The Da Vinci Opportunity, Section 2

How the Popularity of The Da Vinci Code Book
and Movie Can Be Helpful to Christians and Others

by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts

Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.

Excursus: Why is Gnosticism Popular Today?
Part 11 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Monday, March 27, 2006

Yet the losers have been making quite a comeback in the last few decades. In scholarly tomes and popular paperbacks, Gnosticism takes the spotlight. The Gnostics are often seen, not as the losers in a fair theological debate, but as the victims of orthodox prejudice and power. Gnosticism is the David fighting against the big, horrible Goliath of orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church. Many contemporary writers not only defend ancient Gnosticism against its oppressor, but even find personal inspiration from ancient Gnostic writings.

This is a most curious situation. Why would an ancient, esoteric, and sometimes bizarre collection of documents receive such attention today? And why would it inspire many to appreciate if not to adopt Gnostic beliefs? In the rest of this post I'll try to sketch out some reasons for the contemporary resurgence of Gnosticism.

The Attraction of Gnosticism for Scholars

Scholars have been aware of Gnosticism for centuries, largely because many orthodox church fathers (like the second-century bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons) wrote disapprovingly about this amorphous movement in early Christianity. Interest in Gnosticism grew after 1945, when a collection of Gnostic documents was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Yet scholars had to wait for years to have access to the Nag Hammadi tractates. Finally, in the 1970's, the full collection was published for scholars. In 1977, a definitive English translation was published, The Nag Hammadi Library in English. For the first time, people could read for themselves what Gnostic writers actually believed. Then, in 1979, Elaine Pagels published her controversial bestseller, The Gnostic Gospels. This book popularized Gnosticism, not only as an academic curiosity, but also as a compelling version of Christianity for folks who could not stomach Christian orthodoxy. (Note: In The Da Vinci Code Sir Leigh Teabing refers to a book called The Gnostic Gospels, [p. 245] which he takes to be a collection of actual documents. In fact, Pagels's book was a discourse about these documents, not a collection of them.)
		The original cover of The Gnostic Gospels.

As I explained earlier in this series, I found myself in the middle of the Gnostic buzz when I was a student at Harvard. In 1978, during my junior year of college, I took a seminar on "Christians, Jews, and Gnostics" with Prof. George MacRae, who had translated several of the tractates for The Nag Hammadi Library in English and was one of the world's leading scholars on Gnosticism. It was exciting to study texts that had received very little scholarly attention with someone who knew them so well. (Prof. MacRae was a major reason I decided to do a Ph.D. in New Testament. He would have been my dissertation adviser, but he died in the mid-80s, just as I was beginning my research.)

When The Gnostic Gospels came out in 1979, I was studying New Testament at Harvard, the very school from which Elaine Pagels had received her Ph.D. nine years earlier. Many of my colleagues were friends of Pagels and cheered her work. Some, I remember, were envious of her wide popularity. A few even criticized her for being a "popularizer," which cut against the elitist grain of scholarship. The professor who was Pagels's dissertation adviser, Helmut Koester, became my dissertation adviser several years later, after Prof. MacRae died. Many of my fellow students went on to build their academic careers as experts in Gnosticism, notably, Ron Cameron of Wesleyan University. So, during my graduate school days, Gnosticism was in the air.

Part of what was so exciting in those days was the chance to dive into original texts that had never been studied before. Until that point of time, most New Testament scholars and graduate students had to rework the same soil that had been turned up by others for centuries. Now we had an unprecedented academic bonanza. These were heady times, especially for scholars who had lost some of their zeal for studying the New Testament itself. Many of my colleagues at Harvard had once been committed Christians, often of a very conservative stripe. Love for Scripture drew them into the academic study of the New Testament. But, somewhere along the way, they lost their belief that the canonical writings were God's gift to us. Some became liberal Christians, without any conviction of biblical authority; others became agnostics, without any religious faith at all. Anti-conservative bias was encouraged by some, but not all of the faculty at Harvard. I remember one of my professors lecturing on the orthodox notion that one must "stand under" the text in order to "understand" it. "That's bull****!" he said, in a classroom filled with 150 seminarians.

