Theme: Title: The Da Vinci Code and the Bible Fact AND Fiction Target Group: Mainly (& Limited) Church Background Age: 14+ Aim: Equipment: Bible base: To consider: How do we know what is true? Why can we trust the Bible? Where can we really find out about the life of Jesus? Print out 1 (Reliability of the New Testament A Summary of the Evidence); Print out 2 (How did we get the New Testament we have today?); Print out 3 (Bible Bit); Bibles; pens. Various This outline originally appeared on the re:source website in November 2004 in response to the best-selling book by Dan Brown. The movie, based on the book, has just been released so we have updated the outline accordingly. The story raises lots of questions about the life and work of Jesus, the authority of the Bible and the role of the church. A brief summary of the thriller is included below. This outline does not follow the usual format as there is so much material to cover. The best way to use this outline would be to pick the bits that best suit your group and the time available. If your group is from a limited church background, then perhaps you could just use a small selection of the passages from the Bible Bit activity. However, please do remember that the story is a work of fiction and should be treated as such. Summary of the story Jacques Saunière, a curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris, is murdered. Robert Langdon, an American expert in religious symbology and Sophie Neveu, a French cryptologist, arrive at the scene where Langdon becomes an immediate suspect. Evidence at the crime scene indicates that Saunière was killed because he knew about a colossal conspiracy by the Roman Catholic Church to cover up the real origins and nature of Christianity. Pursued by various civil and religious authorities, Robert and Sophie follow a trail of clues across France and England. Their mission is to uncover the conclusive evidence for this conspiracy, and for the supposed hidden truth about Christianity. They are also joined by a religious historian from England, Sir Leigh Teabing. Along the way, Langdon and Teabing reveal to Sophie and the reader the nature of the conspiracy and the true origins of Christianity. The reader is thus presented, through the medium of fiction, with a reconstruction of those origins and with the implicit suggestion that it is in fact historical. Author: Robert Fielden Copyright: Robert Fielden 2004 Damaris Trust, 1997-2004.
How do we know? (10 mins) Read out the following statements and ask the students in pairs to discuss how they would decide if these things really are true or false or whether or not they really did happen. 1. Tony Blair is the Prime Minister 2. Today it is Tuesday (or whatever day it is) 3. Chocolate has a delicious taste 4. Greece are European Football Champions 5. Pure water boils at 100 degrees Celsius 6. Phil Mitchell in Eastenders was shot by Sharon 7. The Beatles had many number one hits in the 1960 s 8. Freshly ground coffee has a lovely aroma 9. Queen Victoria was a good queen 10. The Fire of London never took place 11. When an egg is boiled the white part changes from a translucent fluid to an opaque solid 12. William the conqueror died at the Battle of Hastings 13. The Vikings came to England from South America 14. Jesus Christ rose again from the dead 15. Britain s climate was much colder 15,000 years ago Ask for feedback. Hopefully, some or all of the following may have been given as answers; personal experience, historical records, speak to people who were there, scientific evidence and accepted, verifiable historical facts etc. Talk Give a short talk, making the following points: For some things in life, it is important to know if they really happened or not (e.g. Jesus resurrection) For other things, it is not so important (e.g. If Phil Mitchell was shot and if so by whom) Christianity is based on historical evidence that can be tested and verified For historical events, it is important to establish if they really happened or not This can be done by looking at the various sources of information and asking: o Who wrote them? o Why? o How long after the events were they written down? o Is there supporting, external evidence from other sources? o o Has anything else come to light that discredits them? If they were not true, would they have survived and is there evidence that people who were still around at the time disagreed with them (E.g. If you found a newspaper article that said that the Beatles did not have any number one hits, are there people still alive today who could tell you that they did?) When we think about a story like The Da Vinci Code and what is says about Christianity, it is important that we know some of the reasons why the New Testament records of the life of Jesus are reliable. Are the New Testament Gospel accounts about Jesus historically reliable? Ask the group this question: Why do people find it hard to believe that the Gospel accounts of Jesus life report actual events and are reliable?
