Hi there, how are you?
The Da Vinci Code is making the rounds. Note: I haven't read the book, but I've got a strong grasp on what its about. I think I will be checking out the movie. Ron Howard is directing, with a solid cast, and I hear it's a fun thriller (though it may be dumbed down a bit).
There's been a ton of info tossed out, for or against the flick. Especially really reactionary stuff... And that sucks. It's kind of silly to perceive such a book as an attack on faith -- it is, lest we forget, a work of fiction, and it's intended to be a fun suspense story. I did get to hear the fourth part of a cool sermon series on the book, by a Korean pastor. It was a damn fine sermon, very balanced in its approach. It also gave me a stronger sense of what the book raises about church and everything. (I'll be crossposting this to my religion/faith/spirituality/life blog at www.disciplesx.com.)
I'll try to add to this as people ask other questions. If I don't know, I'll go over and quiz some professors (I live at and attend a seminary) and get a cross section of answers. These professors run the range of views, so it might be interesting.
First, how did the Bible come to be? We don't really know. Well... if you say, how did a certain translation come to be, we have all the info you need on that... from King James to older versions (like the old Wycliffe Jean stuff) to newer stuff. Now, if you ask, how did each book in the Bible get in there... well, we don't know. It was apparently a consensus sort of thing. Communities of faith apparently had access to various letters, texts, and so on, and through their own practice, came to see a number of them as standard. There were lots of disagreements. For example, one faith community (or a group of them) took all four gospels and tried to force them into a single gospel. This was circulated and used, but eventually, it fell out a favor. We don't know why.
Throughout the Bible's history, there have always been efforts to prune or add, though that has lessened over the years. Martin Luther, for instance, saw certain epistles in the New testament of being worthless. The Protestant church also kicked out some texts because they were trying to do things their own way or whatever. Gnostic texts were pruned or rejected, because they supposedly were pagan or unorthodox. We don't know why, as when we read them later, they don't seem amazingly "bizarre". Certainly, some of them are quite unusual, like the childhood stories of Jesus in the Gospel of James. Mostly, these Gnostic texts were also written rather late, making it difficult for anyone to justify adding them to the canon at the time.
It's all a very complex issue, especially the Gnostics. There is so little we know. As we have discovered their texts, we know that Gnostics are concerned with "gnosis", basically special knowledge imparted to them by Christ. You can see this in the Gospel of John as well, sort of a special dispensation of knowledge from Jesus to a specific disciple. The communities that produced these texts then claim that they have been followers of this disciple and have this special knowledge. However, like I mentioned before, their texts aren't all that wild. So, the scholarly thought suggests, like the Montanists, it wasn't their teaching that was so much hated -- it may have been their actions as a community. Were they too socially progressive, suggesting an overthrow of the social order? Perhaps. Were they wild, insane cultists who did disgusting evil things to initiates? Perhaps. Maybe it was a combination -- whatever it was, the main stream sort of tradition saw them as radical and incompatible.. and they were suppressed. We are glad that their texts have survived, because they shine a lot of light on what was going on in religious thought in that day.. and reveal time and time again, there was never one view on Christianity -- it has always been diverse, changing, contradictory, and so on. It's cool, actually.
What do we really know about the divinity of Jesus? Was Jesus really divine, or was it something that was made up later by the church? This is a popular thought, even among some Christian scholars. Certainly, there is evidence to suggest that maybe the divinity of Jesus was something that developed later, but there are a lot of holes in this. For starters, we have to pinpoint the first texts written in the New Testament. Written by Paul, these epistles appeared in the 1st century, well before the church in Rome had become any sort of organized force. But Paul refers in these early epistles (written between 45-70 AD?) to a high Christology -- there are segments of the text which scholars suggest are pieces of hymns, which have amazing things to say about the divinity of Jesus. And if Paul was indeed a latecomer to Christianity, that suggests that the divinity of Jesus was already well in practice, in just a few years after Jesus' death. This is absolutely fascinating! The first time in my faith journey that I have ever heard a good solid answer about the divinity of Jesus... Certainly, there is still a lot we don't know, but it is remarkable to see how quickly the communities believed in a divine Jesus -- Jesus meant something very radical and life-changing to them (which of course goes on today).
Is the church corrupt? Well, yeah... certainly not always, but like any institution, it happens. I certainly wish and work for a transparent church in the future.. but time will tell....
Okay, so thus ends your random bible questions answered for today. I am going to keep working on this, and punch it up as some sort of article on DisciplesX. Night!
Edit No. 1: I sort of cut it short, because my girlfriend wanted to talk. I will probably go through this and try to clarify certain things, cite specific sources, and detail things a bit more... But I'm getting tired... but hopefully, if any of you care to read this stuff, you can help me tighten things up before I post it over at DisciplesX. And I changed the title, cause really, this doesn't have a lot to do with the Da Vinci Code, other than hopefully satisfying some curiosity out there... Peace!
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chipper
I received my comp copy in the mail last week, and it’s been fun looking over it. I think I will try a more expansive review on RPG.Net once I have a little time, but for now, here are my first thoughts: