Posted on 05/28/2006 12:50:42 AM PDT by ekeni
About six months ago, on seeing a gorgeous illustrated edition of The Da Vinci Code published by Bantam Press, I finally succumbed to the mania and joined the 40 million others who had already forked out for the hardback version. And yes, I too found the book unputdownable: it was fast paced, contained some fine puzzles and was genuinely interesting. The book has been much criticised, however, for its alternative rendering of the life of Jesus, with one US Christian leader describing its portrayal as "candy-coated poison". A core idea at the centre of Dan Brown's book is that Jesus never claimed to be a divine being, but rather saw himself as a mortal prophet sent by God; only later did the Christian church elevate him to divine status, claiming that he was God incarnate - a claim Christ (Greek for messiah) himself pointedly never made in the gospels. On the contrary, in John 14:28, for example, Jesus is reported as saying quite clearly: "The Father is greater than I." The Da Vinci Code recalls the emperor Constantine, in AD325, convening the Council of Nicea, where what we today know as the Christian Nicene Creed was formally adopted. A historian, Sir Leigh Teabing (played by Sir Ian McKellen in the new movie), explains what happened at Nicea in a key passage from the book: "Many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon. The date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of the sacraments, and of course the divinity of Jesus." "I don't follow, his divinity?" "
(Excerpt) Read more at commentisfree.guardian.co.uk ...
An alternative response: Let me introduce myself. My name is Abdullah. I have an idea for a book. I will call it the Sa’d Code. It is about a scribe who copied down some “revelations” (called the Koran) from a self proclaimed prophet called Mohammad. Now Mohammad told people that these came from God, via an angel called Gabriel. Naughty Sa’d tests Mohammad’s claim by changing the revelations when he writes then down. Now Mohammad doesn’t pick up the changes. Sa’d deserts Mohammad as he knows the “revelations” can’t be from God. Any intelligent human can change them. When Mohammad makes his big play for Mecca he tells his troops he wants Sa’d killed even if S’ad seeks refuge in the ka ba. This is actually recorded in the earliest book about Mohammad’s; life, (this book is rarely mentioned on Muslim web sites as it’s embarrassing to the “cause”) .Why does Mohammad want Sa’d dead? What is the secret the imams have kept for 1400 years? Will it bring down the Islamic religion? Is my book truth or fiction? Now enter a Christian called say “Peter”, who writes a teasing column for the Guardian suggesting that, (in the light of my book, now published and turned into a movie,) a discussion about whether the Koran is actually the word of God will bring Muslims and Christians together..........touché. The difference is my “book” is based upon facts written by early Muslim historian.
At the heart of Dan Brown's blockbuster lies a major distortion of History. True, Constantine convened a council of Nicea. However, the Council did not have close votes on whether Christ was God Incarnate, a claim He clearly made more than once. And the Council's votes were not close.
But it makes people feel better to think that we, 2000 years after the fact, have a better handle on what Jesus said and did than those who lived with Him, lived within decades of Him, and lived within a century of Him.
After all, we're smarter.
I'd like to see Dan Brown's book about the secret society protecting the truth that Mohammed married a Jewess and was circumcised later in his life. I'll bet THAT would be a blockbuster, eh?
Shalom.
"Now enter a Christian called say “Peter”, who writes a teasing column for the Guardian suggesting that, (in the light of my book, now published and turned into a movie,) a discussion about whether the Koran is actually the word of God will bring Muslims and Christians together..........touché. The difference is my “book” is based upon facts written by early Muslim historian."
That storyline might actually be worth a page turner/movie, unlike the Brown schlock. (Am I the only person who thought the wheels fell off the plot wagon about two thirds through?)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1639394/posts
Actually we do not know what "he" claimed and even less about whether his claim was valid. Some faith beliefs say one thing; other faith traditions say another. Many people have claimed to be "God incarnate"-- this is not novel. Recently the Rev. Moon; the godess of the "Church Universal and Triumphant"; the founders of Mormonism. The sheer number of competitive claims to know "the one true God/the one true faith" is daunting to sort out.
All these disputations teach one thing for sure--one has to be humble in asserting "the truth"; one man's 'truth' is another man's 'heresy'.
Probably one could do just as well finding "the truth" by throwing at a dart board. You might be lucky, but on average when all possibilities are equal, it is a matter of chance.
It has been accepted Christian dogma for 1700 years that Jesus is equally man and equally divine. As presenting the idea that Jesus had a human side would thus seem to be standard theology. In any case, the human male aspect of Jesus should be equally agreeable or disagreeable to not just Roman Catholics, but also to Orthodox, the 150 denominations of Protestants, the Mormons, Christian Scientists, Mandaeans, Copts, and other Christians.
