1. Jesus' life was not “recorded by thousands of followers across the land”. Nor is it at all clear that Jesus “inspired millions to better lives”— if by that he means (as the sentence suggests) that Jesus did so in his own lifetime. Jesus was not a cause of much comment in any contemporary ancient sources (Jewish or Roman); any historical figure who had such an impact would have left a much larger blip on the radar screen of the Roman Empire.
2. The figure “80” or “more than eighty gospels” is, as far as I know, completely fabricated. There were indeed more gospels than the canonical four (nothing new here, these have long been known and are widely available in the standard collection, The New Testament Apocrypha edited by Hennecke and Schneelmelcher [there are also other editions]). They list about 31 other “gospels,” but that number depends on which texts qualify as “gospels,” and there is a big debate about what the genre is. Some works, even the Gospel of Mary, are thought by some to be more apocalypses than gospels, etc.
Of course, we do not know what we do not know (a major principle of historiography!). So there were probably other gospels we aren’t aware of, but that just compounds the error of the factual-sounding number “80.”
3. No gospels were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, nor any other Christian documents . The author has erroneously placed the Dead Sea Scrolls within The Gnostic Gospels. The Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian (they are Jewish); the Nag Hammadi texts are not “earliest” (by anyone's reckoning for the whole corpus; some scholars hold out for one document, The Gospel of Thomas, as not necessarily being itself so early, but as containing within it traditions that were earlier, but by no means is even this a consensus position). Hence the statement that “these” (the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls] are ... “the earliest Christian records” (the sentence is grammatically in apposition with the one preceding) is false on two counts.
4. Of the Nag Hammadi codexes , only four in the standard edition are called “gospels” (43 other documents are letters, acts, apocalypses, and various other genres). “These documents” (i.e., the Nag Hammadi codexes), far from “speak[ing] of Christ's ministry in very human terms” , are famous for their Gnostic account of Christ as more divine than human. See, e.g., The Gospel of Truth 38: “Now the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who first gave a name to the one who came forth from him, who was himself, and he begot him as a son ...” I could cite many more examples, but the point is that the Gnostic Gospels hardly represent a lower, more human view of Christ/Jesus than the divine Christ supposedly created by Constantine .
5. To say that Mary Magdalene's marriage to Christ is “a matter of historical record” is simply false. Brown’s appeal to an “Aramaic” term to explain a word in the Gospel of Philip (usually translated “companion”) is extremely weak . GPhil is a second- or third-century Coptic translation of a Greek original. Brown is probably trying to make reference to a Syriac term (a dialect of Aramaic) that is supposedly in the mind of the Greek author, who may have written in Syria (there are other references in the document to Syriac terms, but this is not one of them). But even if the three-stage translation equivalents (from Syriac to Greek to Coptic) are allowed (with all the problems that involves), the terms in all three languages still have a range of referents, including “friend” or “companion” (but by no means restricted to “spouse”). The same text does, however, say Jesus used to kiss her often , likely to set her in competition with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in John’s Gospel. Mary of Magdala was, however, called “a female disciple of the Lord” in the 2nd century Gospel of Peter (which accords with Mark 15:40-41); she was likely a very important early Christian, but nowhere in ancient sources said to be Jesus’ wife, let alone mother of his children.
On the general point that Jesus may have been married, that is possible, by inference from general practice , but there are also reports of first century Jewish ascetics, such as the Essenes, who are said by Philo not to marry (Hypothetica 11.14). By the way, our author also does not reckon with the fact that even the source he appeals to, the Gospel of Mary roots Mary’s special knowledge in a vision Mary had of the Lord , apparently post-resurrection, not in some special relationship with Jesus in his lifetime.
6. On Constantine's invention of the divinity of Jesus and exclusion of all but four canonical gospels: there are thousands of problems here. Perhaps the most egregious error is that in his enthusiasm, Brown has left out the rather inconvenient testimony of the letters of Paul, (historical sources dated to the 50s or early 60s CE) in which Jesus is already the Son of God, one who was the very agent of creation (see 1 Cor 8:6, and many other places). This is hardly the very human Jesus that Brown says was the only view of Jesus for three centuries until Constantine struck it down. To add another witness: Ignatius of Antioch, in letters written ca. 110 CE, refers to Jesus as God (Letter to the Romans, prescript, etc.). Way too much, in other words, is attributed to Constantine here. Also, Constantine did not make Christianity “the official religion” (p.232). He issued edicts for its toleration, and gave it institutional backing, but that did not happen until Theodosius I outlawed non-Christian religion.
7. Constantine did not invent the term “heretic” the word is Greek (it is a loan word in Latin, as Tertullian notes in de praescr. haer 6.2), and it does refer to “choice,” but was used already by Paul and Luke to refer to “divisions or factions” (1 Cor 11:19) or “schools” of thought (Acts 5:17; 26:5). It becomes technical “bad boy” language for “people not us” long before Constantine (Irenaeus in the 2nd, Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the 3rd century).
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Sunday, October 29, 2006
But It's Just Fiction....(Part 9)
In the above we have the bulk of Brown’s Biblical material. Hereafter we find only a few points of consideration. In Chapter 74 there is a claim that “early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex” in the Jewish Temple, and that YHWH was worshipped along with a female consort named Shekinah.
Where Brown derives this “information” is difficult to say. It is found in no scholarly source to my awareness; it is not certified by any leading archaeologist or Biblical commentator. In Chapter 77 Brown offers a comment about a proper name, Sheshach, which he says is “mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah.” This name is a codeword for Babylon. While this latter point is true, it seems excessive to say that something mentioned but twice (Jer. 25:26, Jer. 51:41) is mentioned “repeatedly.”
It is suitable in closing to consider some comments from Chapter 82. Brown’s hero remarks that “every faith in the word is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith—acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”
It is no mystery that a contextual study of the word “faith” (pistis) in the New Testament and its contemporary literature does not bear this definition out. The word is used as a noun to refer to the Christian "faith" as a set of convictions, but in far many more cases the meaning intended is in the sense of faithfulness, or loyalty as owed to one in whom one is embedded for service. The relationship between the believer and God is framed in the New Testament terms of an ancient client-patron relationship.
