Although I consider myself a bookworm, I\u2019m not much of a novel reader. I usually don\u2019t pay any attention to the fads in that arena. But I\u2019ve been reading articles lately about the cottage industry that\u2019s grown up around Dan Brown\u2019s The DaVinci Code<\/b>, so maybe it\u2019s time I give that book some attention, especially since Jesus<\/b> is involved. Not that I\u2019m gonna actually read the book. Hey, who needs to. With all the web sites set up to pick his book apart chapter by chapter, you don\u2019t need to plunk down twelve bucks to know what goes on in The DaVinci Code.<\/p>\n
As you probably know, The DaVinci Code has gained a lot of attention for implying that Jesus was not<\/b> the Son of God, and furthermore, that Jesus had a thing going with Mary Magdalene<\/b> (and had children through her). The DaVinci Code has been interpreted by many readers as going beyond fiction, into the realm of speculative (and even plausible) history. As a result, devout Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants (the unholy alliance<\/b> of the 21st Century) have launched an attack on the Code\u2019s many historical weak spots. From a quick surf on the net, I saw a phalanx of web sites devoted to intelligently blasting The DaVinci Code to pieces. And they seem to be doing a good job of it.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s my two cents<\/b> on the DaVinci situation. Brown\u2019s plot is darn interesting, but it belongs solely in the land of fiction. Still, I must admit that just because Brown is wrong does not<\/b> mean that the churchy people are right. The question of Jesus\u2019 status as a lover and a parent remains an historical mystery<\/b>. The New Testament doesn\u2019t say anything about it one way or the other. It was quite unusual back then for a Jewish man to reach the age of 30 without having been married and having produced children. Unusual, but not impossible. Being an itinerant preacher always on the go from one village to the next, it wouldn\u2019t be easy if you had a wife and kids. But then again, Peter had a wife<\/b>, and the New Testament wasn\u2019t embarrassed about admitting that.<\/p>\n
So perhaps the absence in the Gospels of any mention of Jesus having obligations to a wife or kids was significant. Or maybe not.<\/b> The earliest Gospel manuscripts that we have today were written at least 200 years after Jesus was crucified (about the time of the Council of Nicea, which is cited by Brown as the primary historical cover-up event). That leaves a lot of time for subtle editing by factions seeking to remember Jesus in a very Godly way. Brown cites the many \u201calternative Gospels\u201d as evidence of an historic conspiracy<\/b> to cover up Jesus\u2019 true nature, given that one of them (the Gospel of Philip) talks of the jealousy that the Apostles had regarding the attention that Jesus was giving Mary of Magdala, including kissing her<\/b> on the lips.<\/p>\n
Well, my friends, most scholars agree that these alternative Gospels were mostly composed in the Second Century, well after Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were committed to papyrus. They are generally imaginative take-offs<\/b> on the basic themes from the Fab Four. On the other hand, even conservative scholars like the late, great Raymond Brown admit that some of these writings might contain a memory of Jesus here and there that, for various reasons, just didn\u2019t make the cut in the primary gospels. It\u2019s not impossible that Jesus was remembered early on as having an interest in Mary M., that this unsettling interest was washed out of the accepted gospels by those inspired to honor Jesus as God\u2019s true son, and that a later-composed backwater gospel somehow survived with that little tid-bit intact.<\/p>\n
Not impossible — but not necessarily probable<\/b> either. In the end, the whole thing remains a mystery, and probably always will. But one thing is for sure. Dan Brown really is a talented and creative novelist. He discovered and tapped into the occultist<\/b> edge of pietistic European Catholicism and then twisted it around 180 degrees to support a modern secularist \/ feminist agenda. I can relate to what he\u2019s playing with. I grew up in a Polish Catholic household just one generation removed from Europe, and I experienced the gray zone where populist Catholic spirituality slips over into superstition, into a world of ghosts and mystery rites and intricate symbols (e.g., dark and strange looking icons) and deep secrets about the end of the world (recall the three secrets of Fatima<\/b>). Imagine the irony if those European ghosts and rites and symbols and secrets were real after all, but were protecting a very different kind of Holy Grail.<\/p>\n
But no. In the end, Brown\u2019s ghosts and rites and symbols and secrets are just as unreal<\/b> as the ones that I heard and saw as a kid, despite the updated political correctness that Dan Brown infuses them with. I have decided to side with the scholars<\/b> in my search for the real Jesus, or at least the realest one we can have. The academics have the better way of approaching and discussing the important questions about Jesus. One reason that you can put more trust in a scholarly book is that it will never<\/b> be made into a movie<\/b>. By contrast, Ron Howard is already working on a film version of The DaVinci Code. And good old Ron isn\u2019t exactly noted for being a stickler about historical accuracy. The DaVinci Code is ultimately just an entertaining ghost story, a dead end<\/b> on the search for the real(est) Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although I consider myself a bookworm, I\u2019m not much of a novel reader. I usually don\u2019t pay any attention to the fads in that arena. But I\u2019ve been reading articles lately about the cottage industry that\u2019s grown up around Dan Brown\u2019s The DaVinci Code, so maybe it\u2019s time I give that book some attention, especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}