All this was going on within a couple of centuries of the founding of the Church. These folks were a lot closer to the events depicted and they still had trouble sorting it all out. If Brown had lived back in those days and said Jesus had married and fathered a kid, he would quite likely have found a large following. People today are looking at the situation through 17 centuries of formalized orthodoxy that in many cases brutally suppressed competing doctrines, and they think they are practicing the "true" Christianity, when it could have gone any number of ways.
bttt
You are right on, the vote was 318 to 2
Close ????
"The difference is my “book” is based upon facts written by early Muslim historian."
I hope there are no pictures! :-)
pflr
For me, the wheels started wobbling early in the book, when it portrayed the security at the Louvre museum as being almost nonexistent--not very believable following 9/11/01, even in France, where terrorists bombed the Versailles palace in 1978. The wheels got even looser when one of the characters, convicted of a murder aboard a docked ship, was imprisoned in Andorra--which has no seacoast.
The author supposedly made a threat anonymously to make LGF look like a muslim hating web site. The perp was caught (sort of) and it is an ongoing story. Apparently the author hates LGF and it is was his (or Reuters)weak attempt to silence their comments re TROP.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1639394/posts
Inayat is a total weasel. Inayat stepped in it big time.
Check this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1639394/posts
Death Threat From Reuters
"Friday, May 26, 2006 A Death Threat from Reuters (Bumped) See below for important updates...
Early yesterday morning at about 3:00 am on the West Coast, someone in Sweden Britain connected to the Internet and browsed over to this article at the Guardian by Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain: This code could open doors.
Bunglawala’s piece (about the Da Vinci Code) is in the section of the Guardian site where readers can comment, and someone posted a link to LGF as a rebuttal to Bunglawala. Our Swedish British visitor clicked that link, leading him/her/it to this post: Swedish Muslims Demand Shari’a.
At 3:23 am, this creature used our contact form to send the following email with the obviously phony Hotmail address ‘zionistpig@hotmail.com’ and the subject line, “You bunch of wankers.”
I look forward to the day when you pigs get your throats cut....
Well, isn’t that tolerant."
Here's a link with the weasel's picture and original article:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2006/05/a_truth_at_the_heart_of_the_da.html
Sorry, repeat.:)
Well, yes we can. We have eyewitness reports. Those are generally considered to be sufficient - especially when we have 5. That would stand in any court of law unless you can challenge the truthfulness of the eyewitnesses. As to their validity, that was never the question. However, the validity of the claims came with the Resurrection.
Some faith beliefs say one thing; other faith traditions say another. Many people have claimed to be "God incarnate"-- this is not novel. Recently the Rev. Moon; the godess of the "Church Universal and Triumphant"; the founders of Mormonism. The sheer number of competitive claims to know "the one true God/the one true faith" is daunting to sort out.
What's your point? Brown said Christ never claimed to be G-d Incarnate. Brown was wrong. The fact that Moon made the same claim has no bearing.
All these disputations teach one thing for sure--one has to be humble in asserting "the truth"; one man's 'truth' is another man's 'heresy'.
Truth is truth. People don't own it. One man may think he knows the truth and be wrong. Or he may be right and another thinks he is wrong. Neither situation changes the truth.
Probably one could do just as well finding "the truth" by throwing at a dart board. You might be lucky, but on average when all possibilities are equal, it is a matter of chance.
I don't know where such a statement comes from. Discovering the truth is an exercise in logic and scholarship. It can be done. Just because it is hard doesn't mean it can't be done. And when two people claim conflicting truths, it is incumbent upon people to determine which is a liar, not shrug and say, "Who's to know?"
It has been accepted Christian dogma for 1700 years that Jesus is equally man and equally divine. As presenting the idea that Jesus had a human side would thus seem to be standard theology. In any case, the human male aspect of Jesus should be equally agreeable or disagreeable to not just Roman Catholics, but also to Orthodox, the 150 denominations of Protestants, the Mormons, Christian Scientists, Mandaeans, Copts, and other Christians.
Jesus was in every way human as we are, yet He did not sin. Since He died before He ever married, He had no children.
Shalom.
Yes you are. Everyone else thinks the plot took a powder after the first ten minutes.
We live within a couple of hundred years of Shakespeare, and yet scholars have serious arguments about what was original Shakespeare.
Don't look back to within a couple of hundred years, look back to within decades. That's where you'll find what Christianity really is.
And don't be surprised if our understanding flows away from "orthodoxy" and back many more times until Jesus returns. Human beings are flawed. We make mistakes, and G-d corrects those mistakes.
Shalom.
At the moment we have no extent Christian documents from before the 2nd century. Going back to within a few decades of the actual events is, at this moment, impossible.
That was the thought for a long time. The latest scholarship disagrees with you. Check out This Link for some updated information. Scholars don't exactly agree, but the estimates for Mark, for example, all fall earlier than AD 100.
Shalom.
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