Posted on 04/13/2006 8:12:35 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Welcome to Holy Week, American style. Just as millions of Christians are preparing to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the media is once again out to debunk historical Christianity.
Just last weekend I was in an airport bookstore and saw the new book counter filled with numerous editions of The Da Vinci Code. Then I picked up the New York Times, and there I was greeted with the headline on the front page that read, “In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal.”
You probably have seen the hype, including a one-hour National Geographic TV spectacular: After seventeen hundred years, the story goes, the long-lost text of the so-called “Gospel of Judas” has re-surfaced. It claims that Jesus secretly told Judas to betray Him; so Judas is really a good disciple.
Well, it’s not a new discovery. This “new gospel” and the heresy it espouses—Gnosticism—were rejected as fiction by Christian leaders and the Church as early as 180 A.D.
Gnosticism was an attempt to add to Christianity an essentially Eastern worldview dressed up with Christian language. It was presented to the Roman world as the true Gospel—complete with endless mysteries that only those with secret knowledge could unravel. Many unsuspecting people were enthralled with Gnostic writings, particularly their sometimes gory and salacious initiation ceremonies. Christian pastors and theologians repeatedly rejected all forms of Gnosticism, until, by the middle of the third century, it had all but disappeared.
But now it is back with a vengeance, with supposed discoveries and works like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It provides the means for Christianity’s detractors to debunk the historical Jesus, and it certainly sells books. Seven million copies of The Da Vinci Code is testimony to that. Gnosticism has particular appeal today because of the postmodern age, which has rejected historical truth. So you can find God any way you wish, through your own group. This, of course, is the belief that is at the root of the spreading New Age movement.
The danger is that we have a biblically illiterate population. People today don’t know—maybe don’t care—whether there is a difference between the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of John. They are unfamiliar with the work of the ancient canonical councils of the Church (which rejected the Gnostic “gospels” time and again) or even of the basic creeds or confessions of the Christian Church. Sadly, people are as gullible today as ever.
Now it is tempting to get angry at National Geographic and the liberal press for unleashing this fraudulent “gospel” at the beginning of the holiest week of the year. But don’t. Instead, let’s use the media attention to debunk the debunkers, to point out to friends that this regurgitated Gnosticism—the Da Vinci Code and the “gospel” of Judas included—is nothing more than historically unsupportable fantasy.
Then we can point them to the knowledge that is accessible to all people that has been accessible to Christians for two thousand years and proven historically accurate. It’s called the Bible.
But whatever you do, get informed first. Come to our website (see further reading below) or call us here at “BreakPoint” (1-877-322-5527) and find some of the resources that we are offering. And get busy because millions can be suckered in—unless you and I set the record straight.
Where in the Bible is there the instruction for a canonical council to determine what should be in the Bible?
"Gospel" means "good news".
The word "logos" (Greek) means "word".
"It's also embarrassing that most don't know the word Gospel has nothing to do with religion, it means "word" and nothing else."
... uh, no, it does not mean "'word' and nothing else." The word "Gospel," Greek, "euangelion," (spelled phonetically) means "good news" or "good message." It has a clearly more hopeful and optimistic denotation than merely "word" and a distinctively Christian connotation. Word in Greek is "logos." Which, although denotatively merely means "word," does in given contexts mean far more, e.g. John 1:1. And context, far more than mere dictionary definition, determines what a word really means.
So criticize both the "Gospel of Judas," which is just another piece of Gnostic junk, and, if appropriate, the over-reaction of some Christians to it. But don't assert what is clearly not true.
Actually, doesn't gospel mean "Good word", or "good news", rather than just "word"?
More information - here
The interesting thing on the National Geographic video was that at one time there were something like 30 gospels. Isn't the DaVinci Code based around studies of the Gospel of Mary Magdeline?
I didn't know that the earliest Gospel, Mathew, wasn't written by Mathew, and wasn't written until decades later. Apparently John wasn't written until 60 or more years later. None of the authors for the for Cannonized Gospels are known.
It was interesting that the Gnostism denomination of Christianity believed in a more "personal" relationship with Christ and with God, just as todays funamentalists believe. But the hierchical Christians which became the Catholics dominated them two centuries later.
One thing in the NG show I remember from my Southern Baptist Sunday School, or perhaps my New Testament history class at Oklahoma Baptist University, was that Judas was particularly favored by Christ. The Gospel of Judas confirms that, and they hadn't even dug it out of the desert when I was taught that.
Yes it does means Good Word, my mistake.
"The story is true" - Dan Rather
On behalf of the people who read the Bible on a regular basis, thank you!
Didn't they also believe that the flesh was inherently evil, countered by the Spirit being inherently good? (Carried through to modern thought, this is one of the basic concepts of Scientology...)
If we are "made in God's image", how can our bodies be inherently evil?
And again, the heresy of "hidden knowledge" given only to the elite of the Followers. (Another concept rewarmed for Scientology. New Age = Old Lies, eh?)
"Emporer"?
I guess Judas lacked a good spokesman and press secretary.
Probably the same ones who said, "Forged but factual", about certain documents.
I'm going to waste my time arguing with that?
I want ON your Chuck Colson ping list, please!
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