I’ve worried about the Virgin Mary before, but this book review in The Economist gave me new causes for concern:

They knew that the Holy Spirit had made the Virgin Mary pregnant but that she was still a virgin. What they were not quite sure about was how those two things could both be true. How, in short, had God got in?

Theologians set about solving this riddle with great debate—and a healthy disregard for biology. Almost no orifice was off limits. God had entered Mary through her eyes, suggested one text. Another scholar thought He had come in through her ear. A third suggested that He had impregnated Mary through her nose—which was inventive, if hard to imagine being incorporated into the annual school nativity play.

This is one of those brilliant book reviews: it’s filled with humour and extracts the juice from the book without me having to bother with the whole volume. This seems just as well given the cutting verdict on the tone:

Mr MacCulloch’s great strength is that he knows a vast amount. His great weakness is that he has written it all down, over 497 pages, in a tiny font.

Oof. This is good stuff.