"The Da Vinci Code" Book Club

[sweetnpetite]

coptic gospels- not just made up.

In rare instances, archeologists discover texts and documents, such as the accidental discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran or the Coptic Gospels at Nag Hammadi.

http://www.tncc.vccs.edu/faculty/longt/REL210/introduction_to_archeology.htm

(näg hä´mädi) , a town in Egypt near the ancient town of Chenoboskion, where, in 1945, a large cache of gnostic texts in the Coptic language was discovered. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, dating from the 4th cent. AD, include 12 codices of tractates, one loose tractate, and a copy of Plato's Republic —making 53 works in all. Originally composed in Greek, they were translated (2d-3d cent. AD) into Coptic. Most of the texts have a strong Christian element. The presence of non-Christian elements, however, gave rise to the speculation that gnosticism, which taught salvation by knowledge, was not originally a Christian movement. Until the texts' discovery, knowledge of Christian gnosticism was confined to reports and quotations of their orthodox opponents, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian. Among the codices are apocalypses, gospels, a collection of sayings of the resurrected Jesus to his disciples, homilies, prayers, and theological treatises.

Bibliography: See E. H. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979); K. Rudolph, Gnosis (1983); B. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (1987); J. M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (1988).

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/n/nagh1amma.asp

 

[sweetnpetite]

two links

for anyone curious to learn more about the dead sea scrolls. (I'll admit, I don't know much about this topic, but I am interested)

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/toc.html

In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds, searching for a stray goat in the Judean Desert, entered a long-untouched cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and began a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves.

Coming from the late Second Temple Period, a time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts by almost one thousand years.

Since their discovery nearly half a century ago, the scrolls and the identity of the nearby settlement have been the object of great scholarly and public interest, as well as heated debate and controversy. Why were the scrolls hidden in the caves? Who placed them there? Of what significance are the scrolls to Judaism and Christianity?

 

[sweetnpetite]

two links

for anyone curious to learn more about the dead sea scrolls. (I'll admit, I don't know much about this topic, but I am interested)

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/toc.html

much of the same information is on both sites, but there are some differences.

 

[smartnsassy]

I've never read it, but I'm thinking about it now.

I'm not that interested in the dead sea scrolls. I think I'll skip that part.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The big deal on the Dead Sea srolls was very suspicious and was something I was following rather closely.

The scrolls were given to a committee of expert scholars for study and translation not long after they were found, sometime in the 40's or 50's, but publication dragged on and on with nothing being released. After a while it became pretty obvious that these guys were just sitting on them. Bits and pieces of the scrolls would be released occasionally, but the big bulk of them remained carefully hidden from public view. Rumors started circulating that they contained some blockbuster information that threatened the roots of Christianity (most of these scholars were Christian) and it was said that the Vatican had ordered the catholic scholars on the panel to make sure nothing got out.

A businessman named Hershel Shanks had started a magazine called Biblical Archaeology Review back in the '70's which reported on biblical archaeology from a non-sectarian, layman's point of view, and it was Shanks who finally started demanding that the scrolls be released. By this time some thirty years had passed with only scraps being published. Shanks' magazine had (& has) a considerable following, and the public pressure increased to the point where the committee couldn't resist anymore. Sometime in the '80's or '90's they committee finally relented and published a book of photographs of the scrolls' text. They had to be publsihed this way because so much of the writing was degraded or fragmentary. Scholars have been working on the translation and decipherment since.

So far it looks like there's no real blockbuster information in there and it looks like the 'plot' to wothhold the scrolls was baced more on academic jealousy and selfishness than on religious cover-up. There are some copies of existing books of the bible--I think there are fragments of the book of Isaiah in there--but the reveleations so far have mainly been of interest to scholars. A number of the scrolls have to do with Jewish eschatology of the Roman period, but it appears now that whoever wrote the scrolls were a kind of dead-end off-shoot of traditional Judaism, so the texts don't have much to say about mainstream religious thinking, either Jewish or Christian.

