There was some clueless minister on TV yesterday telling everyone that they should “cut Opie a break” and not take The Da Vinci Code so seriously. Like many people, he just doesn’t get it. Let me tell a story to illustrate a point:
Maria was shocked! “You mean the whole thing was a fraud?” she asked. “Yes,” said Abdur. “Last year the private letters of Khadija, Muhammad’s favorite wife, were discovered in the famous ‘Dome of the Rock’ in Jerusalem. The letters have been carbon dated by scientists and proven to be genuine. Just before her death, Khadija wrote letters to her uncle, the King of Abyssinia, and, in pangs of guilt, confessed that she and Muhammad had fabricated the all stories about his visions and the sayings in the Qur’an as a way to seize power in Medina and Mecca.”
“You mean Muhammad wasn’t really a prophet?” asked Maria. “I’m afraid not,” said Abdur. Maria was stunned. “That’s hard to believe,” she responded, “Why haven’t we heard of this before?” “Well,” said Abdur, stroking his beard thoughtfully, “Muhammad’s closest followers intercepted the letters.”
“So they knew the truth!?” Maria interrupted. “Yes, but they didn’t want to reveal the secret because that would have destroyed their own basis for power. On the other hand, they were afraid to destroy letters written by Muhammad’s favorite wife, so they simply hid them in the Dome of the Rock. In the anguish over the “Prophet’s” later death, the letters were soon forgotten.”
“The secret was well hidden until the crusaders conquered Jerusalem. When the Knights Templar discovered the letters and presented the evidence to Saladin, he paid a fortune to purchase the letters and to keep the contents quiet. It is simply a fact of history, my dear, that the Knights Templar went to Jerusalem as poor men, and returned to Europe very wealthy.”
“Anyway,” Abdur continued, “powerful Muslim leaders began hearing rumors that the Knights Templar had secretly kept some of the most incriminating letters. You didn’t think Muslim military expansion was just about power and land, did you, Maria? On the contrary, military force was a desperate attempt to stop the secret from spreading, but when that didn’t work, Rahman II, the Muslim general, traveled secretly across the border to Spain where he met with Philip IV, the King of Aragon.”
“Within days of that meeting, the Knights Templar were summoned to Spain and, upon arrival, were immediately arrested and executed. The remaining letters were confiscated and hidden again in the Dome. In return for Philip’s help, Muslim armies then retreated from the borders of Spain and the secret was finally safe—safe, that is, until the letters were accidentally discovered again last year!”
In the story above, Muhammad, Khadija, Philip IV, the uncle in Abyssinia, the Dome of the Rock, Aragon, Mecca, Medina, the crusades and even the arrest of the Knights Templar are all historical events, people, or places—yet not only is the story entirely fictional it is historically ridiculous, and, if presented seriously it would qualify as a pack of lies.
You see, it is very easy to produce a story that might sound plausible to those who don’t know any better. But for anyone to actually publish a novel like this, and have the audacity to claim, or even to imply, that it was based on fact, would be incredibly malicious, hateful and irresponsible—and Muslims would rightly be outraged.
Yet this is precisely what Dan Brown has done with his Da Vinci Code novel. Make no mistake about it, The Da Vinci Code book is not just fiction, it is either an incredible display of historical ignorance, or it is a vicious pack of lies! Nevertheless, I’ll be the first one in line this afternoon to see the movie and will begin a series of critiques on Monday.
Showing posts with label DaVinci Code. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DaVinci Code. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
DaVinci Code: The movie
Like thousands of other Americans, I contributed to the fortunes of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard Friday by seeing their Da Vinci Code movie which had one of the biggest opening weekends of all time. At times the movie was exciting and kept my attention quite well with mystery, action and suspense. A couple of times the suspense was enough to elicit audible gasps from the audience. At other times I found myself wishing my watch glowed in the dark so I could see how much more of this I had to endure—the movie could have been improved by leaving thirty to forty more minutes on the cutting room floor. The movie followed the plot of the book pretty well but the implausibility’s in the book were sometimes magnified to the point where some of the plot seemed awkward if not just plain dumb.
