A few thoughts on Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and The Da Vinci Code.
No, I could not sit still while watching it. Who, with the slightest knowledge of the facts of the situation, could? But I still had to suffer through the ABC (yes, the same folks who brought you the Peter Jenning’s Jesus Seminar commercial a few years ago) special on the fictional, absurd, yet raking-in-the-money book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. In fact, it has special meaning, since there was a small chance, for a couple of hours, that I was going to have a chance to respond to it on a nationally broadcast news program, but that did not happen (at least not yet anyway). In any case, for anyone familiar with
the love of gnosticism exemplified by the Jesus Seminar’s elevation of the Gospel of Thomas to quasi-canonical status (click here for an article I wrote on this topic for CRI), and the constant popularity of Elaine Pagels and her ilk, this new work is hardly surprising, outside of its blatant, obvious reliance upon previously written (and refuted) works of the same genre. To call this an anti-Christian screed that is clearly fiction (but is being treated as if it has serious historical weight) is to engage in understatement. BE WARNED! The special doesn’t even begin to give you a real taste for the depravity of the book, which likens medieval architecture to female genitalia in graphic language. They obviously realized that going to that level of detail would not fly on network television…at least not yet.
Tomorrow on the DL I will be addressing various aspects of the program, but in particular, its simply ridiculous presentation on the “gnostic gospels.” Did you notice how they did not have the same scholars on during that section that they had on before? There’s a reason for that. All they could do was interview the very folks who make money peddling the meandering silliness of the ancient gnostics (excuse me, but they call this journalism?). When you read the contents of Nag Hammadi and the like, you are struck by the utter incoherence (purposeful incoherence, given the system itself) that marks those writings, yet the gleefully uncritical acceptance of the value of these works by the media elite seems to know no bounds.
ABC has once again done its best to bash the Christian faith while enriching those who join them in their campaign. The ancient gnostics would be chuckling at the resurrection of their old writings, but in light of 2 Peter 2:9, I sorta doubt they are.