They do shed considerable light on the religious atmosphere of Jesus' time, when a lot of Jews thought the messiah was coming, and on Jewish messianic thought. The most famous scroll has a lot to say about a "teacher of righteousness" who some people take to be Jesus, but mostly they talk about what things will be like when he comes, not that he's been there.

The scrolls seem to have been written by a Jewish sect known as Essenes, who had a lot of proto-Christian characteristics, especially when it came to ethics, with a lot of rules about ritual cleanliness and all that. Some scholars maintain that the scrolls were written by the inhabitants of some nearby ruins, which they take tobe an Essene monostery or religious centerr, but the actual identity of the ruins is a subject of considerable dipute. In any case, it looks like the scrolls were hidden because the writers expected some heavy stuff to come down.

If you're really into OT scholarship and the foundations of Christian thought, they're worth reading. Otherwise you'll probably be disappointed.

---dr.M. (one-time proud subscriber to Biblical Archaeology Review. I signed one of the petitions to release the scrolls too.)

The last Big Thing to happen in BAR was the supposed discovery of the box that once contained the funerary remains of Jesus' brother James. The box had an inscription that said "James, son of Joseph brother of Joshua [i.e. Jesus]. The box appeared authentic and withstood some pretty good tests. Based on the known frequency of name distribution in Palestine at the time, scholars calculated that the odds were that this was the actual box that held James' bones.

Further tests by antiquities experts confirmed that it was a skillful forgery though. I didn't even know Jesus had a brother.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You’ve rattled my nest with this thread. Religion and its history and development are something of an obsession with me, ever since I was kicked out of Hebrew School for asking too many questions I wanted to know if God was married to Mother Nature and wanted to know why I couldn’t get a straight answer. So Dan Brown wasn't the only one who wanted to know whathappened to the feminine principle in Western religions.

I don’t buy his contention that there was any sort of sexist plot by the Church to deny the feminine side. Of course women were kept down, but I think that was and always has been more of a cultural construct than any sort of religious conspiracy. Comparative religion shows that most agriculural societies have male and female gods and are concerned with fertility. Pastoral societies—those that depend on herding— and warlike societies tend to have male gods. probably because the men are out wandering in the mountains with their animals and it’s all pretty butch. Of course the Hebrews were pastoral nomads and small-time raiders, and so their god was very male.

Even so, Jewish mystical thought has always conceded that God has a feminine side. It’s referred to as the “Shekhina” which is often translated as God’s spirit, but is also understood as meaning God’s feminine side or his bride or wife. The idea of the Shekhina is treated very carefully by Jews, though, because it implies some sort of non-unity of God, which is just anathema to Jews. The Shekhina figures prominently in the Qabbala where the left side of the Tree of Life is considered the feminine manifestation of God’s power.

The feminine is manifested in Christianity by the Cult of the Virgin, which came to prominence in the early Middle Ages, just about the time that society settled back down into feudalism and the barbarian tribes turned to farming (there’s that agriculture/goddess connection again). The Virgin became the goddess for the peasants and common folk, who felt she was more accesible than Christ himself, who seemed like he’d been taken over by the nobles and clergy. Christ represented power and judgment (male), and Mary represented mercy and compassion (female. The same qualitiues are represented in the Tree of Life by the right hand and the left hand). The Cult of the Virgin became so big that it was seen by some as a threat to Jesus-worship, but I don’t think the Church ever launched any crusade against it. The huge popularity of Mary was finally kind of trampled under foot during the reformation and counter-reformation with the return to a purer Christian orthodoxy.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Dr. M, according to Brown's book, "Jehovah" is a combination of the names of male and female gods.

True?

The idea of a conspiracy to de-feminize religion by demonizing women and sex (Eve as a by-product of Adam and the originator of sin) strikes a chord with me, not because the three big monotheistic religions celebrate a male god, but because fundamentalist Christianity and Islam have in common an almost fearful attitude toward women. I don't know enough about orthodox Judaism to make the same judgement, but it seems to me that the Taliban isn't alone in teaching scorn of women. Christianity disguises its scorn as protection and respect, but the end result is the same: female as second-class person who can't be trusted to share the pulpit.