The anti-Christian bigotry in the book is actually toned down in the movie. Most of the anti-Christian rhetoric comes from Teabing, who ends up looking like a crazy old coot. At times, Tom Hanks character, Robert Langdon, actually tries to soften the force of some of Teabing’s anti-Christian rhetoric and in the end, Langdon even recalls praying to Jesus during a time when he survived a life threatening event.
In the movie, as in the book, an evil albino monk from Opus Dei—there are no monks in Opus Dei—whips himself viciously, leaving deep scars on his back. I was on a panel yesterday with a Catholic seminary professor whose priest is a member of Opus Dei. This professor said that the only thing his Opus Dei priest has encouraged him to do is give up coffee and sugar for a time as a sign of dedication to God. Give up sugar? Are you kidding? I think I’d rather give myself a few whacks on the back! :-)
Overall, the movie was not as in-your-face offensive as the book, but on the other hand, the essential message of the book still came through loud and clear. That message is that Jesus was married, with children, and was never even thought of as God until the fourth century AD when some powerful Christian bishops voted on the matter and then destroyed or eliminated from the New Testament all the many gospels that speak of Jesus as only human and not God.
The anti-Christian bigotry in the book is actually toned down in the movie. Most of the anti-Christian rhetoric comes from Teabing, who ends up looking like a crazy old coot. At times, Tom Hanks character, Robert Langdon, actually tries to soften the force of some of Teabing’s anti-Christian rhetoric and in the end, Langdon even recalls praying to Jesus during a time when he survived a life threatening event.
In the movie, as in the book, an evil albino monk from Opus Dei—there are no monks in Opus Dei—whips himself viciously, leaving deep scars on his back. I was on a panel yesterday with a Catholic seminary professor whose priest is a member of Opus Dei. This professor said that the only thing his Opus Dei priest has encouraged him to do is give up coffee and sugar for a time as a sign of dedication to God. Give up sugar? Are you kidding? I think I’d rather give myself a few whacks on the back! :-)
Overall, the movie was not as in-your-face offensive as the book, but on the other hand, the essential message of the book still came through loud and clear. That message is that Jesus was married, with children, and was never even thought of as God until the fourth century AD when some powerful Christian bishops voted on the matter and then destroyed or eliminated from the New Testament all the many gospels that speak of Jesus as only human and not God.
DaVinci Code: Jesus as God
In The Da Vinci Code, Leigh Teabing says to Sophie, “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet….a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. “Not the Son of God?” “Right, Teabing said. “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea…a relatively close vote at that” (233).
A few historical corrections may be in order. First, the vote at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 was not about whether Jesus was in some sense the Son of God. Both sides agreed on that. The question was what, precisely, did that mean. The followers of Athanasius (a black bishop from North Africa—one of my personal favorites) taught that Jesus was God. The other side, headed by Arius (a priest), also worshiped Jesus and taught that Jesus was a divine being—just not the same as God. Neither side thought of Jesus as a mere mortal as The Da Vinci Code claims.
Second, historians are not sure how many bishops attended the Council but the vote was not close, as The Da Vinci Code claims--out of over a hundred bishops, all of them except two sided with Athanasius. (As an aside, I find it amusing how, in the 60’s some black leaders condemned Christianity as a white man’s religion, when in fact the entire course of Christian history was affected by the intellect, dedication and raw courage of Athanasius, a black bishop, who suffered much for his faith).
Third, the idea that no one thought of Jesus as God before this council, is historically absurd. To give just a few examples, just over 100 years before this council met a church leader named Tertullian wrote, “Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God….” Fully 130 years before the Council of Nicea, Irenaeus, a church leader in what is now called France, was commenting on the Gospel of John when he wrote, "and the Word was God,’ of course, for that which is begotten of God is God." About 160 years before the Nicean Council a man named Justin, who was martyred for his faith, wrote, “…the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God.”
