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May 14, 2006
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Da Vinci Code
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Was Jesus Married?"
2 Peter 2:1-12; John 2:1-11
- Today in round two with Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code, we come to the question of whether or not Jesus Christ was married. However, because of the claims made by the book a simple "no" will not suffice in answer.
I received some great encouragement notes this week from folk. Thank you all. One woman asked if we might have a show of hands to see how many have even read the book. I thought that a great question. How many of you have read Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code? Looks like about a fourth of you.
The sales for his book have topped 50 million copies. Clearly Mr. Brown has struck a nerve in society, and for some I believe it is a spiritual quest for answers. The answers he gives however are wrapped in the guise of a huge conspiracy, one in which the church is the bad guy and another ancient group, called the Gnostics, are made out to be the good guys.
So, I believe since people want answers, since people are hungry for truth that for us to spend some time with this book by Brown and begin to answers some of the questions it raises it may give you the understanding needed that when people speak to you about the book or the movie and the claims made therein about Jesus, the Bible or the church, you will be able to listen well and respond with answers you have thought about.
For those of you who have not read this story, the Da Vinci Code is a compelling, fast-paced, mystery thriller as the hero and heroine search to decipher clues left by a man murdered for what he knew. What did he know? This is what takes the victim's granddaughter Sophie, the French detective, whose name means "Wisdom", and the Harvard professor of religious symbology Robert Langdon on a treasure hunt through Paris and London.
Quickly the treasure hunt leads to the revelation that the Biblical text is not trustworthy, indeed an authoritative character says, "History has never had a definitive version of the book" (p. 251, Archer Books). Last week I carefully looked at how the Biblical text came to be and showed the error of such a viewpoint. If you missed that message and still wonder how accurate the Biblical text is, the manuscript of that message is on our website.
The treasure hunt also leads to the secret that has been kept hidden for centuries, that Jesus was not God in the flesh but merely a mortal man, who married Mary of Magdala and by her fathered a child. Perhaps if this idea were laid out plainly it would be simple to discount, but it comes as a great church conspiracy, one which now endangers the characters in the story.
The novel claims that the early church never believed Jesus was God in the flesh, but only that he was a great mortal man until in a political move the Emperor Constantine with the leaders of the church, which the book says, and I quote, "hijacked (Jesus') human message, shroud(ed) it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and us(ed) it to expand their own power" [endquote] (DVC, Archer Books, p. 253). Since this whole idea of this conspiracy which took place at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD is so foundational to the story, we will talk more about that next Sunday when we review what exactly happened at Nicaea.
- For today we are back to the Da Vinci Code's novel claims about Jesus, which the book says are based upon documents that predated the New Testament, which were found in two great archaeological finds, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Scrolls(DVC, Archer Books, pp. 265-267).
The expert in the book says there were documents dated from New Testament times in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but this is patently incorrect. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 were crucial in Biblical research for the find contained scrolls from all the books in the Old Testament except the book of Esther which were 1000 years older than our next earliest manuscript. While this find confirmed the accuracy of the Old Testament back 1000 years to 200 BC, along with glimpses into the life of the Qumran community who had kept them. At 200 before Christ was born, it is clear this find could not possibly contain any the New Testament information.
So, what about the Nag Hammadi find in Egypt. The 52 scrolls in this find confirmed the teachings of a heresy (which is a word denoting an opinion against something else) that we have evidence existed in the first century, but the scrolls in this find were dated 2nd century and later. Far from being the "unaltered" and "earlier" Gospels, as Dan Brown claims in his book, these books detail a belief foreign to Christian faith, and were not written by the apostles, which we learned last week was a foundational necessity for something to be trustworthy.
- So these so-called Gnostic Gospels were documents written in the 2nd century and later by several groups of people who stood soundly against the "faith as handed down" over the years.
In the time when John and Paul were writing their letters, clearly there were beliefs that countered what Jesus had taught and the church had received. The Apostle John in his first epistle says the belief that Jesus Christ was not God come in the flesh is a belief that comes from the anti- Christ. Clearly someone must have been teaching this for him to teach against it. And Paul denounces the idea that Jesus never resurrected from the dead in 1 Corinthians 15 by saying: "If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain; you are still in your sins," (15:17). Again someone must have been sowing seeds of such error in the early church.
