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Five whoppers from the Da Vinci Code
This question must
have been asked by more people in recent times than any other single
faith related issue. It is just one of the burning questions that Dan
Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code has posed millions of
non-Christians in the last couple of years. Now, with the release of
the film, still more people will be confronted with fiction dressed up
as fact. Here are five key questions answered by Christianity Today
magazine.
1. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene?
No. Mary Magdalene was certainly close to Jesus. She wept at Jesus'
tomb (John 20). Jesus even entrusted her to return and tell the
disciples about his resurrection. But we have no reason to believe they
were married. Brown says that Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper reveals
the secret. He writes that the figure to Jesus' right, traditionally
known as the apostle John, is actually Mary. Not true. Artists often
gave characters feminine features to portray youth. John was the
youngest of the disciples. Brown correctly observes that few Jewish men
of Jesus' day did not marry. But why, then, did the apostle Paul,
himself celibate, not mention Jesus and Mary when he argued that
apostles could marry (1 Cor. 9:5)?
2. What about these alternative gospels that aren't in the New Testament?
It's true that the Bible did not arrive as a "fax from heaven," as
Brown writes. The New Testament canon in its current form was first
formally attested in 367. Nevertheless, church leaders applied
important standards when compiling the Bible. Authors of accepted
writings needed to have walked and talked with Jesus, or at least with
his leading disciples. Their teaching could not contradict what other
apostles had written, and their documents must have been accepted by
the entire church, from Jerusalem to Rome. Church leaders considered
earlier letters and reports more credible than later documents.
Finally, they prayed and trusted the Holy Spirit to guide their
decisions.
The so-called Gnostic gospels, many discovered just last century, did
not meet these criteria. Many appeared much later than the Bible and
were dubiously attributed to major Christian leaders. Their teachings
contrasted with what apostles like Paul had written. For example, many
Gnostic writings argued that Jesus did not appear in the flesh, because
flesh is evil, or they rejected the Old Testament.
3. Were there really competing Christianities during the early church?
Yes—in the sense there were many disputes about the nature of
Jesus. And the church has done its best to vanquish challengers to
orthodoxy. Once the church decided against the Gnostic writings, they
gathered and burned all the Gnostic manuscripts they could find.
Later church councils convened to discuss other threats to Christian
orthodoxy. Constantine, the first Roman emperor to make Christianity
legal, called the most important of these meetings in 325. Leaders from
around the Christian world gathered in Nicea, where they debated
Arianism, which taught that God created Jesus. Brown writes that
Constantine called this council so he could introduce a new divine
Jesus on par with the Father. On the contrary, documents from before
Nicea show that most followers of Jesus already called him LORD, the
Yahweh of the Old Testament. The church leaders at Nicea rejected
Arianism and affirmed that God and Jesus existed together from the
beginning in the Trinity. This council produced the first drafts of
what became the Nicene Creed, a landmark explanation of Christian
belief.
4. What is Opus Dei?
A conservative religious group within the Roman Catholic Church. Opus
Dei urges priests and laypeople to strenuously pursue sanctification
through everyday discipline. The group has taken criticism for its
conservative views, zeal, and secretive practices. There is no evidence
that Opus Dei has resorted to murder; nor has the Vatican entrusted
Opus Dei to violently guard the church's deepest secrets, as Dan Brown
claims in The Da Vinci Code.
5. Does the Priory of Sion really exist?
Yes, but not as described by Brown. Researchers suspect that members of
the real-life Priory of Sion, founded in 1956, forged documents that
placed major historical figures—such as Isaac Newton and Leonard
da Vinci—in an ancient secret society. There is no evidence for
this group beyond dubious documents. Any story relating this group to a
dynasty begun by Jesus and Mary Magdalene is a fanciful work of fiction. |
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You
can download these questions and answers as a free guide to give to
friends on
www.christianitytoday.com/biblestudies/areas/biblestudies/articles/060426b.html |
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