The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians were certainly war-like, and Egypt may have been the exception in having had female rulers (?) but their pantheons of gods had powerful females. And I don't think the idea of sexual union was considered indecent until the Christian church came along.

No?

 

[sweetnpetite]

Dr. M, according to Brown's book, "Jehovah" is a combination of the names of male and female gods.

True?

The idea of a conspiracy to de-feminize religion by demonizing women and sex (Eve as a by-product of Adam and the originator of sin) strikes a chord with me, not because the three big monotheistic religions celebrate a male god, but because fundamentalist Christianity and Islam have in common an almost fearful attitude toward women. I don't know enough about orthodox Judaism to make the same judgement, but it seems to me that the Taliban isn't alone in teaching scorn of women. Christianity disguises its scorn as protection and respect, but the end result is the same: female as second-class person who can't be trusted to share the pulpit.

The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians were certainly war-like, and Egypt may have been the exception in having had female rulers (?) but their pantheons of gods had powerful females. And I don't think the idea of sexual union was considered indecent until the Christian church came along.

No?

Vikings had female gods as well. They were pretty warlike. <<<use of understatement for purposes of irony>>>

I also can't think of any polytheistic religioins that don't have female gods. If anyone know of any specific ones I'd love to hear about them.

 

[shereads]

Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. The novel touches on questions of how and why this shift occurred…and on what lessons we might learn from it regarding our future.

What he said.

I've been in a spiritual pout since about age 8 when I realized that women in the Bible are rarely more than passive "helpmates."

I understand Dr. M's frustration with the novel from the perspective of a Biblical scholar. But I find the idea of your cage being rattled perversely appealing. (Angry Science-Man! )

Like SnP, I find the book entertaining (particularly since my car's radio antenna was snapped off in a car wash last week and I exclusively listen to CDs). My feminist side is enjoying the hell out of it, and wanting to distribute free copies to little girls leaving Sunday School at the local Baptist Church, whether it's true or not. Just to shake things up. It also has me curious about Leonardo DaVinci and whether he really was a heretic who got away with it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Dr. M, according to Brown's book, "Jehovah" is a combination of the names of male and female gods.

True?

The idea of a conspiracy to de-feminize religion by demonizing women and sex (Eve as a by-product of Adam and the originator of sin) strikes a chord with me, not because the three big monotheistic religions celebrate a male god, but because fundamentalist Christianity and Islam have in common an almost fearful attitude toward women. I don't know enough about orthodox Judaism to make the same judgement, but it seems to me that the Taliban isn't alone in teaching scorn of women. Christianity disguises its scorn as protection and respect, but the end result is the same: female as second-class person who can't be trusted to share the pulpit.

The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians were certainly war-like, and Egypt may have been the exception in having had female rulers (?) but their pantheons of gods had powerful females. And I don't think the idea of sexual union was considered indecent until the Christian church came along.

No?

The name “Jehovah” comes from a rough anglicization of the sacred Hebrew tetragrammaton: four Hebrew letters Yod He Vau He (YHVH) which represent the Ineffeable Name. They stand for his name, they’re not actually His name, which was super-sacrosanct and only pronounced once a year in the Holy of Holies by the High Priest, who was the only one who knew it. Jews are very, very sensitive about God’s name, and in talking about God don’t even call him “God”. The call him Ha Shem, which means “The Name”. Much of magical Kabbalh is concerned with trying to tease out the Ineffable Name, which would give the knower imeasurable oiwer, but would probably also get him killed.

The Greeks and the Romans did make war--who doesn’t make war?—but when I said ‘warlike societies’ I really meant societies whose whole function was making war, like the Huns, the various Barbarian tribes who overran Europe, the Muslim hordes, and the early Hebrews. The Vikings had a weird relationship to their gods, if you ask me. I really don’t know if Freya had much of a cult. In any case, any rules you apply to people and societies are going to have exceptions, and the idea that agricultural societies have goddesses and warrior societies have gods is an observation and not a law..

