Posted on 05/25/2006 10:45:12 AM PDT by Mike Bates
DOES JESUS have a secret line of descendants who are living today? It's an oddly appealing idea. We tend to think of ancestry in terms of bloodlines, in which some individuals are descended from famous ancestors and others are not. And the idea echoes deeper religious themes of individuals and groups favored by God.
But this is one idea in "The Da Vinci Code," which opens today in theaters worldwide, that just won't wash. Jesus couldn't have just a few descendants living today. If anyone alive today is descended from Jesus, then so are most of the people on the planet.
This absurd-sounding statement is an inevitable consequence of the workings of ancestry. People may have just a few descendants in the two or three generations after they lived, but after that the number of descendants explodes. For a population to remain the same size, every adult has to have an average of two children who grow to adulthood and have children. So the number of descendants for the average person grows exponentially — two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and so on. In just 10 generations — roughly 250 years — an average person can have more than 1,000 descendants.
SNIP
In real genealogies, a person's descendants either peter out within a few generations or begin to grow exponentially. That's why people who came to America on the Mayflower now have thousands of descendants. People who lived just a few centuries earlier have many millions of descendants.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
OK. It's fiction. It's made it's debut and the whole of Christianity hasn't collapsed. In fact, some people seeing it have said their faith is even stronger.
"Waiting for the first "It's just fiction" comment. :)"
How about... "It's just stupid".
Sure, it's fiction. Lousy, rotten, bigoted, blasphemous fiction.
Jesus has many kids. He left them at home when he illegally crossed the border to do jobs 'Americans won't do.' Not to worry, Jesus' family will soon join him in the U.S. Not divine intervention...just RINO activity making it possible.
I am actually Jesus' brother (the bible tells me so).
Don't think this was referring to Jesus Martinez. But maybe. . .
It's either fiction -- or I'm offended at people dissing my great X 100 grandparents.
Yeah, but will Ron (Opie) Howard be making a movie out of that?
"Christianity hasn't collapsed. In fact, some people seeing it have said their faith is even stronger."
I find a lot of people (including myself at one point) are just looking for an excuse not to believe. The rehashing of this forgotten heresy provides them a new source of excuses.
How about a 'I wish it was true' comment.
The more I read why people don't like it,
the more puzzled I become.
Well, to be more specific, the worlds human population must all stem from Noah's Ark and the families aboard.
Thank you, Mike. Thank you all. I'd also like to thank my agent, the family, 2 girls from "Hooters" for last evening's feast, Guinness for creating such a wonderful elixer, my ex-gf for that night on the boat in the lake, rlmorel for the time he hit me square between the eyes with a football and helped me see stars for about 20 seconds, and Dan Brown for writing a piece of fiction that has provided us with so much discussion.
You know what? The people who love this film and the book are the same people who think that the Trilateral Commission is secretly plotting to take over the world. The belief in conspiracy, not matter how fanciful, is quite alive in America, to wit: Who killed president Kennedy?; We never landed on the moon...it was all done in a sound studio somewhere; The Mason are going to takeover America, etc.
Even if it were true about what the books says about Christ, how many ka-zillion people would have to keep there yaps shut for centuries to prevent the truth from leaking out?
And as for the people seeing the film and then asserting that it somehow made their faith stronger, well, that makes as much sense as blaming rain on wet streets. If this film strengthens your faith, you probably had very little faith to begin with.
Alas, the story is, at last, just a story made up to look real.
A feast? At Hooters? Now that's what I call fiction.
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