As God's "clients" to whom he has shown unmerited favor (grace), our response should be an awareness of prescribed duties toward those in whom we are indebted (God) and the group in which we are embedded (God's kin group, the body of Christ). This awareness is the expression of our faithfulness of loyalty
-- in other words, this is our pistis, or faith. "Faith" is not acceptance of what we cannot prove, but trust in one who has proven himself, our pledge to trust, and be reliable servants to, our patron (God), who has provided us with tangible gifts (Christ) and proof thereby of His own reliability.
Faith is not imagination, but the reaction we provide to evidence. The missionaries of the New Testament did not appeal to feelings, but to facts: the resurrection and empty tomb; Jesus’ miracles; his fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
In other words, evidence!!
Those who adhere to Brown’s idealized caricature, however, would for obvious reasons prefer the more nebulous sort of “faith.” It is clear why: All of their documents are dated far too late; all of their evidence is “destroyed;” all of their ideas are gross decontexualizations.
It is not surprising that The DaVinci Code ends with Mary’s tomb unopened and the secrets left unsaid.
If Brown’s ideologues are indeed in possession of ancient and secret documents that turn the world upside down, why are they not now in the hands of paleographers, linguistic experts, or other scholars to be dated?
Christian missionaries risked their lives in preaching the Gospel – what is it the revisionists fear?
Brown is not the first to propose that Christianity is a vast conspiracy by the Vatican and/or others to hoodwink the world about the true Jesus. He will not be the last.
What is surprising is not that he would boldly label “FACT” what has been so totally refuted by the evidence. What is surprising is that our culture is so misinformed about Christianity, woefully ignorant of history, and clueless about the Bible – its origin, composition, preservation, and translation.
This novel is based on such flimsy fabrication that if it used any other setting – an ethnic neighborhood, a police investigation, an environmental conservation movement, for example – no one would be able to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the story.
That millions of people are not turned off by the lack of authenticity in The DaVinci Code is more than surprising, it is sad. That critics and even news media are so gullible is tragic.
Stay tuned for Part 10 coming soon........
Where Brown derives this “information” is difficult to say. It is found in no scholarly source to my awareness; it is not certified by any leading archaeologist or Biblical commentator. In Chapter 77 Brown offers a comment about a proper name, Sheshach, which he says is “mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah.” This name is a codeword for Babylon. While this latter point is true, it seems excessive to say that something mentioned but twice (Jer. 25:26, Jer. 51:41) is mentioned “repeatedly.”
It is suitable in closing to consider some comments from Chapter 82. Brown’s hero remarks that “every faith in the word is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith—acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.”
It is no mystery that a contextual study of the word “faith” (pistis) in the New Testament and its contemporary literature does not bear this definition out. The word is used as a noun to refer to the Christian "faith" as a set of convictions, but in far many more cases the meaning intended is in the sense of faithfulness, or loyalty as owed to one in whom one is embedded for service. The relationship between the believer and God is framed in the New Testament terms of an ancient client-patron relationship.
As God's "clients" to whom he has shown unmerited favor (grace), our response should be an awareness of prescribed duties toward those in whom we are indebted (God) and the group in which we are embedded (God's kin group, the body of Christ). This awareness is the expression of our faithfulness of loyalty
-- in other words, this is our pistis, or faith. "Faith" is not acceptance of what we cannot prove, but trust in one who has proven himself, our pledge to trust, and be reliable servants to, our patron (God), who has provided us with tangible gifts (Christ) and proof thereby of His own reliability.
Faith is not imagination, but the reaction we provide to evidence. The missionaries of the New Testament did not appeal to feelings, but to facts: the resurrection and empty tomb; Jesus’ miracles; his fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
In other words, evidence!!
Those who adhere to Brown’s idealized caricature, however, would for obvious reasons prefer the more nebulous sort of “faith.” It is clear why: All of their documents are dated far too late; all of their evidence is “destroyed;” all of their ideas are gross decontexualizations.
It is not surprising that The DaVinci Code ends with Mary’s tomb unopened and the secrets left unsaid.
If Brown’s ideologues are indeed in possession of ancient and secret documents that turn the world upside down, why are they not now in the hands of paleographers, linguistic experts, or other scholars to be dated?
Christian missionaries risked their lives in preaching the Gospel – what is it the revisionists fear?
Brown is not the first to propose that Christianity is a vast conspiracy by the Vatican and/or others to hoodwink the world about the true Jesus. He will not be the last.
What is surprising is not that he would boldly label “FACT” what has been so totally refuted by the evidence. What is surprising is that our culture is so misinformed about Christianity, woefully ignorant of history, and clueless about the Bible – its origin, composition, preservation, and translation.
This novel is based on such flimsy fabrication that if it used any other setting – an ethnic neighborhood, a police investigation, an environmental conservation movement, for example – no one would be able to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the story.
That millions of people are not turned off by the lack of authenticity in The DaVinci Code is more than surprising, it is sad. That critics and even news media are so gullible is tragic.
Stay tuned for Part 10 coming soon........
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
But It's Just Fiction...(Part 8)
Thus we find (even in Brown) necessary “excuses” to explain why the evidence is all in the church’s favor, thus assuming the blindness of scholars like Jenkins with no axe to grind for either party: “The history is written by the winners,” it is said, and all the evidence for a Christianity with an idealized feminism was destroyed.
Yet this begs the very question of how, and why, the winners won. It assumes that the fight was not honest, that the Church hit below the belt. Evidence such as the Gospel of Mary is taken as evidence; and non-evidence like lack of copies of it any earlier than the third century is also taken as evidence. There is simply no way the Church is allowed to win – there can be no evidence in its favor at all, so that Brown and his cohorts have stacked the deck.
In all of this it is assumed that the early Church was patriarchal and bigoted, but that is simply not the case. As Jenkins observes, the New Testament notes a number of prominent women even as it stands (before being “edited, altered,” to whatever convenient extent conspiracy theorists require). Several commentators on the prime time television program hinted that Mary, while perhaps not Jesus’ wife, was in some sense close to Jesus.