Yet some my colleagues who had given up orthodox Christianity still longed for meaning in their lives. They found hope in the interpretations of Gnosticism by scholars like Elaine Pagels, who saw in the Gnostic writings not only a way to forge a successful academic career, but also an appealing alternative to orthodox Christianity. Gnosticism, especially when run through the interpretive grid of postmodern academia, seemed to support many of the values endorsed by liberal- or post-Christian academics. Gnosticism was envisioned to support feminism, religious pluralism, the supremacy of knowledge, the non-divinity of Christ, the non-literal resurrection, and the self as the source of ultimate meaning. Gnosticism also appealed to the elitism that is rampant in academia.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Excursus: Why is Gnosticism Popular Today? (cont)
Part 12 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Yesterday I began to explain why, in my opinion, Gnosticism is popular today, especially among academics. My last point was that when ancient Gnosticism is run through the interpretive grid of postmodern academia, it appears to support many of the values endorsed by liberal- or post-Christian academics: feminism, religious pluralism, the supremacy of knowledge, the non-divinity of Christ, the non-literal resurrection, and the self as the source of ultimate meaning.

Many of these values can be found in the Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi if you dig around carefully. (The whole Nag Hammadi Library, by the way, includes non-Gnostic documents as well.) But these notions are affirmed only through a selective reading of the evidence. For example, some texts do indeed speak positively of Sophia (a divine female revealer) and do indeed refer to the Holy Spirit in female terms. And in some places women, like Mary Magdalene, are held up as inspired revealers. Yet other texts in the Nag Hammadi Library are about as far from feminism as one can travel. (See, for example, my discussion of Gospel of Thomas 114 in this series .)

Moreover, scholars who have become enamored with Gnosticism generally do not take Gnosticism on its own terms. They do not, for example, actually believe the wild cosmology of many Gnostic writers, with levels upon levels of heavenly beings, and with earth created by a fallen deity. Contemporary scholars reinterpret all of this genuine Gnosticism to suit their own fancy, finding a mythological endorsement of their own pluralistic, individualistic worldview.
		The Nag Hammadi codices.

I don't know any contemporary writer or scholar who actually believes that the highest God sent a non-human Christ to reveal saving knowledge that we have the divine within us. Yet this is the essence of the Gnostic gospel (good news). What today's scholars do with this is to strip away the part they don't like, and recast authentic Gnosticism to make it say something like "you can make up your own truth." This sort of postmodern relativism has nothing to do with genuine Gnosticism, and in fact contradicts it. Whereas the Gnostics believed that truth could only come through revelation from God, contemporary interpreters of Gnosticism believe that we get to create it for ourselves, an utterly non-Gnostic article of faith. (For a similar perspective, see Ben Witherington's excellent discussion in The Gospel Code, pp. 80-95.)

Part of what contemporary scholars like about Gnosticism is its avoidance of the scandal of the resurrection. Orthodox Christians have, from the beginning, proclaimed that Jesus rose from the dead, and that this is essential to the core of Christian faith (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, for example). Yet even as the cross once scandalized Jews who did not believe in Jesus, so the resurrection is a stumbling block for modern scholars who tend to look at early Christian history through naturalistic lenses. But then come the Gnostics, who have no need for a real resurrection. Of course they also have no place for a real Christ, or a real crucifixion. But, be that as it may, Gnostic "Christianity" enables one to enjoy the myth of the resurrection with out endorsing its historicity.

Moreover, if one takes The Gospel of Thomas as the paradigm of authentic Christian faith, the resurrection isn't even necessary at all, nor is the cross. So you can have an utterly non-evangelical Christianity, one that doesn't mess around with things like sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection. This kind of Christianity has obvious appeal to many post-Christian scholars.

Gnosticism vs. Orthodoxy: A Power Struggle?

