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The Gospel Truth
I feel as if I'm the last person on earth to read
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown,
but I'm reading it now. It's a well-crafted story--a real page-turner. The book
(just in case I'm not really the last person to read it) is a mystery/thriller
in which a noble historian and his female consort are thrust into a sort of
treasure hunt for the real truth about Jesus which, in the story, has been
suppressed for 2000 years by the dishonest, self-serving, and evil male
defenders of traditional Christianity. According to Brown, Jesus wasn't God
incarnate, and he didn't die for our sins and rise from the dead. He was an
ordinary guy--though more sensitive & enlightened than most--and was married to
Mary Magdalene! He had children by her and always intended his church to be a
family run corporation!
The supposed evidence for all this is to be found in ancient documents whose
actual existence the author correctly calls "factual". But the mere existence of
"The Gospel of Mary" and the others mentioned does not mean they are
historically accurate. Yet Brown has his historian character constantly
delivering lessons with such a tight weave of fact and fantasy that the reader
is hard pressed to tell the difference. And since he's writing "fiction", he
doesn't need to footnote his absurd claims. But the assumption throughout is
that the four Biblical gospels are corrupt, and these esoteric "gospels"
truthful.
The facts are otherwise. The four gospels found in our Bibles were written
during the lifetime of people who knew Jesus, and include eye-witness testimony
about his miracles, death, and resurrection. They were universally accepted as
authoritative in Christian churches by 125 A.D.--Brown's contention that the
emperor Constantine decided in 325 A.D. which gospels to place in the Bible is
laughable. Leading New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce put it well:
'The [biblical] books did not become authoritative for the Church because
they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church
included them [in the Bible] because she already regarded them as divinely
inspired, …. [Church] councils [did] not impose something new upon the
Christian communities but codified what was already the general practice of
those communities.' (Bruce, F.F., The New Testament Documents: Are they
reliable? IVP, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1960. )
In contrast, the manuscripts Brown's hero puts his faith in were written in
the 2nd-4th centuries, by people who never knew Jesus, most of whom were
non-Christians known as Gnostics. These "gospels" were never in the running to
be included in the Bible. So if you choose to read the novel or see the
upcoming movie, please remember that you are getting a fictional story about
real documents that are themselves fictional stories! The truth about Jesus may
be found where it always has been--in Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John. Oh, and be
sure and tell your friends, too.
Pastor Charlie Scott
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