A fair comment

[fpb]

"'Even if [The Da Vinci Code] is just fiction,' a student opined, 'it's still interesting to think about.'

"To which another student replied: 'Your mother's a whore.' And then, to the first student's stunned incredulity, he added, 'And even if that's just fiction, it's still interesting to think about....'"

Comments

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, I've only seen the movie. I didn't know about the preface.

I apologize for saying I can't see how you could be in a rage about this from the perspective of a historian, since I am not or anywhere near a historian. But is it possible for you to admit that part of the rage comes from the fact that you are a Christian? It definitely adds quite a bit of fuel to the fire, if not the main source for it.

I am disgusted at the thought that this kind of ignorant diatribe can be read

Some would say that about the Bible itself.

People will read what they want to read and they will watch what they want to watch. I don't have a problem with it; I view it as fiction. For those that do not, well, that's their problem. And, er, yours as well, I suppose. =P

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Let me put it this way: propose me a theory of the development of Christianity that denies the divinity of Jesus, but respects the documents and accounts for the facts, and I will discuss it. I might even praise it - from an opponent's viewpoints, since my confidence in the historicity of the New Testament was the beginning of my conversion. But make up your facts, ignore data, pervert evidence, and use it all to give as disgusting and revolting a picture of Christian history as you possibly can, and do so for no better reason than making money, and I will treat you as the crook and the freak you are.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for the silly comment about the Bible, it is the kind of adolescent pseudo-cleverness that misses the point so thoroughly as to be hardly worth answering. The Bible is not the same kind of thing as Dan Brown's pack of lies, and is not read for anything like the same reasons - except for ignorant fanatics. It is only morons who place the story of Jonah and the whale on the same level as the documented and thoroughly credible accounts of Maccabees or the Gospels. You are quite a young woman, but there is no need to try and sound like a pimply fourteen-year-old schoolboy indulging in his first attempts at sarcasm.

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wasn't trying to be sarcastic or clever, I was merely stating a fact which led into my next paragraph.

People will read what they want to read for whatever reason they want. You may be disgusted with something that someone else may revere and vice-versa.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And that proves what? "People" will say anything and the opposite of anything. That has absolutely no relevance to the issue of truth. In science, you would not bother to refute a resurrection of the Ptolemaic system, even if "people" propose it vehemently. The life of Jesus is one of the best documented events in ancient history, and every attempt to discredit the sources has failed - this is my assessment as a historian whose specialist field is the explanation of ancient texts. As a matter of fact, it was my astonished discovery that the texts had all the hallmarks of reliable contemporary historical accounts - years after I had begun to familiarize myself with the analysis and explanation of texts - that brought me back to the Catholic Church. Tendentially, by mood, by natural pessimism, I would be an agnostic; it is the discipline of history that has made me a Christian.

Now, the life of Jesus is the central issue for any thinking Christian. The reason why the Old Testament is part of our Holy Scriptures is quite simply that Jesus claimed it as the grounds for His own teaching, as I pointed out here: http://community.livejournal.com/fpb_de_fide/456.html. Jesus became incarnate not just as any man, but as a Jew; and while His brand of messiah-ship disappointed all Jewish hopes - and was, indeed, all but incomprehensible to His own disciples, until after His resurrection - nonetheless it was as the realization of Jewish hopes, Jewish faith and Jewish prophecy that He cast and explained it. Everything about Jesus and about early Christianity is Jewish. If we believe that Jesus was God incarnate, then we have to accept that the Jews had a special relationship with the God of the universe, which He sealed by becoming incarnate as a Jew. This does not mean that we have to treat the many different books of the Bible as equally valid as history, or even as teaching; but it does mean that we have to see them as witness of the direct impact of the presence of God upon human minds. That is what, in my view, St.Paul meant when he said: "All Scripture is God-breathed, useful for teaching, rebuking and instilling right behaviour". If Paul meant, either that "All scripture" was literally true, or that it was all to be taken as dictated word by word by God, the second part of the sentence would be pretty disappointing, would it not? But what he means that all Scripture has been written in the presence of the spirit of God; not without a more or less generous admixture of human fallibility and limited human language. Anyone who treats Scripture - especially the Old Testament - as Muslims treat the Qur'an or Hindus the Vedas, as issued word by word from the mouth of the Creator, is not a Christian but an idolater, because the Word of God whom we worship is not the Bible but its subject, namely Jesus Christ.