Modern Jews—at least the non-ultraorthodox—are very liberal in their attitude towards women. Women Rabbi’s are common, sex is seen as a mitzvah, or a blessing, at least in the bonds of marriage, and it’s pretty easy for a women to divorce her husband for things like incompatability or even neglect. Orthodox Judaism is a lot more conservative and almost middle-eastern in it’s relegation of women to second-class status. Women aren’t even allowed in the same part of the synagogue as men, married women are supposed to shave their heads and wear wigs, and at Orthodox weddings men don’t even dance with women.

We had a big discussion here some months ago on the roots of Christian misognyny and sexual aversion. Certainly Genesis doesn’t make women look good, but you also have other books in the Old Testament (like Ruth, and Deborah in the Book of Judges) where women are the main characters. Deborah was a warlord (warlady?) and ruler of Israel before it was Israel.

In my opinion, the roots of Christian misogyny go back to the early Church fathers. Paul was pretty anti-woman, and you have to remember that in the early days of Christianity, it was assumed that Christ was coming back any day now, so it was important for the true believer to give up all the pleasures of this world and prepare for His return. The early Christians were pretty zealous, as new converts to any religion often are, were only too eager to give up all luxury and pleasure in preparation for the second coming, and women were pretty high on the list. You had a lot of really bizarre behavior in the early days of the church: Christians going out into the desert and sealing themselves in living tombs for months on end and doing all sorts of things to mortify the flesh. There was even one guy who ripped his own cock out by the roots to make sure he wouldn’t sin. I forget his name (Tertullian?) but he's a saint today.

Another big impetus for the Chruch's anti-woman stance is possibly due to the fact that the early European Christians were still tribes of wandering barbarians, or recently had been. Barbarians are warriors, but they're also basically armed rubes (just like the proto-hebrews) and probably as sexually repessed and anti-woman as any modern day Iraqi. So any faith planted among these people was going to come out pretty misogynistic.

I think Brown’s correct in saying that Jesus was probably married. Jews were (and are) pretty big on the idea that having a family is one of God’s commandments, and Jesus would have been under a lot of social pressure to marry. A 30-year old bachelor would have been extremely unusual. (BTW, Rabbis are expected to marry too.) I imagine that all the disciples would have been family men as well, and yet their wives are never mentioned either, so it's likely that the authors of the gospels just glossed over that. Whether Magdalene was his wife or not I have no idea.

I’ve got like 3 pages to go in the book now, and having read all that I take a more sympathetic view of Brown’s thesis. What I was really reacting to before was the contention that there was a conscious male conspiracy to subjugate women by intentionally demonizing them and denigratring the idea of the feminine. I react to that the same way I react to the feminist charge that there’s some sort of conscious conspiracy by men today to keep women down. That’s just not how things work. People are shaped by the culture they live in, and the culture is rarely the result of a conscious plan by anyone. The boss who refuses to promote a woman is not thinking, “Well, I’ve got to follow the conspiracy guidelines and not promote her.” He’s acting on his own cultural prejudices, and prejudice is usually invisible to the people who have them.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

The name “Jehovah” comes from a rough anglicization of the sacred Hebrew tetragrammaton: four Hebrew letters Yod He Vau He (YHVH) which represent the Ineffeable Name. They stand for his name, they’re not actually His name, which was super-sacrosanct and only pronounced once a year in the Holy of Holies by the High Priest, who was the only one who knew it. Jews are very, very sensitive about God’s name, and in talking about God don’t even call him “God”. The call him Ha Shem, which means “The Name”. Much of magical Kabbalh is concerned with trying to tease out the Ineffable Name, which would give the knower imeasurable oiwer, but would probably also get him killed.

---dr.M.

So God's name could be Steve, for all we know.

 

[Guest]

So God's name could be Steve, for all we know.

Or Ethel.