About the same time as Justin, another church leader named Polycarp—who, was burned at the stake for his faith—wrote, “our Lord and God Jesus Christ….” About fifty years earlier in his life, Polycarp received a letter from another Christian leader named Ignatius. Ignatius was under arrest on his way to Rome to be executed for his faith when he wrote “I bid you farewell always in our God Jesus Christ.”
In another letter, almost 220 years before the Council, Ignatius wrote that Jesus was “God existing in flesh.” Then there was another Christian writer known only as “Mathates” (Greek for “disciple’), writing some time in the first or second century who likened God to a king saying, “as a king might send his son who is a king; he sent him as God” (Mathates to Diognetus 7).
Even before all this, back into the first century, Paul and the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke John and the book of Hebrews all affirmed that Jesus was God.
Of course all of these are Christians—do we have any other evidence? Yes! Just over 210 years before the Council there was a Roman governor named Pliny the Younger who had a problem. It seems that Christians were all over his part of the empire like jackrabbits and he wasn’t sure what to do with them so, he started an investigation. In AD 112 he wrote to the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, saying that he found that on a certain day these Christians “were accustomed to come together before daylight and to sing by turns a hymn to Christ as a god.” About the same time a satirical writer named Lucian had nothing but contempt for Christians. Apparently disgusted by their intolerance, he wrote that Christians “deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage….”
Ok, but what about all those writings that the powerful Christian bishops supposedly kicked out of the Bible—the ones that, according to the Da Vinci Code, treat Jesus as just an ordinary man? Well, one of them is called the “Teachings of Silvanus” which says of Jesus, “Although he was God, he [was found] among men as a man.” Another one, known as the “Letter of Peter to Philip” (not the real Peter and Philip) writes, “according to the orders of our God Jesus.” Yet another of these “lost” writings, known as the “Tripartite Tractate” puts Jesus in the holy trinity, writing of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Then there is the “Trimorphic Protennoia” which speaks of Jesus as “the Christ, the only-begotten God.”
The fact is that Jesus is treated as a divine being in virtually all of these “lost” documents. In fact, one significant difference between the ideology of these “lost” writings and the theology of the church is that the church viewed Jesus as truly man and God whereas these lost writings generally treated Jesus as divine, but not human! Dan Brown had it completely backwards.
The point of all this, of course, is not to try to prove that Jesus was God, but only to show how historically ridiculous Dan Brown’s claims are. I find it somewhat amazing that some of those who were so outraged about the relatively minor dramatic liberties taken by Mel Gibson in his “Passion of the Christ” don’t seem to mind at all about all the historical travesties in The Da Vinci Code. Why is that?
A few historical corrections may be in order. First, the vote at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 was not about whether Jesus was in some sense the Son of God. Both sides agreed on that. The question was what, precisely, did that mean. The followers of Athanasius (a black bishop from North Africa—one of my personal favorites) taught that Jesus was God. The other side, headed by Arius (a priest), also worshiped Jesus and taught that Jesus was a divine being—just not the same as God. Neither side thought of Jesus as a mere mortal as The Da Vinci Code claims.
Second, historians are not sure how many bishops attended the Council but the vote was not close, as The Da Vinci Code claims--out of over a hundred bishops, all of them except two sided with Athanasius. (As an aside, I find it amusing how, in the 60’s some black leaders condemned Christianity as a white man’s religion, when in fact the entire course of Christian history was affected by the intellect, dedication and raw courage of Athanasius, a black bishop, who suffered much for his faith).
Third, the idea that no one thought of Jesus as God before this council, is historically absurd. To give just a few examples, just over 100 years before this council met a church leader named Tertullian wrote, “Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God….” Fully 130 years before the Council of Nicea, Irenaeus, a church leader in what is now called France, was commenting on the Gospel of John when he wrote, "and the Word was God,’ of course, for that which is begotten of God is God." About 160 years before the Nicean Council a man named Justin, who was martyred for his faith, wrote, “…the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God.”