This is true, but not in the way that Brown or these commentators think. Women like Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna “ministered unto [Jesus] of their substance.” (Luke 8-2:3).
The impact of this passage is not appreciated because we have lost track of the contextual meaning: It means that these two women were Jesus’ well-off patrons, and that they financed his ministry – such that, in that day and age, he would have been a “client” who was in some sense obligated to them.
Later in the New Testament, figures like Lydia, Junia, Priscilla, and Phoebe figure prominently. This is not to say that the Church was entirely egalitarian, but it would be a mistake to assume that it was in any sense misogynistic – and when the authority structures did become less favorable to women, Jenkins adds, it was because the Church started following Roman models of administration.
The use of Mary Magdalene reflects a Gnostic tactical measure in every way. As Jenkins observes, the Gnostics, needing to overthrow apostolic authority (note that their doing so presupposes that the apostolic tradition had the upper hand to begin with!), had to choose a person close to Jesus, yet not part of the apostolic band.
The Gnostics also had a worldview that “demanded that spiritual beings exist in male and female pairs,” so that choosing a woman as Jesus’ counterpart was inevitable. In Jenkins’ words, the resort to these late texts “represent a triumph of hope over judgment.”Brown earns no credibility putting an endorsement of these texts into his characters’ mouths.
Chapter 60 offers us what is as close to a research bibliography as Brown intends to provide. His historian character says that “the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians.” That score is reduced to but four (for our convenience, or because there are no more?) but a closer look at these “historians” reveals some anomalies.
The persons who authored these texts are certainly not “historians” in any academic sense, that is, of possessing known academic degrees in these subjects or publishing material in peer-reviewed journals. Nor are the books published by academic presses.
Let’s have a look at Brown’s recommended titles:
The Templar Revelation by Picknett and Prince. Historians they are not; the credits on their book list them as “writers, researchers, and lecturers on the paranormal, the occult, and historical and religious mysteries.” Their other authorial credits include such masterpieces of critical history as The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt and The Mammoth Book of UFOs. Harvard University Press is practically beating their door down.
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Starbird and Sweeney. Printed by that fine academic press “Bear and Company,” this book is authored by one who claims to have a Masters degree (in what is not specified) and to have studied at Vanderbilt Divinity School, though whether she finished, and whether any of her material in this book was offered in any papers, is not said. Starbird is also the author of the third book Brown highlights, The Goddess in the Gospels. It is noted that this book was a primary influence on her.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh. This book, a bestseller that is the motherlode for Brown’s sort of theorizing, is not entirely endorsed by Brown’s historian character, who pins it for “dubious leaps of faith” but allows that its “fundamental premise [is] sound.” It’s nice to know something is, because the authors’ qualifications are not. The lead author Baigent’s sole credential is a degree in psychology. Leigh is described in one location (a website promoting his virtues as a speaker) as a “a writer and university lecturer with a thorough knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology and esoterica,” which seems a roundabout way of saying he has no relevant credentials in the subject.
None of these “scholars” are scholars at all; and no genuine New Testament scholars, liberal or conservative, are cited at all. A good lay introduction to New Testament scholarship is available in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ (Zondervan, 1998) and The Case for Faith (Zondervan, 2000).
I apologize for not having updated this blog in a while as I have had unforeseen circumstances happen to me. It's funny how the evil one operates. With the Power Of The Holy Spirit I will not be deterred from this mission.
Please stay tuned for Part 9 ....Coming Soon
Yet this begs the very question of how, and why, the winners won. It assumes that the fight was not honest, that the Church hit below the belt. Evidence such as the Gospel of Mary is taken as evidence; and non-evidence like lack of copies of it any earlier than the third century is also taken as evidence. There is simply no way the Church is allowed to win – there can be no evidence in its favor at all, so that Brown and his cohorts have stacked the deck.
In all of this it is assumed that the early Church was patriarchal and bigoted, but that is simply not the case. As Jenkins observes, the New Testament notes a number of prominent women even as it stands (before being “edited, altered,” to whatever convenient extent conspiracy theorists require). Several commentators on the prime time television program hinted that Mary, while perhaps not Jesus’ wife, was in some sense close to Jesus.
This is true, but not in the way that Brown or these commentators think. Women like Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna “ministered unto [Jesus] of their substance.” (Luke 8-2:3).
The impact of this passage is not appreciated because we have lost track of the contextual meaning: It means that these two women were Jesus’ well-off patrons, and that they financed his ministry – such that, in that day and age, he would have been a “client” who was in some sense obligated to them.
Later in the New Testament, figures like Lydia, Junia, Priscilla, and Phoebe figure prominently. This is not to say that the Church was entirely egalitarian, but it would be a mistake to assume that it was in any sense misogynistic – and when the authority structures did become less favorable to women, Jenkins adds, it was because the Church started following Roman models of administration.
The use of Mary Magdalene reflects a Gnostic tactical measure in every way. As Jenkins observes, the Gnostics, needing to overthrow apostolic authority (note that their doing so presupposes that the apostolic tradition had the upper hand to begin with!), had to choose a person close to Jesus, yet not part of the apostolic band.
The Gnostics also had a worldview that “demanded that spiritual beings exist in male and female pairs,” so that choosing a woman as Jesus’ counterpart was inevitable. In Jenkins’ words, the resort to these late texts “represent a triumph of hope over judgment.”Brown earns no credibility putting an endorsement of these texts into his characters’ mouths.
Chapter 60 offers us what is as close to a research bibliography as Brown intends to provide. His historian character says that “the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians.” That score is reduced to but four (for our convenience, or because there are no more?) but a closer look at these “historians” reveals some anomalies.
The persons who authored these texts are certainly not “historians” in any academic sense, that is, of possessing known academic degrees in these subjects or publishing material in peer-reviewed journals. Nor are the books published by academic presses.
Let’s have a look at Brown’s recommended titles:
The Templar Revelation by Picknett and Prince. Historians they are not; the credits on their book list them as “writers, researchers, and lecturers on the paranormal, the occult, and historical and religious mysteries.” Their other authorial credits include such masterpieces of critical history as The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt and The Mammoth Book of UFOs. Harvard University Press is practically beating their door down.