Summarizing Gnostic beliefs is difficult for their teachings tended to center around the various teachers espousing their theories however they all had this in common:
- The Supreme God is pure Spirit and only Spirit is good. Therefore, God could never have created matter, for matter is evil.
- The lesser god who created all things including people is separate from and different from the true, Spirit God.
- Salvation is from matter not from sin, it is from these "evil bodies" - so everyone has the life of salvation inside them. The means to be saved was through knowledge, a secret knowledge that you could only gain by being initiated into their group. The Gospel of Judas claims Judas received a special and secret knowledge from Jesus - something unknown until that document proclaimed it. And the National Geographic claims this "hidden book" reveals the truth about Judas who betrayed Jesus!
Gnosticism attached itself to various movements, borrowed from them, and incorporated aspects of their teachings into what they taught.
In general, then, here is what they rejected:
- all of the Old Testament -- for that God was not the supreme God to them.
- a genuine incarnation, because Christ could not be a material being. His physical appearance was an optical illusion. They would say: "Christ cast no shadow."
- The crucifixion was also unreal and irrelevant, for redemption again was not from sin but from the body. To be ignorant of this is to not have the secret knowledge needed for salvation.
While deemphasizing the life of Jesus (his death and resurrection, those actions that made possible the writing of a gospel about him), they emphasized some of Jesus' teachings pulled from the context in which he lived, and then mixed with other sayings. Their writings which are available at any bookstore are filled with disjointed teachings without connection to real life, have a philosophic or esoteric quality to them, and as Catholic writer Amy Welborn says, "they're terribly boring" (from to the source April 20, 2006).
- Gnosticism tended to discount Jesus' humanity, emphasizing what he said, making him into something "less" than a mortal man. But the Da Vinci Code says that these writings emphasized Jesus' humanity, and proved Jesus had married
Mary of Magdala. The book quotes from the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary, two of the books found at Nag Hammadi in this discussion. Again, both these documents were not written by Mary or Philip but by teachers who claimed to be these apostles. We know this for the early church never accepted this, never used them in worship, never taught from them, which is one of the main tests of canon: was the book accepted by the whole church, as I discussed last week.
In the book, Leigh Teabing's case that Jesus married comes out of one phrase from the Gospel of Philip, which describes Mary Magdalene as a "companion" of Jesus, whom Jesus kissed on the mouth and loved more than the others. What Teabing fails to say is that this very damaged scroll is missing several words in this quote. So, this meaning is conjectured.
"the companion of the (_) Mary Magdalene. (___) her more than (_) the disciples and used to kiss her (__) on her (__). The rest of the (__) They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?"
And then the word "companion" Teabing says is an Aramaic word that means spouse, so this proves Jesus married. Since this scroll is written in Greek not Aramaic, that argument is futile. The word for companion is actually a Greek word used of the disciples in the New Testament book of Hebrews (10:33).
What the book claims is Gnosticism may be part of our current heretical bent away from orthodox faith, but is not 2nd Century Gnosticism by a long shot. Another argument for Jesus being married comes from the culture, saying, it was abnormal for Jewish men not to marry. This is true, however, it was not a crime not to marry, and Jesus even taught that some are eunuchs from birth or by choice. And as a bachelor he was in good company with John the Baptist and Elisha before him.
- Another question has been raised of whether the wedding at Cana was actually Jesus' wedding. Consider this with me just for a moment:
- If this was Jesus' wedding, why did Jesus, the groom, need to be invited to his own wedding celebration? He would have been doing the invitations!
- Besides that, why wouldn't Jesus have shared his mom's concern that they had run out of wine, if this had been his family's party, that would have been a huge deal!
- Finally, and this should be obvious, but ladies, so you got married to your husband, but tell me, which of them after the wedding went home with their mom's? Huh? Does that make sense? Yet, here in John 2, Jesus does!