About the same time as Justin, another church leader named Polycarp—who, was burned at the stake for his faith—wrote, “our Lord and God Jesus Christ….” About fifty years earlier in his life, Polycarp received a letter from another Christian leader named Ignatius. Ignatius was under arrest on his way to Rome to be executed for his faith when he wrote “I bid you farewell always in our God Jesus Christ.”
In another letter, almost 220 years before the Council, Ignatius wrote that Jesus was “God existing in flesh.” Then there was another Christian writer known only as “Mathates” (Greek for “disciple’), writing some time in the first or second century who likened God to a king saying, “as a king might send his son who is a king; he sent him as God” (Mathates to Diognetus 7).
Even before all this, back into the first century, Paul and the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke John and the book of Hebrews all affirmed that Jesus was God.
Of course all of these are Christians—do we have any other evidence? Yes! Just over 210 years before the Council there was a Roman governor named Pliny the Younger who had a problem. It seems that Christians were all over his part of the empire like jackrabbits and he wasn’t sure what to do with them so, he started an investigation. In AD 112 he wrote to the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, saying that he found that on a certain day these Christians “were accustomed to come together before daylight and to sing by turns a hymn to Christ as a god.” About the same time a satirical writer named Lucian had nothing but contempt for Christians. Apparently disgusted by their intolerance, he wrote that Christians “deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage….”
Ok, but what about all those writings that the powerful Christian bishops supposedly kicked out of the Bible—the ones that, according to the Da Vinci Code, treat Jesus as just an ordinary man? Well, one of them is called the “Teachings of Silvanus” which says of Jesus, “Although he was God, he [was found] among men as a man.” Another one, known as the “Letter of Peter to Philip” (not the real Peter and Philip) writes, “according to the orders of our God Jesus.” Yet another of these “lost” writings, known as the “Tripartite Tractate” puts Jesus in the holy trinity, writing of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Then there is the “Trimorphic Protennoia” which speaks of Jesus as “the Christ, the only-begotten God.”
The fact is that Jesus is treated as a divine being in virtually all of these “lost” documents. In fact, one significant difference between the ideology of these “lost” writings and the theology of the church is that the church viewed Jesus as truly man and God whereas these lost writings generally treated Jesus as divine, but not human! Dan Brown had it completely backwards.
The point of all this, of course, is not to try to prove that Jesus was God, but only to show how historically ridiculous Dan Brown’s claims are. I find it somewhat amazing that some of those who were so outraged about the relatively minor dramatic liberties taken by Mel Gibson in his “Passion of the Christ” don’t seem to mind at all about all the historical travesties in The Da Vinci Code. Why is that?
DaVinci Code: Was Jesus married?
According to The Da Vinci Code, “the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record…social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried…if Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible’s gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood” (245).
Not only are the Gospels silent about Jesus being married, nothing is written about him being married in the rest of the New Testament or any other early Christian writing either. Of course, if you buy into the conspiracy theory that the church was trying to suppress the “truth” you may think this is irrelevant, but you should also know that none of the so called “lost gospels” that the church supposedly “suppressed” say anything about Jesus being married either.
Nevertheless, we're all supposed to believe that Jesus was married because the Gospels don’t say he was! While most men were married in Jesus day social decorum did not forbid singleness—the Essenes, for example, were a Jewish group that usually remained unmarried. But even if social decorum pressured men to get married, Jesus was not particularly known for following social decorum.
Another reason given for believing that Jesus’ was married is because the Gospel of Philip—written in the 3rd century AD—says that Jesus’ “companion” was Mary Magdalene and, according to The Da Vinci Code, “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse” (246).
This is actually kind of funny because the Gospel of Philip wasn’t written in Aramaic! It was originally written in Greek, and then translated into Coptic (and Egyptian language). The word “companion” both in Coptic and in Greek is koinonos, which means friend, partner, or companion—but not spouse. Both Greek and Coptic have words for spouse or wife and koinonos is not it. While it is true that your spouse should be your companion, not all your companions are your spouses—well, we hope not anyway or you may have some legal issues.
