Christ's celibacy. Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else.
|
Posted on 02/29/2004 3:33:39 AM PST by JimVT
Christians try to debunk 'Da Vinci Code'
By Mark O'Keefe Newhouse News Service
After reading "The Da Vinci Code," Holly Jespersen wondered if Jesus Christ did in fact wed Mary Magdalene and father her child, as the novel claims.
"It definitely made me question all that I have been brought up to believe," said Jespersen, a Presbyterian who lives in Chicago.
Glen Gracia of Boston, a former practicing Catholic, had a similar reaction, questioning the validity of the Bible if, in fact, it was commissioned and manipulated by the Roman emperor Constantine for political purposes, as the book asserts. "I was basically floored," Gracia said.
Alarmed by reactions like these, defenders of traditional Christianity have launched a counteroffensive against author Dan Brown's fast-paced thriller, which is in its 48th week on The New York Times' fiction best-seller list. It has sold more than 6 million copies, is being translated into more than 40 languages and will be made into a Columbia Pictures film directed by Ron Howard.
Brown has stopped giving interviews. But on the book's first page, he makes an assertion that galls his critics: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
Books and articles with titles like "Dismantling the Da Vinci Code" and "The Da Vinci Deception" have been or are about to be published. Preachers are giving sermons to church members who ask why they were never told there was a Mrs. Jesus. Web sites and discussion groups are humming over the book's "heresies."
In Seattle, about 500 people turned out Thursday night to hear the Rev. Michael Raschko, a theology professor at Seattle University, "help us separate fantasy from truth" about the book, according to a brochure circulated by parishioners from St. James Cathedral. The discussion was scheduled to be held at St. James but was moved across the street to a larger venue.
On Wednesday night, a similar forum on "the reality behind the fiction" has been scheduled at First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue.
Some of the country's most influential clerics are joining in a collective Christian outcry.
In The Catholic New World, the Archdiocese of Chicago's newspaper, Cardinal Francis George calls the book "a work of bizarre religious imaginings" based on "a facade of scholarship" that exploits "gullibility for conspiracy."
When "The Da Vinci Code" was released last March, church leaders paid little attention. Brown was an obscure author, this wasn't the first time a novel had taken shots at Christianity — and it was, after all, fiction.
But as the book became a publishing phenomenon, religious leaders noticed that readers were taking the novel's historical claims as fact. "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci," a November ABC special that seriously explored Brown's themes, made clear that this was a cultural force to be reckoned with.
Yet where some Christian leaders perceive a threat, others see an opportunity.
The book has sparked interest in early Christian history, with public fascination of topics like the Council of Nicea in 325.
"It's only a threat if people read this fictional book naively, don't think critically about it and don't pursue truth," said the Rev. Mark Roberts, pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif. The plot centers on the search for the "Holy Grail" by a brilliant Harvard symbologist and a French cryptologist, who follow clues in the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.
For example, the feminine-looking person on Christ's right in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is supposedly not the apostle John, as is conventionally assumed, but Magdalene, described in the New Testament as a woman who had seven demons cast out of her, followed Christ and was the first to see him after his resurrection.
As the clues lead them through the museums and cathedrals of Europe, Brown's protagonists discover a centuries-old conspiracy, advanced by a patriarchal Roman Catholic Church bent on covering up the truth about the feminine roots of Christianity and the formative effect of its predecessor, pagan goddess worship.
Opus Dei, a Catholic organization based in New York, is portrayed as particularly sinister, with a corrupt bishop directing a devout albino assassin to do his dirty work.
George and other Catholics have accused Brown of prejudicially tapping into the public's suspicion of the Catholic hierarchy after the church's sex-abuse scandal.
"If someone were to say this is just a cute story, that would be fine," said Brian Finnerty, communications director for Opus Dei. "But to present this book as historical is fundamentally dishonest."
The greatest protest has been over the negative portrayal of central Christian beliefs, including:
• Christ's divinity. Brown writes that Constantine collated the Bible, omitting some 80 gospels emphasizing Christ's human traits in favor of four that made him God. This was supposedly done at the Council of Nicea, "in a relatively close vote."
But the actual vote was 300-2, said Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, and it did not determine Christ's divinity. That was attested to much earlier "by many New Testament passages, as well as by the earliest Christians and all the church fathers, even if there was some disagreement as to the precise nature of that deity," Maier said.
The Council of Nicea "did not debate over whether Jesus was only mortal or divine, but whether he was created or eternal."
• The Bible's inerrancy. Peter Jones, co-author of "Cracking the Da Vinci Code," says that in trying to establish that the Bible was cooked by Constantine and his cronies, Brown overlooks the fact that four-fifths of what is now called the New Testament was deemed divinely inspired in the first century — two centuries before Constantine and the Council of Nicea.
• Christ's celibacy. Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else.
George and other traditionalists treat the claim as absurd. "All those martyrs the first 300 years, they were covering up the fact that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene? Why in heaven's name would someone go to their death to protect that secret? It's absurd."
The controversy leaves Jespersen confused. She is "still absolutely convinced that Christ is God," but thought Brown made a compelling argument that Jesus was married. Jespersen plans to attend an upcoming discussion on the book.
Regardless of what she learns, she's glad she read it, calling it a conversation piece that "has encouraged me to question what I have always accepted, just because it is what I was taught."
Seattle Times reporter Janet I. Tu contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
Depends on what you mean by "gnostic". In the sense that the outlook resembles the belief that God/divinity resides within all of us, and the kingdom of God can be realized here on earth if we come to grasp that, it's gnostic. If by "Gnostic" with a capital-G, you mean in accord with the religion and beliefs of the Gnostics, then it's really not Gnostic at all.
how come the church founded by St. Thomas the Apostle in india didn't have this book???
Because it's not really entirely clear that Thomas went to India? Or if he did, as he probably (but not definitely) did, the accounts of him there have been pretty clearly embellished by later writers? ;)
Not the answer you were looking for, I'm sure, but that's one option. Another possibility is that it is, in fact, a collection of the sayings of Jesus as told by Thomas, but since Thomas himself didn't write it down, where he was may or may not have any relation to where it was. Or perhaps it's a collection of the sayings of Jesus that got seriously distorted over the years of oral telling, such that while it started out as authentic, it became distorted into what we know today, which isn't particularly accurate at all. Or perhaps it's a 1'st century forgery, made by borrowing from the Gospels and adding other material in. The point is that nobody really knows, and there's no real factual evidence to say one way or another. The historical provenance of all of the Gospels is spotty, at best, and in that respect, Thomas isn't much different.
Christ's celibacy. Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else.
|
Stop jumping to assumptions. No-one taught me that. That's what I think it is about. The end times have happened.
It's premise is that, not only was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene, but, like "The Passover Plot" of many years back, that Jesus survived the Cross only to die at Masada during the 70AD revolt against Rome.
The reason they are now so "popular" is that they affirm the gnosticism of modern USA. And a lot of it is due to modern theologians such as those in the "jesus seminar" who want to make a new scripture.
I agree and this may be a fulfillment of prophecy.
2 Timothy 4
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.
Why should it be necessary to "debunk" a novel, a piece of FICTION?
I suppose Christians should also be out trying to disprove Star Wars or Planet of the Apes?
Not if you're "looking for loopholes," as W. C. Fields was reported to have said while reading the Bible intently on his deathbed.
Actually, it is believed to be John.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.