Much of contemporary scholarship has bought hook-line-and-sinker into the interpretation of history as a power struggle between the strong oppressors and the weak but noble oppressed. From this point of view, the mere fact that orthodox Christianity won the battle with Gnosticism makes orthodoxy suspect. This suspicion is supercharged by the historical sexism of the church, not to mention its critique of homosexual practice and its audacious claim that salvation can be found only through Christ. Orthodoxy has dominated, in this view, not because it is true, or surely not because it has been blessed by God, but solely because it was able to manipulate history through an abuse of power. This is the viewpoint of Dan Brown's mouthpiece, Sir Leigh Teabing. The Catholic Church, by getting in bed with the Roman emperor Constantine, was able to suppress non-orthodox Christianity and impose its falsified view of Jesus upon the world.

There is no doubt that during the first few centuries A.D. the church experienced a titanic struggle between Gnostic Christianity and orthodox Christianity. Writers on both sides bore witness to this fact. No doubt there was a power dimension to this battle, and that Constantine's involvement helped orthodoxy, at least in a way. (It's been argued in some quarters that Constantine actually hurt genuine Christianity more than helping it, but this I'll save for another blog series.) If we take seriously the ancient documents we have at our disposal, both the Gnostic writings and the orthodox ones, then we must recognize that those in the midst of the battle saw it, not primarily as a struggle for power, but mostly as a struggle for truth. What was at stake in the battle between Gnosticism and orthodoxy was truth, or perhaps, even better, Truth.

I'll have more to say about this next time. Stay tuned.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Excursus: Gnosticism vs. Orthodoxy as a Battle for Truth
Part 13 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Yesterday I explained further why, in my opinion, Gnosticism has been so popular among scholars during the last three decades. My last point had to do with the tendency of scholarship to describe the conflict between Gnosticism and orthodox Christianity as a power struggle between the victims (Gnostics) and the oppressors (The Roman Catholic Church, in league with the Roman Empire). This sort of perspective flows freely through The Da Vinci Code, especially in the revelations of Sir Leigh Teabing.

Both Gnostics and orthodox Christians believed that there was such a thing as truth, and that this truth mattered for salvation, and that they had it, and that the other side didn't. The contemporary attempt to see in Gnosticism some sort of incipient pluralism misses the boat. Gnostics were every bit as dogmatic about truth as orthodox Christians. They just disagreed about what the truth really was.

Without a doubt, Gnostics believed that they, and they alone, had the genuine truth that sets one free from fatal ignorance and leads to salvation. Consider this passage from the Gospel of Philip (a gospel quoted by Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code).

Ignorance is the mother of all evil. Ignorance will result in death, because  those who come from ignorance neither were nor are nor shall be. [. . .] will be perfect when all the truth is revealed. For truth is like ignorance: while it is hidden, it rests in itself, but when it is revealed and is recognized, it is praised, inasmuch as it is stronger than ignorance and error. It gives freedom. The Word said, "If you know the truth, the truth will make you free" (John 8:32). Ignorance is a slave. Knowledge is freedom. If we know the truth, we shall find the fruits of the truth within us. If we are joined to it, it will bring our fulfillment. (83:30-84:13)

Notice that this passage includes a saying of Jesus that appears in the Gospel of John (which was written about a century earlier than the Gospel of Philip, by the way). Both the Gnostics and the orthodox believed in the ultimate importance of truth. Yet they disagreed profoundly on the nature of truth. For Gnostics, the truth included the evil of the material world and its creator, the seed of divinity hidden in the human heart, and the revelation delivered by the Christ who did not die on the cross. For the orthodox the truth included the goodness of creation by the one true God, the fallenness of the human heart owing to sin, and the atonement accomplished by Christ who had to die on the cross to set us free from sin. For Gnostics, the basic human problem is ignorance. Therefore knowledge leads to salvation and freedom. For the orthodox, the basic human problem is sin. Therefore knowledge alone does not save. Faith in response to the cross and resurrection of Christ is necessary for salvation. The battle between orthodoxy and Gnosticism, though surely at times a power struggle, was fundamentally a battle over the truth, or one might say, the Truth. Today the battle lines are drawn differently, with the very belief in Truth at risk. And, to be sure, at times today's battle is one of power, as academic societies and universities decide who gets to deliver papers, or publish monographs, or receive tenure. In these skirmishes, the tables of power have often been turned, with orthodox Christians taking it on the chin from the powerful who align themselves with the Gnostics.
		Salvador Dali, "Crucifixion ('Hypercubic Body')", 1954. Although I don't know whether Dali was a modern-day Gnostic or not, his version of the crucifixion would certainly suit Gnostic tastes (no blood, to nails, no real suffering). Confession: This picture hung in my room during my college days. I liked the art, but didn't think about the theology.

