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We have already seen that Brown relies heavily upon a highly doubtful, uncritical, easily challenged view of extra-biblical sources such as the Nag Hammadi Library and various other gnostic-influenced works. Ironically, Brown contradicts himself once again in his statements immediately following the embarrassing “heretic” comment on page 234. Here Brown speaking as Teabing says that “some of the gospels that

After creating, out of whole cloth, the idea that Constantine was busy running about the Roman Empire looking for at least 996 “original” gospels while promoting his edited versions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Brown decides there is simply too much credibility lingering in this story, so he decides to shoot the last of it dead immediately. Enter the

After insisting that “educated” Christians know all about Constantine’s hi-jacking the faith and inventing the deity of Christ, Teabing tries to say that Jesus was a good guy and did good things. That is very nice: defame the entirety of His own teaching about Himself, tell us that we actually can know abolutely nothing about Him or His teachings (if

“It was all about power,” Teabing continued. “Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power. I’ve written several books on the topic.”

We have come to the examination of one of the key assertions made by Dan Brown in his attack upon the central elements of the Christian faith (so as to make room for his Magdalene-based conspiracy theory). We read:    “My dear,” Teabing declared, until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and

I’ve decided I might as well live-blog while I watch this thing. Given that it will feature John Dominic Crossan and Scott Hahn…well, it will have to be interesting. Prediction: Hahn will be one of the most conservative on the program. We can hope, anyway. Remember, he was trained as a Presbyterian. 🙂 00: Ah, there’s ol’ Dr. Crossan, “Get

He was on his way to his death, and he knew it. The story of Ignatius, the great bishop of Antioch, one of the early Christian martyrs, is well known, at least to those with an interest in church history (which limits things a good bit these days). Unwilling to compromise, Ignatius happily, as an aged man, embraced his departure

Yahoo! had a story yesterday on the finding of an ancient Christian church in Israel, one pre-dating Constantine (hat tip SafeHaven). And almost as if on cue, the story contains this paragraph: Two mosaics inside the church — one covered with fish, an ancient Christian symbol that predates the cross — tell the story of a Roman officer and a

Having endowed Constantine with a-historical super-powers and credited him with doing things he never did, would never have had any interest in doing, could never have accomplished, and in fact, would have worked against his actual historical interests, Dan Brown continues the demolition of his historical credibility, but at least for a moment he sounds like so many others who