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The Gospel of Mary
In The Da Vinci Code
The Text in the box is from http://www.allaboutgod.com/gospel-of-mary-faq.htm
The Gospel of Mary has been promoted in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. This is aGnosticGospelof the second century. A key point of Brown’s proposed theory is found in the Gospel of Mary. This has to do with Jesus’ favoritism toward her. The text seems to reflect a conflict wherePeter was challenging the role of Mary as a recipient of a special revelation from Jesus. Marywas distraught about Peter’s challenge. The implication here is that Jesus knew Mary wellenough to consider her worthy to be the recipient of special revelation.The term "Gnostic" derives from "gnosis," which means "knowledge" in Greek. The Gnostics believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine, hence the name. TheGnostic gospels, then, concern themselves with the way to achieve divine knowledge, which isthrough completely human means. The early church declared these writings uninspired, and thus,did not canonize them into the Holy Bible. Because they were written so far after Jesus’ life, and because they disagree with the accepted inspired Scriptures, these writings should not beconsidered biblical.The main passage that Brown uses as support actually comes from one of these Gnostic writings(Gospel of Philip 63:32-64:10). This text describes Mary Magdalene as a “companion” of Jesus.History tells us that this text from the Gospel of Philip, as well as other Gnostic texts, wascomposed in the second half of the third century. This is a full two hundred years after the life of Jesus. (The four Christian gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- were written and beingcirculated within the first 90 years of the time of Christ.) The passage that Brown uses as his premise has many missing elements. Note that although the Gospel of Mary is not considered to be inspired, Brown interprets the textwith his own twists. In fact, there was no mention of Jesus being married to Mary or of themhaving an intimate relationship. This text simply says that Jesus appeared to her alone. This is notagainst the Holy Bible’s story of Jesus revealing Himself to Mary after His resurrection. WhereBrown escapes fact is when he begins filling in words randomly, all the while having the reader believe them to be true, verifiable fact.The Gospel of Mary, because only one copy was recovered, will likely never be a complete andhistorically verifiable document. The canonized Scriptures are based on multiple copies passeddown through the generations and discovered in various locations. If we offer up the Gospel of Mary to be anything other than literary fiction, historians would require there to be factualevidence to support such a claim, not only the opinion of Dan Brown, a fiction novel writer.
Why is the Gospel of Mary not in the Bible?
The text in the box was from http://reluctant-messenger.com/gospel-magdalene.htm
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene has Taoist and Buddhist concepts presented in first century Christian Semantics.According to this text, Jesus was quoted as saying that
"All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with oneanother and will again be resolved into their own roots, becausethe nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its naturealone."
This is very similar to the Taoist concept of Oneness as expressedin Chapter 34 of Tao Teh Ching, Speaking of the Tao it says "
All things derive their life from it [Tao] All things return to it, and it contains them.
"Another portion of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene describes a soul's journey after death and thechallenges it overcomes. These passages are much likeThe Tibetan Book of the Deadwhichreveals the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities a soul encounters during its journey after it hasseparated from the body at death.This is very similar to this portion of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, "
When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, (which) took seven forms. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is theexcitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven {powers} of wrath.
"These teachings are not consistent with the church practice and tradition, one reason why theGospel of Mary was not included in the New Testament. One might argue that the Gospel of Mary was excluded because of the discrimination and oppression toward women. I begged todiffer. If that were the case, then the account of women being the last to leave Jesus and the firstto see the risen Christ should also have been removed. But the account of these faithful women isin the Bible. The Gospel of Mary was not in the Bible solely because of its content.
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