Perdita

 

[shereads]

SPOILER ALERT! Go away.





The major weakness with the premise of the book - the possible existence of a historic record of Christ's descedants - is that historians have found no record of his existence, outside of the New Testament.

I still want to know what Leonardo DaVinci was hinting at in the Last Supper. John does look a bit girlie, doesn't he?

 

[sweetnpetite]

SPOILER ALERT! Go away.





The major weakness with the premise of the book - the possible existence of a historic record of Christ's descedants - is that historians have found no record of his existence, outside of the New Testament.

I still want to know what Leonardo DaVinci was hinting at in the Last Supper. John does look a bit girlie, doesn't he?

I beleive that there is some record of his existance outside of the NT, however, I don't see how this weakens the premis at all. If those specific records had been found by historians, then the premis *would* fall apart. ie, there would be no secret, nothing to protect or destroy. As for the existence of Jesus, you just have to take it as a given at least within the context of the novel, just as you accept the existance of secret societies and so forth that can not always be proven or disproven. If you don't believe that JC really lived, then basicly the whole book is pure fiction I guess. The premis still holds up though. At least, I think it does.

 

[sweetnpetite]

glad to see that you found some peace with the book, doc.

As to weather there is a conspiracy or a plot or whatever, I really think that it is debatable. I do believe that there are guiding forces toward the supression of woman and the feminine, but I think it's more insideous than every man conscioulsly thinking "I've got to keep women down" It's more in the structer of society, our norms and even our morals and the things we are all tought about what it means to be male or female in our society. NOt to try to pick a fight, because i respect your view, but I think its a matter of oppiinion, not fact (on either side)

I'm a little curious about the idea of the holy grail from a jewish perspective though. IF the jews rejected christ as there masiah, wouldn't that mean that according to jewish thought, there is no such thing as the holy grail? Not trying to be rude, just acedemically curious

Thanks especially about your imput regarding mariage and jewish tradition and so forth. So much of that is ignored by the christian church --especially by those who feel that the bible is so complete that all one needs to understand it is prayer, rather than understanding the context within which is was writen I hate that, lol.

 

[shereads]

Or Ethel.

Perdita

Or Rover.

 

[shereads]

I beleive that there is some record of his existance outside of the NT, however, I don't see how this weakens the premis at all. If those specific records had been found by historians, then the premis *would* fall apart. ie, there would be no secret, nothing to protect or destroy. As for the existence of Jesus, you just have to take it as a given at least within the context of the novel, just as you accept the existance of secret societies and so forth that can not always be proven or disproven. If you don't believe that JC really lived, then basicly the whole book is pure fiction I guess. The premis still holds up though. At least, I think it does.

I'm not saying he didn't exist, just that nobody has published any non-Biblical account of the existence of Jesus as a historic figure. Maybe his importance to the Romans was exaggerated in the Biblical accounts...My point is, I kept thinking how unlikely it would be to have a historic record of his family if there isn't even a record of the man himself. Last year, National Geographic devoted a cover story to the search for the historic Jesus. The Romans kept records of events in their occupied lands, but the New Testament story as told in the Gospels is absent from their records.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm a little curious about the idea of the holy grail from a jewish perspective though. IF the jews rejected christ as there masiah, wouldn't that mean that according to jewish thought, there is no such thing as the holy grail? Not trying to be rude, just acedemically curious

Depends on what you mean by "is".

First thing you have to know is that there is no centalized Jewish church like there is a catholic church. There's no head council or anyone who decides what Jews believe, and it's every Jew's responsibility to read the Torah himself and decipher for himself what it says. Around here we have an organization called "Jews For Jesus" who do believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but reject the teachings of any Christian church, so you can find all sorts of different beliefs under the mantleof Judaism.

Most Jews however reject the idea that Christ was Israel's Messiah for any number of reasons, but foremost among them is that he didn't usher in the Kingdom of God. They don't deny that he existed or that he might have drunk out of a special cup, but they wouldn't believe there was anything special about that cup.

