Review and
Rebuttal
The
Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History
© 2006 by Michael Baigent
Harper Collins Publishers
By Clay Willis & Glenn Davies
[Click
here to read this article in PDF or to download the file.]
Introduction
The attack on Christianity and Jesus
A reexamination of the veracity and viability of the institutions of a society or culture is not a bad thing within itself but a political and societal movement with nihilistic tendencies – destroying things without any thought of what replaces them – has in times past led to the downfall of civilizations. As George Santayana stated, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Over the past several decades there has been controversy and discussion in the public forum – books, movies, the other national media, the education provided by all levels of schools and universities and the teaching of religious organizations – created by those who appear to wish to destroy the institutions that have been the foundation of Western Civilization. Those foundations include the family, marriage, religious beliefs and the rule of law.
The Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “Nihilism” as:
1 a: a viewpoint that traditional values
and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless b:
a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral
truths
2 a: a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are
so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any
constructive program or possibility
One outgrowth of this nihilism is a religious movement that seems to be intent on proving that Jesus of Nazareth was just an ordinary man and not divine at all and that the Bible was not created by the authors to whom it is attributed and passed down orally until it was committed to writing but rather wholly created by some shadowy group of religious figures who made it all up centuries after the events described.
Perhaps the most prominent symbol of this movement in the popular culture in the United States is seen on the cover of Time magazine in April 1966.
Playing off a widely quoted and sometimes misconstrued statement by German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900), the article from Time explored the beginning of this nihilistic era in contemporary religious thought.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort
ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of
all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will
wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What
festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the
greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods
simply to appear worthy of it? Nietzsche
– The Gay Science, Section 125,
translated by Walter Kaufman
The
article, as expected, created a lot of controversy and was followed over the
next two decades with many articles pro and con as to the veracity of the
Judaeo-Christian religions and the literature upon which they were based.
Some two hundred scholars and “professionally trained specialists” formed The Jesus Seminar in 1985 and published their most prominent work in 1993 as The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. In the official introduction to this work the authors wrote:
The Five Gospels
represents a dramatic exit from windowless studies and the beginning of a new
venture for gospel scholarship. Leading scholars—Fellows of the Jesus
Seminar—have decided to update and then make the legacy of two hundred years of
research and debate a matter of public record.
In the aftermath of
the controversy over Darwin's The Origin of Species (published in 1859)
and the ensuing Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925, American biblical
scholarship retreated into the closet. The fundamentalist mentality
generated a climate of inquisition that made honest scholarly judgments
dangerous. Numerous biblical scholars were subjected to heresy trials and
suffered the loss of academic posts. They learned it was safer to keep their
critical judgments private.
However, the
intellectual ferment of the century soon reasserted itself in colleges,
universities, and seminaries. By the end of World War II, critical scholars
again quietly dominated the academic scene from one end of the continent to the
other. Critical biblical scholarship was supported, of course, by other
university disciplines, which wanted to ensure that dogmatic considerations
not be permitted to intrude into scientific and historical research. The
fundamentalists were forced, as a consequence, to found their own Bible
colleges and seminaries in order to propagate their point of view. In launching
new institutions, the fundamentalists even refused accommodation with the
older, established church-related schools that dotted the land.
One focal point of
the raging controversies was who Jesus was and what he had said.
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html
These
two hundred scholars set about to determine – almost two thousand years after
the books were written – by their consensus which of the recorded
words of Jesus were actually uttered by Him.
Setting aside the obvious pompous and arrogant nature of such a venture, it remains obvious from this opening statement that anyone who gave credence to the previous two thousand years of examination and criticism of these scriptures was eliminated from that consensus.
The proof of this statement is apparent from the body of literature generated by The Jesus Seminar almost all of which serve little other purpose than to deny the divinity of Jesus and the veracity of the New Testament scriptures.
In the 1980’s there appeared certain books that blended fact, fiction and speculation in an effort to destroy the credibility of Christianity itself by denying the divinity of Jesus and the story of His life as told in the Bible.
One of these books was Holy Blood - Holy Grail by the author of The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent, co-written with Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh.
In 2003 Dan Brown’s massive bestseller, The DaVinci Code, and the subsequent movie of the same name produced in 2006 are derivative of Holy Blood – Holy Grail and posit basically the same theories as Baigent did in that 1980’s book: that Jesus was married to Mary of Magdala (Mary Magdalene), fathered children whose descendents are still alive today and that a massive “cover up” has been accomplished by those who hold power in Christian religious organizations, especially the Catholic Church.
The Jesus Papers is in one sense a follow-up to the Grail tome, but adds a whole new series of “discoveries” Baigent has made since writing that book.
If one considers The Jesus Seminar and the many books
associated with that movement, the multitude of scholarly books making claims
that the Bible was not written in any sense by the supposed authors (those
listed in the Bible), the many other books, articles, television shows and
movies critical of all aspects of Christianity and follow those observations with
the recent (2007) Discovery Channel broadcast of the James Cameron television
documentary on the discovery of the tomb of Jesus (which supposedly contains
the remains not only of Jesus but most of his family including his “wife” –
Mary Magdalene, of course – and even his young son) it is evident that today
there is a full scale assault upon the very foundations of Christianity.
By co-authoring Holy Blood- Holy Grail and now writing The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent has become famous, or perhaps infamous, for taking on the precepts of the Christian religion. He attracted a lot of attention for making claims in his latest book that some regard as outrageous but others consider “enlightening” by “freeing the reader from the shackles of traditional Christianity”.
Most critics panned The Jesus Papers as in the review by Laura Miller in Salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/04/07/baigent/index.html
Likewise, he’s treated pretty harshly by Thomas L. Knapp from blogcritics.org.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/04/21/173029.php
But Marie D. Jones on the web site Curled Up With A Good Book says:
Baigent offers plenty of solid research into the deeper mysteries surrounding Jesus, such as the clearly Egyptian influence of Christ’s teachings, the possible whereabouts of the Messiah during the missing years, and the possibility that Jesus never died on the cross, but was part of a concerted effort to fool the public and the authorities into thinking he had. http://www.curledup.com/jesuspap.htm
What the range of reviews available shows is that even those critical of Baigent respect his writing ability while a substantial portion of them think this book is an important work offering important concepts to consider.
There will be some readers who take The Jesus Papers to be substantial and authoritative, just as did those who bought 40 million copies of The DaVinci Code and who have traveled throughout Europe to visit the places described in that book and the subsequent movie made from that writing and those who believe that the James Cameron documentary on the discovery of Jesus’ tomb is authentic.
The panning by a majority of critics will not affect those who think Baigent is writing truth – it is only those who have thoroughly studied the Bible and secular history with open minds who will come to the truth of the matter: something of vast importance happened around 30 A.D. – something that totally altered world history – something that convinced thousands of people at that time of the veracity of the story told in the New Testament.
Baigent proclaims to all of those who believe in the
divinity of Jesus, i.e. most Christians, that he has “irrefutable proof” that
Jesus was not divine at all but was merely a very clever man who was not only
something of a “mystic” but systematically manipulated the people of His
day by taking advantage of Old Testament prophecies in order to make his
claim to be the Messiah that he knew the Jews were expecting at that time.
Baigent makes the claim that he has not only seen but held in his hands ancient documents proving that Jesus was alive and writing letters to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem a few years after the time of His supposed crucifixion – proving that there was no resurrection and therefore that Jesus was not the son of God but only human – hence the title for his book – The Jesus Papers.
Baigent also makes much of purported documents that he never saw, but only heard about when writing Holy Blood – Holy Grail, that state that Jesus was alive in A. D. 45. He includes a description of that document first described in Grail in this book to give more credence to the newly discovered “Jesus Papers” and to his theories that Jesus did not die on the cross.
Baigent makes quite a number of other startling “revelations”, which he claims to have unearthed in his investigative studies and dealings with what he describes as the oftentimes shady and underhanded black market style of wheeling and dealing that he says goes on in the archaeological underworld of antiquities.
He has “proof” that Jesus survived the cross, married Mary Magdalene, and had children by her, and that these children of Jesus later became the royalty of Europe and were related to the Knights Templar of medieval times. This whole movement – the Knights Templar and the royalty of most of Europe – began in southern France with Jesus' children as a result of Mary having fled the Middle East with Jesus' son or daughter to an established colony – a Jewish settlement that was located there.
Baigent’s subtitle pretty much sums up the book: “Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History”. The first paragraph from the inside flap of the cover sets the stage:
What
if everything you think you know about Jesus is wrong? In The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent
reveals the truth about Jesus’ life and crucifixion. Despite – or rather
because of – all the celebration and veneration that have surrounded the figure
of Jesus for centuries, Baigent asserts that Jesus and the circumstances
leading to his death have been heavily mythologized.
On the back of the cover of the book, there are even more
controversial questions like these:
* What if everything we have been
told about the origins of Christianity is a lie?
* What if a
small group had always known the truth and had kept it hidden…. until now?
* What if
there was incontrovertible proof that Jesus Christ survived the
crucifixion?
* Where could Jesus
have gone after the crucifixion?
* Who could
have aided and abetted Jesus and why?
* What is the truth
behind the creation of the New Testament?
* Who is working to
keep the truth buried and why?
Even if one attributes these blurbs to the publisher’s marketing people, they are no more flamboyant and controversial than the statements made on virtually every page of the book.
For instance, Baigent asks, “What if Jesus was a ‘Zealot’, part of a political movement
of his day and it was this political activity that caused the Roman government
to execute him rather than doing it at the urging of the Jewish religious
leaders of that day as the Bible teaches?”
How can a Christian today answer these questions? Would Christianity survive if Baigent’s answers to these questions were true? The whole faith of Christianity is based upon the resurrection of Jesus. As the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth almost 2,000 years ago:
But if it is
preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say
that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the
dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been
raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. NIV 1 Corinthians
15:12-14
The apostle Paul speaks the truth from almost 2,000 years ago: if Michael Baigent’s answers are true, then the whole Bible – not just the New Testament but also the Old Testament itself – is false. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus were prophesied throughout the Old Testament, beginning with God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and later with Moses.
The LORD your
God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You
must listen to him. NIV Deuteronomy 18:15
The authors of the New Testament cite any number of Old Testament references to prophecies that foretold the coming of Jesus. Jesus, Himself, pointed to such prophecy.
He went to
Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the
synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the
prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is
written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." NIV Luke 4:16-21
So it is, that if what Baigent claims in The Jesus Papers is true, then both the Old and New Testaments are worthless or at least deserve to be relegated to the stacks of other books full of fables and folklore and not to be considered true in any sense.
Can we, as Christians, fail to respond to the challenge of searching for the real answers to Michael Baigent’s questions? The authors of this review and commentary answer that question with a solid, resounding, “No!”
This article will
attempt to answer some of Michael Baigent's questions and statements about
Christianity, the writers of the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus. We will also point out that Michael Baigent
and many of his peers – both journalists and Bible “scholars” – often fail to
differentiate between information found in the Bible and the “traditions” of
the Catholic Church and many of its offspring Protestant denominations. It is in this latter area – confusing the
teaching and traditions of the Catholic Church (in which Michael Baigent was
reared) with the truth written in God’s word to mankind – the Holy Bible – that
Baigent most often falls into error.
Make no mistake
about it; Michael Baigent is a very able and well-educated investigative
journalist and storyteller who weaves intricate tales, the likes of which –
because he deals in grey areas – very few theologians or ministers of the
established Christian denominations can match.
Even worse, the leaders of these religious organizations either ignore
books like The Jesus Papers or simply denounce them without having an
adequate answer to them in terms of refuting the claims or, even more often,
fail to read them at all. Even worse,
many of those from the political left – theologically liberal – support his
claims. This is especially true of the
nihilists who are eager to destroy the foundations of Western Civilization.