So let’s turn this argument on its head. Suppose that an essential, fundamental doctrine of Christianity depended on Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene. To support this doctrine, the church’s only evidence is to appeal to the fact that the New Testament is silent on the subject and that a single document, written two hundred years after the time of Jesus says that Mary was his “companion.” If this was our only evidence, critics would rightly laugh us out of court, so to speak.
On the other hand, the Gospel of John records that when Jesus was being crucified he assigned the care of his mother to his disciple, John. According to the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene was at the foot of the cross at that time so if he had been married, it is pretty remarkable that the writer would have Jesus being concerned about the care of his mother, but apparently caring nothing for his wife! Conspiracy theorists could argue that Jesus’ marriage to Mary was suppressed out of a desire to demonize Mary, but that’s ridiculous—the church has always held Mary Magdalene in high regard.
So where does this idea of Jesus’ marriage come from? It seems that the whole thing was made up in the 1960’s or 1970’s by a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard who once served time for fraud. He fabricated supposedly ancient documents claiming that he was a descendant of Jesus! When one of his associates committed suicide, Plantard was investigated and ended up confessing under oath that the papers were a fraud. The lies in these fraudulent documents were picked up in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and then borrowed from there for Dan Brown’s story.
Both the Judaism in which Jesus lived, and the Christianity which developed after Jesus, had a very high view of marriage and of sex within marriage—so there is no reason why Jesus couldn’t have gotten married if he had so desired, or why the church would have wanted to suppress such a thing if it was true. Personally, I would prefer that he had been married, but, unlike some writers, I’m unwilling to fabricate “history” to support my preferences.
Not only are the Gospels silent about Jesus being married, nothing is written about him being married in the rest of the New Testament or any other early Christian writing either. Of course, if you buy into the conspiracy theory that the church was trying to suppress the “truth” you may think this is irrelevant, but you should also know that none of the so called “lost gospels” that the church supposedly “suppressed” say anything about Jesus being married either.
Nevertheless, we're all supposed to believe that Jesus was married because the Gospels don’t say he was! While most men were married in Jesus day social decorum did not forbid singleness—the Essenes, for example, were a Jewish group that usually remained unmarried. But even if social decorum pressured men to get married, Jesus was not particularly known for following social decorum.
Another reason given for believing that Jesus’ was married is because the Gospel of Philip—written in the 3rd century AD—says that Jesus’ “companion” was Mary Magdalene and, according to The Da Vinci Code, “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse” (246).
This is actually kind of funny because the Gospel of Philip wasn’t written in Aramaic! It was originally written in Greek, and then translated into Coptic (and Egyptian language). The word “companion” both in Coptic and in Greek is koinonos, which means friend, partner, or companion—but not spouse. Both Greek and Coptic have words for spouse or wife and koinonos is not it. While it is true that your spouse should be your companion, not all your companions are your spouses—well, we hope not anyway or you may have some legal issues.
So let’s turn this argument on its head. Suppose that an essential, fundamental doctrine of Christianity depended on Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene. To support this doctrine, the church’s only evidence is to appeal to the fact that the New Testament is silent on the subject and that a single document, written two hundred years after the time of Jesus says that Mary was his “companion.” If this was our only evidence, critics would rightly laugh us out of court, so to speak.
On the other hand, the Gospel of John records that when Jesus was being crucified he assigned the care of his mother to his disciple, John. According to the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene was at the foot of the cross at that time so if he had been married, it is pretty remarkable that the writer would have Jesus being concerned about the care of his mother, but apparently caring nothing for his wife! Conspiracy theorists could argue that Jesus’ marriage to Mary was suppressed out of a desire to demonize Mary, but that’s ridiculous—the church has always held Mary Magdalene in high regard.
So where does this idea of Jesus’ marriage come from? It seems that the whole thing was made up in the 1960’s or 1970’s by a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard who once served time for fraud. He fabricated supposedly ancient documents claiming that he was a descendant of Jesus! When one of his associates committed suicide, Plantard was investigated and ended up confessing under oath that the papers were a fraud. The lies in these fraudulent documents were picked up in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and then borrowed from there for Dan Brown’s story.
