The DaVinci Code has raised a great deal of controversy since the book, and now the movie have come out.
The main problem with the book (and I would assume the movie) it’s full of lies. So what’s the big deal? It’s a fiction book right? Well, it is a fictional novel, with fictional characters, however it’s setting has to do with actual historical events.
Dan Brown says at the beginning of the book, and repeatedly in interviews that all of the historical aspects of his book are fact, not fiction. However, there is historical evidence that disproves what Mr. Brown wrote in his book
He claims things that are very contrary to Christianity, thing such as:
-The Bible isn’t reliable.
-Christ was only thought of as human until the Council of Nicaea decided to make Him equal with God.
-Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a child. Jesus wanted Mary to lead the church, but the disciples put her in a lower position.
The DaVinci Code uses the Gnostic Gospels as references, saying that our Bible was corruptly chosen by Constantine and the Council of Nicaea and that these Gnostic Gospels give a better account of what really happened.
However, it is the Gnostic Gospels were rejected long before the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.). The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are dated to 50-90 A.D., the earliest Gnostic Gospel, The Gospel of Thomas is dated at around 150 A.D. Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas were rejected because they were very contrary to what the other Gospels said. At the time when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written, there were still eye witnesses around to say whether what was written was true or not. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John then you can find places that you can go today to look for evidence in the Gospels of Thomas and Philip and others like them, there are no places recorded where you could look for archaeological evidence.
The deity of Christ was also established long before the Council of Nicaea, not only in Scripture, but by the church fathers.
“Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church at Ephesus in
Asia…by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God.” – Ignatius of
Antioch A.D. 110
“God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God.” –Tertullian A.D. 210
“Although He was God, He took flesh; and having been made man, He remained what He was, God” –Origen A.D. 225
All of these quotes are from long before the council of
Nicaea. At the Council of Nicaea, they didn’t decide that Jesus was God, they only affirmed it.
If Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, wouldn’t He have paid special attention to her at the cross, like He did to His mother? 1 Corinthians 9:5 says “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?” Wouldn’t Paul have sealed the argument by saying that Jesus had a wife?
As for the Gnostic gospels wanting Mary to be elevated to a higher position. The Gospel According to Thomas says, “Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go out from among us, because women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: See, I shall lead her, so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males.” That doesn’t sound very elevating of females to me.
I hope that this has shown you that you should not always believe what you read and hear and that you should always examine the evidence before believing that something is truth.
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not to disagree or agree with you but in the end you kind of contradict yourself by saying "you should not always believe what you read and hear" but all of your evidence is stuff that you have read. Who's to say that these documents are not false? I am not saying which one is true or not. It is all based upon faith which no one will know the truth of until death.
I understand what you mean. See the thing is, all the information I got came from people that are historians or Biblical scholars, from what I've found on the internet, Dan Brown has a degree in English and in Spanish, which doens't exactly make him an authority on historical matters. I don't think you should just believe me, do some research, it's not all based on faith it's based on historical evidence. You CAN know the truth before death.
I don't want to argue here whether the fact presented in the book are real or not (I think they are not real). But what I want to say is that your arguments are not so convincing. For example, nobody can be sure that in the Bible they wrote exactly what happened. There may have been exaggeratios, interpretations. It is a book, and in every book the author leaves he's influence. So we can't be sure that jesus actually said “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?”
Yes, the author leaves some of his influence. This however, does not discredit the gospels. If you read the gospels you will notice minor differences in the way that they are written. That makes sense becuase they were written by different people who had different backgrounds. The fact is that these "differences" don't change the main story of Christ. Don't you think that if one of the accounts of Jesus was told incorrectly that one of the eyewitnesses would have said, "No, that's not what happened."
The verse I used was actually written by Paul. Again, if it was written incorrectly don't you think Paul or someone who knew him would have said "No, that's not what Paul said."
“God sat in silence while the sins of the world were placed upon his Son. Was it right? No. Was it fair? No. Was it love? Yes. In a world of injustice, God once and for all tipped the scales in the favor of hope.” –Max Lucado
1. the council of Nicea ended the debate about whether Jesus was God. there was a group led by a bishop named Arius who claimed that Jesus was not God but a son of God and was a seperate being. this is called the Arian Controversy.
2. THe council of Nicea did NOT set up what books made the bible, that was not until a later SYnod.
3. all four gospels in the NT all contradict each other.
4. Of course its fiction based on the gospels that did not make the NT but then again, ALL of the gospels are not historical. the BIBLE is NOT A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT.
5. i think movies and books such as the Code raises questions such as
a. what were the intentions of the founding fathers of Xianity?
b. why were other books suppressed while others left it?
c. its been 2000 years, where is Jesus?
d. did the church fathers get it wrong?
The bible is full of allegories, contradictions and myths plagarized from other cultures. But it is good that we are debating this issue.
how do the four gospels contradict each other? i dont follow this argument at all. how do u know that the bible is not a historical document? is there proof that this claim is true?
in answer to the question in 5c, Jesus said he would come on his Father's time and not on his time. There is never a specified time when Christ will come back again. It could be another 10000 years or it could be tomorrow. No one knows the time or place when the Lord will come.
When you read the Bible, it never mentions that Jesus was married to Mary of M. or that Jesus had a child
I think what Dan Brown meant was the historical things that we know that happened. Such as wars, spreading christianity, etc.
We choose what to believe in.
Dan Brown expressed his opinion and his belief in the form of a book. If you are object to it, ignore it, and best of all, do not read it.
-Kristen
I don't really care were its fact or fiction because the Bible can be taken as fact or fiction as well. I think that it a good thing that someone presented a different view of history. And the only accurate account of the time would have been Christ’s journals themselves what happened to them? Or the journals of his followers written while he still lived not 10, 20, 30 years of after his death but while he still lived.