Why? Because
Baigent calls the Bible itself into question and claims in The Jesus Papers that
any argument you might bring forward in its defense would be invalid because
the Bible itself is suspect as a source of truth; that it is unreliable as
a source of truth as a result of tampering or “doctoring” by previous men of
religion. To Baigent this means the Catholic Church, primarily.
Beginning with that
premise – that the Bible can be proved false and Christianity a huge hoax –
Baigent negates the primary historical source of information that refutes his
claims about Jesus and Christianity.
Instead, Baigent
(and many other contemporary Bible “scholars”) grant authenticity to almost any
historical, pagan or secular source other than the Bible. A manuscript from some Greek, Roman or
Egyptian who believed in multiple gods or who was an atheist and highly
antagonistic to the religion of the Israelites or Christianity is granted
immediate authenticity – especially, it seems, if its contents or premise
supports their assertion that what is written in the Bible is false. The apocryphal books (those excluded from the
recognized canon of the Bible) are treated as having the same or greater
authenticity as the Bible.
But this proves to
be the Achilles heel of Baigent’s book – his acceptance of anything written by
someone other than the authors of the Old and New Testament as authentic while
denying the truth of the Bible. The
authors of this article will show that even if Baigent held in his hands the
very documents he calls “The Jesus Papers”, which claim that Jesus did not die
and was not resurrected, or a document claiming to prove Jesus was still alive
in 45 A.D., such documents prove nothing. In fact the authors of the Bible foretold
that such lies would be promulgated.
Only if one grants
unlimited authenticity to secular or historical documents and denies
authenticity to the Bible – the most widely copied and distributed, the most
questioned, the most studied, the most criticized, the most debated, the most
widely-read book the world has ever known – can one believe such documents
contain truth because they directly contradict the teaching of the Bible.
It would take a
book the size of Baigent’s to answer every assertion he makes. This article
will therefore cover only some claims that the authors of this rebuttal
consider the most important (and most egregious) of Baigent’s assertions that
Christianity itself is a sham and a hoax.
The Jesus Papers contains many outrageous claims that should
not go unanswered. It may surprise you
that the authors of this rebuttal believe that in both Holy Blood-Holy Grail
and The Jesus Papers, Baigent is actually doing a great service to the
Christian community by bringing up such questions and making such claims. After all, if these claims cannot be refuted,
then all that we Christians believe is worthless.
Christians can
learn by studying, not only the Bible and other religious writings of the past
and present, but also the writings of those who attempt to discredit both Jesus
and the Bible using “scholarly” language and research to back their
claims.
As the Psalmist long ago wrote:
Help, LORD, for
the godly are no more; the faithful have vanished from among men. Everyone lies
to his neighbor; their flattering lips speak with deception. May the LORD cut
off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue that says, "We will
triumph with our tongues; we own our lips—who is our master?"
"Because
of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now
arise," says the LORD. "I will protect them from those who malign
them."
And the words
of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified
seven times. NIV Psalms 12:1-6
And as the proverb states:
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. NIV Proverbs
27:17
Therefore, the
authors offer this article in rebuttal of The Jesus Papers.
Authors’ note: Throughout this document quoted passages from
the Bible, The Jesus Papers and other sources contain underlining,
italics and bold type added by the authors for emphasis and to
call special attention to certain words, phrases or sentences.
The Role of Mary Magdalene
The Basis of Baigent’s Claims
about Jesus and Mary of Magdala
A little knowledge
of the literary background of Michael Baigent is needed to understand the
genesis of Holy Blood-Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers and
Baigent’s claims concerning the supposed intimate relationship between Jesus
and Mary of Magdala – Mary Magdalene.
Baigent, Henry
Lincoln and Richard Leigh wrote Holy Blood-Holy Grail in 1982. This book was influenced heavily and based in large part on books written
earlier by Gérard de Sède and papers secreted into the French National Library
by Pierre Plantard, who fabricated the history of a cult called the Priory of Sion,
In summary, the Grail
authors argue that there is evidence that Jesus married Mary
Magdalene, had one or more children, and that those
children or their descendants emigrated to what is now southern France. Once
there, they intermarried with the noble
families of that land and eventually founded the Merovingian
dynasty. Though that dynasty disintegrated in the 8th Century A.D.,
the family is championed and protected to this very day by a secret
society called the Priory of
Sion, according to the Grail authors but based primarily on
the writings of Plantard and de Sède.
Critics of Holy
Blood-Holy Grail like those in the independent investigations of 60 Minutes,
Time Magazine,
and the BBC were quick to point out that both Grail
and Sion were based on a complete fallacy.
According to Wikipedia
– the online encyclopedia:
The “Priory of Sion”, which was listed as “fact” in Holy Blood Holy
Grail, never actually existed. Far from having a “history (that) spanned
more than a millennium,” the Priory was a hoax created by an anti-Semitic
French pretender
to France’s throne, Pierre Plantard, a convicted con-man, in 1956. As part of
his hoax, Plantard had planted two sets of forged mediaeval documents: one in
the French National Library,
and another in the 1967 book Le Trésor Maudit de Rennes-le-Chateau. The
documents were taken as factual by the authors of The Holy Blood and the
Holy Grail, which led to many of the false claims in the book.
In 2005, United
Kingdom archaeologist Tony Robinson narrated a critical evaluation of
the main arguments of Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code) and those
of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in a program called The Real Da Vinci Code,
shown on BBC Channel 4
and repeated on The History Channel in the USA and elsewhere.
The program
featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists. Arnaud de Sède,
son of Gérard de Sède, stated categorically that his
father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Prieuré de
Sion (Priory of
Sion), and described the story as “piffle.” The program concluded
that, in the opinion of the presenter and researchers, the claims of Grail
were based on little more than a series of guesses and almost no factual
information at all.
The authors of Grail, including Baigent, have also backpedaled in
subsequent interviews, claiming that they were only presenting a “hypothesis.”
Even after the
premise of Holy Blood-Holy Grail has been debunked and shown to be based
on fallacies, Baigent picks up in The Jesus Papers where he left off in Grail
and once again treats the Grail’s claims as fact.
Mary Magdalene in The “Gospel”
of Philip
The idea that Jesus
might have married and had children was certainly not original with Baigent or
his co-writers. Many theologians had
previously suggested that premise from study of the Gospel of Philip.
A single
manuscript of the Gospel of Philip, in Coptic,
was found in the Nag Hammadi library, which was discovered near
the town of Nag Hammadi In Egypt in 1945. It was a cache of documents secreted in a jar
and buried in the Egyptian desert at the end of the fourth century, when Gnostic
writings and pagan documents were being burned by the official church. Wesley W. Isenberg, the text's translator,
places the date "perhaps as late as the 2nd half of the 3rd century"
and places its probable origin in Syria due to its references to Syriac words
and eastern baptismal practices as well as its ascetic outlook.
Even the
apocryphal Gospel of Philip, upon which Baigent heavily relies, does not
make the claim that Jesus and Mary were married. The passage referring to Mary Magdalene from
which all the speculation comes is incomplete due to damage to the original
manuscript and had to be “reconstructed” but to Baigent – in The Jesus
Papers – the meaning is clear. As Baigent puts it:
The crucial text in the Gospel of Philip has certain words reconstructed –
placed with brackets in the translation – but even without these, the close and
very special relationship between the two is clear.
And the companion of [the savior was] Mary Magdalene. [Christ loved] her
more than [all] the disciples, [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [mouth?
face? cheek? head?]. The rest of [the disciples were offended by it and
expressed disapproval].
But there is more here than an emotional or sexual relationship. If we look further into this Gospel and into
others that also date from around the second century A.D. and have been
similarly excluded by the Church, we find that Mary Magdalene had a special
knowledge of Jesus’ teaching – an insight, or understanding, not necessarily
shared by the other disciples. The
Gospel of Philip, after mentioning Jesus’ close relationship with her, goes on
to explain his relationship with the disciples.
They said to him "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The
Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like her? When a
blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different
from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light,
and he who is blind will remain in darkness."
Jesus is implying that Mary Magdalene is able to “see the light” whereas
the disciples are not. She, in other
words, understands fully what Jesus is teaching; the others do not. [The Jesus Papers P. 111-112]
Not only was
there – according to Baigent – a special “emotional or sexual relationship”
between Jesus and Mary Magdalene but she was far ahead of the men Jesus named
as His ambassadors to the world (apostles) in understanding what Jesus taught.
To the authors of
this review and (we would assert) to most people reading this passage from an
apocryphal writing, it “proves” nothing of the sort. Most secular journalists – not to mention
scholars – work with the rule that one should always view a single source of
information with skepticism. Even the
average newspaper news story has at least two sources to verify
authenticity.
Where is Baigent’s
“second source” for his assertions?
Although he refers to other apocryphal writing to support the idea that
Mary Magdalene may have been a teacher or an important figure in the early
church, he cites no other source verifying any intimate relationship between
Jesus and Mary of Magdala.
He is quite willing to ascribe authenticity to a manuscript that all Bible scholars agree was written "perhaps as late as the 2nd half of the 3rd century" – two hundred years after the events described – and yet is willing to deny that same authenticity to documents those same Bible scholars almost all agree were written at most within 60 years of the death of Jesus.
Baigent
cites this passage to “prove” that the disciples of Jesus were “unhappy” about
this “special” relationship that Mary had with Jesus because he was asked by
them why he appeared to love her more than them. From this single source, he leaps to the
conclusion that Jesus had intercourse
with Mary Magdalene, married her and fathered children with Mary.
That
Mary Magdalene was much closer to Jesus than the Bible depicts is a possibility
but Baigent’s “human” logic in assuming sexual relations between the two is far
from sound, being based just on the “kissing on the mouth” scenario.
It is
not uncommon in many families throughout the world to greet relatives and
family members and even friends with a kiss – even a kiss on the mouth. It is certain that this practice of greeting
by a kiss on the cheek or mouth was common in Jesus' day.
The
apostle Paul wrote to the churches in Rome, Corinth and Thessalonica to “greet
each other with a holy kiss” [Romans 16:16; I Corinthians 16:20; II Corinthians
13:12; I Thessalonians 5:26] and the apostle Peter suggested greeting each
other with a “kiss of charity” [I Peter 5:14], while Judas betrayed Jesus with
a “kiss” [Matthew 26:48 et al].
Should
we infer sexual activity from all these “kisses”?
Baigent’s Claim of Mary Magdalene “Anointing” Jesus as “King”
Because
of Baigent’s assertion of the special status of Mary Magdalene with Jesus and
perhaps of her actual “leadership” among Jesus’ disciples, in The Jesus
Papers he makes another astonishing claim about her relationship with Jesus
– that she was the one who “anointed” Jesus as “king of the Jews” and claims to
base this on the Bible account of that incident.
As we
will show later, this view is not from the Bible but from the “tradition” of
the Catholic Church – a mistake Baigent makes over and over again throughout
all his writing.
In
chapter seven, Surviving the Crucifixion, he devotes four pages
(119-123) to claiming that the woman never said by the Bible to be Mary
Magdalene “anointed” Jesus as “King of the Jews” by pouring some perfume on His
head [Matthew 26:6-13] and that this was a ritual anointing of a “king”
performed by a woman.
Baigent
claims that this woman was Mary Magdalene.
