DC 2003: "These books can't
possibly compete with centuries of established
history, especially when that history is endorsed by
the ultimate best-seller of all time."
"Don't tell me Harry Potter
is actually about the Holy Grail."
"I was referring to the Bible."
This line in Da Vinci
Code about Harry Potter will help
highlight the main issue with Da Vinci Code.
I'll call it the Harry Potter Effect. In
recent years the world has witnessed a phenomenon of
mass scale interest in the story of Harry Potter.
Through this, a process was brought to light whereby
whole cultures of people fixate on, or fall under
the spell, of a certain story. The character and
plot elements in Harry Potter are a perfect
"fit" for a huge number of humans, people relate to
that story as an archetype, a universal ideal, an
elementary idea that is a fundamental expression of
shared psyche among (so many of) us. It's what so
many had been waiting for, without even realizing
they'd been waiting for anything. The appeal is
subliminal; Harry Potter satisfied a basic
need.
My point is that through the
spontaneous reaction of a mass audience to Harry
Potter, we are able to see a re-play of the
phenomenon that took hold around the Mediterranean
two millennia ago. There was a similar reaction to
the story that came to be named the Gospel of
Mark. The Gospel of Mark is the
blockbuster story that hit a perfect "fit" in the
psyche of people who became familiar with it. The
appeal of the story itself remains unaffected by
whether we consider that gospel to be a biography,
and whether or not we agree that Jesus was real or
fictional.
But when considering Da
Vinci Code it is useful to know details about
evidence regarding the story of Jesus. Our reaction
to those facts will affect our perception of Da
Vinci Code, because this book proceeds on an
assumption that the case is closed in favor of evidence
that proves Jesus was a real person in
history, and not, like Harry Potter, a
character of fiction. However, the actual evidence
suggests that there really is only the Gospel of
Mark, and several dozen spin-off stories (all
the other gospels) that expand, elaborate, and alter
that unique blockbuster. The Gospel of Mark,
like Harry Potter today, rapidly captivated
the imagination of the ancient world two thousand
years ago.
To place this issue in
perspective, below is a quick review of the
evidence, the only known evidence, to
suggest that Jesus was a real person…
In January 2005, David Van
Biema, the religion editor for Time
magazine, was interviewed on the PBS Charlie
Rose Show. "What does historical
scholarship tell us about [Jesus], anything? Or is
it just faith?" asked Charlie Rose.
"There's only so much that
exists outside of the Gospels," answered Van
Biema, "a couple of brief sentences about Jesus
in some Roman historians' work."
The above brief exchange is
the furthest extent to which I've seen
anyone in television media try to answer the
question about evidence, what can be agreed upon as
being indisputable historical evidence. The facts
about the evidence regarding Jesus, the "couple
of brief sentences in some Roman historians' work,"
are cited and analyzed below:
Around 40 years after Jesus is
said to have died, his story, which came to be
called the Gospel of Mark, was written down.
Two decades later, which is at least 60 years after
Jesus died, a history book called Jewish
Antiquities, written by the Jewish writer
Flavius Josephus, contains the following passages:
(1)
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if
indeed one ought to call him a man.
For he was one who wrought surprising feats and
was a teacher of such people as accept the truth
gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the
Greeks. He was the Messiah. When
Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the
highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to
be crucified, those who had in the first place
come to love him did not give up their affection
for him. On the third day he appeared to
them restored to life, for the prophets of God
had prophesied these and countless other
marvelous things about him. And the
tribe of Christians, so called after him, has
still to this day not disappeared.
(2) And
so he [Ananus, the high priest] convened the
judges of the Sanhedrin [in 62 C.E. during the
interregnum between the prefects Festus and
Albinus] and brought before them a man named
James, the brother of Jesus who was called the
Christ, and certain others. - (Josephus Jewish
Antiquities 18:63, 20:200)
Scholars and historians debate
the origins of some of the above words. John Crossan
explains, "The problem is that Josephus' account is
too good to be true, too confessional to be
impartial, too Christian to be Jewish. It is either
a total or a partial interpolation by the Christian
editors who preserved Josephus' works…The words in
bold italic represent interpolations deliberately
but delicately Christianizing, in the words of John
Meier, the 'fairly neutral - or even purposely
ambiguous - tone' of Josephus' original
description."
