and destruction, Muslim terrorists had again massacred Christians in Nigeria. Perhaps the Rev Malarkey didn’t pray urgently or with sufficient renewal because God evidently ignored her pleas. He makes no attempt to rescue even his own people; either that or he’s incapable of doing anything about megalomaniacs and murderous zealots. You’d have thought if he was opposed to us slaughtering each other he’d have put a stop to it already, what with all the urgent prayers down the centuries.

Meanwhile, over on the Dark Side, Pope Leo XIV has been assuring his devotees that God does indeed ‘reject violence’. This surely can’t be the God of the Old Testament who loves a good set-to, can it? Nor the God of the New who supposedly sent his son to be violently executed by the Romans. Nor the God of Revelation who plans to send that same gentle Son to slaughter most of humankind. God’s propensity for ‘violence and destruction’ is renowned and Leonardo has let that Oscar go to his head if he thinks otherwise. After all, any number of his predecessors have rolled up their finest-silk sleeves for a good old holy war, with God on their side of course.

Still, if those posters and the Rev Mullalley think prayer is our best hope, maybe I should try it. That bus isn’t going to get here on its own.

Showing Off

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We interrupt this blogcast to bring you breaking news of shenanigans in the wonderful, wacky world of religion.

There’s been a kerfuffle here these last few days after Muslims gathered in Trafalgar Square to engage in mass prayers (that’s mass as in ‘3,000 men‘, not Mass as in the cannibalistic ritual beloved of Catholics.) This was not well received by many in the capital with a number of politicians on the right questioning whether it was really the Good Thing the Muslim mayor of London (and number one Donald Trump fan), Sadiq Khan, thought it was. Sadiq is himself is a Muslim and was present at the pray-in, taking selfies with his admirer. One politician who thought this wasn’t kosher (am I confusing things here?) was Nigel Farage – Donald’s real number one fan – who suggested that if he were ever to become Prime Minister (there’s a chance), he would ban ‘performative public prayer’ of the sort witnessed in Trafalgar Square.

This seems to me not an unreasonable proposition given the Quran (Surah Ma’oon, 107:4-7) regards ostentatious public prayer gatherings as not quite the done thing:

So woe to those who pray yet are unmindful of their prayers; those who show off…

Naturally, Christians have waded into the controversy, wailing that should Muslims be stopped from enjoying prayer spectaculars, they too might be prevented from doing the same thing. Some fear carol singing and pushing their faith on others who have no interest whatever in hearing it might similarly be prohibited. Of course, banning public prayer would not, unfortunately, include carol singing or proselytising on account of the fact that neither of these two activities are prayer bonanzas in and of themselves.

The authors of the Bible also seemed to think that ‘performative prayer’ is a no-no. As Jesus’ script writers have him say in Matthew 6:5-6:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Let’s not forget that as well as being God incarnate for brainwashed Christians, JC is a prophet in Islam. Both Christians and Muslims are prepared, naturally, to ignore their holy books, their prophets even, when they take to the streets and squares of modern cities ‘to be seen by others’ as they debase themselves in front of imaginary gods. It’s not Nigel Farage who wants to forbid ostentatious public displays of piety. Jesus and Mohammed got there first.

As a post script, can I mention that as an atheist, I find these prayer pantomimes, by whichever brand of the deluded, to be both unnecessary and offensive?

No, I thought not.

Jesus the Great Revolutionary

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According to Matthew and Luke’s gospels, Jesus was a revolutionary. He wanted to see the world turned around, the very meaning of the word revolution. He preached that the world as it was would be destroyed and remade, this time with the social order reversed. Those who had been first in the old order – the rich, the powerful, the cruel – would be made to be the last, while those who were formerly last – the poor, the downtrodden, the lowly, the compassionate – would find themselves in first place. They’d be best in show, the new top dogs and, in ways that really mattered, rich. Meanwhile, those who had really committed themselves to him, his closest followers, would become the rulers with him of the renewed revolutionised order that he envisaged: his Kingdom of God.

How would all this happen? Jesus’ Father in Heaven would soon be sending the Son of Man to set the revolution in motion. This powerful being, who perhaps Jesus envisaged as being none other than himself, would ensure all the unimaginable but necessary changes would be achieved. There would be some violence of course, because you can’t have a revolution without at least a little violence:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (The Prince of Peace himself in Matthew 10:34)

Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew 3:10)

Once the old is done away with and the new order established, there would be something of a socialist utopia on Earth. Everyone would share what they had; each would have his or her needs met by everyone else. Even those who came late to the party would enjoy all the rewards the new Kingdom had to offer (Matthew 20:1-16). There’d have to be some slaughter too of course: the one who advocated loving one’s enemies looked forward to exacting bloody revenge on his:

“But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” (Luke 19:27. See also Revelation)

Except of course, none of this happened. The Son of Man did not emerge from the clouds when Jesus expected him to. He himself did not become the Son of Man, ready to kick-start the great social revolution. Instead, the rich, the powerful and the cruel put an end to Jesus’ revolutionary ideas; they were gaining too much traction among the poor and downtrodden and needed to be quashed. An uprising couldn’t be ruled out, specially as Jesus recognised the need for force:

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been coming violently and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11.12)

He predicted too that blood would be spilt, going so far as to recommended his followers arm themselves:

He said to them… ‘the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, “And he was counted among the lawless”; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.’ They said, ‘Lord, look, here are two swords.’ He replied, ‘It is enough.’ (Luke 22:36-38)

According to the gospels, the Jewish religious leaders persuaded the Roman authorities to do away with this dangerous revolutionary and insurrectionist. Once they were made aware of him, the Romans were more than happy to oblige. They mocked Jesus’ aspirations as King of the Jews and crucified him alongside other ‘rebels’ (Matthew 27:38).