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Starbird and Sweeney. Printed by that fine academic press “Bear and Company,” this book is authored by one who claims to have a Masters degree (in what is not specified) and to have studied at Vanderbilt Divinity School, though whether she finished, and whether any of her material in this book was offered in any papers, is not said. Starbird is also the author of the third book Brown highlights, The Goddess in the Gospels. It is noted that this book was a primary influence on her.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh. This book, a bestseller that is the motherlode for Brown’s sort of theorizing, is not entirely endorsed by Brown’s historian character, who pins it for “dubious leaps of faith” but allows that its “fundamental premise [is] sound.” It’s nice to know something is, because the authors’ qualifications are not. The lead author Baigent’s sole credential is a degree in psychology. Leigh is described in one location (a website promoting his virtues as a speaker) as a “a writer and university lecturer with a thorough knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology and esoterica,” which seems a roundabout way of saying he has no relevant credentials in the subject.
None of these “scholars” are scholars at all; and no genuine New Testament scholars, liberal or conservative, are cited at all. A good lay introduction to New Testament scholarship is available in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ (Zondervan, 1998) and The Case for Faith (Zondervan, 2000).
I apologize for not having updated this blog in a while as I have had unforeseen circumstances happen to me. It's funny how the evil one operates. With the Power Of The Holy Spirit I will not be deterred from this mission.
Please stay tuned for Part 9 ....Coming Soon
Sunday, July 16, 2006
But It's Just Fiction... (Part 7)
Miller adds that it is a mistake to misuse Rabbinical literature (as Teabing is likely doing by Brown’s account) to assume that a rabbinic opinion was somehow a law. As the historian E.P. Sanders notes, according to Miller:
“There is also a more general point with regard to calling an opinion a law: once one starts quoting rabbinic statements as laws governing Palestine, one may draw absolutely any portrait of first-century Palestine that one wants. There are thousands and thousands of pages, filled with opinions."
These “laws” may not be laws, but anything from “a simple description of common practice, which someone finally decided to write down” to a prohibition offered precisely because so many people were doing the opposite.
It may be something intended only for the Pharisees, or may be an expression of an ideal that was never followed. As Miller notes, quoting Jewish scholar Ze'ev Safrai: "The public at large did not obey the rabbis. Among the Jews, only a minority followed the rabbis, obeyed their decisions and was influenced by their sermons and moral teachings….The scholar or reader who wishes to do real history must take into account all sorts of possibilities when he or she faces a rabbinic passage; the response, 'everybody did it because the rabbis laid it down' is seldom the correct one."
Therefore, it is false to say that Jesus as a married man “makes infinitely more sense;” it is simply false to claim that the “social decorum” (or anything else) “virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried;” it is false that “celibacy was condemned,” and the silence on the subject in the Gospels is not room for a positive proof whatsoever. (Let it finally be added, as many have noted, that Jesus does have a "bride" -- the church!
This is how the body of believers is identified in Revelation, which clearly points to Jesus being single on earth.)
In a section following, Brown’s “historian” repeats his error about Gospels being found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also appeals to a collection of texts found at a location called Nag Hammadi in 1945. Surprisingly, Teabing makes no mention of the most famous alternative gospel found in this collection, the Gospel of Thomas. Why this is so is quite clear: The Gospel of Thomas ends with an admonition by Jesus that women must “become male” in order to find salvation!
Needless to say, this would not fit in with Brown’s tale of seekers after a feminine divine! Instead, Brown cherry-picks two other documents:
The Gospel of Philip. Recommended as a “good place to start” by Teabing, Brown quotes a portion of the text in which Jesus is said to often “kiss” Mary Magdalene “on the mouth” and thereby invoke the jealousy of Peter.
Teabing goes on to point out that Mary is described as Jesus’s “companion,” and this is supposedly troubling for the canonical Gospel view. Is it? Brown has Teabing say little about this gospel of Philip, and for good reason.
Scholarship has utterly rejected this work as having any authentic historical recollections not derived from the canonical Gospels. Philip Jenkins, a Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, is our Philip who debunks Teabing’s Philip.
In his book Hidden Gospels, Jenkins explodes the myth of the Gospel of Philip as a reliable or contemporary source for the life of Jesus:
Not a first century document at all, scholars date the Gospel of Philip to the third century, about 200 years after Jesus lived, and therefore no product of the disciple named Philip in Acts, unless he lived to be at least 310! This would be as far removed from us as the American Revolution, and certainly not to be preferred over the canonical Gospels, which even by later dates assigned by some scholars (80-100 AD) are far closer to their source.
The Nag Hammadi document was penned no earlier than 350 AD.
The Gospel of Philip is a Gnostic text, and Gnostic thought would have no place in first century Palestinian Judaism. A Jesus teaching Gnosticism in this setting would not have been Teabing’s influential person – he would have been ignored and shunned.
Teabing also appeals briefly to a second document titled The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Claiming that “modern historians” have already explored the issue (and implying a positive finding), this gospel also shows Jesus treating Mary as a companion, and depicts Peter’s jealousy after Jesus gives Mary special instructions to carry out to run the Church after his crucifixion. Leading up to the idea of Mary Magdalene as the “female womb that carried Jesus’ royal bloodline,” Teabing comments:
Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene.
This gospel, however, fares no better than Philip under critical analysis. It, too, is a Gnostic document that reflects no reality found among Palestinian Jews of the first century; the earliest fragments, Jenkins notes, are dated to the third century, and most scholars date it no earlier than 180-200 AD, as far from Jesus are we are from the Civil War.
What Brown has actually done here is uncritically accept as valid specific fringe views that sober scholars like Jenkins reject. Brown sits with those who claim that goddess worship and Mary Magdalene’s prominence was the original, which the early, evil, male-dominated church erased; but as Jenkins observes, “…the Gnostic world should rather be seen as the first of many popular reactions against the institutional structures of the existing church, of the sort that would be commonplace through the middle ages and beyond."
Put simply, the church has a better claim to have “been there first.” Their documents have the evidence of earlier composition -- in terms of manuscript evidence, internal linguistic evidence, and external attestation – and the evidence of context, for the “male dominated” society that is so despised by ideologues like Brown is better matched in the Jewish culture in which Christianity formed, while the “divinized female” ideal that they prefer is found only in much later Gnostic materials.
