Da Vinci Code Query

Jen199

I read the book when it first came out a few years back. I'm a bit vague on the specifics now but the one thing that stayed with me from it was it claimed near the start, that Christ was 'chosen' as the son of god from a list of other 'prophets' 200 years after his death. This was around the time that the stink kicked off about the Holy Grail and I was surprised no one ever picked up on this point. For me it was much more controversial.

Does anyone have any information on this point, be it in agreement or disagreement?

robindch

> that Christ was 'chosen' as the son of god from a list of other
> 'prophets' 200 years after his death.

I didn't get that far in the book, my enthusiasm having evaporated very early on. However, it's certainly a well-known fact amongst critics of religion that many, if not most, of the basic structural elements of the christian belief system evolved from pre-existing mythologies, philosophies and a basic set of heroic archetypes to which the figure of Jesus Christ conforms pretty closely. You can find a summary here:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa4.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/zoroastr.htm (and elsewhere on that website)

...and a rather deeper, if less polite, book-length treatise here:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/rmsbrg00.htm

Excelsior

The patristic fathers wrote extensively to each other from the 1st Century onwards and from them we have clear acknowledgment that the 4 Gospels had reached exclusive and unanimous use across the Christian churches by 170AD. The 4th and final Gospel is the one written by the apostle John on the Greek island of Patmos around 93-94AD, that is, about 60 years after Easter.

The earliest existing fragment of the New Testament at this time is a scrap from the 1st letter to the church at Thessalonika which reads, "God raised him [Jesus] from the dead" which is widely believed to date initially from 40AD, about 8 years after Easter.

I am afraid I cannot counter Robin's skepticism with easy to read websites but the idea that Jesus and his movement is a repackaged collection of Greek, Roman and Bablyonian myths given a Jewish twist is utterly unsupported in modern academia. The radical guys at the Jesus Seminar imagine him as a travelling cynic, the broad middle part of the scholars see him as a Jewish apocolytic Messiah figure and the more traditional Southern Baptist style readings have him as a flat God-in-the-suit-of-a-man.

The definitive texts on the deification of Jesus are the 2nd and 3rd volumes of NT Wright's series, The New Testament And The People Of God. These 2 books, Jesus and the Victory of God and The Resurrection Of The Son Of God, both of which show categorically that from the very first moment of the post-Easter movement, Christians saw Jesus as not just the Christ, but as the eternal, begotten son of God and that the Christian story is an unprecedented and radical departure from the religious and mythic movements of the time, while still being deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Talliesin

It's true that there were a few other religions with a similar theme in terms of the sacrifice of a saviour hero at that time. It's not accurate to deduce any scheme or conspiracy behind the fact that one of them became a world-reaching religion and the others didn't, with most of them dying out entirely.

Zipf distribution alone would suggest one would dominate the others.

robindch

> the idea that Jesus and his movement is a repackaged collection of
> Greek, Roman and Bablyonian myths given a Jewish twist is
> utterly unsupported in modern academia.

The idea may well be unsupported by religious academics, but the idea is standard fare amongst the good folks in the departments of history, philpsophy, anthropology, the cognitive and social sciences and elsewhere.

If you're interested, Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind (The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason) sympathetically discusses christianty's, er, considerbale debt to Greek philosophy. While Daniel Dennet in his recent Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, places the idea of the evolution of religion in its wider memetic and cultural contexts.

Gibbon's old saw

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

is nicely demonstrated by this thread

Excelsior

Outside of memists, who have a large representation on internet bulletin boards (not the most influential media I would have thought), I have not found (in my admitted incomplete reading) any argument that posits Christianity as a composite of prevailing trends. It shows a complete disregard for the overhwelming Jewish influences on the movement and then seems to fast-forward 350 years to paint Augustine as a neo-platonist.

Christianity is often described historically as the movement of people who believed that Jesus of Nazareth came back to life after life after death. The shattering newness of this idea can't be brushed away with a reference to Dennett's latest which in no way directly deals with the issue at hand.

This is all off topic however. Jesus was perceived as Christ and much more, as "very God of very God" from within the first decade.

Son Goku

I believe the standard historical line is that it may incorporate elements of Zoroastrianism, as they have a lot of imagery and teachings in common.
However the case is stronger for Judeo-Christian Mythology (heaven and hell, demons and angels), rather than the actual core faith itself.

The "in-context" history of Zoroastrianism and Christianity also have interesting parallels.

Sapien

Excelsior wrote:

Christianity is often described historically as the movement of people who believed that Jesus of Nazareth came back to life after life after death. The shattering newness of this idea can't be brushed away ...

The shattering what-now?

Excelsior

I see an emoticon being used as a brush.....:eek: :mad: :cool: :cool: :cool:

Sapien

Excelsior wrote:

I see an emoticon being used as a brush.....:eek: :mad: :cool: :cool: :cool:

I'll have a please, Bob.

Fine. Care to earn that rather bombastic turn of phrase?