The Da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction by Robert M. Price Read Free Book Online Page A

orthodoxy that claimed to have been taught by disciples of the apostles. Valentinus claimed to be the successor to Theodas, a disciple of Paul, while Basilides claimed to be the disciple of Glaukias, assistant and secretary to Peter. Some ascribed the so-called Gospel of John to the Gnostic Cerinthus instead. Others claimed Marcion wrote parts of it. Carpocrates claimed to have his teaching from Mary and Martha. Even Tertullian admitted Paul was “the apostle of the heretics.” The Gnostics Heracleon and Valentinus wrote the first known commentaries on John and Paul, and it was very likely Marcion who first collected the Pauline letters.
    Dan Brown is doing the public a favor when he conveys a dumbed-down version of Bauer’s view of the history of Christianity to a wider readership. The danger, as elsewhere in his book, is that he mixes fact with fancy and threatens to make a straw man of the valuable lesson he seeks to teach. (And no one can be so naive as to think he is not trying to teach a lesson, several in fact, in The Da Vinci Code .)

    TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS
    How did this initial Christian diversity give way, and rather soon, to Roman Catholic orthodoxy? Eventually, once Constantine became its patron, the Catholic Church succeeded by means of intimidation and persecution. Before they had the iron fist of state power at their disposal, the bishops had to be content with nonviolent means like propaganda, literary polemics, and co-optation.
    Late New Testament works, including the Acts of the Apostles, the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), and 1 Peter, try to rewrite history to suggest an early unanimity of faith, with Peter and Paul at one, each the mirror reflection of the other, both repudiating in advance the heresies that would one day appeal to their authority. Other documents were sanitized, censored, and rewritten, including John, Luke, the Pauline letters, and Mark. Still other early documents were fabricated and attributed to early martyrs and legendary bishops, including Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement. All sought to impose a revisionist history upon the founding events.
    Once Catholic Christianity received state backing, Christians formed a canon that included the sanitized editions of certain books and excluding others like the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary Magdalene; the Secret Book of James; the Prayer of the Apostle Paul; the Acts of Paul and Thecla; and so forth. The result was a stacked deck intended precisely to give an “official” version of Christian beginnings. Surprising proof of Bauer’s thesis came to light with the 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in Chenoboskion, Egypt. These documents had once formed the library of the monks of St. Pachomius. Once the monks received the Easter letter of Athanasius in 367, mandating the exclusive use of the twenty-seven New Testament books we have today, the monks hastened to stash away the others so as not to have them confiscated or burned. (In the same way, the mysterious absence of any New Testament manuscripts before the third century may imply the systematic destruction of these old texts, which may have looked quite different from the “authorized” versions.) And, armed with state power, the Church took to persecuting heretics and pagans with the same ferocity with which the emperors Decius and Diocletian had once persecuted Christians. This much of Brown’s repulsive sketch of dominant Constantinian Christianity is sadly true.

    THE UNDERGROUND CHURCH
    But the major reason it was so easy to supplant non-Catholic Christianities is the fact of their organization—or rather their lack of it.
    The Marcionite churches (actually “synagogues”) flourished widely and well. Despite their radical belief that celibacy was required for salvation, their appeal was great. Just as in Buddhism, there was a place for those who admired their rigorism but did not feel inclined to embrace it for themselves. “Lord, make me chaste, but not