He states that John identifies the woman as “Mary of Bethany” (the
sister of Lazarus) but relies on the Catholic tradition that “Mary of Bethany”
was the same person as “Mary of Magdala” – Mary Magdalene. To see the full context and origin of this
Catholic “tradition”, see the following URL from the official website of the
Catholic Encyclopedia Online: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09761a.htm
Baigent
writes:
The
entire incident hints of a shadowy source of wealth behind those close
to Jesus [p. 119].
Most
modern readers of the Gospels have no great knowledge of the politics and
practices of the time, and so for them this anointing seems incidental, a mark
of respect perhaps, or as some church commentators have argued, an ornate
ceremony for greeting an honored guest.
Perhaps, but in the context such an explanation is hardly convincing. For those of the first century A. D., the
implication of this action would have been unmistakable: this was a
royal anointing. Traditionally,
the priests and kings of Israel were anointed with expensive oil: with kings it
was poured on the head as a symbolic wreath, while a priest’s head was anointed
with a diagonal cross [p. 120].
This
act by a woman close to Jesus obviously triggered official alarm. We may now be clear where the Gospel is
obtuse: Matthew, however hesitantly, is indicating that Jesus was being
recognized and proclaimed in his role as messiah. [p. 120]
But the
method of his anointing raises another deep mystery, as if there were not
enough mystery about Jesus already.
One would expect such a ceremony to be performed by a group of top
officials, perhaps priests, perhaps representatives of the Sanhedrin, whether
the “official” one or perhaps some Zealot “alternative” one – if any Zealots
were still talking to Jesus after the incident with the denarius. [p. 121]
The
“incident with the denarius” [Matthew 22:15-22] is where Jesus, when asked whether
it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome, told the Pharisees to “render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”. Baigent claims that Jesus was a political
dissident, a member of the “Zealots”, and that this statement would have
infuriated them.
But no
such person was present. Jesus was,
according to Matthew’s account, simply anointed by “a woman” – identified in
John’s Gospel (12:3) as Mary “of Bethany” – and the event took place in the
home she shared with her sister and her brother Lazarus, who had recently been
“raised from the dead.” In the
history of royal or priestly confirmations by a male-dominated organization,
this is unprecedented: the anointment ceremony presided over by a woman?
A woman confirming and acclaiming Jesus as meshiha? Exactly what kind of ceremony was it that has
left its brief, perhaps garbled, trace in the Gospels like a comet
obscured by dark clouds?
Furthermore,
it is curious that a woman, Mary of Bethany, should perform this role rather
than the woman who was far more prominent in the circle of the disciples:
Mary Magdalene. Unless, of
course, the two were the same – unless Mary of Bethany was, in fact, Mary
Magdalene.
A
distinction between the two seems to be made in the New Testament,
but there was certainly a tradition combining the two, a
tradition that was put into the faith during the sixth century by Pope Gregory
I. Evidence is lacking,
however, and this identification is no longer maintained by the Vatican. However, as we shall see, that is not
the end of the matter. [p. 121-122]
Here
again, Baigent confuses the issue by equating the Bible with the teaching and
traditions of the Catholic Church, which he cites above.
Baigent’s
almost breathless approach to this incident is typical of his theorizing
throughout The Jesus Papers. He
takes a small, straightforward incident that the Bible recounts and turns it
into proof of some mystical “anointing” by a woman who was the “leader” of
Jesus’ followers. He posits some
“political plot” by the dissident political group – the Zealots – of which
Baigent supposes Jesus to be the leader.
He claims that it was this political activity by Jesus, coupled by this
anointing of a “king” by Mary Magdalene that caused the Romans to execute Him –
though later claiming that Jesus didn’t really die!
Read
the incident as it is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:
While Jesus was
in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him
with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head
as he was reclining at the table.
When the
disciples saw this, they were indignant. "Why this waste?" they
asked. "This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money
given to the poor."
Aware of this,
Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a
beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not
always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare
me for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached
throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of
her." NIV Matthew 26:6-13
Where
did Baigent come up with his theories about this matter? In the context of The Jesus Papers, it
is necessary to support his other theory that Jesus was not killed at the
request of the Jews, as the Bible shows clearly, but was done solely by the
Roman government as a result of Jesus’ political activities. He was not killed, according to Baigent,
because the Jews accused Jesus of “blasphemy” – claiming to be the “son of God”
– but because Jesus was stirring up the people of Palestine to revolt against
the Roman Army.
In
fact, a little research (that Baigent failed to do or misunderstood) will show
that such “anointing” was a common practice in the time of Jesus – a time when
Baigent claims:
Most
modern readers of the Gospels have no great knowledge of the politics and
practices of the time. [p. 120]
Perhaps
Baigent is one of those ignorant of the “practices of the times”. According to Easton's Bible Dictionary:
The
practice of anointing with perfumed oil was common among the Hebrews.
Anointing was also an act of hospitality [Luke 7:38, 46]. It was the custom of
the Jews in like manner to anoint themselves with oil, as a means of refreshing
or invigorating their bodies [Deuteronomy 28: 40; Ruth 3:3; 2 Sam. 14:2; Ps.
104:15, etc.]. This custom is continued among the Arabians to the present day.
Oil was used also for medicinal purposes. It was applied to the sick, and also
to wounds [Psalms 109:18; Isaiah 1:6; Mark 6:13; James 5:14]. The bodies of the
dead were sometimes anointed [Mark 14:8; Luke 23:56].
In the
account of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus offers yet another reason for the
anointing:
While he was in
Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper,
a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure
nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those
present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of
perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money
given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly.
"Leave her
alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a
beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help
them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she
could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.
I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world,
what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." NIV Mark 14:3-9
Couple
this with the recorded description by Matthew, and it’s hard to understand why
Baigent make so much of this incident common to the times. But, as one who reads The Jesus Papers
will quickly come to understand, such distortion is necessary for Baigent to
tie together all his theories and misunderstanding of the Bible and a result of
his confusing of the scriptures with Catholic “traditions”.
The Role of Mary Magdalene as Recorded in
the Bible
The Bible does not support the claims of some special closeness between Jesus and Mary Magdalene though there is little doubt that she worshipped Jesus and He was kind to her and healed her. She appears to have been a devout disciple.
In Luke 8:1-2 she
is mentioned as one of the women who "ministered to Him [Jesus] of their
substance". In other words, they
provided Jesus with money or supplies – though Jesus had His own personal
source of money. He was a skilled
artisan and had worked for many years (eighteen or more years) in His
trade. This was plenty of time for Jesus
to have saved funds to support Himself in His ministry.
He was not some
poor, itinerant preacher as many contemporary religious organizations teach but
owned a home in Capernaum [Mark 2:1].
The garment that He wore to His crucifixion was quite an expensive
garment [John 19:23, 24]. Jesus was a
“carpenter” but the Greek word tekton – translated as carpenter – means
“an
artificer in stone, iron, and copper, as well as in wood” and is from the same
root word from which we get the English word “technician” – meaning a highly
trained and skilled person.
The Bible tells the
story of Jesus casting out seven demons from Mary. She and several of these
women, who earlier "had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities,"
later accompanied Jesus on his last journey to Jerusalem [Matthew 27:55; Mark
15:41; Luke 23:55] and were witnesses to the Crucifixion.
Mary remained at
the crucifixion site until the body was taken down and laid in a tomb prepared
for Joseph of Arimathea. In the early
dawn of the first day of the week Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary the mother
of James came to the sepulcher with sweet spices to anoint the body [Matthew
28:1; Mark 16:2]. They found the sepulcher
empty but saw the "vision of angels" [Matthew 28:5].
As the first
witness to the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene went to tell Peter
and John [John 20:1-2], and again immediately returned to the sepulcher. She remained there weeping at the door of the
tomb. According to John she was the first person to see Jesus after the
Resurrection though at first she did not recognize Him.
When He said her
name, she recognized Him and cried, “Rabboni”.
She started to touch Him, but He told her not to touch Him.
"Jesus said to
her, 'Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to
my brethren and say to them, "I am ascending to My Father and your Father,
and to My God and your God."'" [John 20:17]
This is the last
entry in the canonical Gospels and the rest of the New Testament regarding Mary
of Magdala, who now returned to Jerusalem. She may have been included in the
group of women who joined the Apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem after
Jesus' ascension [Acts 1:14] though she is not mentioned.
What if Jesus Were
Married?
The Bible is almost
silent on the personal part of Jesus' life from birth to the start of His
ministry at age 30. There is only one
mention of Jesus’ childhood after His birth and before His ministry – that
being the short description of Jesus conversing with the religious leaders in
the temple at age 12 [Luke 2:41-51] – and that is covered only in Luke and not
mentioned in the other gospels.
There would have
been nothing wrong – no sin involved – if Jesus had married and had
children. Sex within marriage is not a sin by Biblical standards and
Jesus would have remained without sin even though married.
Catholic traditions
claim that His mother remained a virgin for the rest of her life. There’s no Biblical or common sense basis for
this claim. Catholics who developed the traditions of that organization
seem to have a real hang-up about sexual matters and such claims of virginity
are possibly there in order for the prudish to fit their own sensibilities
on the real Bible story. It is such traditions,
when confused with the Bible that cause some to think Christianity is
ridiculous and not reflective of real life.
Jesus was a man;
His mother was a woman and they were both fully human. Jesus was “tempted in all points,” [Hebrews
2:18; 4:15] just like we are though “without sin”. There is no reason to believe that Mary was
not the mother of other children after Jesus.
The Bible mentions Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” [Matthew 12:46; 13:55,
56; Mark 3:31; Luke 8:19; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; Galatians 1:19 et
al]
Likewise, there is
no reason to believe that Jesus was not sexually aware. Though He did not participate in fornication
or adultery, certainly He experienced the most common temptation of all men and
women.
But, there is a very
good, simple, logical reason why Jesus would never have married and certainly
why He would have had no children: those children would have been worshipped by
His followers. This is effectively demonstrated by the claims made by
Baigent and others in Holy Blood – Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers
that Jesus' offspring became "royalty" in France and other places.
Jesus, had He had
children, would have fathered human children who would have been normal human
children, prone to sin and error like all people. For them to be assigned
or to claim some special dispensation or to be worshipped would have been
anathema to Jesus as well as to God, the Father. Logic and common sense
suggest there was no marriage and no children to prevent such things happening.
Did Jesus Found His
Church on a Man – Peter?
Michael
Baigent joins his peers and, surprisingly, a great many Bible “scholars” who
criticize Christianity, in misunderstanding the Bible and/or confusing Bible
teaching with the traditions of the Catholic Church and its Protestant
offspring with regard to the organization of the church that Jesus established.
Baigent
is one of many thousands of former Catholics who have discovered the many
errors in Catholic doctrine and left the fold.
But instead of turning to the Bible or even churches that have corrected
many of those errors, he apparently chose to discard all of Christianity.
Nowhere
is this more evident than in the Catholic interpretation (echoed by Baigent
throughout his books, including The Jesus Papers) of the Bible teaching
on the founding of Jesus’ church and its organizational structure. This interpretation underlies the
hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and underpins its reliance on
church traditions and the teaching of the church hierarchy as “infallible” and
having more weight for Catholics than the Bible itself.
Here is
the official Catholic interpretation from the Catholic Encyclopedia on the
Internet found at this URL: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm.
Later, meeting his
brother, Simon, Andrew said, "We have found the Messias", and brought
him to Jesus, who, looking upon him, said: "Thou art Simon the son of
Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter". Already,
at this first meeting, the Saviour foretold the change of Simon's name to
Cephas (Kephas; Aramaic Kipha, rock), which is translated Petros
(Lat., Petrus) a proof that Christ had already special views
with regard to Simon.
