[FairfieldLife] Re: Op-Ed and NPR interview : The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: NPR - Talk of the Nation http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5 Religious historian Elaine Pagels says what is important about The Da Vinci Code is not what the movie got wrong, but what it got right. Perhaps the most important thing about the found gnostic gospels is that Jesus taught Mary how to enter the SILENCE >From The Gospel According to Mary http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm 21) The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome, 22) and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died. 23) In a aeon I was released from a world, and in a Type from a type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient. 24) From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in SILENCE. Chapter 9 1) When Mary had said this, she fell SILENT, since it was to this point that the Savior had spoken with her. Perhaps the most important thing about the found gnostic gospels is that Jesus taught Mary how to enter the SILENCE God Bless, anatol To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' SPONSORED LINKS Religion and spirituality Maharishi mahesh yogi YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "FairfieldLife" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Op-Ed and NPR interview : The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
Excellent! Finally a sane voice in all this sound and fury, signifying nothing. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code' by Elaine Pagels [Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, is a professor of religion at Princeton. She wrote this article for the Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News.] Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.'' As a historian, I would agree that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown's assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei. But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods. What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted to present one version of Jesus' life: theirs. Some of the alternative views of who Jesus was and what he taught were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous. It is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code builds on the idea that many early gospels were hidden and previously unknown. Brown has said that part of his inspiration was one of these so-called Gnostic Gospels as presented in a book I wrote on the subject. It took only three lines from the Gospel of Philip to send Brown off to write his novel: The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often... The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, Why do you love her more than all of us?'' Those who have studied the Gospel of Philip see it as a mystical text and don't take the suggestion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene literally. Still, by homing in on that passage and building a book around it, Brown brought up subjects that the Catholic Church would like to avoid. He raised the big what-ifs: What if the version of Jesus' life that Christians are taught isn't the right one? And perhaps as troubling in a still- patriarchal church: What if Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus' life than we've been led to believe, not as his wife perhaps, but as a beloved and valued disciple? In other words, what Brown did with his runaway hit was popularize awareness of the discovery of many other secret gospels, including the Gospel of Judas that was published in April. There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn't the only version of Jesus' life that existed, and that even the gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation. In 1969, for instance, the Catholic Church ruled that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, as many people had been taught. The church blamed the error on Pope Gregory the Great, who in 591 A.D. gave a sermon in which he apparently conflated several women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene and an unnamed sinner who washes Jesus' feet with her tears. But even that news didn't reach all Christians, and it is the rare religious leader who now works hard to spread the word that the New Testament is just one version of events crafted in the intellectual free-for-all after Christ's death. At that time, church leaders were competing with each other to figure out what Christ said, what he meant -- and perhaps most important, what writings would best support the emerging church. What we know now is that the scholars who championed the Gnostic'' gospels are among the ones who lost the battle. In the decades after Jesus' death, these texts and many others were circulating widely among Christian groups from Egypt to Rome, Africa to Spain, and from today's Turkey and Syria to France. So many Christians throughout the world knew and revered these books that it took more than 200 years for hardworking church leaders who denounced the texts to successfully suppress them. The copies discovered in 1945, for example, were taken from the sacred library of one of the earliest monasteries in Egypt, founded about 10 years after the conversion of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to join the fledgling church. For the first time, Christians were no longer treated as members of a dangerous and seditious group and could form open communities in which many lived
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Op-Ed and NPR interview : The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
On Jun 2, 2006, at 12:12 AM, curtisdeltablues wrote: Great post, great questions raised. I will, of course, only focus on this one: The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often... The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, Why do you love her more than all of us?' Cuz, although Jesus lived in a village, he was not one of the Village People. ...although he is ostensibly the founder of the YMCA... ;-) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' SPONSORED LINKS Religion and spirituality Maharishi mahesh yogi YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "FairfieldLife" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Op-Ed and NPR interview : The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Excellent! Finally a sane voice in all this sound and fury, signifying nothing. ... a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. ---Never mix fact with fantasy--- To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' SPONSORED LINKS Religion and spirituality Maharishi mahesh yogi YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "FairfieldLife" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Op-Ed and NPR interview : The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code'
Great post, great questions raised. I will, of course, only focus on this one: The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often... The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, Why do you love her more than all of us?' Cuz, although Jesus lived in a village, he was not one of the Village People. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: NPR - The Op-Ed Pages Opinion Page: 'Da Vinci Code' Truths NPR - Talk of the Nation http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5 , May 22, 2006 · Religious historian Elaine Pagels says what is important about The Da Vinci Code is not what the movie got wrong, but what it got right. === You can listen to the interview and caller questions mentioned above at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5422695 === Op-Ed The Truth at the Heart of 'The Da Vinci Code' by Elaine Pagels [Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, is a professor of religion at Princeton. She wrote this article for the Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News.] Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.'' As a historian, I would agree that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown's assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei. But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods. What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted to present one version of Jesus' life: theirs. Some of the alternative views of who Jesus was and what he taught were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings. These documents include gospels that were banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous. It is not surprising that The Da Vinci Code builds on the idea that many early gospels were hidden and previously unknown. Brown has said that part of his inspiration was one of these so-called Gnostic Gospels as presented in a book I wrote on the subject. It took only three lines from the Gospel of Philip to send Brown off to write his novel: The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often... The rest of the disciples were jealous, and said to him, Why do you love her more than all of us?'' Those who have studied the Gospel of Philip see it as a mystical text and don't take the suggestion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene literally. Still, by homing in on that passage and building a book around it, Brown brought up subjects that the Catholic Church would like to avoid. He raised the big what-ifs: What if the version of Jesus' life that Christians are taught isn't the right one? And perhaps as troubling in a still-patriarchal church: What if Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus' life than we've been led to believe, not as his wife perhaps, but as a beloved and valued disciple? In other words, what Brown did with his runaway hit was popularize awareness of the discovery of many other secret gospels, including the Gospel of Judas that was published in April. There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn't the only version of Jesus' life that existed, and that even the gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation. In 1969, for instance, the Catholic Church ruled that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, as many people had been taught. The church blamed the error on Pope Gregory the Great, who in 591 A.D. gave a sermon in which he apparently conflated several women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene and an unnamed sinner who washes Jesus' feet with her tears. But even that news didn't reach all Christians, and it is the rare religious leader who now works hard to spread the word that the New Testament is just one version of events crafted in the intellectual free-for-all after Christ's death. At that time, church leaders were competing with each other to figure out what Christ said, what he meant -- and perhaps most important, what writings would best support the emerging church. What we know now is that the scholars who championed the Gnostic'' gospels are among the ones who lost the battle. In the decades after Jesus' death, these texts and