Even if we take the passage as
it is and accept that Josephus wrote every word, we
are still referring to a writing that was made six
decades after Jesus died, and two decades
after the Gospel of Mark started to
circulate. The question then becomes, to what extent
can these words of Josephus be considered
"historical evidence" that Jesus was a real person,
and not a character made up for the Gospel of
Mark? Common sense dictates that it is
entirely possible, and even probable, that Josephus
(like many other people in Rome when he wrote these
observations in 93 C.E.) is commenting on the Gospel
of Mark, which was the blockbuster story of
the day. Writing his Antiquities 60 years
after Jesus died, and 20 years after Mark was
written, Josephus wouldn't necesssarily be able to
know whether the story really happened, or if it was
made up by a storyteller long before Josephus was
born. The brief passage in Josephus' writings does
not explain how he became aware of the Jesus story.
It is possible, and probable, that, like many people
in those days, Josephus knew about the Gospel of
Mark. We need only think of Harry Potter,
a story that nearly everyone has heard about. And
the passage shown above of Josephus' writing is
about the cult of followers of the Jesus
story. That these people could be fans of a
fictional story is a real possibility, if not probability.
The point is, this brief
passage from Josephus, written 60 years after the
death of Jesus, can not be considered proof, nor
even evidence, that Jesus was a real person, no
matter how much we wish to believe in Jesus. Such
belief can still only be based on faith in what one
wishes to be true.
The next incident of Jesus
being mentioned in a verifiable history book, where
we know who the writer is (as opposed to gospel
stories, which are all written by unnamed sources),
comes from Cornelius Tacitus, the aristocratic Roman
historian whose father-in-law was Gnaeus Julius
Agricola, governor of Britain between 77 and 84 C.E.
The passage from Tacitus is even briefer than
Josephus' blurb, and Tacitus wrote this around 120
C.E., some 90 years after Jesus died (which
is about 50 years after the Gospel of Mark
was written, and about 30 years after Josephus wrote
his quick mention of Jesus). Tacitus is writing
about how a rumor had blamed Emperor Nero for the
fire that swept Rome in 64 C.E.:
Therefore
to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits,
and punished with the utmost refinements of
cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices,
whom the crowd styled Christian. Christians, the
founder of the name, had undergone the death
penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of
the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious
superstition was checked for the moment, only to
break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home
of the disease, but in the capital itself, where
all things horrible or shameful in the world
collect and find a vogue. (Tacitus, Annals
15.55; Moore & Jackson 4.282-283)
The same problems that prevent
us from regarding Josephus's words about Jesus as
"evidence" are here only amplified. Like Josephus,
Tacitus is noting an incident of some 50 years prior
that had involved Emperor Nero. And looking back a
half century at that, Tacitus is then looking at the
cult of Christians in 64 C.E. who were already at
that time yet another 30 years removed from the time
of Jesus. As with Josephus, we have to again ask,
how did Tacitus become aware of the story of Jesus?
He is commenting about a "founder of the name" that
these people said lived a century earlier than
Tacitus.
It is possible, and likely,
that the Christians under Nero were the same as
Christians today - they heard the Gospel of Mark
and decided they wanted to believe it is true. By
that time, three decades after the incident was
supposed to have happened, it no longer mattered
whether or not an unknown storyteller simply made
the whole thing up. The story was already being
accepted because of its message. Verifiable and
accurate facts about this story had long since
ceased to matter.
Tacitus could have learned
about the Jesus story from the writings of Josephus,
or he could have known about it from the Gospel
of Mark, or any of the spin off stories that
were becoming popular at the time (Luke, John, etc).
He could have learned about Jesus because of stories
about how Nero murdered Christians decades earlier,
long before Tacitus was born. But to suggest that
this paragraph from Tacitus, like the one from
Josephus, constitutes "historical evidence" that
proves Jesus was real is not a credible
assertion. Such a belief is still only a claim of
faith in what we wish for.
We can speculate forever about
the likelihood that Jesus was real. The fact that
dozens of people were writing stories about him
decades later often suggests to people that a real
man must be at the center of such an effort. But
that whole line of argument comes to a dead end
called the Harry Potter Effect. The fact is
that we see clearly from the Harry Potter
craze that there are indeed certain stories
which, when presented at the right time, can satisfy
some fundamental hunger in the thinking of people.
Humans are literally prone and susceptible to these
stories as a reflection, or an outlet, for images
and connections that swirl around in the daily
thoughts of masses of people.
Like many people, I want to
think, and I wish to believe, that Jesus lived in
history, a real person. But my curiosity, and urge
to consider the facts, brings other possibilities
into view. Bottom line, end of the day reality is
that we can't today prove that Jesus was real, while
at the same time the evidence is overwhelming that
1) a large percentage of humans are susceptible to
acceptance en mass of certain stories, and 2) what
little we do know about the transmission of the
Jesus story over the centuries reveal that details
of the story have been re-written often.
These edits were designed to make the story conform
to agendas from those who carried out the edits, an
agenda from those who presented the writings.