Jews are not big on relics though. One thing: if there was a special chalice Christ drank from, you can be pretty sure it wasn't made of gold. Jews stay away from gold in their ritual gear because they associate it with the sin of the Golden Calf, and the last thing you would see on a Passover table is anything made of gold. In any synagogue you go in, all the precious fixtures are made of silver if anything. No gold allowed.

Incidently, one of the other reasons Jews have a hard time with orthodox Christianity is because the idea of the Trinity smacks of polytheism to them (to me too. I'll never be able to understand it), as does the common Christian practice of venerating and even praying to relics. Jews take the proscription against praying to any sort of object very very seriously. You'd get a Jew to admit Christ was the Messiah before you'd get him on his knees before a cup or a saint's bones.

One of my beefs with Brown's book is that the Grail has always been one of the most potent symbols in western mythology, and to reduce it to what's essentially a stack of political documents is kind of demeaning and disappointing. The grail stands for many things, not the least of which is man's search for God and our desire to be connected to the divine, and making it into something political seems to deny its spiritual meaning.

It kind of reminds me of the Ancient Astronaut nonsense, which looks at some of mankind's e huge religious monuments and says they're actually nothing but landing strips and runway markers. Man does have a spiritual impulse and it's very strong and very deep. Not everything is about politics.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Around here we have an organization called "Jews For Jesus" who do believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but reject the teachings of any Christian church, so you can find all sorts of different beliefs under the mantleof Judaism.

Tragically, those are the people who will suffer the most if Jesus converts to Islam, as predicted by The Onion.

 

[dee1124]

<sigh> It's a novel.

I haven't read the whole thread, sorry if I'm repeating something someone's said.

There are no references to Jesus in contemporary Roman writings, as far as I know. The earliest reference is in Tacitus, where he describes the fire at Rome in the middle 60's as having been set by the followers of "Chrestus." Of course, people also thought Nero set it, too, so he could grab up land for his new palace.

In the early 100's, under Trajan, you have Pliny the Younger writing to the emperor asking what he should do about Christians in his province of ... Bithynia, I think, western Turkey. Trajan wrote back and said that if they break the law, punish them, otherwise don't go out of your way. An early "don't ask, don't tell" policy. All this was at least 30 years after the Crucifixion.

Dr. M: There's a story, I can't find the exact quote, of an eminent English cleric and a friend debating the Trinity while taking a walk. Three men on a horse rode by and the cleric said that was a good illustration of the concept. The other man said, "No, show me one man riding three horses at the same time and I'll believe you."

It's a novel.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

[BDr. M: There's a story, I can't find the exact quote, of an eminent English cleric and a friend debating the Trinity while taking a walk. Three men on a horse rode by and the cleric said that was a good illustration of the concept. The other man said, "No, show me one man riding three horses at the same time and I'll believe you."

It's a novel. [/B]

The Council of Nicea that Brown talks about--where he says they 'voted' to make Jesus God, was actually about Jesus' nature with respect to God and about the nature of the trinity. The debates got very nasty and a few of the scholars and churchmen there were banished and ruined for taking the wrong side.

I'm fascinated with heresies, and if you want to see some of the different ideas that people have had about just how Jesus and God were related, check out this neat little site:

http://www.carm.org/heresy.htm

One thing Brown did get right was the number Phi, which is equal to the square root of five plus 1 divided by 2. Phi is also unique in that Phi-1 =1/Phi, or Phi squared minus Phi=1. It's a very cool number that shows up in all sorts of unexpected places, like e and Pi.

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

I'm not saying he didn't exist, just that nobody has published any non-Biblical account of the existence of Jesus as a historic figure. Maybe his importance to the Romans was exaggerated in the Biblical accounts...My point is, I kept thinking how unlikely it would be to have a historic record of his family if there isn't even a record of the man himself. Last year, National Geographic devoted a cover story to the search for the historic Jesus. The Romans kept records of events in their occupied lands, but the New Testament story as told in the Gospels is absent from their records.

but this is a secret record kept and maintained by his followers. Why would the Roman governments lack of records on him be relevant?

