The only fact
about Constantine
in the paragraph above is that he called church leaders together for the
Council of Nicea in 325. The deity of Jesus had been affirmed in the earliest
writings in the New Testament – the letters written by Paul in mid-first
century (cf. Philippians 2:5-11); Nicea discussed how the divine and human
natures of Jesus were related to each other and took no “vote” on his deity.
Sunday was the primary day of Christian worship from the start (Acts 20:7; 1
Corinthians 16:2); Constantine
had proclaimed Sunday a state holiday four years before Nicea.
Which books to include in what became the New Testament was
not a topic of discussion at the church’s first ecumenical council; Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John had been accepted as authoritative accounts of Jesus’ life
for well over 150 years by that time. There is no historical evidence of any
book burning or Gospel suppression as a result of Nicea; the Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are clear about the human (e.g., tears, pain,
hunger, etc.) as well as divine (e.g., insights, miracles, resurrection, etc.)
natures of Jesus.
The Bible. The Da Vinci Code explains that the New
Testament we have today is unreliable as an account of the life and mission of
Jesus. An older and more faithful account is known to scholars from the
discovery in the 1950s of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi documents. But
the Vatican
has suppressed public awareness of these valuable works.
All these assertions are false. The Dead
Sea Scrolls – found in 1947, by the way – contain no Christian documents and never once mention
Jesus; it is a library of Jewish literature hidden away by a first-century Jewish
sect of Essenes. The 46 Nag Hammadi documents are Gnostic works, include none
of our canonical Gospels, and contain no
reference to an alternate “grail” story. The Vatican has never controlled or had
any desire to conceal either collection of documents.
Jesus. The book
and movie make much of an alternate account of Jesus’ marriage to Mary
Magdalene as “a matter of historical record.” The affirmation is that a married
Jesus “makes more sense” in light of the Jewish social customs of that time
which “virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried” and specifically “condemned”
celibacy.
In the first place, marriage is honorable and holy
throughout Scripture. I know of no reason Christ could not have married, if
that had been his choice. The fact is, however, that there is not a single
document from antiquity – biblical, Nag Hammadi text, or any other – that
claims he was married. It is certainly untrue that celibacy was “condemned” by
Jewish culture in Jesus’ time. Does anybody remember John the Baptist? Paul?
The Essenes of Dead Sea Scroll fame?
The “argument” in Brown’s novel that the Aramaic word koinonos in The Gospel of Philip actually means “spouse” – and thus does make a
claim that Jesus was married – would cause any biblical or linguistic scholar
to laugh. For one thing, Philip is
known to us only in Coptic and not Aramaic. For another, the word koinonos means “associate” or “friend” –
a status our canonical Gospels affirm not only for Mary Magdalene but for
several other women of that time.
The Sacred Feminine.
The Code has the Priory of Sion
perpetuating goddess worship because the group knows a secret hidden from the
masses by the Roman Catholic Church. That secret is that “early Jewish
tradition involved ritualistic sex” in the Jerusalem Temple,
where “Shekinah” was housed as the powerful female consort of the male Yahweh.
“Shekinah” is not the name of a female deity but the term
used to describe the brilliant glory that attends the presence of Yahweh. And
Yahweh – who, by the way, is neither male nor female – is never referred to in
any documentation from ancient times in terms of sexual rituals at the Jerusalem Temple. If Catholics are offended by the
insulting misuse of “historical fiction” – it would more correctly be called “fictional
history” – so are Jews by so outrageous a claim as this one.
The biblical record has Yahweh creating both male and female
to bear the divine image and likeness (Genesis 1:27), giving laws unique to
antiquity that were meant to protect women from common abuses (e.g., divorce
certificates), and honoring their role in Israel’s history (e.g., Sarah, Ruth,
Deborah). Women figure prominently in the ministries of both Jesus and Paul.
It is church history rather than Constantine or the abolition of a “sacred
feminine” that reflects the shameful exclusion and exploitation of females in
the church. Both Catholic and Protestant actions have too often reflected
patriarchal culture over divine ideals. Such Gnostic literature as The Gospel of Thomas demeans women and
holds out the salvific ideal of their being transformed into males.
The garbled representations of The Da Vinci Code just might prompt many of us who suffer from a growing biblical illiteracy to dust off some old documents. And then the flap will have been a good thing.
Rubel Shelly is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Rochester College and interim
minister for the Plymouth (Michigan) Church of Christ. Contact him at shelly_r@bellsouth.net.
May 22, 2006
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