His followers however were not yet ready to let go of him or his revolutionary ideas. Perhaps they saw the possibility of their ruling the world slipping from them. They continued to preach that he would appear again, possibly as the Son of Man, to bring about the revolution he had foreseen.

This is, as I say, Matthew and Luke’s version of events. The writers of the fourth gospel would jettison the failed New-World-Order narrative, building their own Superman-Jesus and dispensing entirely with the great social revolution. In their story, the Kingdom of God is ‘not of this world’ (John 18:36) but only in people’s heads.

The four gospels are, of course, make-believe; allegories of the hoped for Messiah. The Kingdom of God, the revolutionary leader, the reversal of the social order are what some of the earliest cultists wished for, looked for, hoped for. It is their aspirations that are reflected and embodied in the earliest gospels. Like the hopes and dreams of every cultist before and since, they came to nothing.

Many of today’s Christians would not, in any case, have cared for the Kingdom of God that Matthew and Luke’s Jesus is made to promote; far too much socialism and the wrong sort of people in charge. Jesus’ new Kings of the World would, in any case, have made a mess of things in much the same way as all those who took control in the revolutions the world did actually experience. Power, as Lord Acton put it, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Better for Jesus that he became a personal saviour, confined to the minds of those who think he really existed, a mere revolutionary in the head.

The Case of Plagiarised Essays and the Missing Source

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This is a true story. I was involved. It took place when I was a university tutor and had dozens of student essays to mark at any time. The work of about 120 students were distributed randomly between myself and two colleagues.

On this particular occasion, I had about 40 to assess and about half way through them I came upon an essay from a student whom I’ll call Matty. It wasn’t a particular good essay; it was poorly argued, and was littered with errors, the most glaring of which was the referring to the well known psychologist E. (for Elizabeth) Loftus as a man. I gave it a grade only a little over the pass mark and moved on.

Three or four essays later I reached one by ‘Lucas’. As I started on this submission, I realised I’d read it before. I searched back in the marked pile and pulled out Matty’s work. Sure enough, both essays were pretty much identical. The occasional word had been changed, paragraph breaks altered here and there and some sentences rearranged, but the two pieces of work were essentially the same. Crucially, the second essay used the very same quotations from E. Loftus and again used male pronouns for her when discussing her work.

The university, quite rightly, took plagiarism seriously. I summoned Lucas and Matty to my office and confronted them with their third-rate essays. Both insisted they had not copied. They had, they insisted, worked independently. They hadn’t even seen the other’s work.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘how is it your essays are so similar, identical in many places, and most tellingly, how have you both ‘independently’ managed to attribute the wrong sex to Elizabeth Loftus?’

‘We must have used the same books,’ Lucas offered.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘and which book was it that thought Loftus was a man?’

‘Not sure, ‘ Matty offered, ‘but we could maybe find it for you. Because it definitely did.’

‘Just point it out to me from one of your identical and very thin bibliographies,’ I suggested.

The two scanned down the list of three or four books. ‘Erm, not sure,’ Lucas said.

‘No, it’s not there,’ Matty concluded. ‘I’m not sure which it was.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘when you find it, maybe you can bring the book in to show me.’

They nodded eagerly, believing they’d averted the problem.

‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘I’m going to fail both of your essays. I’m afraid too I have no choice but to report you to the Academic Standards Board for your plagiarism.’

The boys looked stunned. ‘But we didn’t copy and that book definitely said Mr Loftus was a man.’

‘There’s no book that says she’s a man,’ I said, ‘and you know it. You’re not going to be able to produce the book because it doesn’t exist. One of you made the mistake of thinking she was male and the other simply copied the error. I don’t know which way round it was, but that’s the only reasonable explanation.’

They left dejected. I did report them to the Academic Standards Board. Unbeknown to me, a tutor from a different department had also reported them for plagiarism in the essays they had submitted to him. Both students were eventually expelled for repeated offences.

I recalled the episode while reading Gary Marston’s Escaping Christian Fundamentalism blog about the hypothetical ‘Q’ that some scholars argue existed before Matthew and Luke’s gospels were written. These scholars postulate that both gospel authors lifted the material they have in common, other than that copied from Mark, from ‘Q’. Like my two likely lads, none of them has ever been able to provide evidence for the existence of this mythical document.

The most obvious explanation for the similarities between Matthew and Luke’s non-Markian material is that one of them, probably Luke, cribbed from the other. Like my two plagiarists, Matthew and Luke are without credibility. Whoever came first – probably Matthew – plagiarised from Mark and made up stories that Luke then copied, mistakes and all, and altered to suit his own purposes. If they’d been dishonest students they’d have been expelled long ago.