Peter becomes Head
of the Apostles. In especially solemn fashion Christ
accentuated Peter's precedence among the Apostles, when, after Peter had
recognized Him as the Messias, He promised that he would be head of His
flock. Jesus was then dwelling with His Apostles in the vicinity of
Caesarea Philippi, engaged on His work of salvation. As Christ's coming agreed
so little in power and glory with the expectations of the Messias, many
different views concerning Him were current. While journeying along with His
Apostles, Jesus asks them: "Whom do men say that the Son of man is?"
The Apostles answered: "Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and
others Jeremias, or one of the prophets". Jesus said to them: "But
whom do you say that I am?" Simon said: "Thou art Christ, the Son of
the living God". And Jesus answering said to him: "Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my
Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter [Kipha, a rock],
and upon this rock [Kipha] I will build my church [ekklesian], and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound
also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed
also in heaven". Then he commanded his disciples, that they should tell no
one that he was Jesus the Christ (Matthew 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; Luke
9:18-21).
By the word
"rock" the Saviour cannot have meant Himself, but only Peter, as is
so much more apparent in Aramaic in which the same word (Kipha) is used for
"Peter" and "rock". His statement then admits of but one
explanation, namely, that He wishes to make Peter the head of the whole
community of those who believed in Him as the true Messias; that through this
foundation (Peter) the Kingdom of Christ would be unconquerable; that the
spiritual guidance of the faithful was placed in the hands of Peter, as the
special representative of Christ.
The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Volume XI. Published 1911. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat,
February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal
Farley, Archbishop of New York
Baigent
repeats this doctrine in The Jesus Papers and does a rather good job of
explaining the Catholic doctrine and its importance to that religious
organization.
According
to the Gospel of Matthew (16:18), Peter was the rock upon which Christ’s church
was built. Ignoring the difficult
question of why a good Jew would want to found a church, Vatican tradition
insists that by this statement – not mentioned by any of the other gospel
writers – Christ transferred to Peter the supreme right to rule over the
Christian Church. All subsequent
bishops of Rome have this right transferred to them specifically. Peter was, according to this tradition, the
first bishop of Rome, and as we have noted, the bishop of Rome elected in A. D.
440, Pope Leo I, claimed that this heritage gave Rome the right to lead Christendom. This is crucial to the Vatican’s assumption
of spiritual validity. Without this
claim – if it should be shown to be nonsense – the entire edifice of the
Vatican and the papacy would crumble into dust. And further, built on this claim is the truly
extraordinary assertion that the Catholic Church is the only path to truth and
that the pope is Christ’s – that is, God’s – primary representative on
earth. The historical Jesus would
have been appalled at what was spawned in his name. (p. 110-111)
Baigent
is correct in his conclusion that Jesus would have been “appalled at what was
spawned in his name.” In fact, this
claim to power is in direct contradiction to the teaching of Jesus. As He told His apostles, including Peter
(Jesus is speaking here of the religious leaders of His day):
"Everything
they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the
tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets
and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the
marketplaces and to have men call them `Rabbi.'
"But you
are not to be called `Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all
brothers. And do not call anyone on earth `father,' for you have one Father,
and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called `teacher,' for you have one
Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever
exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
[NIV Matthew 23:5-12]
What
religious organization, in direct contradiction to the teaching of Jesus, calls
their priests “father” and calls the head of their organization “holy father”?
Jesus specifically condemned such exalting of church leaders.
Jesus
called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not
so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your
servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of
Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom
for many." NIV Matthew 20:25-28
The
scripture from Matthew concerning the founding of the church ("on
Peter", the Catholics claim) is not repeated in any of the other
three canonical gospels.
But the scripture concerning avoiding
hierarchical structures in the church appears as the exact same quote in Mark
10:42-46 (Mark is considered the oldest of the gospels) and the same incident
from a slightly different perspective is found in Luke:
Also
a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.
Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and
those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you
are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the
youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater,
the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at
the table? But I am among you as one who serves. NIV Luke 22:24-27
So what
did Jesus really mean? Did He tell Peter
that He would found His church on a man – Peter? Not so. While Catholic scholars have proven
themselves erudite and forthcoming in many areas, this one appears to the authors
of this review to be a deliberate deception, the end result of the
distortion of Jesus’ teaching that began within a few decades of His death and
resurrection.
For
instance, John wrote to his friend Gaius, who was an “elder” in a local
congregation:
Dear friend,
you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are
strangers to you. They have told the church about your love. You will do well
to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It was for the sake of the
Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. We ought therefore
to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth.
I wrote to the
church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.
So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously
about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also
stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church. Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone
who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen
God. NIV 3 John 1:5-11
This
quotation is from the third letter from John included in the canon and while
some dispute its authenticity, there is no reason to doubt the incident
described with Diotrephes – one of assuming power over the congregation,
“gossiping maliciously” about one of Jesus’ apostles and putting people “out of
the church”. The Catholics today call
this “excommunication” and many contemporary Protestant or independent
Christian religious organizations call this “marking” or “disfellowshipping”
and continue this practice to this day.
John
called it “evil”!
To
understand clearly what Jesus meant, one should study the scripture carefully and
a Greek – English Lexicon can be used for further clarification.
When Jesus came
to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people
say the Son of Man is?"
They replied,
"Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah
or one of the prophets."
"But what
about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter
answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus replied, "Blessed
are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my
Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." NIV
Matthew 16:13-19
Jesus was actually making a rather clever "play on words". Jesus gave the name “Peter” to Simon, son of Jonah [Matthew 16:17; Mark 3:16] – likely because Simon (Peter) was so “hard-headed” and presumptuous as many other scriptures show.
Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter” [Greek – petros, meaning “a piece of rock” or as we might say, a “pebble” or “small stone”] “and on this rock [Greek petra, which means a “primary, or very large stone” and which is sometimes translated as “bedrock”] I will build my church”.
Was Jesus saying that He was going to build His church on Peter? Nonsense! A straightforward reading of this verse will show that the “bedrock” upon which Jesus was going to build His church was the statement made by Peter (the little stone): “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That truth – that Jesus was the Christ (Greek – Christos, meaning “the anointed one”, the promised “messiah”) and the “Son of the living God” is the very “bedrock” of Christianity!
People who seek power over others within religious organizations often claim that these scriptures authorize them to make changes to the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles as recorded in the Bible and give them power to determine who can enter the kingdom of heaven and general power over all the members of that organization. The Catholic Church today (along with many other religious organizations) teaches that the “traditions” of the church (the teaching of its popes and church “fathers”) carry the same authority or even more authority than the Bible itself.
This is in direct contradiction to the teaching of Jesus, whose very words quoted above belie this interpretation.
What difference does this make? By giving such power into the hands of men it gives human beings the right to change God’s laws! That does not make sense because if sinful men are given this authority, all of God’s laws and the Bible itself become meaningless because men can change them.
We know that all men are sinful and this applies even to the Apostles – “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [NIV Romans 3:23] Peter denied even knowing Jesus and all but one of those who later became Apostles deserted Jesus when He was arrested and killed. Paul, who wrote more books of the New Testament than any other, admitted that he remained sinful many long years after the death of Jesus [Romans 7:19-25].
Even the Apostles did not have the authority to change the New Covenant established at the death of Jesus, just as a human will cannot legally be changed by anyone after his death.
For this reason
Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive
the promised eternal inheritance--now that he has died as a ransom to set them
free from the sins committed under the first covenant. In the case of a will,
it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is
in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one
who made it is living. NIV Hebrews 9:15-17
Therefore we know that the apostles were not given the power to change the covenant established between Jesus and His church at His death and the laws and teaching contained in that covenant, and we are on a firm foundation when we claim that certain scriptures have been misunderstood because we know that no human being has the authority to change God’s laws.
As we
have shown, the whole doctrine of apostolic succession on which the hierarchies
of the Catholic Church and most of its Protestant offspring base their
hierarchical structure with their "fathers" having the right to
change Bible doctrine and to decide who is a part of Jesus’ church is a
complete denial of the doctrines taught by Jesus and as Baigent says:
“Without this claim – if it
should be shown to be nonsense – the entire edifice of the Vatican and the
papacy would crumble into dust. And further, built on this claim is the truly
extraordinary assertion that the Catholic Church is the only path to truth and
that the pope is Christ’s – that is, God’s – primary representative on
earth. The historical Jesus would
have been appalled at what was spawned in his name. (p. 111)
In this
matter, we totally agree with Michael Baigent!
The Divinity of Jesus
The
Bible is definitely not silent on Jesus' divinity. In the very
opening verses in the Gospel of John:
In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the
light of men. NIV John 1:1-4
Although
some might interpret verse three as referring to God, the Father, the
following verses in the book of John make clear what the author of this
book believed and to whom he was referring.
He
was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not
recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive
him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor
of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. NIV John 1:10-13
Could
what is said in verse 12 apply to a mere human being who was not “divine” and
not given such authority from the Father?
Verse
14 sums it up by saying the “Word” mentioned in verse one emptied himself of
his divinity to become flesh.
The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his
glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace
and truth. NIV John 1:14
Now, Baigent might claim – if he
were to read these words in the book of John – that some of those words in
verse 14 might have been “added” by the early “Catholic fathers”, since he
claims that many of the scriptures were “doctored”. But even if that were the case all it would
show is that whoever added those words had a very good understanding of
the rest of New Testament teachings. Also, the writer of the
"Gospel According to Saint John" – even if it wasn't John – also had
an excellent grasp of the rest of New Testament teachings when he wrote
these words in verse 18:
No one has ever
seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him
known. NIV John 1:18
The Apostle Paul Proclaimed the Divinity of Jesus
One of
the points that Baigent
stresses
is that the Apostle Paul’s writings were so at odds with the rest of the
disciples because he (Paul) obviously didn't know Jesus personally. He infers that the other 12 apostles took
measures to get Paul away from their sphere of influence and were basically
happy to send Paul “packing” off to parts unknown as his views were too
radical and even contradictory to everything taught by them.
According
to Baigent the apostle James was very much for the “Law” whereas Paul was
for freedom from the Law and James was one who was partly responsible for
sending Paul away to the Gentile regions and out of harm's way (to keep Paul
from doing damage to what the other apostles taught).
In any
case, Paul did not know Jesus, and unlike the Gospels, he did not show any
great concern about what Jesus may have said or done. We get no information about Jesus from Paul,
whose letters proclaim the gospel of, well, Paul: that the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus marked the beginning of a new age in the history of the
world, the most immediate practical effect being the end of the Jewish law –
quite a different stance to that taken by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to
destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). [p. 73-74]
But
Paul never knew Jesus. He never even met
him. And he didn’t get on with the
messianic Jewish community in Jerusalem.
This is hardly surprising, given his previous leading role in the forces
of persecution. The Jerusalem community
didn’t trust Paul. The Book of Acts
coyly, but firmly, explains that he was quickly dispatched to Tarsus in
southern Turkey. It suggests that this
was for his own protection, though it is less clear about who exactly he needed
protection from (Acts 9:30). The point
is that Paul was removed from Judaea.
The Zealots wanted him out of the way.
In fact, there were plenty who would have happily arranged for Paul to
be out of the way permanently. [p. 240]
A few
quotes from Paul’s writing show that Baigent is again relying on the traditions
of the Catholic Church rather than the scriptures in forming his opinion that
Paul thought the “crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus marked” “the end of the
Jewish law”.
What shall we
say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what
sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting
really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."
So then, the
law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
We know that the
law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
For in my inner
being I delight in God's law; NIV Romans 7:7, 12, 14, 22
What, then, was
the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed
to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through
angels by a mediator. A mediator, however, does not represent just one
party; but God is one. Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of
God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life,
then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.
So the law
was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.