Stay tuned for Part 8...coming soon
“There is also a more general point with regard to calling an opinion a law: once one starts quoting rabbinic statements as laws governing Palestine, one may draw absolutely any portrait of first-century Palestine that one wants. There are thousands and thousands of pages, filled with opinions."
These “laws” may not be laws, but anything from “a simple description of common practice, which someone finally decided to write down” to a prohibition offered precisely because so many people were doing the opposite.
It may be something intended only for the Pharisees, or may be an expression of an ideal that was never followed. As Miller notes, quoting Jewish scholar Ze'ev Safrai: "The public at large did not obey the rabbis. Among the Jews, only a minority followed the rabbis, obeyed their decisions and was influenced by their sermons and moral teachings….The scholar or reader who wishes to do real history must take into account all sorts of possibilities when he or she faces a rabbinic passage; the response, 'everybody did it because the rabbis laid it down' is seldom the correct one."
Therefore, it is false to say that Jesus as a married man “makes infinitely more sense;” it is simply false to claim that the “social decorum” (or anything else) “virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried;” it is false that “celibacy was condemned,” and the silence on the subject in the Gospels is not room for a positive proof whatsoever. (Let it finally be added, as many have noted, that Jesus does have a "bride" -- the church!
This is how the body of believers is identified in Revelation, which clearly points to Jesus being single on earth.)
In a section following, Brown’s “historian” repeats his error about Gospels being found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also appeals to a collection of texts found at a location called Nag Hammadi in 1945. Surprisingly, Teabing makes no mention of the most famous alternative gospel found in this collection, the Gospel of Thomas. Why this is so is quite clear: The Gospel of Thomas ends with an admonition by Jesus that women must “become male” in order to find salvation!
Needless to say, this would not fit in with Brown’s tale of seekers after a feminine divine! Instead, Brown cherry-picks two other documents:
The Gospel of Philip. Recommended as a “good place to start” by Teabing, Brown quotes a portion of the text in which Jesus is said to often “kiss” Mary Magdalene “on the mouth” and thereby invoke the jealousy of Peter.
Teabing goes on to point out that Mary is described as Jesus’s “companion,” and this is supposedly troubling for the canonical Gospel view. Is it? Brown has Teabing say little about this gospel of Philip, and for good reason.
Scholarship has utterly rejected this work as having any authentic historical recollections not derived from the canonical Gospels. Philip Jenkins, a Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, is our Philip who debunks Teabing’s Philip.
In his book Hidden Gospels, Jenkins explodes the myth of the Gospel of Philip as a reliable or contemporary source for the life of Jesus:
Not a first century document at all, scholars date the Gospel of Philip to the third century, about 200 years after Jesus lived, and therefore no product of the disciple named Philip in Acts, unless he lived to be at least 310! This would be as far removed from us as the American Revolution, and certainly not to be preferred over the canonical Gospels, which even by later dates assigned by some scholars (80-100 AD) are far closer to their source.
The Nag Hammadi document was penned no earlier than 350 AD.
The Gospel of Philip is a Gnostic text, and Gnostic thought would have no place in first century Palestinian Judaism. A Jesus teaching Gnosticism in this setting would not have been Teabing’s influential person – he would have been ignored and shunned.
Teabing also appeals briefly to a second document titled The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Claiming that “modern historians” have already explored the issue (and implying a positive finding), this gospel also shows Jesus treating Mary as a companion, and depicts Peter’s jealousy after Jesus gives Mary special instructions to carry out to run the Church after his crucifixion. Leading up to the idea of Mary Magdalene as the “female womb that carried Jesus’ royal bloodline,” Teabing comments:
Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene.
This gospel, however, fares no better than Philip under critical analysis. It, too, is a Gnostic document that reflects no reality found among Palestinian Jews of the first century; the earliest fragments, Jenkins notes, are dated to the third century, and most scholars date it no earlier than 180-200 AD, as far from Jesus are we are from the Civil War.
What Brown has actually done here is uncritically accept as valid specific fringe views that sober scholars like Jenkins reject. Brown sits with those who claim that goddess worship and Mary Magdalene’s prominence was the original, which the early, evil, male-dominated church erased; but as Jenkins observes, “…the Gnostic world should rather be seen as the first of many popular reactions against the institutional structures of the existing church, of the sort that would be commonplace through the middle ages and beyond."
Put simply, the church has a better claim to have “been there first.” Their documents have the evidence of earlier composition -- in terms of manuscript evidence, internal linguistic evidence, and external attestation – and the evidence of context, for the “male dominated” society that is so despised by ideologues like Brown is better matched in the Jewish culture in which Christianity formed, while the “divinized female” ideal that they prefer is found only in much later Gnostic materials.
Stay tuned for Part 8...coming soon
Sunday, June 18, 2006
But It's Just Fiction.. .(Part 6)
We pick up with more such errors in Chapter 58. As before, Teabing and his implied authority as a historian are responsible for the relevant statements:
“…Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor…Because Jesus was a Jew…the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. 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.”
All of this is in service of an explanation that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and is taken not from any reputable source on Jewish customs, but from Baigent and Leigh’s material (see below). And is it correct? Once again Teabing would be pulled over by the History Police for this sort of bungle. First, he is committing the classic fallacy of argument from silence – you cannot affirm whatever you want simply because the text doesn’t deny it. Second, the following data from Glenn Miller’s Christian ThinkTank overturns his speculations altogether:
It would have been “normal” for [Jesus] to have been married, but not obligatory for that time (or any other time, for that matter).
1. The rabbinic literature--which is what people sometimes use to argue that celibacy was a capital offense(!)--notes and gives rules for exceptions to rules which were themselves non-binding:
"Celibacy was, in fact, not common, and was disapproved by the rabbis, who taught that a man should marry at eighteen, and that if he passed the age of twenty without taking a wife he transgressed a divine command and incurred God's displeasure. Postponement of marriage was permitted students of the Law that they might concentrate their attention on their studies, free from the cares of support a wife. Cases like that of Simeon be 'Azzai, who never married, were evidently infrequent.
