This interesting U.S. News review of the fictional work “The Da Vinci Code” , touchs on a lot of themes, but one of the main aspects seems to be the conviction by many, many people that there is heretofore unrevealed “secret knowledge” about early Biblical history, and more specifically Jesus and his life, that is tightly held by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations and/or groups.
Is there any real world support or evidence that this “secret knowledge” notion is true, or is everything we know (barring new biblical archeological discoveries) pretty much already on the table and known to scholars?
Well the RCC does not believe it has any hidden secret knowledge.
Most of this stuff pops up when someone who has never studied history comes across some factoid that has fallen out of the public consciousness and decides that it must have been deliberately “hidden” or else everyone would know about it. The last few “exposés” that I’ve seen involved “discovering” documents in the Vatican library. Of course, they were “discovered” specifically because they were “not” hidden–there are just too many ancient works that have not all yet been catalogued. (The Vatican does limit access to the library, but the only limit is to serious scholars so that cranks are not damaging or pilfering the works. Since the number of scholars who have the time and financial resources to hang out in the Vatican library for years at a time, searching through old bills of sale, personal correspondences, and tax rolls on the off chance that they will come across an autographed letter in Paul’s own hand is vanishingly small, there have not been hordes of scholars completing the work of cataloging the entie library. Perfect fodder for the conspiracy loons.)
Of course, there are also the pure loons who are simply making money trying to build a case for all of European royalty being descended from the children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene with side trips past the Masons, Cathars, and other historical groups about whom the general populace is ill-informed.
Well, if it’s secret, how can we know it exists??’:D’
Not, really, putting the Caholic Church as guilty of any shady (even if unreal thing) gives any story a boost. I’m still waiting for someone to blame Roswell on us Catholics
Yes, I can see a Cardinal, rubbing his hands together and twitching his long, villainous moustache…“We’ve got Jesus’ shoe size, and the world will never know!!!”
IIRC, the novel referred to apocryphal gospels such as Mary but I don’t remember any claims about suppressed or hidden bokks that the public has no access to.
The Da Vinci Code is based on some real theories but all of them are really pretty spurious. I was rather disappointed by the book. I was hoping for something more thoughtful and educated. It’s really just a mishmash of crackpot theories hung over a hackneyed thriller plotline.
Well, evidence that SUPPORTED Christ’s physical existence would surely be flaunted by the Church, not hidden, right? I mean, in the good ol’ days we used to carry pieces of the True Cross around, enough to make a whole forest of them, and the body parts of saints.
I’d be more impressed with this theory if it contended that the Church was withholding evidence that Christ did NOT exist, although I’d be hard-pressed to figure out what that would be.
Well, given that a lot of these “secret” books are available at a bookstore near you, if the Church did intend to keep them hidden, they’re doing a really poor job of it.
Several of these “secret” books are available at Catholic bookstores as well as at Barnes & Noble enclosed in a collection called The Lost Books of the Bible and the forgotten books of Eden (their grammar, not mine). These books, for various reasons, didn’t make the cut back in the fourth century when the Canon of Scripture was being hashed out, but are still considered to be “profitable for study”.
Then there are the so-called Gnostic gospels, which were mostly composed during the second century, and include the famous “Gospel of Thomas”. But then, even these you can pick up at Borders. Look for the Nag Hammadi Library.
I think the point is that saying Lutheran Church holds secrets to Christ’s hidden years just doesn’t sound conspirational enough or that few people could conceive that the Presbytterians are the holders of arcane magic spells form the Templars.
It’s a marketing thing. Catholics, with colourful vestments and complicated rituals (compared to the simpler Protestant ones) are really the stuff of nice reporting.
BTW, I didn’t mean to insult anyone with the references to the Lutheran or Presbyterian churches.
I think the point is that saying Lutheran Church holds secrets to Christ’s hidden years just doesn’t sound conspirational enough or that few people could conceive that the Presbytterians are the holders of arcane magic spells form the Templars.
It’s a marketing thing. Catholics, with colourful vestments and complicated rituals (compared to the simpler Protestant ones) are really the stuff of nice reporting.
BTW, I didn’t mean to insult anyone with the references to the Lutheran or Presbyterian churches.
I think the point is that saying Lutheran Church holds secrets to Christ’s hidden years just doesn’t sound conspirational enough or that few people could conceive that the Presbytterians are the holders of arcane magic spells form the Templars.
It’s a marketing thing. Catholics, with colourful vestments and complicated rituals (compared to the simpler Protestant ones) are really the stuff of nice reporting.
BTW, I didn’t mean to insult anyone with the references to the Lutheran or Presbyterian churches.
Darn, you found us out! Yes, we Lutherans do indeed control the Secret Stash of Christ (from his teenaged years). Since we don’t have a Vatican of our own, we tend to move it around a lot, from church basement to church basement. We have built up elaborate rituals to accompany the progress of the Stash from church to church, including the preparation of liturgical jello-fruit-salad and sacred lutefisk, all under the watchful gaze of he fearsome church-basement-lady-ninjas.
For some truly scholarly research on Christ’s lost years, I commend to you Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.
In a way, some knowledge has been ‘purged’ from the Catholic church throughout the years. This knowledge was not secret before it was removed, but could be considered ‘repressed’ or conceiled now.
A good example - the Christian church contained the notion of Reincarnation until the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 553,
when the Vatican had it removed. Some say this was around the time and caused by the church’s charging for sin redemption.
Second Council of Constantinople. And that didn’t contain a denunciation of reincarnation, but of Origen’s idea of pre-existance of souls, which was the idea that human beings were fallen angels.
It is hardly secret with so much written about it.
Reincarnation as a Christian doctrine was certainly suppressed (although your links include a number of errors such as claiming that anathema meant damned when it merely meant formally excommunicated even at the Second Council of Constantinople of 553), but then, reincarnation is not found in the earliest Christian writings which were used to support the beliefs that were accepted as orthodox. Origen, as brillint as he was, appears to have been relying on philosophy taken from Plato and other Greek influences when he speculates on serial incarnations. None of this makes the orthodox Christian view objectively “correct,” but it hardly counts as turning the beliefs that it suppressed as heretical into “secret” knowledge.
Well, “some say” lots of things, particularly when the targets are large institutions such as the Catholic Church or the U.S. Government.
The proof of such claims should be demonstrated with evidence. Since it is a sin to “charge for sin redemption” and lacking evidence that the practice of the Church changed between the late second century (when Origen was born) and the mid fifth century (Second Council of Constantinople), I would generally dismiss such speculation as wishful thinking.
It’s like when people “discover” every year around Christmas that Jesus was probably nor born in Dec 25 or that the Virgin Mary posibly had no blue clothes (Mary is typically shown wearing blue in Catholic images) or that St. Peter was married.
