RECAP

							        RECAP

What have we learned so far?
                      NICAEA
    “Until that moment in       The question before the
    history [the Council of       bishops of Nicaea was
    Nicaea, AD 325], Jesus        NOT “Is Jesus divine?”
    was viewed by His (sic)       but “Is Jesus equal to or
    followers as a mortal         subordinate to God the
    prophet ... a great and       Father?” The bishops
    powerful man, but a man       resoundingly affirmed
    nonetheless. A Mortal”        (not “a relatively close
    (Sir Leigh Teabing).          vote” as the DVC claims),
                                  as the faith of the Church
                                  from the beginning, that
                                  that he is “true God from
                                  true God, one in being
                                  with Father.”
                   CANONIZATION
   “More than eighty gospels were          The four apostolic gospels were
    considered for the New                   received by the Church very early
    Testament, and yet only a relative       on as indisputably the inspired
    few were chosen for inclusion –          record of Christ’s saving words
    Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John            and deeds.
    among them” (Sir Leigh again).
                                            The New Testament contains 27
                                             books including the four gospels.

                                            There were quite a few Christian
                                             books written in the first couple of
                                             centuries of Christianity; but,
                                             besides these 27, only a handful
                                             of other books were ever seriously
                                             considered for inclusion but
                                             eventually rejected.
      WHO CHOSE the Gospels?
   “The Bible, as we know it today, was        “The Bible” also contains 45 books of
    collated by the pagan Roman emperor          inspired Jewish writings which
    Constantine the Great. … He was a            Constantine clearly had nothing to do
    lifelong pagan who was baptized in his       with.
    deathbed, too weak to protest” (Sir         The list of books of the New
    Leigh does it again).                        Testament (the “canon”) was on the
                                                 way to formation well before
                                                 Constantine was a gleam in his
                                                 father’s eye.
                                                St. Athanasius: the first to give the list
                                                 of books as they appear exactly in the
                                                 New Testament today in a letter
                                                 written in AD 367.
                                                The list had been pretty well firmed up
                                                 by about AD 200. St. Iranaeus, writing
                                                 around AD 180, quotes from Matthew,
                                                 Mark, Luke, and John as THE four
                                                 gospels. That’s 140 years before
                                                 Constantine and Nicaea.
             CONSTANTINE
   As for Constantine, he was a politician
    who had the foresight to see that the
    future lay with Christianity, but he also had
    to rule an empire that was still largely
    pagan, especially the Senate in the
    ancient capital of Rome. Still, he clearly
    cast his lot with Christianity, raising his
    heirs as Christians and being baptized on
    his deathbed, when he faced no more
    awkward compromises.
            The Dead Sea Scrolls
   “Fortunately for historians,         The Dead Sea Scrolls don’t
    some of the gospels that              contain gospels or any
    Constantine attempted to              Christian writings.
    eradicate managed to survive.     
    The Dead Sea scrolls were            They antedate the time of
    found in the 1950s hidden in a        Jesus and contain exclusively
    cave near Qumran in the               Jewish writings.
    Judean desert. And, of
    course, the Coptic Scrolls in
    1945 at Nag Hammadi. …
    these documents speak of
    Christ’s ministry in very human
    terms” (Sir Leigh has a million
    of them).
               Nag Hammadi
   As for the Nag Hammadi texts, they follow
    the time of Jesus by a significantly greater
    distance in time than Matthew, Mark,
    Luke, and John.
                           Gnostics
   The Jesus of Nag Hammadi rejects the material world and makes
    salvation available only to a few who receive special knowledge.

   The Greek for “knowledge” is “gnosis,” so these groups are called
    “Gnostic.”

   These writings do not represent an earlier form of Christianity but a
    later development which uses Christian names and terminology for a
    philosophy/theology very different from that which Jesus and
    apostles preached.

   Sir Leigh cannot have read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if he
    thinks that the Jesus portrayed in them is some inscrutable divinity.
         Jesus, Devine or Mortal?
   “Many scholars claim that the          Sir Leigh seems to be entirely
    early Church literally stole            unaware that there was a
    Jesus from His (sic) original           powerful tendency in the first
    followers, hijacking His human          five centuries among some
    message, shrouding it in an             Christians to consider Jesus
    impenetrable cloak of divinity,         ONLY DIVINE.
    and using it to expand their
    own power” (Sir Leigh – what           These early Christians thought
    he doesn’t know about                   it necessary to portray his
    Christianity could fill a book. …       humanity as a pretend kind of
    Sorry, it does).                        thing to protect his divinity.

