Torch, Summer 2006

The “support” for this view of the early church really comes from New Age writers in the 1980s. Reading their books, it is easy to see the absence of anything in the historical record for their views (for example, see Margaret Starbird’s book, The Goddess and the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine ). Recasting the courage and commitment of the early Christian church into New Age, mystical feminism is painful to the memory of those who stood firm in their love for Christ and suffered greatly. T he N ew T estament: D oes t he B ible T ell M e S o? Another challenge to the historic understanding of the early church is that the New Testament we possess today is not the earliest or most accurate recording of early church belief and practice. No doubt, The Da Vinci Code has no understanding of illumination and revelation or of the process of canonization. These are areas that each Christian must read up on for his or her own assurance as well as communicating the truth to those who ask. The Da Vinci Code says, “The Bible is a product of man , my dear. Not of God …The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great” (p. 231). The speaker goes on to say that the Bible “has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book” (p. 231). The truth is that many manuscripts of the Bible were around before Constantine and still exist today. Scholars can look at these manuscripts and see what the early church believed and practiced. It is no secret. The Gnostic gospels that Dan Brown refers to in The Da Vinci Code were written in the second and third centuries and bear little resemblance to the authentic New Testament. It is important to know, too, that the New Testament was translated into many languages throughout the world very soon after the founding of the church. The existence of these translations points to the widespread acceptance of the New Testament early in the history of the church. The missionary zeal of the early Christians is humbling in light of the persecution they were enduring. If the manuscripts and translations are not enough, more than 86,000 quotations of the New Testament are present in the writings of the early church leaders. These leaders wrote sermons, devotionals, and other helpful works as they ministered. It is possible to take these quotations and put together the entire New Testament with the exception of just 11 verses. All of these writings demonstrate the authority with which the early church held the New Testament and enables us to see what was written long before Constantine entered the picture. The Da Vinci Code goes on to claim there were more than 80 gospels circulating at the time of Constantine and that he chose the four which best fit his political and religious agenda: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The truth is, there never have been 80 gospels (where Brown came up with that number is hard to discover). Further, the early Christian leaders affirmed the authority of the four gospels. For example, Papias of Phrygia (A.D. 130) quotes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Justin Martyr (A.D. 140) considered all four Gospels to be Scripture. It is also important to realize that modern versions of the Bible are not the product of centuries of copying, additions, and revisions. Modern translations actually work from the oldest manuscripts we have. They do not look to the latest translations, but rather go all the way back in history to the ancient manuscripts that are available today. T Summer 2006 / TORCH 11