For example. Alice is born in a home birth to conspiracy theory buffs who refuse to give her a social security number(or at a time before they were required). They live on a farm and so are able to live primarily off the land. Alice herself kept a diary all her life, which at her death was passed down through the generations of her family. Each generation also recorded the family tree in the pages at the end of the book. No official records. yet there is this personal family record. If this record were a closely gaurded secret, historians would never be able to prove the existance of Alice either.

See what I'm saying?

 

[sweetnpetite]

Thanks for all that, doc.

Don't confuse Catholism with Christianity however. Most christians (non-catholic) have the same problems w/ Catholocism as you mentioined (praying to saints, ect) except that many do hold the trinity and definatly do not consider it to be polythiestic.

I have a theory that there is a deeper meaning to the grail (according to dan brown's book) which I will go into later. Have you finished?

Sweet.

Depends on what you mean by "is".

First thing you have to know is that there is no centalized Jewish church like there is a catholic church. There's no head council or anyone who decides what Jews believe, and it's every Jew's responsibility to read the Torah himself and decipher for himself what it says. Around here we have an organization called "Jews For Jesus" who do believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but reject the teachings of any Christian church, so you can find all sorts of different beliefs under the mantleof Judaism.

Most Jews however reject the idea that Christ was Israel's Messiah for any number of reasons, but foremost among them is that he didn't usher in the Kingdom of God. They don't deny that he existed or that he might have drunk out of a special cup, but they wouldn't believe there was anything special about that cup.

Jews are not big on relics though. One thing: if there was a special chalice Christ drank from, you can be pretty sure it wasn't made of gold. Jews stay away from gold in their ritual gear because they associate it with the sin of the Golden Calf, and the last thing you would see on a Passover table is anything made of gold. In any synagogue you go in, all the precious fixtures are made of silver if anything. No gold allowed.

Incidently, one of the other reasons Jews have a hard time with orthodox Christianity is because the idea of the Trinity smacks of polytheism to them (to me too. I'll never be able to understand it), as does the common Christian practice of venerating and even praying to relics. Jews take the proscription against praying to any sort of object very very seriously. You'd get a Jew to admit Christ was the Messiah before you'd get him on his knees before a cup or a saint's bones.

One of my beefs with Brown's book is that the Grail has always been one of the most potent symbols in western mythology, and to reduce it to what's essentially a stack of political documents is kind of demeaning and disappointing. The grail stands for many things, not the least of which is man's search for God and our desire to be connected to the divine, and making it into something political seems to deny its spiritual meaning.

It kind of reminds me of the Ancient Astronaut nonsense, which looks at some of mankind's e huge religious monuments and says they're actually nothing but landing strips and runway markers. Man does have a spiritual impulse and it's very strong and very deep. Not everything is about politics.

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

but this is a secret record kept and maintained by his followers. Why would the Roman governments lack of records on him be relevant?

People look for the Roman Records because that's the most likely place to look. In your analogy, if Alice had a big show trial and a miraculous crucification, you'd kind of expect some of the newspapers to pick up on it, yet the record shows nothing.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that the gospels were not even written in Aramaic, which was Jesus' language, but in Greek, which means that his story wasn't even written down until well after his death, a point almost all scholars agree on. It also shows that Jews were just not in the habit of chronicling things back then. They were writing, they weren't writing very much, and what they wrote were mainly religious and legal documents. I doubt very much people were keeping records of what Jesus did at the time.

I haven't read all of this thread, but I get the feeling that SnP is pulling for Brown's story to be true. I hope that's not the case.

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

<sigh> It's a novel.


It's a novel.

We know it's a novel. That doesn't mean the ideas presented in it aren't worth discusion. (or that they aren't worth getting worked up over either for that matter) That's what we are here for, to discuss the novel- what ever aspect of the novel that we feel compelled to discuss.

<sigh> I wish people would stop reminding us that it's a novel. We've actually grasped that elementary fact.