Both the Judaism in which Jesus lived, and the Christianity which developed after Jesus, had a very high view of marriage and of sex within marriage—so there is no reason why Jesus couldn’t have gotten married if he had so desired, or why the church would have wanted to suppress such a thing if it was true. Personally, I would prefer that he had been married, but, unlike some writers, I’m unwilling to fabricate “history” to support my preferences.
DaVinci Code and the New Testament
According to The Da Vinci Code, “More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen…the Bible as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great” (231).
Once again, a few corrections are in order. First, just to be more precise, the number of ancient gospels in existence is actually closer to thirty, not eighty. What Brown is referring to are the Gnostic documents found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, most of which are not gospels.
Second, Constantine facilitated the production of about 50 New Testaments, but he had nothing to do with the contents. Not only that, but the Council of Nicea, over which Constantine presided, had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament.
Third, although the boundaries of the New Testament were still in dispute during Constantine’s time, the essential core had been agreed on for over two hundred years—long before any councils met to discuss the issue. This core included Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, First Peter, First John…and most churches even agreed on Revelation. Cyprian (d. 258), Origen (d. 254), Tertullian (d. 212), Muratorian Canon (late 2nd century; omits First Peter), and Irenaeus (d. 195) all accepted this core including Revelation. None of the Nag Hammadi documents are ever included, probably because including these in the church’s Bible would be like including “gangsta rap” in our hymnals :-)
Some of these authors accepted more than this core. Irenaeus, for example—fully 130 years before the Council of Nicea—quotes extensively from almost every book in our New Testament. Irenaeus calls these books “Scripture,” indicating his belief that they were inspired by God, and he even calls them the “New Testament” (twice). Further, Irenaeus seems to see no need to argue that these books belong to the New Testament—their acceptance as Scripture is so widespread that he just takes it for granted that all will agree. In fact, what really irritates Irenaeus is not that the “heretics” reject his New Testament—they don’t—but that they rip passages out of context and make words and phrases mean things they couldn’t possibly have meant in their original context. For example, the heretics often take Greek words that St. Paul uses and turn them into names for their numerous gods, something that would have appalled St. Paul!
Irenaeus quotes from every book in the modern New Testament except Philemon, James, 2 Peter, and 3 John. Altogether these books make up only about six pages out of about 230 pages in a modern New Testament. The fact is that we don’t know whether Irenaeus rejected these books or whether he just didn’t have occasion to quote from them because they are so small.
All over the Roman Empire the church seemed to agree on this core. Other New Testament books, like Hebrews (10 pages), James (3 pgs), 2 and 3 John (1 pg), and Jude (1 pg), for example, were accepted by some churches but questioned by others even into the fourth century. Some books once considered sacred by some churches were eventually rejected, including the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. None of these are part of the Nag Hammadi documents and they have certainly never been suppressed!
Even before Irenaeus, there are hints that the Gospels and Paul’s letters were accepted as Scripture. For example, Valentinus (a Gnostic leader, 1st half of 2nd century) cites Matthew, Luke, John, Paul’s letters (except 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus), Hebrews and Revelation as authoritative. Tatian (a Gnostic, d. 172) produced a harmony of the Gospels—which included only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Justin (d. 175) referred to the “memoirs of the apostles” and scholars agree that he was referring to the four biblical gospels.
In the letter known as Second Peter, dated by scholars as early as AD 60’s to 130’s—over 200 years before the Council—the author puts all of Paul’s letters in the category of Scripture. The author of First Timothy (5:18), dated from the AD 60’s to 80’s, writes, “For the Scripture says,” and quotes from a phrase found only in Luke 10:7. Also in the first century, a church leader know as Clement of Rome quotes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew—though it is not clear whether he is quoting from Matthew or from oral tradition. There is no such ambiguity in the letter of Barnabas, however, which was written in the first or second centuries and clearly quotes from the Gospel of Matthew as scripture.