NIV Galatians 3:19-21, 24
Understanding
that Paul was a Jew, educated in Jerusalem “at the feet of Gamaliel” and was a
“zealous” student of the Law [Acts 5:34; 22:3], how does one explain his
conversion to Christianity? If he never
met Jesus and knew nothing of Him, what could have changed his life and viewpoint
so radically?
There are
many, including the authors of this article, who believe that Paul would have
at least observed and heard Jesus teaching in the temple in Jerusalem since
Paul lived there at the time of Jesus’ ministry. He may have met Jesus on several occasions
and could well have been among those sent by the Pharisees to question Jesus
[Matthew 12:38; 15:1; 16:1; 19:3; 22:35 et al].
We also believe that Jesus personally taught Paul in the desert for at
least parts of the three years shortly after Paul’s conversion on the road to
Damascus. That belief and part of the
reason that Paul’s writings are so important to Christianity is based on this
scripture:
I want you to know, brothers that
the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not
receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
For you have heard of my
previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God
and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own
age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
But when God who set me apart from
birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me that I
might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up
to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went
immediately into Arabia and later returned to
Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get
acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days NIV Galatians 1:11-18.
Before Paul met with the other
apostles in Jerusalem, he was preaching and teaching the gospel [Acts
13:16-52]. From whom did he gain this
knowledge of the gospel? He only spent a
few days with the disciples in Damascus – not enough time to learn enough to
preach such a sermon as that in the scripture listed above with all its
description of the death and resurrection of Jesus and Jesus’ appearance
afterward to the disciples.
Look at
what Paul believed about the resurrection and the divinity of his Lord and
Master and see if there is any incongruity with the book of John.
Who
is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to
life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. NIV Romans
8:34
This indicates that Paul believed in a literal or actual death of Jesus and a resurrection and like the writer of John' gospel believed that Jesus is now currently residing with God, The Father. No contradiction here.
Did the
apostle Paul believe Jesus to be the Son of God?
For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the
sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to
be a sin offering. And so he condemned
sin in sinful man.
He who did not
spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with
him, graciously give us all things? NIV Romans 8:3, 32
Paul
says much the same thing as John 1:12 quoted above in slightly different
wording in this scripture:
Because those
who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. NIV Romans 8:14
Leaving
no doubt that Paul believed in a literal, physical death and subsequent actual
resurrection from that death, he wrote:
We
were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just
as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. If we have been united
with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in
his resurrection. NIV Romans 6:4-5
Although
the apostle Paul was using these scriptures to show the beautifully symbolic
meaning of our baptism by immersion it shows he clearly knew that Jesus had died
a physical death and was resurrected to the life He now enjoys as our High
Priest on the right hand of the Father in heaven.
Paul
wrote to the church in Philippi concerning the “nature” of Jesus:
Who, being in
very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped [held
on to], but made himself nothing, taking the very
nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. NIV Philippians 2:6-7
The Living
Bible translates this passage even more clearly.
[Jesus Christ] who, though he was God, did not demand and cling to his
rights as God, but laid aside his mighty power and glory, taking on the
disguise of a slave and becoming like men. LB Philippians 2:6-7
The
phrase “equality with God” is a powerful statement of Paul’s belief in the
divinity of Jesus.
In fact
the apostle Paul was so passionate about the resurrection that when he came
before King Agrippa he gave not only a magnificent account of how badly he
(Paul) treated Christians and the vision that occurred on the road to Damascus
but also such an impassioned witness of all the events that occurred to
him that he almost persuaded the king to become a Christian there and then. The
account of this amazing defense of Christianity is found in the book of Acts:
“Therefore, having
obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and
great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and
Moses said would come—that the Christ would suffer, that
He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim
light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.”
Now as he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice,
“Paul, you are beside yourself! Much learning is driving you
mad!”
But he said, “I am not mad, most noble Festus, but
speak the words of truth and reason. For the king, before
whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am
convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing
was not done in a corner. King
Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do believe.”
Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a
Christian.” NKJV Acts 26:22-28
Notice what Paul said in his defense to King Agrippa: “for this thing was not done in a corner." What an understatement! It was public knowledge in Jesus' day. Crowds of people were coming to Him constantly for teaching and healing and He was attracting a huge following and it didn't go unnoticed by anyone – scholars, philosophers, government leaders and least of all the king – and almost certainly was noticed by Paul. Jesus was the talk of every town he visited. Almost everyone knew of His trial and execution and it was almost certainly known about on a personal basis by Paul.
Did Jesus, Himself claim to be God?
As to
Baigent's claim that Jesus never said he was the Son of God personally, He
hardly needed to, because his teachings clearly showed that he taught He was
from God the Father and represented Him – in fact part of His mission on earth was
to reveal the Father. But almost
everyone, especially the religious leaders of His day knew what He was
claiming.
They’re
quoted as saying:
In the same way
the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him.
"He saved
others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of
Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He
trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, `I am the
Son of God.'" NIV Matthew 27:41-43
Among
the more powerful statements made by Jesus declaring Himself to be the God of
the Old Testament is this one recorded in the Gospel of John.
Your father
Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
"You are
not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen
Abraham!"
"I tell
you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"
At this, they
picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the
temple grounds. NIV John 8:56-59
Jesus
is thus making the claim that He was the one who spoke to Moses from the
“burning bush”.
God said to
Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what
you are to say to the Israelites: `I AM has sent me to you.'" NIV
Exodus 3:14
Why did
the Jews who heard Jesus make the statement in John 8:58 pick “up stones to
stone him”? Because He was claiming to
be God and that, to the Jews, was blasphemy and the Law required a blasphemer
to be stoned.
On
trial for His life and “under oath”, Jesus again said clearly that He was the
messiah, the Son of God.
But Jesus
remained silent. The high priest said to him, "I charge you under oath by
the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God."
"Yes,
it is as you say," Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: In
the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty
One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
Then the high
priest tore his clothes and said, "He has spoken blasphemy! Why do
we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. NIV Matthew
26:63-65
“Blasphemy” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as “the act of showing contempt or lack of reverence for God” or “the act of claiming the attributes of deity”, i.e., claiming to be God. Clearly the latter is what the high priest was accusing Jesus of.
Baigent claims that Jesus never claimed to be God. It only shows that he has not given the same
diligence to reading and understanding the Bible as he has to those “ancient
texts” he likes to quote.
Did Jesus actually die
on the stake?
In The
Jesus Papers Baigent devotes 17 pages, all of chapter 7, to questioning
whether Jesus actually died on the cross.
Consider
this: If Jesus did not actually die on the cross and if He was not buried and resurrected
three days later, the whole foundation of Christianity is destroyed. This is no trivial matter! It is a claim that negates the whole
New Covenant that Jesus established at His death.
If The
Jesus Papers were the only source for this questioning of whether Jesus
actually died and was resurrected, it would mostly just provoke ridicule and
condemnation as a wild theory and soon be forgotten. But the assault on Christianity continues as
it has throughout the ages.
The
recent James Cameron documentary on the finding of a tomb claimed to be that of
Jesus and his “family” is only one more of many such media productions seeking
to undermine Christian beliefs. And much
of the major media in the United States and throughout Western Civilization seems
eager to publicize each of these assaults, especially around the time of the
Easter and Passover celebrations in Christianity and Judaism as well as other
holy days or holidays.
It is
common for such assaults (Baigent’s book is no exception) to first deny that
the scriptures are accurate. This
discrediting is stated as fact and then assumptions are made on that false
basis.
Baigent
writes:
Certainly the New Testament is bad history. This is impossible to deny. The texts are inconsistent, incomplete,
garbled and biased. It is possible to deconstruct the New
Testament to the point where nothing remains but a heavily biased, dogmatic
Christian mythology – in which case we could argue that the account of Jesus
supporting the payment of taxes to Caesar was simply a later addition to
reassure the mostly Greco-Roman Gentile converts to Christianity that there was
nothing politically dangerous about the new faith, that it was never a threat
to Roman power. (Page 123)
Yet,
after making such an outrageous statement, Baigent equivocates and partially
refutes his own statements. In the very
next paragraph he writes:
On the other hand, if we accept that these stories contain some
history, however garbled, we need to seek those facts that might have survived
beneath the later mythological edifice.
As mentioned earlier, the pagan historians themselves, in particular
Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, while sparse in their information, do report –
and by so doing confirm – that a Jewish messiah was crucified during the period
when Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judaea, and further, that a religious
movement, centered upon and named after this particular messiah, was in
existence by the end of the first century A.D.
Consequently, we must admit that there is some real history in the
Gospels, but how much of it is there?
How we judge the extent of the Gospel’s truth ultimately depends upon
the perspective we bring to them. (Page 123-124)
Baigent’s
perspective is evident. If the history
comes from a “pagan” historian, it must be true! If it comes from the Bible, it must be
suspect!
He
speculates, on pages 125-126 that it was really the Jewish “Zealot” movement,
incensed that Jesus “approved of paying taxes to Caesar” [Matthew 22:15-22],
who set up Jesus to be killed by the Roman government.
Baigent
does not exemplify the virtue of consistency – he had just claimed (see the
quote from page 123 above) that this event was likely added later to reassure
non-Jewish converts.
Then he
claims that some “drug” was used to simulate Jesus’ death so that he could be
proclaimed dead and then later resuscitated by his co-conspirators.
Baigent
offers no facts – not even any “pagan historical writing” – to support his
thesis that Jesus did not actually die but states these things as “fact” – as a
continuing search for the “truth”. He
does claim that a document exists – discovered during the time he was writing Holy
Blood – Holy Grail – that claims Jesus was still alive in 45 A.D. Again it’s a document from a “historical” or
“secular” or “pagan” source and – in Baigent’s mind – it must be true!
To
explain how such a “conspiracy” could have come about, Baigent picks a few
verses from the scriptures and describes them as clues to the real source of
Jesus’ training and the powerful effect brought about by this conspiracy. He claims it all started in Egypt.
Baigent’s
Descent Into “Mysticism” to Explain the Crucifixion and to Explain How The
“Hoax” of Jesus’ Death, Burial and Resurrection Came to Be.
At the end
of the chapter claiming that Jesus did not actually die on the cross, Baigent
offers the following as the foundation for claiming that Jesus received his
training as a “mystic” in Egypt:
“My kingdom is not of this world,”
said Jesus to Pontius Pilate during his interrogation (John 18:36). Jesus explained, “If my kingdom were of this
world, then would my servants fight.”
This is another statement, like that of the advice to pay taxes, that
would have been sure to enrage the hard-line Zealots.
But what does this statement really
mean? And even more curiously, where did
he learn this approach that so differed from that of his politically active
colleagues and contemporaries?
Jesus cannot have learned his trade
in Galilee, for Galilee was the Zealot heartland. The zealots would have controlled his
training and learning, especially given the destiny they had planned for
him. And even if, for some reason, he
had, despite all, adopted such a mystical perspective and a political approach
that accommodated Roman demands, then his Zealot teachers would have known of
his change of heart and would have prevented him from entering Jerusalem as the
prospective messiah.
All this suggests that Jesus was
working to his own plan – one that not only involved his being anointed as
messiah by a woman close to him but ensured that the Zealots would not suspect
the truth until it was too late. We
have to conclude that Jesus learned his trade elsewhere. (Page 131)
Is it
necessary to point out here that Baigent gives Jesus no personal credit at all
for his life, his knowledge and his mission?
If Jesus grew up in Galilee (according to Baigent) he would have been
controlled by the Zealots; since statements Jesus made do not agree with
Baigent’s beliefs about the political movement of the Zealots, then Jesus must
have been controlled by someone else in another location.