He had himself said that a man who did not marry was like one who shed blood, and diminished the likeness of God. One of his colleagues threw up to him that he was better at preaching that at practicing, to which he replied, What shall I do? My soul is enamored of the Law; the population of the world can be kept up by others...It is not to be imagined that pronouncements about the duty of marrying and the age at which people should marry actually regulated practice."
2. Judaism at the time of Jesus, of course, was a "many splintered thing", with the forerunners of the rabbinics being only one sect among many, one viewpoint (actually, multiple viewpoints!) on a spectrum of viewpoints. Accordingly, there were other groups at the time that either (a) required celibacy; or (b) allowed it.
The Essenes (and the somehow-related Qumran folks) were described by Josephus, Philo, and Pliny as being celibate, but the data is inconclusive as to whether they REQUIRED it or merely ENCOURAGED it.
Philo describes another Jewish sect of both men and women--the Therapeutae --who were celibate in their studies and pursuit of wisdom and the holy life (De Vita Contemplativa 68f).
3. But the dominant class of individuals who were “allowed” or “expected” to be celibate were prophetic figures, throughout Jewish history:
The prophet Jeremiah…
The wilderness prophet Banus:
"More well-known, though still exceptional, would have been the undoubted celibacy of wilderness prophets like Banus (Josephus Life 2.11) and John the Baptist."
John the Baptist (and possibly his prototype Elijah]…
Even the 2nd century AD Hasidic miracle-worker, the Galilean rabbi Pinhas ben Yair taught that abstinence was essential to reception of prophetic wisdom and the Holy Spirit.
4. Although the Rabbinic writers stressed the importance of marriage for procreation, it is noteworthy that this prophetic ideal of celibacy still showed up in the rabbinics:
"Judaism saw nothing wrong in portraying as celibate the great primordial prophet, seer, and lawgiver Moses (though only after the Lord had begun to speak to him). We see this interpretation already beginning to develop in Philo in the 1st century A.D. What is more surprising is that this idea is also reflected in various rabbinic passages. The gist of the tradition is an a fortiori argument. If the Israelites at Sinai had to abstain from women temporarily to prepare for God's brief, once-and- for-all address to them, how much more should Moses be permanently chaste, since God spoke regularly to him
. The same tradition, but from the viewpoint of the deprived wife, is related in the Sipre on Numbers 12.1. Since the rabbis in general were unsympathetic--not to say hostile--to religious celibacy, the survival of this Moses tradition even in later rabbinic writings argues that the tradition was long-lived and widespread by the time of the rabbis…In view of this "marginal" tradition in early Judaism, it is hardly surprising that the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes has no difficulty in seeing Jesus as celibate and explaining his unusual state by his prophetic call and the reception of the Spirit."
So, although it would have been “normal” and expected for a young Jewish man to be married, we have examples of where celibacy was accepted, encouraged, or required. Therefore, Jesus would not have had to have been married.
Part 7 Coming Soon.......
“…Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor…Because Jesus was a Jew…the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned, and the obligation for a Jewish father was to find a suitable wife for his son. 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.”
All of this is in service of an explanation that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and is taken not from any reputable source on Jewish customs, but from Baigent and Leigh’s material (see below). And is it correct? Once again Teabing would be pulled over by the History Police for this sort of bungle. First, he is committing the classic fallacy of argument from silence – you cannot affirm whatever you want simply because the text doesn’t deny it. Second, the following data from Glenn Miller’s Christian ThinkTank overturns his speculations altogether:
It would have been “normal” for [Jesus] to have been married, but not obligatory for that time (or any other time, for that matter).
1. The rabbinic literature--which is what people sometimes use to argue that celibacy was a capital offense(!)--notes and gives rules for exceptions to rules which were themselves non-binding:
"Celibacy was, in fact, not common, and was disapproved by the rabbis, who taught that a man should marry at eighteen, and that if he passed the age of twenty without taking a wife he transgressed a divine command and incurred God's displeasure. Postponement of marriage was permitted students of the Law that they might concentrate their attention on their studies, free from the cares of support a wife. Cases like that of Simeon be 'Azzai, who never married, were evidently infrequent.
He had himself said that a man who did not marry was like one who shed blood, and diminished the likeness of God. One of his colleagues threw up to him that he was better at preaching that at practicing, to which he replied, What shall I do? My soul is enamored of the Law; the population of the world can be kept up by others...It is not to be imagined that pronouncements about the duty of marrying and the age at which people should marry actually regulated practice."
2. Judaism at the time of Jesus, of course, was a "many splintered thing", with the forerunners of the rabbinics being only one sect among many, one viewpoint (actually, multiple viewpoints!) on a spectrum of viewpoints. Accordingly, there were other groups at the time that either (a) required celibacy; or (b) allowed it.
The Essenes (and the somehow-related Qumran folks) were described by Josephus, Philo, and Pliny as being celibate, but the data is inconclusive as to whether they REQUIRED it or merely ENCOURAGED it.
Philo describes another Jewish sect of both men and women--the Therapeutae --who were celibate in their studies and pursuit of wisdom and the holy life (De Vita Contemplativa 68f).
3. But the dominant class of individuals who were “allowed” or “expected” to be celibate were prophetic figures, throughout Jewish history:
The prophet Jeremiah…
The wilderness prophet Banus:
"More well-known, though still exceptional, would have been the undoubted celibacy of wilderness prophets like Banus (Josephus Life 2.11) and John the Baptist."
John the Baptist (and possibly his prototype Elijah]…
Even the 2nd century AD Hasidic miracle-worker, the Galilean rabbi Pinhas ben Yair taught that abstinence was essential to reception of prophetic wisdom and the Holy Spirit.