Yet, as in the first Christian centuries, today's battle is not simply about power. It's really about truth, and whether there is such a thing as Truth, and whether that Truth is to be found in Jesus Christ as He's revealed in Scripture or not. This is one major reason why The Da Vinci Code has become so popular in some quarters, and so maligned in others. The Da Vinci Code clearly rejects the truth of the Bible, advocating an amalgam of Gnosticism and paganism in its place, and claiming Jesus as it's inspiration. Yet, ironically, as I will demonstrate later in this series, much of what The Da Vinci Code promotes is in fact denied in the Gnostic writings upon which the novel depends.

Although I could say much, much more about Gnosticism, I'll stop now. It's time to return to where I left off, and explain why I believe that the biblical gospels are reliable sources of information about Jesus. I'll address this issue in my next post.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Opportunity #1: The Antiquity and Reliability of the New Testament Gospels (Section E)
Part 14 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Thursday, March 30, 2006

Before my recent excursus on Gnosticism, I had been discussing the dating of the gospels, showing that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, perhaps along with the Thomas, are the oldest of the gospels. Their antiquity gives them an a priori claim to historical reliability, since it's reasonable to assume that a description written chronologically close to an event would be more accurate than one written a long time afterwards.

1. Historical Reliability in Context

The writers of the gospels were creatures of their own time and culture, no matter what you believe about biblical inspiration. They used the common language of the first-century Roman Empire (Greek). They reflected the values of the Greco-Roman-Jewish world in which they lived, such as a concern about hospitality and cleanliness with regard to eating. And they wrote in ways shared by writers of their day. So, for example, though many scholars regard the New Testament gospels as biographies, they do not mean that the gospels fit the modern genre of biography, but rather the ancient genre, in which writing about a person's life tended to be much shorter and focused on key events for the purpose of deriving moral lessons. By modern standards, the failure of the gospels to discuss the childhood of Jesus says they aren't biographies. But this was common to biographical writing in the time of Jesus.

Critics of the biblical gospels often get carried away by minor differences between them. If you compare a story in Matthew, for example, with a parallel story in Mark, you almost inevitably find some modest inconsistencies. In Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable? I cite the following example and offer the following explanation:

Matthew 3:17 - And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Mark 1:11 - And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

This sort of difference delights detractors of the gospels and perplexes the faithful. It would be pretty hard to argue that the voice from heaven said the same sentence twice in slightly different ways. No, it seems more likely that Matthew and Mark use slightly different words for the same vocal event.

Does this prove that one of the gospels is wrong? Does this mean that either Matthew or Mark was a sloppy historian? Not if we see them in terms of their own time and culture. Yes, we expect historians and biographers to quote their sources with precision. Yet in the ancient world, before there were transcripts, tape recordings, and podcasts, biographers and historians exercised greater freedom in paraphrasing or altering spoken words for stylistic reasons. Quotation marks didn't exist in Greek of the first-century A.D. A good historian, if he knew that a character had made a speech at a certain time, would get available information about that speech and then write the speech with his own words. Nowadays, a historian who did this would be considered sloppy at best, dishonest at worst.

So, when I say that the gospels are reliable as historical sources for Jesus, I'm not applying a standard of reliability that is anachronistic and unfair to the writers. Rather, I'm judging reliability with an awareness of the culture in which the gospel writers did their work. Given this culture, I believe we can have confidence in the picture of Jesus that emerges from the New Testament gospels.