                                           The Church’s response to that
                                            was to affirm unequivocally
                                            both the humanity and divinity
                                            of Jesus.
            The “True” Jesus
   The Council of Chalcedon, in 451,
    proclaimed that “…our Lord Jesus Christ is
    one and the same Son, the same perfect
    in Godhead and the same perfect in
    manhood, truly God and truly man
    ….made known in two natures without
    confusion, without change, without
    division, without separation, the difference
    of the natures being by no means
    removed because of the union…”
            Church Conspiracy:
         Jesus and Mary Magdalene
   “…the early Church needed to          The issue isn’t what one thinks
    convince the world that the            of the idea of Jesus’ being
    mortal prophet Jesus was a             married. The issue is the
    divine being. Therefore, any           evidence. This is an utterly
    gospels that described earthly         gratuitous assertion. Matthew,
    aspects of Jesus’ life had to be       Mark, Luke, and John clearly
    omitted from the Bible … More          portray Mary Magdalene as an
    specifically, [Mary                    important disciple of Jesus.
    Magdalene’s] marriage to
    Jesus Christ” (Sir Leigh              They don’t conceal this fact,
    Teabing, very much enjoying            but they also never give the
    Sophie’s shock).                       slightest indication that she or
                                           any woman was his spouse.
         Jesus and His Kingdom
   Jesus proclaims the nearness of God’s kingdom.

   He challenges some who would follow him to give up
    their possessions or to leave their families behind: hardly
    a prophet of cozy domesticity.

   Nor does he want his followers to make any mistake
    about the fact that his kingdom “is not of this world.” He’s
    not interested in establishing a “royal bloodline.”

   Even the Gnostic writings that Sir Leigh calls to his aid,
    especially the “Gospel” of Philip, do not make any claims
    about a sexual relationship.
                    Jewish Tradition?
    “… Jesus as a married man makes             The Dead Sea Scrolls belonged to a
    infinitely more sense than our standard       community called the Essenes among
    biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor. …       whom there were clearly celibate men.
    Because Jesus was a Jew and the
    social decorum during that time              St. Paul, who lived at “that time,”
    virtually forbid a Jewish man to be           writes to the Corinthians, “Now to the
    unmarried” (Sir Leigh, then Robert            unmarried and to widows, I say: it is a
    Langdon).                                     good thing for them to remain as they
                                                  are, as I do, but if they cannot exercise
                                                  self-control they should marry, for it is
                                                  better to marry than to be on fire” (1
                                                  Cor.7.8-9).

                                                 There was a sense in those times that
                                                  God was taking crucial action to bring
                                                  about his kingdom, and that
                                                  superseded even the most important
                                                  human relationships, including
                                                  marriage.
             Unoriginal Christians!
    “Nothing in Christianity is         The Christians despoiled the
    original. The pre-Christian God       pagans in a different way.
    Mithras … was born on
    December 25 … Even                   They transformed pagan
    Christianity’s weekly holy day        realities into Christian ones to
    was stolen from pagans. …             make it clear that Christianity
    Christianity honored the              had surpassed paganism.
    Jewish Sabbath of Saturday,
    but Constantine shifted it to
    coincide with the pagan’s            Constantine may very well
    veneration of the day of the          have made Sunday a weekly
    sun” (Sir Leigh and Robert            day of rest because it was
    Langdon).                             already the day of Christian
                                          worship, rather than making
                                          Christians worship on the
                                          “Sun”-day.
              Sunday, Sunday
   As devout Jews, Jesus’ disciples continued their
    Jewish worship on Saturday, but gradually
    Sunday surpassed Saturday, because Sunday is
    the day of Christ’s Resurrection.

   Also, God began creating on the “first day” of the
    week, and in Christ there is a new creation.
    Christianity’s closest relationship was to the
    fiercely monotheistic Judaism. Pagans who
    became Christians chose the worship of one
    God, and many paid with their lives for refusing
    to worship false gods during eras of persecution.
        Christians Hate Women!
   “Those deemed ‘witches’         No one is going to defend
    by the Church included all       the prosecution of
    female scholars,                 thousands of women and
    priestesses, gypsies,            men (about 20% of
    mystics, nature lovers,          victims were men) which
    herb gatherers and any           went on from the late
    women ‘suspiciously              Middle Ages, through the
    attuned to the natural           Renaissance and even
    world.’ … During three           into the first years of the
    hundred years of witch           Age of the Enlightenment.
    hunts, the Church burned
    at the stake an
    astounding five million
    women” (Robert
    Langdon, apparently).
    Do Not Suffer Unto Thee a Witch!
   During centuries of widespread social upheaval,
    Catholics, Protestants, and the Puritans of New England
    turned with irrational suspicion against some of their
    neighbors and accused them of witchcraft.

   However, scholars estimate the number of victims at
    about 50,000, at a time when capital punishment was
    imposed for many more crimes than it is today.

   It is an absolute libel to accuse the Church of what
    amounts to a campaign of genocide against women.
            Protectors of the Hoax
   “The Priory (of Sion) believes      The Priory of Sion is an
    that Constantine and his male        elaborate hoax of few modern
    successors successfully              Frenchmen.
    converted the world from
    matriarchal paganism to             One of the great achievements
    patriarchal Christianity by          of the Judeo-Christian tradition
    waging a campaign of                 is the realization that God is
    propaganda that demonized            pure Spirit. He created the
    the sacred feminine,                 human race in his image, and
    obliterating the goddess from        he created the human race
    modern religion forever”             male and female. Yet God is
    (Robert Langdon).                    neither male nor female.

                                        There was no worship of
                                         goddesses in the religious
                                         tradition into which Jesus
                                         Christ was born.