4. Although the Rabbinic writers stressed the importance of marriage for procreation, it is noteworthy that this prophetic ideal of celibacy still showed up in the rabbinics:
"Judaism saw nothing wrong in portraying as celibate the great primordial prophet, seer, and lawgiver Moses (though only after the Lord had begun to speak to him). We see this interpretation already beginning to develop in Philo in the 1st century A.D. What is more surprising is that this idea is also reflected in various rabbinic passages. The gist of the tradition is an a fortiori argument. If the Israelites at Sinai had to abstain from women temporarily to prepare for God's brief, once-and- for-all address to them, how much more should Moses be permanently chaste, since God spoke regularly to him
. The same tradition, but from the viewpoint of the deprived wife, is related in the Sipre on Numbers 12.1. Since the rabbis in general were unsympathetic--not to say hostile--to religious celibacy, the survival of this Moses tradition even in later rabbinic writings argues that the tradition was long-lived and widespread by the time of the rabbis…In view of this "marginal" tradition in early Judaism, it is hardly surprising that the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes has no difficulty in seeing Jesus as celibate and explaining his unusual state by his prophetic call and the reception of the Spirit."
So, although it would have been “normal” and expected for a young Jewish man to be married, we have examples of where celibacy was accepted, encouraged, or required. Therefore, Jesus would not have had to have been married.
Part 7 Coming Soon.......
Thursday, June 08, 2006
But It’s Just Fiction….(Part 5)
Part 5
At [the Council of Nicea]….many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon – the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus….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.
This is a half-truth. The Council of Nicea did seriously consider alternating views of Jesus, not so much as “mortal” versus “God” but as “eternal” versus “created,” and they were debating because heretics had come out against the already-held view that Jesus was divine. The heretical view, held by the presbyter Arius, maintained that Jesus was not divine by nature, but was created in ages past by God. Jesus was thus not argued to be “mortal” or just a “great and powerful man” even by the heretical. (As an aside, Constantine, who Teabing blames so much on, was himself sympathetic to the Arians!
Beyond this, the New Testament itself gives clear evidence of Jesus being viewed as divine:
Through the New Testament, Jesus describes himself, and other New Testament writers describe him, in terms of the Wisdom of God, a pre-New Testament Jewish figure that was regarded as divine, and as an attribute of God personified.
Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man, a phrase associated with a divine figure in Daniel 7.
Paul in 1 Cor. 8:4-6 offers a revised version of the Jewish Shema which includes Jesus in the identity of Yahweh, the God of the Jews.
A variety of New Testament passages affirm the absolute and full deity of Christ, such as John 1:1 (“the Word was God”), John 5:18 (“calling God His own Father, making himself equal with God”), John 20:28 (“[you are] my Lord and my God”), “Titus 2:13 (our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,”), Romans 9:5 (“God over all, blessed forever”), and Colossians 2:9 (“within Him dwells all the fullness of being God in bodily form”), and others.
Chapter 55 of The DaVinci Code, then, is laden with error and represents the poorest scholarship one will find between two covers. To put these sorts of statements into the mouth of a historian is an insult to the profession.
Part 6 Coming soon......
At [the Council of Nicea]….many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon – the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus….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.
This is a half-truth. The Council of Nicea did seriously consider alternating views of Jesus, not so much as “mortal” versus “God” but as “eternal” versus “created,” and they were debating because heretics had come out against the already-held view that Jesus was divine. The heretical view, held by the presbyter Arius, maintained that Jesus was not divine by nature, but was created in ages past by God. Jesus was thus not argued to be “mortal” or just a “great and powerful man” even by the heretical. (As an aside, Constantine, who Teabing blames so much on, was himself sympathetic to the Arians!
Beyond this, the New Testament itself gives clear evidence of Jesus being viewed as divine:
Through the New Testament, Jesus describes himself, and other New Testament writers describe him, in terms of the Wisdom of God, a pre-New Testament Jewish figure that was regarded as divine, and as an attribute of God personified.
Jesus identified himself as the Son of Man, a phrase associated with a divine figure in Daniel 7.
Paul in 1 Cor. 8:4-6 offers a revised version of the Jewish Shema which includes Jesus in the identity of Yahweh, the God of the Jews.
A variety of New Testament passages affirm the absolute and full deity of Christ, such as John 1:1 (“the Word was God”), John 5:18 (“calling God His own Father, making himself equal with God”), John 20:28 (“[you are] my Lord and my God”), “Titus 2:13 (our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,”), Romans 9:5 (“God over all, blessed forever”), and Colossians 2:9 (“within Him dwells all the fullness of being God in bodily form”), and others.
Chapter 55 of The DaVinci Code, then, is laden with error and represents the poorest scholarship one will find between two covers. To put these sorts of statements into the mouth of a historian is an insult to the profession.
Part 6 Coming soon......
Sunday, May 28, 2006
But It’s Just Fiction….(Part 4)
Part 4
In his text Brown only names one particular mystery religion alleged to provide a source for Christian beliefs (see below), but in general, this can be said in reply:
The taking over of symbolism is true – but signifies ideological victory, not borrowing. Note to begin with that we are talking here not of apostolic Christianity of the first century, but of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.
What we see here is not so much “borrowing” but a sort of advertising campaign, or a type of artistic one-upmanship. The pagan deity Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb.
Why was this done?
It was done because this was an age when art usually was imitative. This is because the people of the New Testament world thought in terms of what could be "probabilities," or verification from general or prior experience. Imitation was a way of asserting your superiority: “Mithra is not the real hero. Samson is. Ignore Mithra.” “This mystery religion uses a miter as a sign of power. Well, we have the true power. We claim the miter for our own.” Note that the borrowing only involved art and ritual – it did not involve borrowing of ideology.
Now in terms of the only specific mystery religion Brown names, Mithraism:
The pre-Christian God Mithras – called the Son of God and the Light of the World – was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days.
Not surprisingly, scholars of Mithraism know nothing of any of this. Let’s look at the claims one at a time:
He was called the Son of God and the Light of the World. This is simply false. I have previously surveyed Mithraic studies literature and neither of these titles is noted by Mithraic scholars.
He was born on December 25. This may be true, but it is of no relevance, for the New Testament does not associate Dec. 25th with Jesus’ birth at all. When the Christian Church chose December 25 as the birthday celebration for Jesus Christ, they did so in direct opposition to the pagan mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, not because they believed Jesus was born, like the pagan god(s), on that date.