(Possible answers: They were written a long time ago, they were written in a culture that we find hard to understand, people have not studied them in any depth, they were written down many years after the events actually happened, they present people with a challenge about life and how it should be lived, and people think that they can experience and know God without knowing anything about Jesus) This huge topic cannot be easily covered in a half hour meeting. It may be helpful to print out (enough copies for one for each person) and discuss the content of Print Out 1 (Reliability of the New Testament A Summary of the Evidence). If this is a topic that the group would like to discuss further, why not ask your church leader to come into your meeting to look at the evidence in more depth with you? How did we get the New Testament we have today? In The Da Vinci Code, it is suggested that the church got together in the fourth century and picked four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) out of a possible 80 Gospels and that it picked the four that best suited its own agenda. For some background on what is known as the Canon of scripture (Canon simply means standard by which things are measured so when applied to scripture it means an officially accepted list of books have a look at Print Out 2 (How did we get the New Testament we have today?) Bible Bit Having established that we can trust the NT documents, lets have a look at them to address some of the issues raised in The Da Vinci Code. You may find it easiest to print out the questions and give people a copy. They are available as Print out 3 (Bible Bit). Read 1 John 1:1 2:2, 4:1 6 and 5:1 12 and answer these questions together. To help you, as the leader, some answers are included here in italics. What do these verses say about: Jesus and who he is? (The Word of Life; existed from the beginning; he is eternal life; God s Son) What he has done? (His blood cleanses us from every wrong; he is a sacrifice for sins; he takes away the sins of all the world; he was baptised and shed his blood on the cross) How God can be known? (By looking to and knowing Jesus; by believing that Jesus is the Christ; by obeying his commandments; by trusting Christ to give us victory; Jesus was baptised and shed his blood and so was revealed to us as God s Son) What are the signs of a false teacher? (Someone who does not acknowledge and confess publicly that Jesus became a human being; someone who speaks from the world s viewpoint; someone who does not belong to God)
Was Jesus really God? One of the conspiracies in the story relates to whether or not Jesus was really divine. The story line claims that the early church added to the Gospels to make Jesus look more Godlike to cover up his humanity. Read the following passages to see what the NT has to say about this: His own claims to be God: Mark 14:61 64 At his trial, Jesus claimed to be the Christ John 10: 25 33 Jesus claims to be One with the Father John 15:17,18 He claims to be equal with God John 8:58 Jesus claims to be God by using the name I AM which the Jews knew to mean God John 8:19 Jesus claims that if you know him, you will know the Father John 14:8,9 Jesus claims that to see him is to see the Father Matt 8:2 Jesus received worship What others said: Romans 9:5 Paul claims that Jesus is God Philippians 2:6 11 Paul says that Jesus is, in very nature, God and should be worshipped Colossians 1:15 17 Paul claims that Jesus is the image of the invisible God John 1:29,34 John the Baptist says that Jesus is God Matthew 16:15 17 Peter says that he believes that Jesus is the Christ John 20:28 Thomas says of Jesus, My Lord and my God His indirect claims to be God: Mark 2:5 7 He forgives sins (something only God can do) John 14:6 He claimed to be The Life John 5:27 He will judge the world something only God has the right to do Also refer to Print out 2 (How did we get the New Testament we have Today?) Extra Information: The Holy Grail The storyline unfolds that the Holy Grail is not in fact the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper, but is actually the child born to Jesus and Mary Magdalene Jesus own blood line. However, there is no evidence in the New Testament to suggest that Jesus was married to anyone at all. Some of the main arguments are as follows: There is no mention of Jesus having a wife anywhere in Scripture. Whenever Jesus family is referred to, it is only his mother, brothers and sisters who are mentioned. The tradition of the church down the ages has always been that Jesus was unmarried. If you have not yet done so, refer your group to Print out 1 (Reliability of the New Testament A Summary of the Evidence) if they still have questions. Also remind them that the book/movie would have them believe that what they have always been told about this is part of a great cover up or conspiracy!
Other Resources: There has been much written on the Da Vinci Code and posted on the Internet. Here are some links to a few helpful articles: http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/006/28.57.html http://www.apologeticsindex.org/d50.html http://www.licc.org.uk/culture/node/view/192 http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=1&id=201 http://www.church.org.uk/resources/sermons.asp (Search the sermon database for the sermon preached by Ian Garrett on 22 May 2006) A short booklet that your group might also find helpful is The Da Vinci Code - A Response by Nicky Gumbel. It should be available in your local Christian bookshop, or you could buy online (just type the title into a search engine). ISBN: 1904074812 PUBLISHER: Alpha International Resources PRICE: 1.00 In this short response, Nicky Gumbel addresses questions raised by the best-selling hardback fiction book of all time. These are the questions that Nicky Gumbel addresses in the booklet: What is The Da Vinci Code about? What does Dan Brown himself believe? Is there any evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did an earlier form of Christianity exist? Where does the truth lie?