2. The Use of Even Older Sources

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the oldest gospels (perhaps including Thomas). They were written within 40-60 years after Jesus's death, by writers who had quite a bit of knowledge of Jesus. Yet most, if not all of the biblical evangelists (gospel writers), used older written sources.

Matthew, Mark, and John do not refer to their sources specifically, though it's likely that they used them (except, perhaps, Mark). Luke, on the other hand, makes clear his dependence on both oral and written materials. His gospel begins:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4) Luke refers to many "orderly accounts" of the ministry of Jesus. These are written sources Luke used, perhaps including the theoretical sayings source known as Q (from the German, Quelle, meaning "source"). The language of "handing down" is technical language for oral tradition. Luke also got information from "eyewitnesses" who had seen Jesus, and from "servants of the word," teachers and preachers, who passed on sayings of Jesus and told stories about him. (For more on the sources of the gospels, see my series on the reliability of the gospels .)
		"St. Luke" by Frans Hals, 1625

So when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John sat down to write, they didn't begin with a blank slate and a creative imagination. Rather, they had done their research, gathering historical data from various sources. The written sources get us even closer to the actual time of Jesus. The oral sources get us all the way back.

One further word on oral tradition. It's common today to think of oral tradition as an ineffective, sloppy means of passing on history. Scholars sometimes write as if those who told stories about Jesus felt free to make them up as they went along. Surely at some point this sort of freedom came into play, especially in the second century when the Gnostics began to reinterpret historical traditions about Jesus to suit their agenda. Yet contemporary research about oral cultures suggests that the early Christians would have been much more disciplined than we might suppose in their storytelling. In fact, though storytellers had certain freedoms, their culture expected them to pass on the core of the story accurately. This was made possible, in part, by the use of oral forms that enhance memorization. These forms are obvious in the gospels. So, those who believe that the earliest Christians made up all sorts of stories and sayings of Jesus would do well to pay closer attention to how oral cultures actually work. This would enhance their confidence in the reliability of the gospels. (For further discussion, see my other series .)

In my next post I'll explain further why the New Testament gospels are trustworthy sources of information about Jesus.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Opportunity #1: The Antiquity and Reliability of the New Testament Gospels (Section F)
Part 15 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Friday, March 31, 2006

Yesterday I began to explain in detail some of the reasons why I believe that the New Testament gospels provide a reliable historical picture of Jesus. My points were:

1. Historical Reliability in Context
2. The Use of Even Older Sources

Today I'll add one further point.

3. Multiple, Early Witnesses to the Basic Gospel Story

The basic gospel story in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John focuses on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Of course these gospels include lots of other material (teachings, miracles, etc.), but they all lead to the climax on Good Friday and Easter.

This is the sharpest difference between the New Testament gospels and the Gnostic gospels. Some of the Gnostic gospels almost completely ignore the death and resurrection of Jesus (like the Gospel of Thomas). Many others insist that Christ didn't actually die, and therefore didn't actually need to be raised from the dead. The Gnostic gospels focus largely on passing on esoteric revelations of Jesus. In the biblical gospels, the teachings of Jesus set the stage for His crucifixion and resurrection.

In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we have four, first-century witnesses to the basic gospel story. Most scholars (but not all) believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark, so only two of these witnesses are independent of the others (Mark and John). But this doesn't diminish the historical value of Matthew and Luke. If I'm having a conversation with two friends, and one tells me that the Lakers won tonight's game, and the other friend, hearing the report of the first, confirms what he said, then I have two solid witnesses even though they are not independent. So it makes sense to conclude that in the biblical gospels we have at least four, first-century testimonies to the core of the Christian gospel.

I say "at least" because we have other witnesses from the first century.