He died,and was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. This is simply false. The Mithraic scholar Richard Gordon says plainly that there is “no death of Mithras – which means, there can be no burial of Mithras, and no resurrection of Mithras, either. Some amateur writers cite the church writer of the fourth century, Firmicus, who says that the Mithraists mourn the image of a dead Mithras; but this is far too late to have influenced Christianity (if anything, the influence was the other way around) and after reading the work of Firmicus, I found no such reference at all. More relevant perhaps is the late second-century church writer Tertullian's Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 40 which says, "if my memory still serves me, Mithra…sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown…" The argument therefore relies on Tertullian's memory, and it isn't the initiates of Mithra, but Mithra, himself who introduces an “image” of a resurrection(?) – he is not “resurrected” himself.
Therefore, the comment of Brown’s character is a dismally erroneous assessment of what is reported by Mithraic scholarship.
“Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun.”
This is also simply false. All available evidence indicates that Christianity was honoring Sunday long before Constantine. Brown is perhaps confused because certain New Testament passages, for example, record Paul going to the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach to the Jews (if one wants to preach to the Jews and the Gentile God-fearers who attended with them, then it is logical to look for them where they are found - on the Sabbath, in the synagogue!). However, it is clear that Christian observations are held on the “first day of the week” (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2; cf. Rev. 1:10), and there is also ample evidence of Sunday being observed well before Constantine:
1. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (110 AD), wrote: "If, then, those who walk in the ancient practices attain to newness of hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but fashioning their lives after the Lord's Day on which our life also arose through Him, that we may be found disciples of Jesus Christ, our only teacher.” Ignatius specifies the "Lord's Day" as the one on which "our life arises through Him" -- the resurrection day, which was a Sunday.
2. Justin Martyr (150 AD) describes Sunday as the day when Christians gather to read the scriptures and hold their assembly because it is both the initial day of creation and the day of the resurrection.
3. The Epistle of Barnabas (120-150) cites Isaiah 1:13 and indicates that the "eighth day" is a new beginning via the resurrection, and is the day to be kept
4. The Didache (70-75) instructs believers: "On the Lord's own day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks."
5. Other later testimonies from Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Pliny the Younger, which pre-date Constantine significantly, testify that Christians worshipped on Sunday.
So once again, Brown’s “historian” receives a dismal grade in history.
Part 5 Coming Soon...........
In his text Brown only names one particular mystery religion alleged to provide a source for Christian beliefs (see below), but in general, this can be said in reply:
The taking over of symbolism is true – but signifies ideological victory, not borrowing. Note to begin with that we are talking here not of apostolic Christianity of the first century, but of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.
What we see here is not so much “borrowing” but a sort of advertising campaign, or a type of artistic one-upmanship. The pagan deity Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb.
Why was this done?
It was done because this was an age when art usually was imitative. This is because the people of the New Testament world thought in terms of what could be "probabilities," or verification from general or prior experience. Imitation was a way of asserting your superiority: “Mithra is not the real hero. Samson is. Ignore Mithra.” “This mystery religion uses a miter as a sign of power. Well, we have the true power. We claim the miter for our own.” Note that the borrowing only involved art and ritual – it did not involve borrowing of ideology.
Now in terms of the only specific mystery religion Brown names, Mithraism:
The pre-Christian God Mithras – called the Son of God and the Light of the World – was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days.
Not surprisingly, scholars of Mithraism know nothing of any of this. Let’s look at the claims one at a time:
He was called the Son of God and the Light of the World. This is simply false. I have previously surveyed Mithraic studies literature and neither of these titles is noted by Mithraic scholars.
He was born on December 25. This may be true, but it is of no relevance, for the New Testament does not associate Dec. 25th with Jesus’ birth at all. When the Christian Church chose December 25 as the birthday celebration for Jesus Christ, they did so in direct opposition to the pagan mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, not because they believed Jesus was born, like the pagan god(s), on that date.
He died,and was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. This is simply false. The Mithraic scholar Richard Gordon says plainly that there is “no death of Mithras – which means, there can be no burial of Mithras, and no resurrection of Mithras, either. Some amateur writers cite the church writer of the fourth century, Firmicus, who says that the Mithraists mourn the image of a dead Mithras; but this is far too late to have influenced Christianity (if anything, the influence was the other way around) and after reading the work of Firmicus, I found no such reference at all. More relevant perhaps is the late second-century church writer Tertullian's Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 40 which says, "if my memory still serves me, Mithra…sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown…" The argument therefore relies on Tertullian's memory, and it isn't the initiates of Mithra, but Mithra, himself who introduces an “image” of a resurrection(?) – he is not “resurrected” himself.
Therefore, the comment of Brown’s character is a dismally erroneous assessment of what is reported by Mithraic scholarship.
“Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun.”
This is also simply false. All available evidence indicates that Christianity was honoring Sunday long before Constantine. Brown is perhaps confused because certain New Testament passages, for example, record Paul going to the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach to the Jews (if one wants to preach to the Jews and the Gentile God-fearers who attended with them, then it is logical to look for them where they are found - on the Sabbath, in the synagogue!). However, it is clear that Christian observations are held on the “first day of the week” (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2; cf. Rev. 1:10), and there is also ample evidence of Sunday being observed well before Constantine:
1. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (110 AD), wrote: "If, then, those who walk in the ancient practices attain to newness of hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but fashioning their lives after the Lord's Day on which our life also arose through Him, that we may be found disciples of Jesus Christ, our only teacher.” Ignatius specifies the "Lord's Day" as the one on which "our life arises through Him" -- the resurrection day, which was a Sunday.
2. Justin Martyr (150 AD) describes Sunday as the day when Christians gather to read the scriptures and hold their assembly because it is both the initial day of creation and the day of the resurrection.
3. The Epistle of Barnabas (120-150) cites Isaiah 1:13 and indicates that the "eighth day" is a new beginning via the resurrection, and is the day to be kept
4. The Didache (70-75) instructs believers: "On the Lord's own day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks."
5. Other later testimonies from Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Pliny the Younger, which pre-date Constantine significantly, testify that Christians worshipped on Sunday.
So once again, Brown’s “historian” receives a dismal grade in history.
Part 5 Coming Soon...........
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