Posted on 04/17/2006 9:15:36 AM PDT by Daralundy
Part of a crowd of 1,500 parishioners from the Archdiocese of Winnipeg walk with a wooden cross during Good Friday celebrations in Winnipeg. They joined many more Christians around the world in affirming their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Christians will fill churches today to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, an event celebrated in the Bible's New Testament.
But outside church walls, sacred Christian texts are under attack by scholars and in popular culture.
From the fictional juggernaut of The Da Vinci Code to the historical account of the Judas Gospel to the scholarly critique of Misquoting Jesus, bestsellers argue that the New Testament isn't the last word.
Should Christians believe everything in their Bibles? It appears not all Canadian Christians do.
Almost one in five Canadians believe Jesus Christ's death on the cross was faked and that he married and had a family, according to a new poll on Christianity's cornerstone belief in the resurrection.
The Da Vinci Code, written by the American author Dan Brown, tells of a Church-led conspiracy to suppress Christ's marriage to Mary Magdalene and his fathering of a royal bloodline. The Code has sold more than 40 million copies since its release in March 2003. A movie based on the book will premiere next month.
The Bible is believed to be the most popular book ever written, with an estimated six billion copies printed.
The poll, conducted for CanWest News Service last week in the days leading up to Easter, indicated that 17 per cent of Canadians and 13 per cent of Americans believe Brown's premise.
"It shows that The Da Vinci Code is winning the day," says Richard Ascough, a religious studies professor at Queen's University in Ontario, referring to the bestselling novel that raises the conspiracy theory.
But in the poll, seventy-three per cent of Canadians and 78 per cent of Americans said they believe that Jesus died on the cross and he was resurrected to eternal life.
Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, in a Good Friday service before Pope Benedict in Rome, condemned writers who make money denying church teachings about Jesus.
"Christ is still sold, but not any more for 30 coins," he said, referring to the Apostle Judas's betrayal of Jesus before his crucifixion.
Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican church, attacks books like The Da Vinci Code, arguing that they encourage people to believe the Christian faith is a series of "conspiracies and cover-ups.''
In a sermon he was scheduled to deliver in England's Canterbury Cathedral today, Rowan said they lead people to treat Biblical texts "as if they were unconvincing press releases from some official source whose intention is to conceal the real story."
But if Christians can't agree on how literally to read the Bible, can scholars at least agree on the authenticity of the text?
Not really.
"The Scriptures are both a human and divine reality. They are not divine words that were dropped out of heaven or forced into a person to write down," says Rev. Timothy Friedrichsen, a New Testament professor at Catholic University in Washington.
"Southern Baptists are adamant about the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Bible," counters Malcolm Yarnell, director of the Centre for Theological Research at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
For many, faith offers answers enough: If the Bible says it, it's true. But modern scholars wield tools of science and history in a quest for certainty.
Text experts have studied thousands of pieces of ancient, handwritten Scripture. (Gutenberg created the first printed Bible in the 15th century.) And almost every book, fragment or scrap includes typos, errors or changes compared with the others.
"Most of the differences don't matter, but some of the differences are huge," says Bart Ehrman, chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina and the author of Misquoting Jesus, a book that suggests sections of the New Testament changed over the early centuries of Christianity.
But even the largest differences are not so huge, insists Darrell Bock, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and the author of Breaking the Da Vinci Code, one of many recent books identifying historical or theological errors in the novel.
"Every central doctrine of the faith is well established," he says. "Even if you take out all the readings [Ehrman] has suggested in his book, you have not altered Christianity as a whole."
How important is accuracy to the faith of modern Christians?
Important, claims Ehrman.
"If you have a belief in the very words of the Bible, and all your faith is based on having these words, and suddenly you realize you don't have these words, it has a cataclysmic effect on your faith," he says.
Friedrichsen disagrees.
The Holy Spirit guarantees the portions of the Bible that speak to eternal truths, but human frailty may have affected other passages, he says. "It's always hard to hold those two principles together, the human and the divine."
More about the Da Vinci Code than about Canada but I thought I'd ping you anyway.
And the same 17% believe Jimmy Carter was a great president...
They also believe soap opera characters are real people...
That's what gets me about this whole DaVinci Code thing. It's a novel, not a historical manual and people still get so engrained in the STORY that they start to beleive it.
Yep. Turn out that Jesus' real name was Gus.
They have no real interest and would probably assume if asked that he did have a wife and children - like the Hindu gurus, the Buddha, the Sikh gurus, Mohammed etc.
Very few people as a percentage of the population actually buy Dan Brown's fake history outright.
And what percentage of Canadians believe that UFOs are alien space beings visiting us???
A lot of theses same people believe that Mapes and Rather - con artists in the same league as Dan Brown - produced a legitimate document.
But even if Jesus did have a family, why does it matter? This has not been proven or disproven. I saw an interesting look on the history channel at Jesus family's role in the early church and that it was not very important to church due to the role of everyone part of the same family of God after analysising the old documents that still survive from the 1st and 2nd century.
Ever hear of scientology???? A book written by a sci-fi author is now a religion...go figure. Lol
The short answer is that the truth is the truth and even innocuous-seeming lies are still lies and intrinsically immoral.
This has not been proven or disproven.
It is conclusively disproven.
Not one early source, either canonical or uncanonical, even implies that Jesus of Nazareth was married or had children.
The idea of Jesus being married or having children was a complete fabrication based on no evidence made up by someone who was born more than a thousand years after the events in question.
I saw an interesting look on the history channel at Jesus family's role in the early church
You sound a bit confused. Those who believe that Jesus had siblings identify certain leaders of the early Church in Jerusalem as being Jesus' immediate family members. It is undisputed that Jesus had blood relatives who were local leaders in the early Church.
However, none of these relatives were thought by anyone to be Jesus' children - that's another matter entirely.
and that it was not very important to church due to the role of everyone part of the same family of God after analysising the old documents that still survive from the 1st and 2nd century.
The only existing documents relating to Jesus that date from the 2nd century contain absolutely no evidence of any kind that Jesus was married or had children. The only existing document from the 1st century is a fragment of the Gospel of Mark, adocument which makes no refrence to any wife or children.
Other documents whose composition is datable to the 1st and 2nd century likewise contain absolutely no evidence of Jesus having either wife or child.
Again, this notion was invented by opponents of Christianity in the 19th century.
They naively assume that no one (or hardly anyone) would confuse fiction with fact. Well, here's the evidence that their notions were idealistic. If this poll is accurate, then some significant portion of our society is not as discerning as those Freepers presumed.
-A8
Ever hear of scientology???? A book written by a sci-fi author is now a religion...go figure. Lol
Good point...definite LOL. Heard something on the radio about Tom Cruise and his interview w/Diane Sawyer and he never would explain anything about Scientology. All he could say was, read a book about it.
Quid est veritas?
Not surprising. The remaining 83% don't believe in him anyway.
13% of Canadians think Jesus only lived 4 months.....
Just seperating the wheat from the chaff.
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