Euclid and Jesus: How and why the church changed mathematics and Christianity across two religious wars

by C.K. Raju

Euclid is celebrated as the father of geometry, and author of the Elements, a book once revered like the Bible, but now a school text. Strangely, Greek manuscripts do not mention Euclid, but speak anonymously of the “author of the Elements”. Did Euclid exist? Was the real author of the Elements a woman, Hypatia? Was she black? The mystery geometry of black Egypt aimed to arouse the soul, and prove equity, as in Plato's story of Socrates and the slave boy. Early Christians had similar beliefs about the soul, but the church changed Christian doctrine to enable its priests to rule. When pagans resisted, the church retaliated it smashed their temples, burnt their libraries, cursed the early beliefs about the soul, and banned philosophy. This plunged Christendom into its Dark Age, but catalysed the Islamic Golden Age. The contrast fuelled envy, and Christian priests incited the Crusades, hoping to grab Muslim wealth—but the Crusades failed beyond Spain. To convert Muslims, who accepted reason, the church now sought mathematics, connecting it to Christian doctrine by changing both. That led to a subtle religious bias in mathematics, and to its racist history. This book is for the layperson concerned that both biases are still being thrust upon schoolchildren today.

Genres: History

222 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

C. K. Raju holds a masters in mathematics from Mumbai, followed by a PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute. He taught mathematics for several years at Pune University before moving on to help build India's first parallel supercomputer, Param. After a fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, he resumed university teaching, and is currently a Distinguished Professor. He has proposed many radical new ideas related to time, quantum mechanics, quantum computing and the history and philosophy of mathematics, and calculus. He has written critically acclaimed books on physics (Time: Towards a Consistent Theory, Kluwer, 1994), history and philosophy of mathematics (Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, Pearson Longman, 2007), on time at the interface of science, religion and ethics (The Eleven Pictures of Time, Sage, 2003), and on the history of science (Is Science Western in Origin?, Multiversity and Citizens International, Penang, 2009). For a full list of his books, see http://ckraju.net. He straddles various fields, and was an editor of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research and curently advices other scholarly journals. He has also built computer software for industrial and educational use. Volume 5 of his collected papers contains his scholarly articles on mathematics and religion. In his "5-day course on calculus", he has demonstrated that mathematics can be made very easy by eliminating the post-Crusade theology in it. Watch out for more of his forthcoming books, especially "Euclid and Jesus".

Reviews

[Bhaskar Tripathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book on history of knowledge tradition. A very thought provoking and insightful. Contrary to the common theme one might pick up that it is against Christianity (since it is talking about misuse of power by Church), this book is a great binding force for people of all faith bounded by the tradition of acquiring knowledge. This book should be read by everyone and it is unfortunate that even in this age of information this history is not commonly known. The only thing I felt missing in this book was how later Muslim rule did the same book burning madness in India and probably elsewhere. In that context it has some how absolved the Muslim rule over centuries which was equally murderous and stifling knowledge tradition. But I highly recommend this book as a starting point and explore further in your own!

[Rohith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This narrative is a perfect example of how even though facts are out in the public, we wont usually connect the dots to realize the lies peddled to us by organized cults. It would have taken immense effort to collect all the facts mentioned in the book. Connecting the dots is the easiest thing.

A systematic annihilation of the myth "most of secular scientific knowledge has originated in Greece". It is the single biggest crime committed against human psych by current secular educators. Many of us would have had a feeling that it is a myth. We can even see the means and opportunity of the church to carry out such a crime through its "world class" universities. After all, even during the age of Internet, authorities get away with lying for several years before truth is uncovered. So it must be very easy in medieval times. The challenge is not finding the means and opportunity. The challenge is finding a motive. You can't really charge them guilty without it. This book provides exactly that, the motive: Why is it necessary for a systematic myth building about origin of knowledge in Greece? What is the necessity for the church(priests to be precise) to start such a myth?

This book is more enlightening to an honest Christian who believes in the doctrine of love but is shocked by doctrine of sin used by Church throughout history to oppress people.

In spirit of following the author's advice in the epilogue, the best way to read the book is to check every fact mentioned by the author after each chapter.

As for those young people who are victims of these biases, get rid of those biases even if they are forced on you by your parents and teachers. A simple way to do so is to ask questions. If the answers sound like story-telling, used to preserve lies, you know what trick is at work. Remember, they can’t capture your mind without your consent. Don’t give that consent: keep asking questions, and see how those stories fall apart.

[Ashish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read on how the corrupt priests wiped out Pagans and co-opted knowledge of the ancient civilizations which they passed off as their own. All this served the purpose of world domination by the White Christian nations of the West through soft power of religion and knowledge, which continues to this day.

[Pramod Vemuri · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is better to read the introduction and epilogue of the book and call it a day.

To cut the long story short, the idea is that mathematics as we know is shaped by the neoplatonist philosophy, which was first rejected but then re-appropriated by christianity as tool for evangelism. And having inherited the race supremacism from the romans, they rewrote history and re-evaluated philosophies to put their white neoplatonist ideals on top. In particular, the author argues that aristotlean logic and neoplatonism are the foundations of western mathematics, which are not universal constructs - which is a very interesting thesis. What's not interesting is the author's writing style, and any exploration of what the consequences of said philosophy are.


I made the mistake of trying to read it from start to finish, as it made my head hurt. Maybe as a result of being routinely dismissed by the establishment (which the author alludes to), the author spends way too much time indulging in his conspiratorial fancies and needlessly insulting the west; borderlining on anti-caucasianism. It feels as if he liberally borrowed from critical race theory and decoloniality projects which argue against universality in domains of math and medicine. The author makes no attempt to distinguish between geometry and arithmetic, nor does he acknowledge that 20th century european mathematicians have themselves challenged (Quine, Godel, Popper, Feyerabend, etc). Euclid's parallel axiom was rejected as well, and it led to study of geodesics.

