Last night ABC aired the program, "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci." Essentially it was nothing more than a companion video adverting the book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. I video-taped it (though I missed the opening few minutes).
On the one hand, the program did actually say things like: "There's no historical or biblical evidence for Jesus and Mary Magdalen being married." They admitted they could find only one art historian who would affirm that the "female" figure in the painting of the Last Supper by Da Vinci was not St John the Evangelist, but was "definitely" a woman (though Mary Magdalene?). Several of their theologians admitted that arguments purporting a line in contradiction to the Church's teaching were at best arguments from silence.
Sadly, for most of the "biblical" discussion, they relied on Elaine Pagels and her defense of the Gospel of Thomas (and other Gnostic gospels), without clearly explaining their dubious status. For example, the Gospel of Thomas says: "114 Simon Peter said to them, 'Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.' Jesus said, 'Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.'" Scholars, so-called, want to tout the Thomas Gospel as more authentic to Jesus' teaching--even claiming it predates the original Gospels, which is laughable and which no serious scholar will admit to believing--yet always fail to mention this verse (or declare that it was "added later"--how convenient).
What was even sadder is that the program so clearly presented Brown's book as somehow historical! They kept interviewing him for comments on these various allegations about Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci, as though he were some imminent scholar and not a writer of a work of FICTION! Puh-leaze.
I'll go back and look it over more carefully. It was at least an hour of entertainent--because it certainly was light on facts and truth.
Posted by Clifton at November 4, 2003 09:00 AM | TrackBack