Using the Da Vinci Code to destablize Christianity with the Gnostic Gospels. Part 2 of 4.
A movie or mystery novel can make the existence of the Gnostic Gospels known. Otherwise they might remain an obscure topic for scholars.
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For background information to understand this post.
This is about using popular culture and entertainment to advance our agenda.
Suddenly with the movie “Da Vinci Code,” an obscure academic subject became widely known.
I had known of the Gnostic Gospels since I had double majored in chemical engineering and ancient history in college. It was a topic for Graduate Students in ancient history, but I don’t think many people knew about them.
Now they were discussed in the news including the entertainment news.
BBC, April 7, 2006, “Not so secret gospels.”
Once the dusty preserve of theologians and historians, the success of the Da Vinci code has turned an ancient religious document into a major publishing event.
There could hardly be a luckier time - or more providential depending on your perspective - for publishing a newly-discovered gospel.
And:
The Da Vinci Code has turned this 2nd-Century tract from a talking point at theological conferences to a media event, perhaps even a blockbuster.
The translators' press release said the "launch is due in Easter 2006" - and New Testament scholarship very rarely gets to be "launched", it is just published in journals.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4887222.stm
Where few people were likely to read some academic journal about the Gnostic Gospels, many people would be interested in watching an entertaining movie in which the Gnostic Gospels are mentioned. Also, it would be entertaining to watch religious leaders rage about the movie.
The Gnostic Gospels which were nearly eliminated from history were now a popular topic.
The Christian establishment was not happy and attacked the movie strenously.
Christians who had previously never heard of the Gnostic Gospels now knew of them. The Bible wasn’t something that fell from the heavens form God, but instead was something put together by councils which selected some books and rejected others. The revealed word of God was more a product of religious politics.
Knowing of their existence, some Christians might read them. Christian leaders when they rejected them were at the same time making other Christians familiar with their existence.
Baptist Press, Oct. 11, 2004, “FIRST-PERSON: The Da Vinci Code & the new Gnostics.”
The Gnostic influence in The Da Vinci Code should be noted very closely. During the last 30 years, a number of academics have argued forcefully that Gnosticism was unfairly rejected by the church.
For example, about 10 years ago, participants in The Jesus Seminar published The Five Gospels which argued for the inclusion of the Gnostic work The Gospel of Thomas into the canon of Scripture. More recently, Princeton professor Elaine Pagels has published “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.”
A tireless advocate for the Gnostic “gospels” and Thomas in particular, Pagels argues that the church affirmed the complete deity and humanity of Christ for pragmatic reasons not grounded in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The Da Vinci Code makes a similar theory available for a wide audience. A character named Teabing claims that until the council of Nicea “Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet” and it was only after Nicea (325 A.D.) that he was recognized as the Son of God.
Prior to 1945, most of what we knew about Gnosticism came from the church fathers who opposed them. However, in that year an ancient Gnostic library was discovered in the Egyptian desert which contained several of the Gnostic “gospels.” Known as the Nag Hammadi library, these works have basically confirmed the church fathers’ description of Gnosticism. In short, when they told us that Gnostics were heretics, they were telling the truth!
These advoctes of the Gnostic Gospels working in obscurity, suddenly see their topic as part of a major movie and popular discussion and debate.
With religion, there is always differences of opinion and if some scholars believe in the Gnostic Gospels, non-scholars might conclude that those who reject them have an agenda, or maybe neither of them really know. Religious people are not strong on analytical evidence either.
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/first-person-the-da-vinci-code-the-new-gnostics/
NPR, May 22, 2006, “The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'“
Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work "full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.'
And:
But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods.
What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true – that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted to present one version of Jesus' life: theirs.
Some of the alternative views of who Jesus was and what he taught were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous.
The article goes on in detail why the Gnostic Gospels are threatening to the Christian establishment.
https://www.npr.org/2006/05/22/5422879/the-truth-at-the-heart-of-the-da-vinci-code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_The_Da_Vinci_Code
So what do we do with this?
[1] Mention the movie “Da Vinci Code” in our social media. The best thing would be to put a trailer for the “Da Vinci Code” in our social media.
[2] Share links to videos about the Gnostic Gospels.
[3] Share videos which advocate that the Gnostic Gospels are part of Christianity or give them credibility.
[4] Post in your social media other moviews mentioning the Gnostic Gospels. At this time I don’ have any recommendations.
[5] Post in your social media news articles, book reviews about the Gnostic Gospels.
Goals
[1] Reduce the credibility of the Bible and hence the credibility of Christianity, in particular the more dogmatic groups who want to use the Bible to go after Gays.
[2] Fracture Christianity. Instead of there being a fairly unified faith, a faith with many variations, different Christianities feeling threatened by the other Christianities as threats to their credibility
This second goal is very doable, in that religious people want a religion to meet their emotional needs and construct rationalizations to support their particular religious ideas that meets their emotional needs.
Many of these possible Christianities which might result from the Gnostic Gospels likely fit the emotional needs of Christians better than the existing Christianities.
