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"Semper Gnosticism!" This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our...

IN A paddy-lined valley in the far north of Japan is a municipal signpost inscribed: “Tomb of Christ: next left.” Follow the winding path up into the forest and there, sure enough, is a simple mound with a large wooden cross labelled as the grave of Jesus. Nearby is a tomb commemorating Isukiri, Christ’s brother, adorned with a plastic poinsettia Christmas wreath. For two millennia the farming village of Shingo claims to have protected a tradition that Jesus spent most of his life in Japan. The village is the home of Sajiro Sawaguchi, a man in his eighties who claims...

The way I see it, Dan Brown should be very happy for Fandango, which allowed millions of theater-goers to see "The Da Vinci Code" before reading the reviews. Normally, movies don't crash, losing 57% of their audience in the second weekend. Especially not when the 2nd weekend is a holiday weekend and the first weekend was not. But normally people who see movies this stupid have already invested in their Jar-Jar Binks Happy Meal Action Figure. Go figure that the Happy Meal featuring a dead, naked museum curator with a pentagram scratched in his back didn't sell to well. (OK,...

Gnosticism is probably hotter now than it has been since—well, over 1,500 years ago. As The Da Vinci Code hits movie theaters and probably extends its three-year run on the New York Times bestselling fiction list, Gnostic books like The Gospel of Judas and The Lost Gospel are also prominent on nonfiction bestseller charts. Peter Jones, professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary California and director of Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet (cwipp.org) is the author of The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back and other books that critique anti-Christian doctrines, including Cracking Da Vinci's Code (Cook Communications) and the newly...

"A lie is halfway round the world while the truth is still putting its boots on." --- Mark TwainMy first reaction to Dan Brown's novel, "The Da Vinci Code," was: "It's a work of fiction, a thriller, a page-turner. Everybody knows that." I was wrong. A young friend of mine met a classmate from Catholic high school who told him that she was seriously thinking of giving up her faith after reading "The Da Vinci Code." My friend said, "You'd give up your faith because of a novel?" She answered, "Oh, but it's all true!"Oh, but it's not! Soon the...

The Forum: Gnostics' favorite scholar gets a free pass from critics by Phil Lawler special to CWNews.com May. 09 (CWNews.com) - Novelist Dan Brown has been rightly criticized for the many outlandish claims advanced as "historical background" for his sensational novel The Da Vinci Code. While Brown poses as a writer who researchs his subject carefully, his critics have exposed him as a novelist who builds his popular appeal on sloppy scholarship, conspiracy theory, and a hyperactive imagination. Still, the best-selling novelist can call upon a few scholars with impressive academic credentials to support the theories that underlie his book....

Folks, the three-part analysis of the gospel of Judas which was published recently in Vivificat! has now being consolidated into one single Adobe Acrobat PDF file. You may download it from here. If you find this file worthy of dissemination, please, share it far and wide with family, friends, and acquaintances.

The Washington Post religion section recently had an article about the Gnostic gospels. What are they? — A reader in SterlingThe Gnostic gospels are attributed to the work of a community known as the "Gnostics," which existed in the early Church. (Gnosis in Greek means "knowledge.") However, before addressing the issue of the Gnostic gospels, we must first understand more about the Gnostic community and the heresy entitled "Gnosticism." The origins of Gnosticism are unclear. The first traces of Gnosticism arise centuries before Christianity and are rooted in the ancient religions of Syria, Babylonia, Phoenicia and Persia, and in the...

Dissecting the Gnostic Gospels By Jenni Vinson Trejo April 21, 2006 During the third century, the Christian church cast out the writings of a heretic sect of “Christians” who claimed to be the keepers of knowledge, the Gnostics. These Gnostics claimed that they had found God within themselves and that they held the truth about God. The Gnostics wrote their own version of accounts regarding Jesus and his followers. They eventually had to bury their papyrus books to keep the Christian church from destroying them for being blasphemous. Those documents, discovered in 1946 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, disclose a...

The Gospel of Judas debuted Thursday in Washington, D.C. What's the Gospel of Judas, you ask? Well, it's not a gospel. And it's not written by Judas. But it's still important, if not the most important nonbiblical text discovered during the last 60 years, as a National Geographic Society executive told The New York Times. The text, a copy of the document written during the second century, reveals some big news. Turns out Judas wasn't the renegade disciple who betrayed Jesus and committed suicide after remorse overwhelmed him. No, this Judas was just doing what Jesus told him to do....

