Some "recent past" revisionism examples

In American culture, a double standard is surely at the top of the “food chain.” As Dr. Paul Maier states: “You dare not attack any of the religious systems of the world…except for Christianity.”

So, we have the “Jesus Game” (As described by Dr. Paul Maier)

· “Begin with a general sketch of Jesus on the basis of the Gospels, but then distort it as much as you please…The prize is maximum coverage in the nation’s print and broadcast media. Any frowns from the faithful will be ignored amid the skyrocketing sales of your product.”

Is this the first time this has been done? Absolutely NOT!

· England’s Hugh Schonfield unveiled a portrait of Jesus in 1966 that he defined as a false “Savior” who schemed the whole Golgotha scenario.

· Nikos Kazantzakis’ book The Last Temptation of Christ, later made into a movie, cast Jesus as an object of St. Paul’s scorn.

· Also in the tumultuous ‘60’s, we might even have expected to see “Jesus, the Radical Revolutionary,” courtesy of the S. G. F. Brandon books.

· Of course, we must also remember authors like John M. Allegro, another British scholar who once worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls but ruined his reputation by favoring us with the image of “Jesus the Mushroom Cultist” in 1970. In his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Allegro seriously argued that Jesus was invented by myth-makers who got high on the hallucinogenic qualities of the red-topped, white-flecked fly agaric mushroom and wrote the Gospels to communicate their cultic secrets!

· Not to be outdone, Moron Smith presented “Christ the Master Magician” in his 1973 book The Secret Gospel, explaining away Jesus’ miracles as sleight-of-hand.

· In claims similar to those in the Qur’an, Australian Donovan Joyce’s The Jesus Scroll unveiled “Jesus the Senescent Savior” who survived Golgotha and lived on to the ripe old age of eighty.

· “Jesus the Happy Husband” staged his debut in several books, the most influential of which was Baigent, Lincoln, and Leight’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 1980’s. These authors spun the impossible saga that is the heart of the storyline of The Da Vinci Code – that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that their offspring persisted in the Merovingian dynasty of medieval France.

· After Jesus as “The Clownish Christ” in Godspell and “The Rock Redeemer” in Jesus Christ Superstar (both forgivable) came the 90’s and the irrepressible John Dominic Crossan, oracle of the Jesus Seminar, who gifted us with “Jesus the Rustic Redeemer” (or, perhaps, “Seinfeld – the Savior,” depending on which chapter you follow in his The Historical Jesus – The Life of a Jewish Mediterranean Peasant).

And, this is not all of them…but as the ‘plot thickens’ as to who Jesus really was (and is), we must have a way of finding the truth, for not all of these “authors” have the right idea. There must be a “standard” by which we are able to tell. For this, we turn to the standard that the witnesses accounted for, The Holy Bible. These are the writings of the first century witnesses that account for the true life, work, and claims of the real Jesus. Of course, this isn’t often who we see portrayed.

Whenever one of the networks attempts a serious documentary on Jesus, it usually tips scholarly representation heavily in the direction of radical, revisionist critics rather than serious, centrist biblical scholars, as witness Peter Jennings’ ABC special “In Search of Jesus,” which aired in June 2002, or Dateline NBC in February, 2004.

And now, crowning this retinue of revisionism, comes The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. For one, this seems to be just a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1980). Dan is also capitalizing on what is already a vulnerable target: the Church. Current scandals with Roman Catholicism due to the pedophilia cases and other clergy and church leaders making horrific decisions in our society, allows Dan Brown to capitalize on the disingenuous regards most have for the church. Add to that the rise of radical feminism and the women’s movement (as seen on the cover of Newsweek (Dec. 8, 2003).

So, why is this so dangerous? Because of biblical illiteracy rates rising in our culture (consider less than 8% of the Millennial generation is in church on any given Sunday), many readers/moviegoers assume that all of the supplementary contextual and background detail involving Christianity is true WHEN IT IS NOT! A few factual references are heavily interlaced with fiction or outright falsehood. To represent such details as fact is positively dishonest.

For example, on the first page in the book (after the table of contents and such) we read a heading of “FACT” under which Dan Brown writes statements that form the basis of the entire novel. Furthermore, Brown has publicly clarified that he believes that the conspiracy theory he presents in The Da Vinci Code is actually true (Good Morning America, ABC: Nov. 3, 2003 and Primetime Live, ABC: Nov. 3, 2003).

Please remember our Lord’s regards for us in these last days…that many false prophets will be among us, and that the spirit of the anti-christ(s) will work against us. How do we determine these things? We test the spirits (1 John 4). See Colossians 2:8; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; and Eph. 5:6; but put on the armor of God…Eph. 6:10-20! We overcome this demonic teaching by taking all things to THE WORD MADE FLESH – JESUS, who gave us His Word as a ruler and measure for these things.