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The Mother of All Conspiracies:
Jesus and the Gospels
W
e live at a time when claims of conspiracy abound. From wondering who shot JFK to aliens running the government, the theories seem endless. And since nothing is off limits, the truth about Jesus is under fire as well. In fact, it’s among the hottest conspiracies out there. This is clearly evidenced by the ongoing success of The Da Vinci Code, whose prequel, Angels & Demons, is now a major motion picture, and whose sequel, The Lost Symbol, will be hitting bookshelves shortly.The trilogy is fanciful fiction to be sure. But it is sprinkled with just enough truth that the lines between history and heresy have become blurred.
H I G H E R
T H I N G S __
Have We Missed the Truth about Jesus? Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose for the salvation of mankind. At least, that’s what the New Testament tells us. But what if its four Gospels are flawed? What if there are other, conflicting reports about Jesus that should be trusted instead? That would change everything from the Divine Service to all of Western civilization. That we have, in fact, missed the truth about Jesus is precisely the claim being made today, and not simply in novels and movies. On the contrary, quite a few scholars have gotten into the act as well. Hardly a Christmas or Easter now passes by without their opinions showing up in the media, with intriguing catchwords like secret, lost, missing, or new often used in the headlines.Their hope is to persuade people into thinking that Christianity got Jesus wrong . . . on purpose! For ammunition, they point to ancient books written about Jesus that weren’t included in the New Testament.
By Seminarian Mark Pierson
These alternate texts all contradict the four standard Gospels on crucial issues. Namely, they deny that Jesus is God incarnate, they reject that salvation is the work of Christ alone, and they deny that Jesus physically rose from death. But the reason they came to be seen as heresy, so the argument goes, is because certain politicians made it so. By using their power, only one version of Jesus—the version they preferred—came to be known as Christianity. Hence, the Gospel of John was included in the New Testament while the Gospel of Judas was banned. In turn, all subsequent Christians have been trapped in ignorance, blindly believing in a fabricated Jesus. With more than one version of Jesus out there, how do we know which Jesus is the true Jesus? Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, the answer is actually quite simple. History Depends on Evidence, Not Speculation Let’s say someone wrote a completely different biography of Abraham Lincoln today.This Lincoln, we are told, fought on the side of the Confederates and died by slipping in a bathtub and breaking his neck. How believable do you think this report would be? It would be laughable and for good reason. First, this author would be removed from Lincoln and all who knew him personally by almost 150 years. So where does this new information come from? More than that, all previous histories written about Lincoln—some of which come from eyewitnesses—would be contradicted. On what basis does this new biography replace the others? In fact, no known evidence supports this farfetched account.
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