JESUS "dies" every year on Good Friday but rises on Easter Sunday and church attendance is resurrected with him. More than 4.5 million Australians will make time for tomorrow's services of remembrance or Sunday's services of rejoicing. Some will do both. Secular citizens should not assume such devotion is automatic. Some believers stay away, and some of those who go are not really believers, at least not in the bodily resurrection. The latter include some high-powered Christians. Attesting to this is one of the Church of England's heaviest hitters, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who was in Australia recently...

THE CATHOLIC Church has not hidden from Christians the existence of the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic writings. But scholars and certain sectors of the media have tended to use the controversial writings to forward their own agendas and discredit the Church, a Catholic biblical scholar has warned."There may be malice involved," said Spanish Dominican Fr. Angel Aparicio of the University of Santo Tomas. "They may be scholars, but they have their own agendas. I am so surprised the National Geographic is promoting this (Gospel of Judas)."Aparicio was referring to the National Geographic Society special aired on Palm Sunday...

The National Geographic Society released the manuscript of what is called "The Gospel of Judas" yesterday. By National Geographic's own account, a team first assembled by the Maecenas Foundation has been working on the text since 2001. As a result of press releases tied to publication of the text, widespread coverage has repeated the claim that this is an authentic and unique representation of the historical relationship between Jesus and Judas, and that Jesus encouraged Judas to betray him. Despite the careful work by scholars that has gone into a document of obvious interest, I have to express disappointment when...

NEW YORK - An expert on ancient Egyptian texts is predicting that the "Gospel of Judas" — a manuscript from early Christian times that's nearing release amid widespread interest from scholars — will be a dud in terms of learning anything new about Judas. James M. Robinson, America's leading expert on such ancient religious texts from Egypt, predicts in a new book that the text won't offer any insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. His reason: While it's old, it's not old enough. "Does it go back to Judas? No," Robinson told The Associated Press on Thursday. The text,...

Folks, with heaviness of heart, I cannot recommend any more MonasteryIcons.com as a source for religious iconography. It appears that their theological bona fides are not in order, to put it mildly. I have used their religious pictures many times during the last year and a half to illustrate the significant saints of the day. I always included a link to their site as credit. Not any more. I apologize for having led thirsty souls to the wrong well unknowingly . The information that moved me to discontinue my recommendation may be accessed in the links below: - A word...

Home > Christianity Today Magazine > Faith & Thought > History Christianity Today, June 2004 Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out Recent gadfly theories about church council conspiracies that manipulated the New Testament into existence are bad—really bad–history. by Ben Witherington III | posted 05/21/2004 In Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, villain Leigh Teabing explains to cryptologist Sophie Neveu that at the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) "many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon," including the divinity of Jesus. "Until that moment," he says, "Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet. …...

Israeli police today detained two of Madonna’s bodyguards after they assaulted photographers waiting for the star outside her Tel Aviv hotel. Two of the photographers and a policeman who tried to break up the brawl were wounded, said Tel Aviv police spokesperson Liat Pearl. “Two security guards were detained for questioning by the Tel Aviv police department,” said Pearl. The pop diva has been in Israel since Wednesday with 2,000 other students of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Madonna’s visit to the country has sparked a media frenzy with the local dailies devoting pages detailing her luxury hotel suite and even...

In Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, villain Leigh Teabing explains to cryptologist Sophie Neveu that at the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) "many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon," including the divinity of Jesus. "Until that moment," he says, "Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet. … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless." Neveu is shocked: "Not the Son of God?" Teabing explains: "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicea." "Hold on. You're saying that Jesus' divinity was...

Series schism 2: Third Gnostic Crisis By Uwe Siemon-Netto UPI Religious Affairs Editor WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- Editor's note: This is part two of the UPI series on the new schism running horizontally through most Christian denominations. In this installment, theologians argue that the rift constitutes the Church's Third Gnostic Crisis, which is as menacing as were its predecessors 1,000 and almost 2,000 years ago. When Don Westblade, a religion professor, tries to explain the Gnostic crisis of the early church to his students at Hillsdale College in Michigan he points to a stunning parallel in modern times. The...

"What on earth do those people think they're doing?" That has been the response of innumerable people watching the Episcopal Church, and perhaps the Anglican Communion, on its course of self-destructing. In these pages, Philip Turner, a distinguished Anglican priest, missionary, and theology professor, writing in sorrow laced with anger, gave one answer to the above question (see First Things, November 2003). It is easy to dismiss people with whom we strongly disagree as being either ignorant or crazy, or both. But we owe them and ourselves the effort of trying to understand what they think they are doing, and...