An article written by Religious historian Professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton for Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News and brodcast on NPR program ‘Talk of the Nation, May 22, 2006′ caught my attention· Pagels said that what was important about The Da Vinci Code is not what the movie got wrong, but what it got right.
She said, “Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work ‘full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.’ As a historian, she agreed that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown’s assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown’s conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei.”
Perfect! Pagels that should dump the book into the dustbin of history. There is no truth to it. But lets read on.
“But what is compelling about Brown’s work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying is not the book’s many falsehoods but what is true – that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted to present one version of Jesus’ life: theirs.”
Wrong! Professor Pagels, they were only preserving the Truth. There is only one Truth. One word added or removed from the Truth makes a lie.
“Some of the alternative views of who Jesus was and what He taught were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous.”
Thank you, Professor for the information.
“It is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code builds on the idea that many early gospels were hidden and previously unknown. Brown has said that part of his inspiration was one of these so-called Gnostic Gospels as presented in a book I wrote on the subject. It took only three lines from the Gospel of Philip to send Brown off to write his novel: ‘The companion of the saviour is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often… The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?’ Those who have studied the Gospel of Philip see it as a mystical text and don’t take the suggestion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene literally.”
Thank you Pagels, you were right on the botton. Dan Brown wrote his book on mere speculations.
“Brown, by homing in on that passage and building a book around it, brought up subjects that the Catholic Church would like to avoid. He raised the big what-ifs: What if the version of Jesus’ life that Christians are taught isn’t the right one? And perhaps as troubling in a still-patriarchal church: What if Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus’ life than we’ve been led to believe, not as his wife perhaps, but as a beloved and valued disciple?”
Wow! Professor, You realy mean Brown had no basis for the Da Vinci Code? The Code was a fiction of his imagination.
“What Brown did with his runaway hit was popularize awareness of the discovery of many other secret gospels, including the Gospel of Judas that was published in April. There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn’t the only version of Jesus’ life that existed, and that even the gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation.”
Nothing strange about holding opinions that are wrong especially where Truth is left free to combat it.
“The copies discovered in 1945, for example, were taken from the sacred library of one of the earliest monasteries in Egypt, founded about 10 years after the conversion of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to join the fledgling church. But these particular texts appeared to upset Athanasius, then archbishop of Alexandria; in the year 367 he sent out an Easter Letter to monks all over Egypt ordering them to reject what he called ‘illegitimate and secret books.’ Apparently, some monks at the Egyptian monastery defied the archbishop’s order and took more than 50 of the books out of the library, sealed them in a heavy jar and buried them under the cliff where they were found 1,600 years later. In ordering the books destroyed, Athanasius was continuing the battle against the “Gnostic” gospels begun 200 years earlier by his revered predecessor, Bishop Irenaeus, who was so distressed that certain Christians in his congregations in rural Gaul (present day France) treasured such “illegitimate and secret writing.” Irenaeus insisted that of the dozens of writings, only four were genuine — and these, as you guessed already, are those now in the New Testament, called by the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He explained that only they were actually written by eyewitnesses of the events they describe — Jesus’ disciples Matthew and John, or by Luke and Mark, who were disciples of the disciples.”
Thank you Pagels for historical details. But do you know that Iranaeus recognised that these 4 Gospels alone record the eternal being, human ancestry, birth, death, ressurection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ, Son of God, and Son of Man? They record also a selection from the incidents of His life and from His Words and Works. Taken together they set forth not a biography but a Personality. The four Gospels though designedly incomplete as a story, are divinely perfect as a revelation. In the four Gospels, the pen is a different pen; the incidents in which Jesus is seen are sometimes different incidents; the distinctive character in which He is presented is a different character; but He is always the same Christ. That fact alone mark these Books as inspired.
What, then, do these other texts say, that christians and historians find them so threatening?
“First, according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus suggests that when we come to know ourselves at the deepest level, we come to know God: ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.’ Second, according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, ‘I am the light that is before all things; I am all things; all things come forth from me; all things return to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up a rock, and you will find me there.’ Worst of all, perhaps, was that many of these secret texts speak of God not only in masculine images, but also in feminine images. The Secret Book of John tells how the disciple John, grieving after Jesus was crucified, suddenly saw a vision of a brilliant light, from which he heard Jesus’ voice speaking to him: ‘John, John, why do you weep? Don’t you recognize who I am? I am the Father; I am the Mother; and I am the Son.’ After a moment of shock, John realizes that the divine Trinity includes not only Father and Son but also the divine Mother, which John sees as the Holy Spirit, the feminine manifestation of the divine. But the Gospel of Mary Magdalene — along with the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Philip -– all show Peter, the leader of the disciples, challenging the presence of women among the disciples. We hear Peter saying to Jesus, ‘Tell Mary to leave us, because women are not worthy of (spiritual) life.’ Peter complains that Mary talks too much, displacing the role of the male disciples. But Jesus tells Peter to stop, not Mary! Those possibilities opened by the ‘Gnostic’ gospels — that God could have a feminine side and that Jesus could be human — are key ideas that Dan Brown explored in ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ and are no doubt part of what made the book so alluring.”
Because of the discovery by that Egyptian farmer in 1945, we now at least have the chance to hear what stories were making the rounds. Finally Professor, I learnt in my history lesson that after Jesus rose from the dead, some of the watch at the sealed and guarded sepulchre came to Jerusalem and showed the chief priest and elders what had taken place. After a lenthy discussion, they gave large sums of money to the soldiers and requested them to say that His disciples came by night and stole him away while they slept. This story is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.
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