Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
That the Dead Sea Scrolls are part of the ’earliest Christian
- records;’ and
That the ancient, heretical documents found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, are a more faithful historical record of Jesus than the New Testament Gospels.
-
Matthew 28:11-15, we read
- 11 Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done.
- 12 And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers,
- 13 Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.
- 14 And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.
- 15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.
- The Jewish authorities, in the days of Christ and today, take the position (if you press the issue) that the Lord was a bastard (fatherless child) and a sorcerer. If he was virgin-born, then Isaiah 7:14 was fulfilled in Him and therefore they instigated the crucifixion of their Messiah:
- Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
- Secondly, if He performed all the marvelous miracles recorded in the Scriptures, this would in fact be the endorsement of God—and again they have crucified their Messiah. Take note that they did not deny His existence or the miracles. They simply attributed them to fornication and sorcery.
- Back to Mr. Brown’s blasphemy. Washington, D.C., trial lawyer and author C. L. Parshall weighs in on The Da Vinci Code in a feature article in the January-February 2006 issue of IMG titled “Scrolls, Souls, and the ‘Da Vinci Effect.’” Parshall chose to deal with just two of the historic distortions Dan Brown promotes in his book:
Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
- (1) That the Dead Sea Scrolls are part of the ’earliest Christian
- records;’ and
(2) That the ancient, heretical documents found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, are a more faithful historical record of Jesus than the New Testament Gospels. - The Da Vinci Code portrays itself as a factual accounting of the ancient records, citing and fully misrepresenting them. The first issue Parshall raises concerns the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered in the caves of Qumran near the Dead Sea in Israel. The following excerpt is from Parshall’s article:
- As to the first point, the “seer” of Brown’s book, a character named Sir Leigh Teabing, solemnly opines:
- “These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,” Teabing said. “The earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible.” [End of quote]
- Evidently, Mr. Brown was unaware that the Dead Sea Scrolls have nothing at all to do with the New Testament and the life of Christ. Again from “Scrolls, Souls, and the ‘Da Vinci Effect:’”
- The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of, among other things, 225 Old Testament manuscripts, about 215 of which were discovered in 11 caves at Khirbet Qumran near the Dead Sea in Israel; the other 10 were found nearby at Wadi Murabba ‘at, Nahal Hever, and Masada. They contain every book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Esther. The latest dates from around A.D. 68; the earliest, from around 250 B.C. They represent the oldest version of the Old Testament in existence.
- So, is Jesus mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls? No. The Qumran religious community during the first century was not Christian; it was a remote and separatist desert sect of Judaism. Most scholars believe it was a part of, or related to, the Essenes; and there is a virtual “consensus” among Dead Sea Scrolls scholars that those scrolls do not address Christ or the early church:
- The Qumranites . . . existed during the time of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth (26-30 A.D.). But none of the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to Him, and they do not mention any
- follower of Jesus described in the New Testament.
- The bottom line is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are in no sense a “Christian record,” as Dan Brown’s novel suggests. Nor do they contradict the New Testament. [End of quote]
Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
-
Not only are the Dead Sea Scrolls not Holy Writ, but the ancient scrolls found at Nag Hammadi are not Holy Writ either.
-
Mr. Parshall writes:
- Quite different from the Dead Sea Scrolls are those ancient texts found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 by an Egyptian peasant who later sold them the following year to a dealer in Old Cairo. None of them are “New Testament”: they contain none of the books from Matthew to Revelation. In fact, they contain sayings and accounts of the life of Christ that resulted from Gnostic heresy in the centuries following the original New Testament autographs. That heresy sought to re-explain the meaning of Christ’s ministry from the philosophical perspective of speculation and paganism.
- Parshall writes:
- The Da Vinci Code, however, promotes these Gnostic gospels as more authentic than the four Gospels of the New Testament. Nothing could be further from the truth. [End of quote]
- B. Layton, in his book The Gnostic Scriptures, published in 1987, dates the Nag Hammadi texts at around 350 A.D., which is 250 years after the writing of the Gospels of the New Testament.
- Finally from the IMG article:
- It is noteworthy that even the Nag Hammadi “experts” have concluded that those texts were “buried . . . by unknown persons, [for reasons] . . . not specifically known,” and we know nothing about the original source of the information contained in them; and what is true of the “Gospel According to Phillip” is also true of the other Nag Hammadi texts: their authorship and the identity of their compilers “are completely unknown.”
- From an objective, historical standpoint, to base any conclusions regarding the life of Jesus Christ on the “Gnostic” texts from Nag Hammadi, or to contend that they eclipse the New Testament record, is nonsense.
Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
- Rather than the early church concealing the truth about Jesus by suppressing the “Gnostic” versions discovered at Nag Hammadi (the theory of The Da Vinci Code), precisely opposite is the case: the New Testament versions, written by eyewitnesses or from eyewitness sources, were more reliable and generally accepted because they were accurate. The heretical counterfeits penned much later were soundly (and wisely) criticized and rejected as deceptive, dangerous distortions of the truth. [End of quote]
- The Dead Sea Scrolls are not New Testament, nor are the ancient Nag Hammadi texts, written 250 years after Christ, the truth. The Bible is the Word of God preserved for our eyes, for this very day. H. Morris, in his book Many Infallible Proofs, writes:
- If we can believe anything at all that has been preserved for us from ancient history by the writings of men of those days, we are more than justified in believing that our New Testament was originally written in essentially its present form by the traditional authors. The world’s foremost Biblical archaeologist, William F. Albright, has said: “In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D.”
Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
- Then again Morris writes:
- No wonder then, in view of the combined evidence of the empty tomb, the numerous appearances, the change in the disciples, and the authenticity of the records, not to mention the testimony of two thousand years of Christian history, that such a man as Thomas Arnold, formerly Professor of History at Rugby and Oxford, one of the world’s great historians, could say:
- I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better, fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair enquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died, and rose again from the dead.
Defamation stories about Jesus are certainly not new.
on the matter of what constitutes sound evidence, developer of the Harvard Law School, after a thorough evaluation of the four Gospel accounts from the point of view of their validity as objective testimonial evidence, concluded:
- “It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact.”
- The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction based on fiction, not to be confused as a viable contradiction to the Word of God.
- GOD SAID, Matthew 28:1-7:
- 1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
- 2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
- 3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:
- 4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
- 5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
- 6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.
- 7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
- MAN SAID: Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, even if there was such a man in history. These stories are simply myths promoted by Christianity.
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