Baigent
continues:
A clue can be discerned in a very
curious statement by Jesus reported in one of the Gospels. He says, “When thine eye is single, thy whole
body is full of light.” (Luke 11:34) [p. 132]
Baigent
reverts to the King James translation here, possibly because it is particularly
difficult to understand the “Old English” and he has lifted part of a verse
(leaving out the first phrase, “The light of the body is the eye,” a phrase
similar to our contemporary adage, “The eyes are the window to the soul.”) to
attempt to show the “mystical” nature of this statement. When seen in context, reading the verses
before and after the quote, it is a statement of Jesus’ whole mission – to
bring light (truth) to the world and there is nothing at all “mystical” about
what He said.
"No one
lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl.
Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body
also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of
darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.
Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will
be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you." NIV
Luke 11:33-36
The KJV
translates the Greek word haplous as “single” but it means “folded
together” or “clear” and the NIV translates this as “good” as does the New King
James Version; The New Revised Standard Version translates this as
“healthy”.
See
what Baigent makes of this simple statement:
This is pure mysticism of a type not
otherwise found in the New Testament; nor is it found in the Zealot
teachings we find expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is unique in a Judaean context. We are forced to conclude that Jesus had,
as it were, been initiated somewhere else.
He had had an experience of the Divine Light that mystics all through
the ages have reported.
We need to understand this statement
more fully, for it is crucial. It is
the very pivot around which the truth about Jesus revolves. If we can understand this statement, then we
can understand Jesus; we can understand why he broke with the Zealots, and why
the Church has pushed lies about him ever since. The Church had to perpetuate such lies,
for clearly if it told the truth about Jesus, it would be finished. It is really that important.
There was only one place where Jesus
could have learned this approach. Only
one place among the Jewish residents where these kinds of mystical concepts
were discussed and taught, where the political obsessions current in Judaea
were either absent or much muted. And
that place was Egypt.
It is impossible to understand
Jesus, his teaching, and the events of first-century Judaea without
understanding the Jewish experience in Egypt. [p. 132]
From that
one quotation (not clearly translated in today’s English by the KJV), Baigent
claims to reveal the “truth” about Jesus.
Without it, we cannot “understand Jesus”. We can understand (according to Baigent) why
the Catholic Church, which was not formed for at least 300 years after Jesus
died, reached back in history to form this conspiracy to “perpetuate lies”
about Jesus because without those “lies”, the Catholic Church would have been
“finished”!
From
that one statement, we can “know” that Jesus must have been controlled by those
teachers of mysticism in Egypt!
Chapter
8, “Jesus In Egypt”, makes the claim that Jesus spent the time from His early
teen years until the beginning of His ministry at age 30 in Egypt being trained
by the mystics who lived there. Of
course, there is no foundation for this claim either in the Bible or in secular
history – no hint, no statements, nothing whatsoever on which to base this
claim other than Baigent’s interpretation of this one statement made by Jesus
to be “mystical” in nature.
See how
Matthew records this event:
"Do not
store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and
where thieves break in and steal. But
store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy,
and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also."
"The eye
is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full
of light. [KJV - The light of the body is the eye: if
therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.] But if your eyes are
bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is
darkness, how great is that darkness!" NIV Matthew 6:19-23
Baigent’s
selective quoting of the scripture from Luke, using the language of the KJV to
buttress his point, and claiming that the statement is “not otherwise found in
the New Testament” when it is repeated exactly by Matthew, is inexplicable
unless it is seen as a device used to claim that Jesus was a “mystic”. Other translations of the Gospels’ account of
the statement just wouldn’t do that.
He
spends the next 91 pages of The Jesus Papers in exploring the mysticism
of the religions of Egypt – chapters 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. While this is reasonably well researched and
interestingly written, there is nothing at all to tie this mysticism to Jesus,
other than Baigent’s interpretation of that one scripture containing Jesus’
statement.
He
concludes this section by once again assigning almost “mystical” powers to the
Catholic Church (not formed until more than 300 years after Jesus’ death):
No wonder that the power brokers of
Rome wanted to exclude knowledge of this sacred path as well as knowledge of
these additional Gospels. Unfortunately
– for them – they could do nothing about the Gospels that later became the New
Testament except to control the interpretation of them – to control the
“spin”. The conceit, of course, is that
some theologians with attitude presume to understand hundreds, perhaps a
thousand or two years later, what the writers meant better than they did
themselves. Why ever have we believed
this for so long?
Although there were always scholars
and commentators who saw through the spin, it is only in recent times that the
manipulation and error have come so much to the fore in public. But so far, particularly in the ornate halls
of the Vatican, nothing has changed.
Power prefers spin to truth. (Pages 243-244)
The “Blockbuster” News – The Jesus Papers
Baigent’s narrative of the time he actually touched the “Jesus Papers” comes late in the book. He speaks of a “friend” as being the source of these papers – a friend never named and described only as “an Israeli who had lived for many years in a large European city” and “a wealthy businessman”. [p. 267]
These “Jesus Papers” were found by this “friend” in an excavation in a house in Old City in Jerusalem in 1961 among a “number of objects that allowed him to date the finds at about A. D. 34”. How convenient! That date would be after the most commonly allowed years for Jesus’ crucifixion.
The most accurate dating method for such organic artifacts is radiocarbon dating. Baigent claims that his “friend” could date the papyrus to a specific year – A. D. 34. He does not specify how his friend could date something so accurately when there is no dating method that is so specific. Radiocarbon labs generally report an uncertainty as to the specific date, e.g., something dated to the year 3,000 would be stated as “3000 ± 30BP” indicating a standard deviation of 30 radiocarbon years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
If Baigent were following standard archeological principles and not trying to buttress his claim that Jesus did not die by crucifixion, he would have said the papyrus could be dated from 4 A. D. to 64 A. D. Was this obfuscation deliberate?
Here is his narration:
The
papyrus texts were two Aramaic letters written to the Jewish court, the
Sanhedrin. The writer, my friend
explained, called himself bani meshiha – the Messiah of the Children of
Israel. I was stunned. Was I really hearing this? I listened intently to what my friend was
saying. He continued to explain:
This
figure, the Messiah of the Children of Israel, was defending himself against a
charge made by the Sanhedrin – he had obviously been accused of calling himself
“son of God” and had been challenged to defend himself against this charge. In the first letter, the messiah explained
that what he meant was not that he was “God” but that the “Spirit of God” was
in him – not that he was physically the son of God, but rather that he
was spiritually an adopted son of God.
And he added that everyone who felt similarly filled with the “spirit”
was also a “son of God”.
In other words, the messiah – who must be the teacher we know as Jesus – explicitly states in these letters that he is not divine – or at any rate, no more than anyone else. This, we can be sure, is something the Vatican would not like to be made public.
Having
discovered these two papyrus letters, my friend showed them to the
archaeologists Yigael Yadin and Nahman Avigad and asked their opinion of
them. They both confirmed that these
letters were genuine and important.
Unfortunately,
they also told some Catholic scholars – very likely one or another of the
members of the École Biblique, consultants to the Pontifical Biblical
Commission – for word reached Pope John XXIII.
The pope sent word back to the Israeli experts asking for these
documents to be destroyed.
My
friend refused to do this, but he was prepared to make a promise that they
would not be published for twenty-five years.
This was done.
At the time I met him the twenty-five years were long expired, but my friend still refused to release the two texts because he felt that releasing them would just cause problems between the Vatican and Israel and would inflame anti-Semitism. [p. 269-270]
Naturally I was desperate to see the Jesus papers for myself. I wanted to be certain that they truly
existed, and I wanted to be able to say, “Yes.
They exist. I have seen them.” But my friend declined; he said that he was
not prepared to show me at that time.
But he had many other treasures that interested me greatly, and so, over
the next few months, I traveled several times to his place to chat and to look
at what he had recently purchased. Then
one day, just as I arrived, he came out of his door putting on his coat.
“Come with me now,” he said.
“You have the time?”
Oh, I had the time all right.
We drove to another part of the city, where he led me to a large
safe that was big enough to walk into and, like his cabinets, temperature and
humidity-controlled. I followed him
in. There he presented me with two
framed papyrus documents covered with glass.
Each was about eighteen inches long and nine inches high. I held them.
These were the Jesus papers, the letters from Jesus to the
Sanhedrin. They existed. I had them in my hands. I was silent as I fully enjoyed the moment.
But it was also one of those moments of supreme frustration when I
wished above all that I might have a familiarity with ancient languages, like
some experts I know. It’s like holding a
treasure chest but not having the key to open it. There was, regrettably, nothing I could
do. Despite my many years of experience
with manuscript material, I was overcome with the significance of what I held
in my hands. I was awestruck and
speechless as I thought of the changes in our history that these letters might
cause were they to be released publicly.
But at least they were safe. I
handed them back to him. He smiled. We went to lunch.
I have no idea what we ate that day because I was so utterly
consumed by the implications of what I had just seen. I wanted everyone to know about the
papers. I wanted to stand in the
street and cry out to every passerby that the “smoking gun” exists, I have seen
it and held it!
It was as I suspected when our informant, the Rev. Dr. Douglas Bartlett,
told us of a manuscript containing incontrovertible evidence that Jesus was
still alive in A. D. 45. I had long
suspected that this evidence most assuredly would come in the form of secular
rather than biblical documents. It is
the dry, matter-of-fact nature of such documents that make them so believable –
as in the plain testimony of a man defending himself on a charge before a
court. As I’ve asserted before, if we
are ever to fully understand the Jesus of history, it is amid such mundane
documents that we will get our greatest clues and insights. [p. 271-272]
He
claims to have held the “Jesus Papers” in his hands but he could not read
them and took no photographs or copies of them.
And yet he was “awestruck” by holding these documents in his hands even
though he has only his “friend’s” word as to what they contain.
He does
not question why such a “smoking gun” would not be divulged to the public for
the certain great monetary gain and accompanying fame for anyone who did so but
calmly and unquestioningly accepts this friend’s claim that to do so would
“cause trouble between Israel and the Vatican” and “inflame anti-Semitism”.
Baigent
apparently believes without question that these documents offer proof that Jesus
was not divine and was still alive after the time He was supposedly
crucified. But then, this is the same
man who accepted the stories about the Priory of Sion as a valid and upon which he
based Holy Blood – Holy Grail and the stories that he repeats in this
book.
In
addition to these “Jesus Papers”, Baigent calls to mind the papers he’d been
told about while researching and writing Holy Blood – Holy Grail. Several times in The Jesus Papers he
mentions these papers that prove (to him) that Jesus was still alive in 45 A.
D.
What is even more striking is that he learned of the contents of those papers first mentioned in Grail from a man who had been told of them about 40 years earlier – and that man never actually read those documents. He had learned of them from another man who had supposedly read them about fifty years prior to that time!
Baigent writes:
One of the tasks of any study of
history is to try to account for the facts.
Unfortunately, in this case, there are no facts, at least none that
can be held up as beyond criticism.
We have no texts about Jesus, no Roman records, no family papers or
inscriptions. All we have is the
statement, reported secondhand by the Rev. Dr. Douglas William Guest Bartlett,
that “Jesus was alive in the year A. D. 45” and that his survival was the
result of help from “extreme zealots”.
The Rev. Bartlett heard this from
his mentor, Canon Alfred Lilley, who had translated the original document and
asserted this as a fact. Bartlett
clearly considered the information to be accurate. Nevertheless, we are dealing with a
manuscript that Lilley had read forty or more years earlier and was recalling
late in his life. Bartlett was repeating
the story another fifty or so years after that.
We are right to wonder how accurate those recollections would be.
