Holy Bible or Holey Bible? Part 2

Some updates
Hey everyone, I am a bit hyper now cos I just came back from a jog.. I am elated because I got a mail from someone which made my day! u know, nothing beats knowing that one (in fact two) of your good friends or loved ones is open to the gospel or is being saved.. what can I say? God works according to His purposes and I can only thank God for them.. And I am relieved cos I led 2 bible studies in 3 days unscathed.. I thank God for them too.. I dunno how I survived last week with 2 bible studies to prepare and so many things to do.. but I did! now to take a breather, continue blogging and going back to reading up on neurology.

Da Vinci's Code
I think most of you would have expected me to write something about this. But actually the fact is there are already so many books and articles out there on it, I really got nothing new to add.. haha.. perhaps I shall just summarise some of the more important points from various articles..

Actually I havent watched the movie but I read the book like one year ago so I roughly still know the story.. I think it is an interesting story no doubt.. as a young Christian then, I think I am forced to consider whether some of the things said in the book are true.. it forced me to deal with the facts and not just blindly believe. but I will be lying if I say that my faith wasn't shaken a tiny bit..

that is where Dan Brown is so successful in doing.. he skilfully tries to mix what he claims as "facts" and "real events" with fictional characters and events.. and successfully created a bestselling novel and blockbuster movie. by doing so, he is absolved of any blame of misreporting facts.. at the same time, blurring our perception of truth vs fiction.. in the process, readers are challenged to question whether there can be any absolute truths and tempted to believe that there are none.. he is really good at doing that.. and in the process, tens of millions of dollars richer.. to him, he has achieved his purpose, whether or not his supposed facts in his novel are really facts or not.

Dan Brown defines things his own way. his truths and facts seem to be his own truths and facts.. he claims that he is a Christian trying to decipher life's big mysteries (whatever that means), on his own path to enlightenment, and most incredibly, a student of many religions.. I rest my case. I admit, I hold my own prejudices and biases as I type this.. but I don't think u would expect a non-Christian to be typing this right?

and indeed, I suggest to you, everyone of us here hold our own prejudices as we watch the movie or read the book. as a non-Christian, with little knowledge of the bible and how it came about, you will walk out of the theatre thinking Christianity consists of a spectrum of beliefs ranging from Jesus is God to Jesus is a married man and that a group of people long ago ganged up to edit documents and make Jesus seem to be God when he wasn't. to you, this alternative "fact" is enough to discredit Christianity. case closed. "I knew it.." "I told you so.." but I didn't expect you to be more objective or less biased than this.. after all Dan Brown is such a skilful writer..

still, some of u might be interested in what the "opposition" might have to say. you have a choice!

Da Vinci Code VS Opposition
DVC: The bible is a product of man.. Not of God. the bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it.. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

O: DB got it right, the bible did not fall magically from the clouds. It was written by man. BUT it is God-breathed. It is inspired by God. It was not created from nothing. It is based on historical facts and real-life accounts of people who touched, talked and interacted with Jesus.

DVC: Constantine commissioned and financed a new bible which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him god-like. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burnt.

O: Constantine was the Roman Emperor from AD 313 to AD 337. He was not a Christian cos he prayed to various gods and accepted many religions in his empire. Thus, he had no reason to commission or finance this "new bible" which made Jesus out to be a god. The earlier gospels were neither gospels, nor were they earlier.. These books were excluded from the bible on the basis that they were not written by first- or second-hand witnesses of Jesus. They were also written 100 to 200 years after Jesus' death.

The gospels that were accepted in today's bible were written by Jesus' disciples or his disciples' close mates or disciples. All these writers lived during the time of Jesus. And all these gospels were written before AD 100. That's like historians writing about Hitler now.

There was no "new bible". As early as 10 to 20 years after Jesus' death, there were already gospels or creeds circulating around and which were already accepted as being authoritative and true. And by AD150, there were reportedly collections of books that were regarded as authoritative. But in AD325, due to the challenge of heresy and fraud, the church leadership decided to clearly define a list of books which have become the New Testament of today. But these books had been circulating for at least 2 centuries..

The accepted books did not embellish Jesus' god-like traits or downplay his human traits. In fact, the bible says that Jesus is fully man and fully God at the same time. Jesus breathed and ate and was tempted in the desert like a human being in the gospels. And he was crucified to death on the cross. The rejected "gospels" were never suppressed. They were available and read by people but were simply not recognized as having the same worth or authority as the accepted gospels. DB also got it completely wrong when he says that the outlawed "gospels" talked about Jesus' human traits. Cos the opposite is true. These false gospels claimed to have some superior revelation from God, were not based on eyewitness accounts, and rejected the belief that Jesus came in the flesh. In other words, these false gospels rejected Jesus' humanhood.

DVC: Jesus’ establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote. A relatively close vote. Until that point in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet, … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.

O: Jesus’ divinity was accepted by the twelve disciples soon after his resurrection, way before AD 300. The issue at Nicaea was how the divine Son (Jesus) and Father (heavenly God) were interrelated and whether they share the same substance. No one at the council was contending that Jesus was a mere mortal or just a prophet. The dispute was over whether Christ had a divine substance like the Father's or whether he shared the same divine substance with the Father.

DVC: There were thousands of documents recording that Jesus was a mortal man.These are the Nag Hammadi documents, named after the place they were discovered in Egypt in 1945.

O: There are not thousands of them. Only 45 fragments, parts of documents.
It is agreed by almost all scholars that most of the documents were written in the second or third centuries. Unlikely to be part of the original real documents of the NT, written mainly before 100 AD.

DVC: Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus.

O: This one is a smoke bomb dropped from no where. Don't know where it came from too.. Maybe it came from the gospel of Dan Brown or something.. but good try la.. very sensational.. and makes for good debate.. but none of the gospels, no matter false or true, mentioned that Jesus was married..

Conclusion
Well, actually most of the articles are giving DB too much respect by even bothering to criticise his novel. Cos it is just a fictional story with too many half-truths and absolute lies. You don't use fiction to confirm or disprove anything.. If you would like to think that the bible is false, why not read the bible or attend a sermon? challenge your Christian friends' beliefs or something..

Oh and I have no qualms about reading the book or watching the movie. And no, most churches do not forbid their members from catching the movie. My personal opinion is that: all the more Christians should watch it cos we are not afraid of facing up to challenges to our faith. Only by considering that something might be false can someone come to accept that it is true. And if anything, Christianity is a religion which can be readily defended by evidence and logic.