Nor is it clarified *why* the euclidean approach is inferior to the empirical approach that is commonly used elsewhere. In fact my high school experience has always been that I tilt my geometry drawing in favour of the solution I want (such as using an isoceles triangle for solving a problem that is harder to prove using a scalene triangle). In other words, empirical approach relies on proof by exhaustion, which is not as concise as proof by contradiction. Not that empirical approach doesn't have a place - I encountered a problem in my (CS) masters where the solution was to simply draw a diagram where the algorithm fails. But the book instead spends its time ridiculing Newton for measuring the length of a curve using fluxions than a string (as if I can measure the trajectory of a missile using a string).

Lastly, about his rejection of logic as a universal construct -- he doesn't explain an important principle that logical universalism is not a neoplatonist theory, but one that nyaya also relies upon. Whereas (to my knowledge) the principle of excluded middle is mainly an invention of Aristotle (note that the empirically motivated constructionist school in the west attempts to rebuild math without the axiom), axiomatic deduction is not "racist".

The book certainly has a good point to make -- that mathematical education is unnecessarily complicated and biased (something that is more politely covered by Paul Lockhart in his book, A Mathematician's Lament) -- but to attack deductivism is to put descarte before the horse.

[Jonathan J. Crabtree · Rating 1 out of 5]

Euclid and Jesus By C. K. Raju Is a fictional conspiracy theory.

It asks the rhetorical question, "Was the real author of the Elements [of geometry] a woman, Hypatia? Was she black?" Save yourself some money. The answers are 'No' and 'No'. C. K. Raju simply ignores the overwhelming evidence Hypatia could not have written Elements and that Hypatia wasn’t black.

For an in-depth review and a video snippet of Euclid and Jesus, go to https://kreately.in/euclid-and-jesus-...

The core conspiracy in C. K. Raju’s book Euclid and Jesus is that Euclid was invented by crusading Christians in the 12th century to fool Muslims. Raju's myth is based on the idea the first editions of Euclid’s Elements in Europe were via Arabic translations out of Toledo, subsequently translated into Latin for Christian readership.

We read: “Adelard was the first to translate the Elements, from Arabic into Latin. This was when Christian Europe first heard of the Elements”. Yet, this is simply not true. Euclid’s Elements was known in Europe at least 600 years earlier than Raju's date. For example, the Verona manuscript of Euclid’s Elements in Latin is dated to around A.D. 500 CE.

According to C. K. Raju, ‘uclides’ meant ‘ucli’ + ‘des’, where ‘ucli’ means a key, and ‘des’ means geometry. So Arabs understood ‘uclides’ as meaning ‘the key to geometry’!”

I emailed the above to Dr Sonja Brentjes who is perhaps the world’s top expert on medieval Arabic mathematics manuscripts. Her reply was short and to the point. “Absolute rubbish. Sorry.” My second fact checker was Dr Jeffrey Oaks, another expert on medieval Arabic mathematics. His reply concluded that C. K. Raju was politically motivated and on the etymology of Euclid, completely wrong.

As for the Greek Hypatia, a Byzantine encyclopedia collated in the 900s called the ‘Suda Lexicon’ described Hypatia as “fair of form”, so not black.

The fiction Hypatia wrote Elements in the late 4th to early 5th century CE is easily myth-busted by the following facts.

Zeno of Sidon 150 – 70 BCE Criticised Elements
Demetrius Lacon c. 100 BCE Criticised Elements
Hero of Alexandria fl. 1st c. CE Wrote on Elements
Diophantus c. 250 CE Taught (Euclidean) geometry
Pappus c. 290 – 350 CE Wrote on Elements
Iamblichus c. 242 – 327 CE Criticised Elements

Also, Martianus Capella 360 – 428 CE Wrote on books 7, 8 & 9 of Euclid’s Elements at the same time Hypatia was supposedly writing it.

If Hypatia wrote Elements, how is Thābit ibn Qurra’s Restoration of Euclid’s Data explained away? How is the “Kitab Uqlidis fi Ikhtilaf al-manazir, the Arabic Version of Euclid’s Optics explained away?

It's been a decade since Euclid and Jesus came out. So no doubt C. K. Raju has had ample evidence to do more research. So, here are questions he must answer rather than keep evading.

Q1. The only evidence says she was ‘fair’. Where is the independent primary source evidence dated within approximately 500 years of Hypatia’s death that states she was black?

Q2. Why has no African or Egyptian mathematics historian stated that Hypatia wrote Euclid’s Elements or that she was black? Surely, they would want to promote their hero!

Q3. Why have you hidden the existence of Euclid’s Elements in Europe at least 600 years BEFORE you claim? Is that because it would destroy your myth that Euclid was invented during the 12th century?

Q4. Will you stop spreading your 'Hypatia wrote Elements' conspiracy theory now that all the inconvenient evidence you hid has been revealed?

Notably, over the past few years, C. K. Raju appears not to like being presented with evidence and questions that dents his credibility. There is no doubt C. K. Raju knows a lot about Indian mathematics and its history. Yet, when it comes to matters of mathematics manuscripts in ancient Greek or Latin he appears either out of his depth or willing to deceive.

Euclid and Jesus is simply NOT a 'Good Read'.

For an in-depth review and a video snippet of Euclid and Jesus, go to https://kreately.in/euclid-and-jesus-...

Jonathan J. Crabtree
Elementary K-8 Mathematics Historian
Podometic Bharatiya Maths Founder
Melbourne Australia

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