Mention of the “extreme zealots”
sounds like an opinion rather than something within the document itself. To call any group “extreme” is to make a
value judgment; who, in this case, is making that judgment? Canon Lilley, perhaps? Furthermore, as we have seen, Jesus would
have been hated by the Zealots after he refused to support their opposition to
the Roman taxes. So this statement is
difficult to support and is, as I suggest, more likely an opinion.
But what is significant is the date,
A. D. 45, when Jesus is said to have been still alive. This is valuable data because a date is
not open to interpretation: A. D. 45 is easy to remember, even after many
years, and it is a fact that remains true whatever spin might swirl
about it. This is the only part of
Bartlett’s letter that I can accept without dispute or suspicion that opinion
has become confused with fact. [p. 263]
This whole statement would be laughable were it not obvious that Baigent is completely serious. Baigent states that the use of the “judgmental” term “extreme” calls that point into question but a secondhand memory of a date read 100 years ago is “a fact that remains true”!
This and other such flights of fancy call into question the
believable content of this entire book and all of Baigent’s work.
Summary of The Jesus Papers
In the
last two chapters of The Jesus Papers, Baigent attempts to put all his
claims in context: Jesus was taught and controlled either by the Zealots and
their political movement or by the mystics of Egypt who trained him; that Jesus
never claimed to be divine; that He did not die on the cross but was given a
drug that made Him appear to be dead; that He was later resuscitated and was
still alive in 45 A.D; that Jesus wrote letters to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem a
few years after the time of the crucifixion and denied that He had ever claimed
to be the actual son of God; and that all of this could be proven if only
certain documents from the early years and even documents found among the Dead
Sea Scrolls had not been suppressed by the all-powerful Catholic Church. He further claims that Paul’s writings are so
divergent from the rest of the New Testament because he never knew Jesus.
Of
course, the underlying thesis of this book is that almost all of Christianity
is a lie and that the Bible should be disregarded or discarded entirely and
that we should rely on his knowledge of the “truth” about Jesus.
Michael
Baigent does not deal with the many scriptures that do show Jesus'
divinity in the Bible. His answer is to
dismiss all of them by not only avoiding mentioning them but to claim that the
Catholic hierarchy has so distorted the scriptures when they “canonized”
them that they are largely inaccurate and unreliable as a source for believing
in the divinity of our Saviour.
Such
claims are easy to make but not as easy to prove as Michael
Baigent would have us believe.
Baigent puts all of his faith in “ancient writings” outside of the Bible
as being accurate – how so? What
makes other “ancient writings” any more accurate than the Bible? Does a document's antiquity and its antipathy
to the Bible equate with accuracy?
There were
many other people and groups present in the Palestine of Jesus'
day, outside the established religious sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees
and Essenes, such as Greek and Jewish philosophers – not to mention Roman
ones – who wouldn't have supported the story of the resurrection. No doubt many of these wrote documents or
even an article or two for whatever passed for the equivalent of the local
newspaper in those days.
Finding ancient writings from those days doesn't necessarily mean they are accurate or should be regarded as a “viable alternative” to the truth of the Bible and in no way prove the inaccuracy of the Bible.
As we mentioned earlier in this paper, Baigent
is quite a good investigator and writer
and would be an even better one if not for his
propensity to give credence to any pagan, atheist or secular document over the
Bible.
As
to his claim that Jesus’ death on the cross was faked and there was no
resurrection, this is simply restating a lie concocted by the Jewish Sanhedrin
and told by the Roman soldiers who witnessed the events preceding the
resurrection but accepted bribes to repeat the lie given them by the Sanhedrin.
After
the account of the appearance of an angel who rolled away the stone that was
placed over the opening to Jesus’ grave – which almost scared them to death –
Matthew added this:
While the women were on their way,
some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests
everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and
devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them,
"You are to say, `His disciples came during the night and stole him away
while we were asleep.' If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy
him and keep you out of trouble."
So the soldiers took the money and
did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among
the Jews to this very day. NIV Matthew 28:11-15
The Chief priests and Pharisees were so afraid that Jesus'
disciples were going to “fake” a resurrection that they demanded Roman guards be put on Jesus'
tomb. These leaders knew exactly what Jesus taught – because he openly taught for 3 1/2 years – but
it’s also clear that they did not believe him
– they called him a “deceiver”. Their concern was that Jesus’ disciples would steal his body from
the tomb and “fake” a resurrection by telling everyone that he had been
resurrected, thereby giving credence to his claims of
rising the third day — the only sign he said
he would give an “evil and adulterous
generation” that he was the Messiah
[Matthew 12:38-40].
With
Jesus death on the cross and the Roman guards there to assure that the
disciples could not perpetrate the fraud of stealing Jesus’ body and claiming
resurrection, they thought their problems in dealing with Jesus and his unusual
power with the people were over.
But the story the guards told caused these men to take a completely new stance and drove them to desperate measures in an effort to hang onto their positions of authority. This “emergency” meeting dissolved into a hastily prepared “cover story” that would explain the events described by the soldiers.
It's almost incredible to think that the
actions of a group of Jewish religious leaders could filter down to our
time now and affect us and possibly be
responsible for influencing Baigent to
write such a book as he has done —
but this may be exactly what has happened.
Because of the lie concocted by these Jewish leaders, everything Baigent has claimed about the existence of papers claiming Jesus was alive in A.D. 45 may very well be true! We’re speaking of the ones Baigent says the Rev. Dr. Douglas Bartlett said his mentor, Canon Alfred Lilley, had told him about some 40+ years before, that Lilley claimed to have unearthed and read some 50 years before that, which prove (according to Baigent) that Jesus did not die on the cross and was not resurrected.
The Bible does not say why the Roman guards
didn't report directly back to Pilate – they
were his soldiers. Perhaps they were confused by the
events. Nor does the Bible say how long it
took them to recover from their fright and panic.
What is abundantly clear is that all of the soldiers in question — no matter how many there were — suddenly became rich soldiers by taking a “large sum of money” to report to Pilate only what the chief priests and elders told them to say. Not only did the chief priests offer these soldiers vast sums of money but also backup and protection from their Roman boss, the Governor.
When the chief
priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a
large sum of money, telling them, "You are to say, `His disciples came
during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this report
gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble."
NIV Matthew 28:12-14
Is this not – in effect – the same thing that the papers described by Canon Alfred Lilley said? Why would finding an ancient, written account of this lie be considered so momentous? The Bible itself tells the origin of the lie and recounts the whole story for all to read and understand. It’s not blockbuster news nor is it even new!
The Jewish priests couldn't do anything about the two women that
got away but they could do the only other thing that would defuse the situation
and allow them to retain their power and hold over the religious world of their
day — they bribed the only other (male) witnesses to the presence of a
'holy angel of God' pronouncing the validity of Jesus' crucifixion and
resurrection and basically confirmation of his entire ministry.
Do you realize
what this “brilliant strategy” could have meant in
terms of the spread of Christianity? It could
have severely slowed the growth of it considerably by putting a huge stumbling
block in the way of potential converts. Only two women
spread the news of the angel's words — and
what status did women have in those days? Who do you think would have been
more believable —
the established Jewish religious order
and the word of professional Roman soldiers or the
testimony of two women of a relatively new “sect” with radically different views to that of
the established or traditional Jewish religion?
But it didn’t work!
The
reason that it didn’t work was that too many people saw Jesus after His
resurrection and the 12 good men He appointed as ambassadors of His Kingdom and
to whom He gave great power did what He asked them to do – provide powerful
witness to the truth of what really happened.
The immense growth of Christianity and the fact that the whole story,
including the description of the origin of the lie that He did not die and was
not resurrected, demonstrates how successful they were in spreading the truth.
As
the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth:
For what I received I passed on to
you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according
to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After
that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time,
most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he
appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me
also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not
even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
NIV 1 Corinthians 15:3-9
The irony is
that Baigent has been pursuing evidence of a nearly-2,000-year-old
lie perpetrated by Jewish priests in Biblical times and has so far based parts of two best
sellers – Holy Blood – Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers on this
lie.
What could
Canon Alfred Lilley (the man who supposedly once possessed the ancient
document— if it indeed existed — claiming Jesus did not die on the cross and was
alive in 45 A.D.) have “discovered”? It
would only be some form or a follow up to this very same lie told almost 2,000 years ago in written form! It could have been an almost 2,000-year-old
scroll or parchment of a “report” to Pilate or a “confession” of one
or more of those same Roman soldiers described in
Matthew’s account of the incident stating that they “witnessed” the removal of
Jesus' body by his disciples!
So
there is the possibility that such a document might still exist. Baigent has been
chasing after this ancient lie to prove his
theories without seeming to realize that he
is only repeating the lie concocted by the Jewish religious
authorities. Could the
saying that was “commonly taught among the
Jews” have been written down as well as taught by word of mouth? The answer is that it was most likely, and probably was written down at least in the
soldiers’ reports to Pilate and perhaps in other venues and then repeated
generation after generation right down to our day. There were likely “follow-up” stories told
and written to continue to try to justify the previous lies told.
That is a joke on Baigent — played on him by ancient Jewish chief
priests. The “punchline” is that he is
repeating a lie recorded in the Bible to prove that the Bible is not authentic!
This part of his books contain, in this sense, little more than repetition of a
quote from the Bible written almost 2,000 years ago: “His disciples came and stole him away by night
while we slept.”
Perspective – The Catholic
“Cover Up”?
One thing remains a mystery to us concerning The Jesus Papers — “Exposing the Greatest Cover Up in History” — why Baigent lays all the blame for that cover up at the “door” of the Catholic Church?
Has the Catholic Church denied the truth of the resurrection? No! Have they denied the truth of the Crucifixion? No! Have they somehow “doctored” the scriptures to add or claim a “divinity” of our Saviour that just wasn't there to begin with? No!
Baigent seems to think the Catholic Church has done exactly that and adds the accusation that they are hiding the “true knowledge” that the death and resurrection were in actuality “faked”. This would make not only the Catholic Church a sham, phony institution but also the rest of Christianity.
In order to pull off this subterfuge – doctoring the scriptures and hiding the truth – Baigent also claims the Catholic Church altered or doctored the scriptures and then “canonized” them in the New Testament. Did they really? Where's the proof of that?
Baigent doesn't even consider the possibility that the New
Testament might have been “gathered together” — effectively “canonized” — by the early Christians themselves. In perspective, this is quite surprising because he is quite good
at research.
There is a gap in
written and oral history of the church from about 50 A. D. to about 200 A. D. during which time very
little if anything is known. The thorough written history of the Catholic
Church effectively begins with the Council of Nicaea in the 300’s A.D. and only
the writings of a few “church fathers” speak to earlier times. The formal Catholic “canon” reached its
present state in approximately 367 A. D.
Almost
all agree that the latest book of the New
Testament canon was written in the last half of the first century. Many believe that all these books we call the
New Testament were written before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple
in 67 – 70 A. D. for the simple (logical) reason that none of these books
specifically mentions that destruction, of which Jesus had prophesied [Matthew
24, Mark 13, Luke 21].
The Catholic Church became a full blown hierarchy around 350 years after Jesus' death and gave its formal
imprimatur to the “canon” in 367 A. D.
What happened to the books of the New Testament and any other “Gospels”
or writing of the apostles during that 150 – 300 year time span?
It
is possible that the Gospels were transmitted orally for quite a long time
before they were written down. Perhaps
those who wrote these books did so at the request of the apostles rather than
the apostles themselves doing the writing. Or perhaps the apostles never put
anything in writing but their followers wrote down the versions they had heard
from the original sources. Even if they
were written down immediately by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John before 67 A. D.
or by one of their disciples, how long would such documents survive without
being copied? How many copies were
made? To whom were they distributed and
how widely were they distributed? The
zeal with which the first century Christians spread the message of Jesus is
obvious from the pages of the Bible and from secular history.