One possibility is the Gospel of Thomas, which may be as old as the biblical gospels. It almost completely ignores the cross and resurrection of Jesus. In Thomas, salvation comes from finding the correct interpretation of Jesus's sayings, not from his atoning death (saying 1). There is one mention of the cross of Jesus in Thomas, however, which seems to imply actual knowledge of Jesus's crucifixion (saying 55). But, otherwise, the death and resurrection of Jesus are not significant. It's worth noting, however, that the Gospel of Thomas doesn't deny that Jesus actually died, as do later Gnostic gospels. Moreover, since many of the sayings of Jesus found in the biblical gospels are also found in Thomas, though in slightly different forms, if Thomas is an independent and early source, then this fact supports the basic reliability of the sayings of the New Testament gospels.

But there are other significant, early witnesses to the core of the Christian gospel. In fact, the earliest Christian writings consistently speak of the death and resurrection of Jesus as if they actually happened. I am talking here of the epistles of Paul. His letters to various churches were all written around 50-60 A.D., at least ten years before the gospels were written. (Q, if it existed, may have been written during the same period.) Paul rarely quotes sayings of Jesus, and seems relatively uninterested in His earthly ministry. But the death and resurrection of Jesus make all the difference in the world for Paul, and he mentions them often.

In one of his letters to the Christians in Corinth, for example, Paul writes:

Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

Paul wrote this letter somewhere around 55 A.D., or 25 years after Jesus's death. Thus we have here one of the oldest literary witnesses to the essentials of the Christian gospel, which centers in the theological interpretation of the historical death and resurrection of Jesus.

Note, however, that Paul is not inventing this statement of the basic Christian message. It's something that he had "proclaimed" to the Corinthians during his first visit to Corinth (probably around 50 A.D.). But, notice further, that Paul handed on what he had first received. He refers to the process of oral tradition, by which early Christian beliefs were passed on. So what Paul delivered to the Corinthians around twenty years after the death of Jesus was something that he had received earlier. Exactly how much earlier, we do not know. But it's clear that Paul's traditions about the death and resurrection of Jesus go back to the very earliest strata of Christian belief.
		A view of ancient Corinth today. The ruins (mostly) of the city in which Paul preached are surrounded by tile roofed modern buildings. (This picture courtesy of Holy Land Photos.)

Thus the writings of Paul provide another, clearly independent witness to the most important elements of the New Testament gospels, namely, the death and resurrection of Jesus. These elements are also those that tend to be either omitted or denied in the later Gnostic gospels.

The core of the Christian testimony about Jesus is also found in other New Testament writings, including the 1 Peter, Hebrews, and 1 John. These documents were all written in the latter half of the first century, and add even further support to the reliability of the New Testament gospels in the things that matter most to Christians, and that are denied by the Gnostics.

In conclusion, we have several early witnesses to the ministry and saving work of Jesus, including the four biblical gospels themselves. This cloud of witnesses suggests strongly that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John paint a historically credible picture of Jesus.

In my next post in this series I want to spell out two further reasons I find the New Testament gospels to be reliable as sources of historical knowledge about Jesus.

Send an e-mail link of this page to a friend. E-mail Mark D. Roberts

Visit the guestbook. Go to the homepage.

Opportunity #1: The Antiquity and Reliability of the New Testament Gospels (Section G)
Part 16 of series: The Da Vinci Opportunity
Posted for Monday, April 3, 2006

So far I've been suggesting several reasons why the New Testament gospels can be trusted as reliable witnesses to what Jesus actually said and did. Here are my three main points in review:

1. We must evaluate historical reliability in context.

2. The New Testament gospels are not only the oldest of the so-called gospels, but also they use sources that are older still.

3. There are many, early witnesses to the basic story of the New Testament gospels. These witnesses include the earliest Christian writings, which employ still older traditions.

Today I'll add a further point.

4. The biblical Jesus makes more historical sense than the Gnostic Christ.

Given everything we know about Jesus's geography, ethnicity, religion, and culture, it makes sense that He would sound like the Hebrew prophets and be associated with them. Though Christians believe that Jesus is more than merely a prophet, we certainly see Him as standing squarely in the prophetic tradition. To put matters simply, the prophetic Jesus makes good historical sense.

In contrast, the Gnostic "Christ" would be lost in the world of Jesus, the first-century Jewish culture of Galilee. If you pay att