What the 'Code' got right: A need to control

Sun, May. 28, 2006

Elaine Pagels

is a professor of religion at Princeton

Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against The Da Vinci Code as a work "full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors."

As a historian, I would agree that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown's assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei.

But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods. What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true - that some views of Christian history were buried for centuries because leaders of the early Catholic Church wanted only one version of Jesus' life: theirs.

Some alternative views of Jesus were discovered in 1945 when a farmer in Egypt accidentally dug up an ancient jar containing more than 50 ancient writings - including gospels banned by early church leaders, who declared them blasphemous.

Brown has said that part of his inspiration was one of these so-called Gnostic gospels as presented in a book I wrote on the subject. It took only three lines from the Gospel of Philip to send Brown off to write his novel. The companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. And Jesus loved her more than all of the disciples, and used to kiss her often. "The rest of the disciples were jealous," the gospel reads, "and said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' "

Students of the Gospel of Philip see it as a mystical text and don't take literally the notion that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene. Still, by building a book around that passage, Brown brought up subjects the Catholic Church would like to avoid. He raised the big what-ifs: What if the version of Jesus' life that Christians are taught isn't the right one? And perhaps as troubling in a still-patriarchal church: What if Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus' life than we've been led to believe, not as his wife perhaps, but as a beloved and valued disciple?

In other words, Brown popularized awareness of the discovery of many other secret gospels, including the Gospel of Judas, published in April.

There have long been hints that the New Testament wasn't the only version of Jesus' life that existed, and that even the Gospels presented there were subject to misinterpretation. In 1969, for instance, the Catholic Church ruled that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, as many people had been taught. The church blamed the error on Pope Gregory the Great, who in A.D. 591 gave a sermon in which he apparently conflated several women in the Bible, including Mary Magdalene and an unnamed sinner who washes Jesus' feet with her tears.

But even that news didn't reach all Christians, and it is the rare religious leader who now works hard to spread the word that the New Testament is just one version of events crafted in the intellectual free-for-all after Christ's death. At that time, church leaders were competing with each other to figure out what Christ said, what he meant - and perhaps most important, what writings would best support the emerging church.

We now know that the scholars who championed the Gnostic gospels are among the ones who lost the battle.

In the decades after Jesus' death, these texts and many others were circulating widely among Christian groups from Egypt to Rome, from Africa to Spain, and from today's Turkey and Syria to France. So many Christians throughout the world knew and revered these books that it took more than 200 years for hardworking church leaders to suppress them.

What, then, do these texts say, and why did certain leaders find them so threatening?

First, they suggest that the way to God can be found by anyone who seeks. According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus suggests that when we come to know ourselves at the deepest level, we come to know God: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you." This message - to seek for oneself - was not one that bishops like Irenaeus (circa 130-202) appreciated. Instead, he insisted, one must come to God through the church, "outside of which," he said, "there is no salvation."

Second, in texts the bishops called "heresy," Jesus appears as human, yet one through whom the light of God now shines. According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "I am the light that is before all things; I am all things; all things come forth from me; all things return to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there; lift up a rock, and you will find me there." To Irenaeus, the thought of the divine energy manifested through all creation, even rocks and logs, sounded dangerously like pantheism. People might end up thinking that they could be like Jesus themselves - in fact, the Gospel of Philip says, "Do not seek to become a Christian, but a Christ."

Worst of all, perhaps, was that many of these secret texts speak of God not only in masculine images, but also in feminine images. The Secret Book of John tells how the disciple John, grieving after Jesus was crucified, suddenly saw a vision of a brilliant light, from which he heard Jesus' voice: "John, John, why do you weep? Don't you recognize who I am? I am the Father; I am the Mother; and I am the Son." After a moment of shock, John realizes that the divine Trinity includes not only Father and Son but also the divine Mother, which John sees as the Holy Spirit, the feminine manifestation of the divine.

But the Gospel of Mary Magdalene - along with the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Philip - shows Peter challenging the presence of women among the disciples. He says to Jesus: "Tell Mary to leave us, because women are not worthy of [spiritual] life." Peter complains that Mary talks too much, displacing the role of the male disciples. But Jesus tells Peter to stop, not Mary! No wonder these texts were not admitted into the canon of a church that would be ruled by an all-male clergy for 2,000 years.

The possibilities opened by the Gnostic gospels - that God could have a feminine side and that Jesus could be human - are key ideas Brown explores in The Da Vinci Code and are no doubt part of what made the book so alluring.

But the real mystery is what Christianity and Western civilization would look like had the Gnostic gospels never been banned. Because of an Egyptian farmer's discovery in 1945, we now at least have the chance to hear what the "heretics" were saying, and imagine what might have been.
Elaine Pagels (epagels@princeton.edu), author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, wrote this article for the San Jose Mercury News.

Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad

By Erik KirschbaumSun May 28, 11:20 AM ET

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Germans they should no longer allow themselves to be held prisoner by a sense of guilt over the Holocaust and reiterated doubts that the Holocaust even happened.

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Ahmadinejad said he doubted Germans were allowed to write "the truth" about the Holocaust and said he was still considering traveling to Germany for the World Cup soccer tournament.

"I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust. More than 60 million were killed in World War Two ... The question is: Why is it that only Jews are at the center of attention?," he said in the interview published on Sunday.

"How long is this going to go on?" he added. "How long will the German people be held hostage to the Zionists?... Why should you feel obligated to the Zionists? You've paid reparations for 60 years and will have to pay for another 100 years."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders have said his previous remarks questioning whether the Holocaust happened were unacceptable. Denying the Holocaust is a serious crime in Germany punishable with a prison term of up to five years.

Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in concentration camps.

In the rare interview with Western media, Ahmadinejad said if the Holocaust really happened Jews should be moved from Israel back to Europe.

"We say if the Holocaust happened, then the Europeans must accept the consequences and the price should not be paid by Palestine. If it did not happen, then the Jews must return to where they came from."

WORLD CUP

He said he was still considering going to Germany to support Iran in the World Cup despite protest stirred by a "worldwide network of Zionists."

Iran's first World Cup match is against Mexico in Nuremberg on June 11 two days after the tournament starts and German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says he would be welcome to come because Germany wants to be a good host.

The invitation sparked protests from other political leaders and groups who said his anti-Israeli comments were unacceptable.

"My decision (on whether to go) depends on a lot of different things," said Ahmadinejad, a soccer fan. "Whether I have time, whether I want to and some other things."

He said he could not understand why his possible visit had caused such debate but was not surprised by the row.

"I was not at all surprised because there is a very active worldwide network of Zionists, also in Europe," he said in the rare interview with Western media that was published on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad's latest comments were condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder and dean, called on Merkel to keep him out of Germany.

"On a day when the Pope is in Auschwitz to remind the world of the horrors of the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad questions it again," Hier said. "For him to be at the World Cup and sit in a VIP seat would be a desecration of the memory of the Holocaust."

Asked by Der Spiegel, in its cover story entitled "The man the world is afraid of," whether he stood by his earlier view the Holocaust was a myth, Ahmadinejad said: "I only accept something as the truth if I am truly convinced of it.

"In Europe there are two opinions on it. One group of researchers who are by and large politically motivated say the Holocaust happened. There is another group of researchers who have the opposite view and are by and large in prison for that."