The DaVinci Code.
This past Saturday I went to a conference at our church about the book and movie, The DaVinci Code. I have not read it, but what I've been told it is great fiction. The problem is that the author, Dan Brown, claims to have written historical fiction. He writes of early church history and unfortunately most Christians haven't had any instruction in that part of our heritage. We cannot recognize fact from fiction. He has a lot of inaccurate facts in his book.
To summarize some important points:
1) The council of Nicea took place in 325 AD and it confirmed the orthodoxy (beliefs) of Christianity, because of arising heresy. It was not to pick the 4 gospel books in the New Testament. These were established already by 180 AD. Matt., Mark, and Luke had been written in the 60s and John probably in the 90s AD. The council did not even discuss this. Brown claims there were 80 different gospels and they agreed on what should be the gospels and they did so to agree (by a close vote) that Jesus was divine. To refute the last point, divinity goes all the way back to Jesus. He claimed to be divine by accepting worship, by claiming to sit at the right hand of God (Mark 14:6-25). The high priests and religious leaders understood that he claimed to be God, because that is why they wanted to kill him--and why they did.
2) Jesus was not married to Mary Magdalene. There are only 2 very unclear passages from the Gnostic gospels. There are only 30 + 6 Gnostic gospels--not 80 as claimed. I have seen the 2 passages and one has blanks from the text, that perhaps people like Brown fill in to make it sound like a marriage and the other has a mention of her as a female apostle--which according to the definition of the word means messenger. Mary told the disciples about the resurrection of Jesus. So what. It is interesting to note that the Gnostic gospels mainly focus on Jesus after his resurrection and not before, like the 4 gospels do. Also they speak heresy about God and creation, the person of Jesus, heaven and the work of Jesus.
3) How we get the canon of scripture is not know to most Christians. The process continued all the way through the 3rd and 4th century as Brown says, but it wasn't the gospels being debated at that time, rather it was books like Hebrew, James, 1,2, 3rd John, and Revelation.
Overall it was a great seminar and very instructive in order to give an answer for the reason we believe.
This past Saturday I went to a conference at our church about the book and movie, The DaVinci Code. I have not read it, but what I've been told it is great fiction. The problem is that the author, Dan Brown, claims to have written historical fiction. He writes of early church history and unfortunately most Christians haven't had any instruction in that part of our heritage. We cannot recognize fact from fiction. He has a lot of inaccurate facts in his book.
To summarize some important points:
1) The council of Nicea took place in 325 AD and it confirmed the orthodoxy (beliefs) of Christianity, because of arising heresy. It was not to pick the 4 gospel books in the New Testament. These were established already by 180 AD. Matt., Mark, and Luke had been written in the 60s and John probably in the 90s AD. The council did not even discuss this. Brown claims there were 80 different gospels and they agreed on what should be the gospels and they did so to agree (by a close vote) that Jesus was divine. To refute the last point, divinity goes all the way back to Jesus. He claimed to be divine by accepting worship, by claiming to sit at the right hand of God (Mark 14:6-25). The high priests and religious leaders understood that he claimed to be God, because that is why they wanted to kill him--and why they did.
2) Jesus was not married to Mary Magdalene. There are only 2 very unclear passages from the Gnostic gospels. There are only 30 + 6 Gnostic gospels--not 80 as claimed. I have seen the 2 passages and one has blanks from the text, that perhaps people like Brown fill in to make it sound like a marriage and the other has a mention of her as a female apostle--which according to the definition of the word means messenger. Mary told the disciples about the resurrection of Jesus. So what. It is interesting to note that the Gnostic gospels mainly focus on Jesus after his resurrection and not before, like the 4 gospels do. Also they speak heresy about God and creation, the person of Jesus, heaven and the work of Jesus.
3) How we get the canon of scripture is not know to most Christians. The process continued all the way through the 3rd and 4th century as Brown says, but it wasn't the gospels being debated at that time, rather it was books like Hebrew, James, 1,2, 3rd John, and Revelation.
Overall it was a great seminar and very instructive in order to give an answer for the reason we believe.
posted by ksquared | 12:50 PM
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