Following the Living Way - Jesus Christ

Some Research on Da Vinci Code & Gospel of Judas

It's great how many churches are using the Da Vinci Code book and movie to talk about the real truths of Christ. We recently let our congregation know about some resources for people with questions. I wanted to share them with you.

Focus on the Family's Da Vinci Code website:
http://go.family.org/davinci/

Here is a place you can order these great 100-page books debunking the D.V.C. and give them out to people. That's what we're doing here.
http://www.beyondbelief.com/a_dvquest.spl?sourceid=3105/

Josh McDowell
http://josh.davinciquest.org

Christianity Today - Why the Lost Gospels lost out:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/006/7.26.html

And here's Biola University's response to the gospel of Judas:
http://www.biola.edu/news/articles/060410_judas.cfm

I think the bottom line about why the gospel of Judas is getting so much press, besides the Da Vinci movie tie-in, is something that Ari Fleischer wrote about in his interesting autobiography. He said that the media is all about conflict. If there's no conflict, they'll try to start some. Or create conflict where there isn't any. Peace doesn't sell. So to spin the gospel of Judas as something that could "rock" orthdox Christianity is just a ploy to sell more papers or magazines or whatever.

How much less interesting would the gospel of Judas be if they just told the straight truth about it: we have other gnostic gospels; none of them even begin to compare in quality to the real Gospels; and there will always be people who revise history to make the bad guys look like the good guys. Now that's a story that, if printed, deserves to be buried in the back of the local paper. But if this "recent discovery threatens to overturn everything we know about Christianity" then, of course, that's front page material.

posted by Rob @ 5:25 PM