The point of all this is that the impression is sometimes given by Dan Brown (who is clueless) and some scholars who know better, that the New Testament was created almost from scratch in the fourth century by some powerful Christian bishops who met to consider eighty gospels, but who kept only those that agreed with their views and kicked all the others out. This is pure nonsense.
Once again, a few corrections are in order. First, just to be more precise, the number of ancient gospels in existence is actually closer to thirty, not eighty. What Brown is referring to are the Gnostic documents found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, most of which are not gospels.
Second, Constantine facilitated the production of about 50 New Testaments, but he had nothing to do with the contents. Not only that, but the Council of Nicea, over which Constantine presided, had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament.
Third, although the boundaries of the New Testament were still in dispute during Constantine’s time, the essential core had been agreed on for over two hundred years—long before any councils met to discuss the issue. This core included Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, First Peter, First John…and most churches even agreed on Revelation. Cyprian (d. 258), Origen (d. 254), Tertullian (d. 212), Muratorian Canon (late 2nd century; omits First Peter), and Irenaeus (d. 195) all accepted this core including Revelation. None of the Nag Hammadi documents are ever included, probably because including these in the church’s Bible would be like including “gangsta rap” in our hymnals :-)
Some of these authors accepted more than this core. Irenaeus, for example—fully 130 years before the Council of Nicea—quotes extensively from almost every book in our New Testament. Irenaeus calls these books “Scripture,” indicating his belief that they were inspired by God, and he even calls them the “New Testament” (twice). Further, Irenaeus seems to see no need to argue that these books belong to the New Testament—their acceptance as Scripture is so widespread that he just takes it for granted that all will agree. In fact, what really irritates Irenaeus is not that the “heretics” reject his New Testament—they don’t—but that they rip passages out of context and make words and phrases mean things they couldn’t possibly have meant in their original context. For example, the heretics often take Greek words that St. Paul uses and turn them into names for their numerous gods, something that would have appalled St. Paul!
Irenaeus quotes from every book in the modern New Testament except Philemon, James, 2 Peter, and 3 John. Altogether these books make up only about six pages out of about 230 pages in a modern New Testament. The fact is that we don’t know whether Irenaeus rejected these books or whether he just didn’t have occasion to quote from them because they are so small.
All over the Roman Empire the church seemed to agree on this core. Other New Testament books, like Hebrews (10 pages), James (3 pgs), 2 and 3 John (1 pg), and Jude (1 pg), for example, were accepted by some churches but questioned by others even into the fourth century. Some books once considered sacred by some churches were eventually rejected, including the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. None of these are part of the Nag Hammadi documents and they have certainly never been suppressed!
Even before Irenaeus, there are hints that the Gospels and Paul’s letters were accepted as Scripture. For example, Valentinus (a Gnostic leader, 1st half of 2nd century) cites Matthew, Luke, John, Paul’s letters (except 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus), Hebrews and Revelation as authoritative. Tatian (a Gnostic, d. 172) produced a harmony of the Gospels—which included only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Justin (d. 175) referred to the “memoirs of the apostles” and scholars agree that he was referring to the four biblical gospels.
In the letter known as Second Peter, dated by scholars as early as AD 60’s to 130’s—over 200 years before the Council—the author puts all of Paul’s letters in the category of Scripture. The author of First Timothy (5:18), dated from the AD 60’s to 80’s, writes, “For the Scripture says,” and quotes from a phrase found only in Luke 10:7. Also in the first century, a church leader know as Clement of Rome quotes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew—though it is not clear whether he is quoting from Matthew or from oral tradition. There is no such ambiguity in the letter of Barnabas, however, which was written in the first or second centuries and clearly quotes from the Gospel of Matthew as scripture.
The point of all this is that the impression is sometimes given by Dan Brown (who is clueless) and some scholars who know better, that the New Testament was created almost from scratch in the fourth century by some powerful Christian bishops who met to consider eighty gospels, but who kept only those that agreed with their views and kicked all the others out. This is pure nonsense.
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