Who cares whether it is fact of fiction, it was a novel meant for entertainment.
I think that the book "The Da Vinci Code" is a story and was meant for the enjoyment of all people. By completely disregarding a book because it says things about a certain belief, a person is being ignorant to the other point of view. Looking at references to da Vinci's art that are made in the book there are things to be noted, that da Vinci did place there. Ever see the painting of the last supper? Man does that disciple ever look like a woman!! What was he trying to say? Who knows, we can only speculate and the Da Vinci Code is a book that does this, it speculates and provides an entertaining story line at teh same time.
The Bible consists of several books written during biblical times that were deemed holy by a council of MEN. There are only speculations to the number of books that were left out of the holy scriptures due to reasons only the council may know about. What do the other books tell that these men didn't want us Christians to know? What made these men on this council so righteous that they could choose what in fact was gospel and what was just made up stories?
I also believe that faith is only strengthened when questioned. To never look deep and investigate into your faith is to have empty faith. We need to understand our faith. Maybe there is more out there that would make our faith even stronger than what it is when we are spoon fed the scriptures by our ministers and priests or what have you. Knowledge with out understanding is only memorization and any one can memorize a bunch of words on paper.
~ArielLynne
I believe this book was written to entertain, although some might have a diffuclt time percieving wether it is fact or fiction just because they are not well educated with the meanings of the bible.
This is also intresting because of how the recent administration has placed strict laws regarding seperation of Religion and State.
fiction
It is important to realize what is fact and what is fiction because if it's fiction and people who don't know any better take it as fact then people have a very wrong view of history. If someone wrote a book about WWII and the author wrote that Hitler and the Nazis won, would you just accept that as fiction and not important? I would hope not because we know that it's not the way things really happened. Historical fiction is one thing, but if it's "historical" then it should be ficticious characters and and historical facts, not ficticious characters and ficticious facts.
“God sat in silence while the sins of the world were placed upon his Son. Was it right? No. Was it fair? No. Was it love? Yes. In a world of injustice, God once and for all tipped the scales in the favor of hope.” –Max Lucado
Having "" Faith has many different meanings, by many individuals. To question this is human nature. I was not there and we only have the stories, and written documents by others to go by. I bring a few interesting points though. As silly as this sounds has anyone heard this before. The fish story. Meaning I cought a fish this big. After it has been spread around amazing how big the fish got. My point would be, any of the documents could have changed. Is it certain that Mathew, Mark, John etc wrote from their own minds. It may have not been their exact words, or may have changed in time. Are the dates correct?? Were they written by another and pre-dated. No one knows because no one in this life time was there. Doctors, Lawyers, and Scholars of today get things wrong all the time as far back as you want to go. In the movie and book they mention witches etc, and how they were hunted and killed. Seriously we believe there were witches on this earth. If we can believe there were witches why can't it be just as factual Jesus was as human as the rest, and could be extraordinary. Ironically everything that hints to Jesus being human, and him having a reationship with Mary are not included. Also who said when the Council Of Nicaea was put into place. Is there certain Proof, but last of all Jesus's documents gone, and why. If you look at what is stated in the Bible, and what is not you could make an obvious assumption that something was going on. What on the other hand is unclear. Like one of the people on this forum stated a Book is just that a Book. It was a book formed to one belief to make it simple. There are no choices. You either believe or not. Now I'm not saying that having Faith or Believing is a bad thing, but If you do not question any Document or a Book you are mindless, and brainwashed by paper no matter how old or new. Like another poster stated. I guess either way you go you will find out, but again you will not be around to tell what you see or do not. Ironically I'm trying to find my faith, and have been activily involved in my church for a year after a long time away. Too many bad things happened, and I felt as if "Foot Prints" my favorite, was not occuring.
yeah i went and picked it out of the fiction section so there you go lol. For me the debate is more "are you going straight to hell if you buy this book?" which is obviously no. I know in my heart what is true and what isn't. if someone wants to believe that this "best selling ficition novel" is real and start a religion about it, well thats fine. i mean i'm not a scientologist or anything but you gotta do what you gotta do. But i can believe in the gospels and still enjoy the Da Vinci code. its pretty well written and fast paced....even though it is totaly ridiculous. But hey i can enjoy lord of the rings and harry potter and know thats not true so it still applies here
There are over 70 gnostic gospels that were never part of the bible. Some of these were rejected cuz it was just nonsense (which happens, i mean there's always some psycho explaining a situation that tries to convince us that he saw pink elephents eating peanuts with Jesus) but there were also a lot of those gnostic gospels that made a lot of sense but also raised a lot of questions. That's not to say that the current gospels aren't valid, my thing is how can you really understand what was going on just by hearing from four people? I mean, in modern times if an accident happens the first thing you should do is find as many people as you can who saw what happened to help write a more accurate report and possibly help you in court. Not all of it is gonna be accurate or makes sense because most people have their own perspective or view of a situation. So I mean, let's face it, even if we were there to witness all this stuff we'd still have different accounts of what happened. The Gospels are just ideas of what happened. As is Dan Brown's book, it's just an idea.
But here's my thing, why should it matter if Jesus was married? I actually like the idea, why wouldn't someone who advocated love, peace, and understanding not share a loving intimate relationship with someone? But putting that aside, why should we be nit picky about the "facts"? Jesus wasnt about "facts", he was about loving one another, helping one another, and all that good stuff. That's really what we should be focusing on, not whether or not he was married. I say go ahead, read which ever gospels you want, but always focus on Jesus' teachings because that's what he wanted us to learn about.