The Gnostic gospels do not and would not say Jesus was married, nor do any of the Old or New Testament books. Indeed, as Elisabeth Wolcott noted this week, Isaiah speaks prophetically of Jesus Christ, in chapter 53 verse 8 by asking this question: "Who can speak of his descendants?" Jesus was cut off from the land of the living, he had not physical descendents and was not married.
But the point of marriage in this novel is to prove that Jesus began a royal line of Mary, who is the real "Holy One" in the story, it is Mary we are meant to worship as the Sacred Feminine. As the novel says, we are all to "pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine" (p. 277 DVC).
- With the reworking of Christian history, Dan Brown's book preaches another religion, as old as the garden, where people can be gods. Without the reality of God's good creation, the rejection of sin as man's problem or redemption as the solution, no incarnation, death or resurrection of Jesus, but a religion that instead believes along the lines of the ancient fertility cults of which God clearly warned us through the experiences of the people of Israel time and time again (1 Corinthians 10: 1-14).
The Da Vinci Code teaches us clearly with Solomon in Ecclesiastes, that there is "nothing new under the sun".
There are many Christians who do not know their history and so read this book and are swallowing what it is saying. There are even Christian scholars in this day and age who feel they have proven that what this novel claims are true. I'd call them a kind of 'modern Gnosticism' in a theological movement they called the "Jesus Seminar".
Twice a year these scholars gathered on a hunt to discover just what Jesus actually said and did. They decided by voting on the sayings of the New Testament, but they began with a set of presuppositions which sound a lot like Gnosticism to me:
- The Bible is not the uniquely inspired Word of God.
- Another was that all miracles told of in the Scriptures had to be false, for they could not be scientifically repeated. According to them, then, there could be no virgin birth, no walking on water, no feeding of thousands, no bodily resurrection, etc.
After 20 years of voting, this group rejected 82% of the teachings, and all prophecy of the Bible. Only one saying in Mark survived, none of John, and 2 words from the Lord's prayer, and those were: "Our Father". You can imagine that the "Gospel" they came up with was sorely lacking in anything redemptive but seems to be related to Dan Brown's.
- What connection do I see with 2 Peter and all this? Peter remember has told us to know Jesus, to grow in our knowledge of Jesus, both knowing about and personally knowing him. He has told us to pay closer attention to the Scriptures, old and new (for in his third chapter Peter even refers to Paul's writings as Scriptures and this by 60 AD!). The reason why Peter tells us to grow and to know Jesus is so that we can recognize false teachings that come around us.
Notice in his 2nd chapter he warns against these teachers who will
- Secretly introduce destructive heresies even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves.
You can see that this book is promoting such a heresy, a divisive opinion.
- These teachers will be followed by people whose behavior will bring shame upon the Way of Truth. What Dan Brown's book fosters is such error.
- And finally, these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up!
So, what are we to do? We are to pay closer attention to the Word - learn to read and listen to it. Do not just accept something I say, or something you read, or something that you see as true, instead, take it to the book. Test it by what the Lord says herein. Remember, this is the most accurate book and most protected book of all time.
Here is the greatest story ever told, the story of how the loving and personal God knew our plight, and knew that nothing we could do could possible spare us from the state we were in and came. He did not send a fax or email, did not send a book, but came himself in human form. As John said, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared…"
The real life lived by Jesus made real history that is faithfully and accurately proclaimed and recorded in this very accurate, very trustworthy book. When people ask you about Jesus, about the church, or about Mary of Magdala and use evidences from Mr. Brown's authorities, listen. They would not be talking unless God was already working in their lives. Then, offer to read their book, if they'll read yours.
Tell them your story if they give you an opportunity. Jesus who is written about in the Bible was not just a mortal man, for you have met him, and he walks with you day by day. He may not have had descendents born to him through a woman, but we are all descendants of his Father when we come to faith in Him, for then we are born as children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
But mostly remember - you don't have to convince anyone that Jesus is Lord, but simply invite them to give Jesus a try, for since Jesus is living and real, if they will but trust, if they will be open the door, He will reveal himself to them. And you don't have to argue for He that is in you is greater than the one in the world, so just stand in the faith you have.
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