Print out 1 Reliability of the New Testament A Summary of the Evidence When establishing the reliability of an historical text, there are three tests that should be carried out. 1) Reliability of the documents themselves Since we do not have the original New Testament documents, how reliable are the copies that we have in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval from the original and the currently existing copies? The larger the number of manuscripts and the shorter the time interval the more reliable is the copy. The documents that make up the New Testament were very widely copied and circulated so there is a huge number of manuscripts available: 5,000+ Greek manuscripts, both partial and complete New Testament copied by hand from the 2nd to 15th centuries 10,000 Latin manuscripts 9,300 other manuscripts including Ethiopic, Slavic and Armenian There are no original manuscripts of the New Testament but the large number of copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original accurately. The books of the New Testament were written in the latter part of the 1st century and the earliest full manuscripts date from the 4th century, which is only 250 300 years between the original and the earliest remaining copy. (The oldest remaining fragment of the New Testament is part of John s Gospel from 130A.D., which is in the John Ryland s Library in Manchester.) These copies are very close in time to the original compared to other ancient writings e.g. Caesar s Gallic Wars was written around 58-50B.C., and there are 9-10 copies which date from 900A.D., a time interval of over 900 years. Livy s History of Rome was written between 59B.C. and 17A.D. and we one have 1 partial copy from the 4th century and 19 complete copies from the 10th century. For both these works, there are only a small number of copies and a much larger time gap between the original and the earliest existing copies, but no historian would doubt their authenticity. 2) Is the New Testament consistent with itself? This is all about how well the different accounts of the events fit together in the different New Testament books and whether the writers used primary sources of information. Once again, the New Testament books can be shown to very accurate many apparent contradictions and puzzling passages have been explained later by archaeological discoveries or more detailed study. Many of the writers claim to be giving an eye-witness account of what happened or writing on the evidence of eye-witnesses e.g. Luke (Luke 1: 1 3), Peter (2 Peter 1:16), John (John 19:35, 1 John 1:3). It is now becoming more generally accepted that most of the New Testament books were written before 80A.D. The writers could not, therefore, afford to be inaccurate as there were plenty of people still alive to discredit what they had written if it was wrong. (For example, if you wrote a report in your school newspaper about the Under-16 football team winning the County Cup and then published it on a website, there would be plenty of people around to check the facts and dispute them if you got them wrong.) Continued/..
3) Evidence from other sources This is all about finding other sources of information that support the accuracy, reliability and authenticity of the New Testamant records. Such sources include: Christian writers outside the Bible, non-christian writers and archaeology. Some examples are: Josephus (37 100A.D.) was a Pharisee and a Jewish historian working under Roman authority. He confirms the existence of John the Baptist and his execution by Herod. He also records the trial of James when he was sentenced to be stoned, and describes him as the brother of Jesus, who is called the Christ. He also writes about Jesus, that he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher and that he was condemned to death on a cross under Pilate. Pliny the younger was a Roman author, and in 112A.D. he wrote that Christians were worshipping Jesus as God, sharing food together and resolving to live good lives. Thallus in 52A.D. wrote about the darkness and the earthquake at Jesus crucifixion. Lucia of Samosta, a 2nd century Greek writer describes Christians as worshipping a man who had been crucified, following his teaching and having no regard for material possessions or even their own lives. The Talmud confirms the time of Jesus crucifixion and the Jewish leaders intention to kill him. There are many other sources of information, many from historians not at all sympathetic to Christianity, which verify the records found in the New Testament. For further study and information: The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict Josh McDowell Nelson 1999 ISBN: 0 7852 4219 8 More than a Carpenter Josh McDowell - Tyndale House Publishers 1987 ISBN: 0842345523 It Makes Sense The Handbook to Believing (Chapter 5) Stephen Gaukroger Scripture Union 2003 ISBN: 1 85999 743 0 Understanding the Bible (pp158 161) John Stott Scripture Union 2003 ISBN: 1 85999 640 X The Story of the Book Terence Copley Scripture Union 2005 ISBN: 1 84427 1315