Are we to make the assumption that the early
Christians did not distribute multiple copies
of the gospels and letters written by the apostles of Jesus? Would they have not wanted to share the truth
and teaching of Jesus as witnessed, expounded and taught by the apostles?
There would be, common sense asserts, not only hundreds but also maybe
thousands of copies of these scriptures gathered together by enthusiastic early
Christians who would have been eager to preserve these precious documents.
There may have been writings other than those in our present canon
grouped with those in the canon at various times but only those that could be
traced orally or in writing to the apostles (including Paul) would have
credence.
Even one hundred years after the last apostle (likely John) died, the most the church leaders could have done would be to change the order of the New Testament books slightly and eliminate the ones without proper credentials or the ones that conflict with the body of writing they found already gathered. There would have been far too many copies for them to do much else.
Because it is integral
to Baigent's assertion that the Catholics “doctored” the scriptures, we hereby state emphatically – using
logic and common sense – that the Catholic Church could not possibly have
doctored the New Testament other than in very small ways (cf. I John 5:7, which
supports the Catholic doctrine of the “Holy Trinity” but which is acknowledged
as a mistranslation of or addition to the original text).
Why?
Because the writings of the eye witnesses to
the story of Jesus was the church literature of
that day and age! Every single Christian of those times who could
read or write would have wanted
their own accurate copies of every single
writing of every author.
Even without the printing press there would have been far too
many copies of the scriptures for the Catholic Church or anyone else to alter them significantly
even if they wanted to. Even if someone or some organization tried to find and destroy every copy, some people would have
hidden their copies and moved to other
geographical areas taking their precious copies
with them, and start the preservation
process all over again.
Every scrap – every portion of the New Testament books found – agrees
almost 100% with the scriptures we have today.
There are spelling and grammar errors but these are corrected by other
scrolls and codexes and no significant variation of the canon has ever been
found.
The Catholic Church of 367 A. D. could not be sure that there might not be many other copies around that would have contradicted any doctoring or re-writing of already existing texts — they would have been immediately detected by anyone who possessed the originals or copies of the originals.
Do we really think that the ancient world of that day didn't have
secular and religious scholars every bit as good as
those of today who would be able to detect a fake book or text in much the
same way as art dealers today are able (mostly) to detect fake art from the
original or genuine article?
In
the “big picture” of the history of God’s church, we conclude that God’s plan
for getting the message of His New Covenant with all of humanity worked to
perfection.
Through
the apostles personally selected by Jesus (including Paul), God wrote the
scriptures we call the New Testament. He
used the monks and other scribes of what became the Catholic Church to pass
down these scriptures through the “dark ages”; He used Martin Luther and the
other “reformers” to call attention to the error that had crept in to the
Catholic Church; He used the inventors of the printing presses to spread His
word to everyone who could read or who could find someone to read the
scriptures to them.
Today,
He uses the Internet and people like Alan Ruth — the Webmaster at http://www.biblestudy.org to inform any
of the billions of people on this planet of His word and to bring together people
like the authors of this review – one in Australia and the other in the United
States.
Not
long before His death, Jesus prayed for these apostles who would write the
scriptures we call the New Testament:
"I am coming to you now, but
I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the
full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world
has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them
from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify
them by the truth; your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, I
have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be
truly sanctified."
"My prayer is not for them
alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that
all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they
also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." NIV
John 17:13-21
No one and nothing can thwart the will of God!
Apology and Explanation
to Catholics
It
has been necessary for us to point out a number of what we see as errors in Catholic
traditions and teaching because so much of Baigent’s theories are formed to
combat those traditions and teaching.
And yet we find that Baigent confuses the traditions and teaching with
the actual scriptures and ends up denigrating both.
We
wish to state clearly that we are not denigrating Catholics individually or
even the religion itself – just pointing out that it is not exactly the same
religion taught in the Bible. We know
many honest, God-fearing Catholics who exhibit many of the traits espoused by
Jesus. The Catholic Church itself –
while involved in some pretty horrendous phases like the Inquisition – cannot
be blamed for the actions of its leaders without also pointing out the many
good things the organization has accomplished over the centuries of its
existence.
No
one and no human religious organization has a corner on the truth. All human religious organizations have
experienced splits and schisms over the years as leaders have come and gone and
none of them is without sin!
We
say this because we do not want Catholic readers of this document to think
we’ve singled them out as being in error.
We’ll just say, to close this apology section, that we find it somewhat
amusing that the Catholic Church claims and is proven to have changed the
weekly day of worship from the Sabbath (Saturday) to Sunday and that this is
taken by Catholics to be a sign of the authority of the Church. The amusing part is that almost all of the
Protestant Churches – most offshoots of the Catholic Church and which deny its
authority – follow that lead without question.
We offer this small apology as a way of showing our sincerity in what was written above and although we sometimes see humour where others may not we are serious about that apology.
Conclusion
Books
such as The Jesus Papers and Holy Blood, Holy Grail and video
productions like James Cameron’s recent “documentary” of the discovery of
Jesus’ family tomb serve an excellent purpose: they force Christians to check
out what they believe and why they believe it.
They ask important questions: Can we trust the traditions and teachings
of the Catholic Church and other religious organizations? Is the Bible really true? Are the accounts of Jesus life, death and
resurrection only the “mythology” concocted by those who were trying to protect
their power and station in religious organizations?
The
important thing is that each of us must reach conclusions based on fact, faith
and common sense – not necessarily in that order. Perhaps some of those whose belief in
Christianity is based on what others have told them or based on a superficial
reading of the Bible will struggle with these questions — that is a good thing.
As the
apostle Paul wrote almost 2,000 years ago:
You, then, why
do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will
all stand before God's judgment seat.
It is written:
"`As surely as I live,' says the Lord, `every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.'"
So then, each
of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead,
make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's
way. NIV Romans 14:10-13
Baigent and many others are placing “stumbling blocks” in our way but those who are willing to consider what they write or show in their videos and then read the Bible and give thought to what they read there will find that these obstacles only make us stronger when they are overcome.
It’s not appropriate for us to “judge” Michael Baigent, especially as to his motivation for writing books like Holy Blood – Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers. We don't know his heart nor do we know the circumstances of Michael's personal life and upbringing.
That he is confused about the truth and his own beliefs is an assessment that we can make with reasonable assurance. The Bible says:
Train up a
child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
[Proverbs 22:6].
This is speaking of God’s way of life – the way of love.
Clearly,
Baigent has departed from his upbringing and the reason for his departure from
his Catholic faith seems fairly clear to the authors of this
review. If the Catholic Church taught all of the truth and only the
truth faithfully — without any error whatsoever and without relying on
traditions developed by men — then it is highly unlikely that Baigent or any
other individual with understanding would depart from it, especially if he has
been shown and received nothing but unconditional love by his teachers.
The truth is that many people depart from all churches either voluntarily or forcibly –if they don't agree with their teachers – and so we have to ask, “Why?”
There is a parallel that can be drawn from a simple but ubiquitous example of what happens when children learn that their parents and other authority figures have misled them about something important to those children.
Look at how children react to the revelation either by other children or by their chagrined parents that Santa Claus does not exist. They’ve been taught that he is a “magical” figure capable of supernatural things – delivering toys to all the children in world; owning reindeer that can fly and pull a sled across the skies and granting the wishes of children.
It’s easy to see the shock, disbelief and disillusionment in their faces when they learn that something they have been taught and grown up with all their young lives is false. This sometimes results in those disillusioned children not trusting completely anything else their parents or others teach them – of a religious nature or otherwise. Many well-meaning parents have set their children on the road to cynicism by pretending that Santa Claus is real.
We don't and can't know all the details, but it is our assessment that something of this order occurred to Baigent when he discovered that much of what he was taught by his Catholic parents and the authority figures in that church as being true and supposedly “unquestionable” was demonstrably false. The Jesus Papers is filled with examples of this disillusionment and cynicism.
In fact, with his being raised as a Catholic where the traditions and teachings of that church are given equal or greater weight than the scriptures, it’s completely understandable that Baigent confuses the two. It’s tragic that because the former can be proven untrue, he also discards the latter as false.
God is the master potter and we are the clay in His hands [Isaiah 64:8] but if that clay has become brittle or inflexible then it can't be worked with and molded into the design that the potter desires.
If we study of the scriptures with rigid and inflexible ideas or notions or preconceived dogma we should not expect to emerge with understanding because that inflexibility will distort everything we might otherwise learn.
That we believe is what has basically happened in Michael Baigent's case and what has prompted the series of books he has written. But that doesn't matter — we must deal with what Baigent has written — we cannot concern ourselves too much how he came to be that way.
We have given examples of how Baigent confuses the traditions of the Catholic Church with the teaching of the scriptures; we’ve shown how he gives authenticity to almost any historical or secular manuscript but denies that the scriptures themselves are true; we’ve shown how he extrapolates from the scriptures and the apocryphal manuscripts to support his theories that Jesus did not die, or was executed by the Roman government because of His political activities; or that Jesus was not resurrected and that the very church of God itself has lied and covered up this “new truth” – that Jesus was only a man, married, had children and perpetuated what has to be the greatest hoax in all of written history.
We’ve also shown how thin Baigent’s research gets when it comes to determining the authenticity of non-Biblical ancient documents, especially those that fit his theories and/or contradict the Bible or the traditions of the Catholic Church.
We’ve used a lot of words ourselves, to give you the essence of Baigent’s theories and the flaws we find in those theories according to our understanding and it is our hope that you find some profit from reading this article — as we did in writing it.
We felt compelled to defend our faith and the authenticity of the Bible and we find ourselves in some sense grateful to Michael Baigent and The Jesus Papers for the opportunity to test our faith and to increase our knowledge of the scriptures.
The confusion of the teaching of the Catholics and other human religious organizations with that of the Bible leads many to loss of faith as evidenced by Baigent. We earnestly hope and pray that Baigent and others sharing his confusion will turn to the Bible with “new eyes” and open hearts and learn to discern the difference in the traditions and teaching of men and the truth that comes from the Bible.
The Jesus Papers represents a challenge to all of Christianity of which we are only a very small part. The authors represent the very smallest “spiritual unit” that exists — our Lord and Saviour said: “Wherever two or more are gathered together in my name, There I will be in the midst of them.” [Matthew 18:20] This is just one of the many promises made that we hold dear.
There comes a time in all our lives when we must stand up and be counted — this is one of those times for us. We just could not let this challenge to all of Christianity go unanswered!
We have given this review our best shot. We are not members of any church except God's spiritual one and therefore have no institutional axe to grind and no biased beliefs toward any man or woman. There are good men and women inside and outside all churches and we've given all of you our honest appraisal of Michael Baigent's The Jesus Papers.
Those who read the Bible with an open mind and continue to search for the truth will find it.
Clay Willis & Glenn Davies
Acworth, Georgia and Victoria, Australia
May 19, 2007
Author’s Postscript: The authors of this article first met vie e-mail and the Internet in December 2003 as a result of Glenn submitting a question to http://www.biblestudy.org, a web site at which Clay, along with a dozen or so other “mature” Christians, attempts to answer questions submitted to that site. One e-mail led to another and then another and the conversation has been going non-stop since then. In December 2006, Glenn read The Jesus Papers (a gift from his son) and decided to send a copy to Clay, which was received on December 26th. After finishing reading the book in January 2007, they began discussing whether anyone would respond to the book and whether such response would be adequate. After further discussion, they decided to review and rebut the book.
Questions or comments should be directed to claywillis@bellsouth.net.