Print out 2 How did we get the New Testament we have today? The New Testament It is important to remember that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are not the result of some arbitrary selection of some church synod or committee that sat round the table with a stack of Christian documents and said. Let's decide which of these we shall say has divine authority. No! Rather it was when these twenty-seven books were generally accepted by Christians throughout the known world that then they were said to be authoritative. So when at last a Church Council gave a ruling on the matter, all that it did was to ratify the general consensus of Christians, who (we may believe) had been guided in this respect by a wisdom higher than their own... Canonicity implies supreme authority in matters of faith. By including a document in the canon, the early Christians meant that it might be confidently appealed to in the establishment of matters of doctrine, whether in debates within the catholic [the Greek word for the Latin word universal ] church itself or in disputes with heretics. But they included these writings in the canon because they already recognized their authority; the writings did not acquire authority by being included in the canon. One of the chief criteria (though not the only one) in recognizing the authority and canonical quality of a work was apostolic authority. So much was this so, that individuals or groups wishing to invest their own line of teaching with special authority liked to set it forth in the form of a Gospel, a book of Acts, an Epistle, or even an Apocalypse [a Revelation ], bearing the name of an apostle (F.F.Bruce). And so you have the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of John and so on. Church.org.uk Coloured Supplement October 2004 Fantasy Faith An Extract from the Belief.net website. Darrell Bock Bible scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary who has authored a book, Breaking the Da Vinci Code. Beliefnet talked recently with Bock about his book. Could you name the top one or two outrageous claims made in the Da Vinci Code? I go back and forth on this, but I think my first choice is the claim that there are 80 gospels. And with that the idea that there was a vote in the 4th century at the Council of Nicea, and the people in attendance picked four out of these 80. Tell us what really happened. We know of between a dozen and a dozen and half gospels that are alluded to in the early church writings-- and we have in existence maybe a dozen of them. Four of those are the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), so we re down to at most a dozen other candidates. So that s the first part of the answer, that we re only dealing with maybe 12 other gospels that we know about. Even more important, however, is that by the end of the second century it was pretty clear that these four gospels had surfaced to the top. The others had fallen to secondary use, if they were ever used at all. And that s a good 125 years before the Council of Nicea which is when the novel claims the decision was made.
The other one is the idea that Jesus divinity was voted on in the 4th century. Jesus divinity was something that was central to the Christian faith, virtually from any document we can get our hands on. All the key canonical documents contain it. We have extra-biblical testimony from Roman historians who talk about going into Christian groups that worship Jesus like a God and sing hymns to him. So the idea that this is some type of subsequent development of the Christian faith is one of the worst claims of the book. Clarify for us, then, what actually happened at the Council of Nicea regarding Jesus divinity? The Council of Nicea was an attempt to articulate in precise theological and philosophical language what the church already believed about Jesus. One of the issues that comes up is debate over the view of Arianism. This is the idea that Jesus was the greatest created being, as opposed to being divine. The novel suggests there was a close vote on it. The best that I can tell, the only vote taken at the Council of Nicea was on this, and it wasn t a 52 to 48 percent deal--it was 300 to 2, which only goes to underscore the fact that the belief in Jesus divinity was something that was fundamentally in place by the time the council met. Beliefnet.com
Print out 3 Bible Bit Having established that we can trust the New Testament documents, let s have a look at them to address some of the issues raised in The Da Vinci Code. Read 1 John 1:1 2:2, 4:1 6 and 5:1 12 and answer these questions together. What do these verses say about: Jesus and who he is? What he has done? How God can be known? What are the signs of a false teacher? Was Jesus really God? One of the conspiracies in the story relates to whether or not Jesus was really divine. The story line claims that the early church added to the Gospels to make Jesus look more Godlike to cover up his humanity. Read the following passages to see what the New Testament has to say about this: His own claims to be God: Mark 14:61 64 At his trial, Jesus claimed to be the Christ John 10: 25 33 Jesus claims to be One with the Father John 15:17,18 He claims to be equal with God John 8:58 Jesus claims to be God by using the name I AM which the Jews knew to mean God John 8:19 Jesus claims that if you know him, you will know the Father John 14:8,9 Jesus claims that to see him is to see the Father Matt 8:2 Jesus received worship What others said: Romans 9:5 Paul claims that Jesus is God Philippians 2:6 11 Paul says that Jesus is, in very nature, God and should be worshipped Colossians 1:15 17 Paul claims that Jesus is the image of the invisible God John 1:29,34 John the Baptist says that Jesus is God Matthew 16:15 17 Peter says that he believes that Jesus is the Christ John 20:28 Thomas says of Jesus, My Lord and my God His indirect claims to be God: Mark 2:5 7 He forgives sins (something only God can do) John 14:6 He claimed to be The Life John 5:27 He will judge the world something only God has the right to do Also refer to Print out 2 (How did we get the New Testament we have Today?)