On Christianity

[desoto_hia873]

Lately, I’ve developed an odd fascination with Christian history. I’m describing this as odd because I’ve never been particularly religious, nor am I particularly Christian. I was raised an Anglican (that’s C of E to my flist across the pond and Episcopalian to those south of the border)--I was baptized as a baby, suffered through our minister’s interminable sermons (it wasn’t unusual for them to last an hour or more, which is a long time to a six-year-old--he was known far and wide for his lengthy sermons), and even made it through his stultifyingly dull Confirmation classes--but I’m pretty much agnostic now. I dabbled in the Baha’i Faith a number of years ago--I still like and agree with many of its teachings, but I can’t honestly call myself a Baha’i. I don’t do the daily prayers, I don’t observe their fasts, and I occasionally consume alcohol.

I think that my interest in Christianity grew out of my learning about the Baha’i Faith, though. Once I’d got to the point where I understood at least some of what the Baha’is were about, I was curious to know more about Christianity. At the time, my mother was married to a Baptist, so I figured I’d do a compare and contrast between Baptist and Anglican beliefs in an attempt to understand why Christianity comes in so many flavours. I asked her husband lots of questions, and he answered them, and I still don’t understand why there are so many different factions. The Catholic/Protestant divide makes some sense to me--that whole infallibility of the Pope thing is a pretty big issue. But the differences between the various Protestant groups seem to me to be, well, almost trivial in some cases.

I picked up a copy of The DaVinci Code at a used book sale last year and read it. As I commented at the time, it’s not a very well-written book, but its short chapters that always ended in cliffhangers made it a page turner, and I finished it in about three days. It left me with a whole new set of questions, not least of which was: how much of what Dan Brown wrote about Christian history was true? Over Christmas, I read Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Bart Ehrman, and the answer turned out to be: not a lot. This slim book taught me quite a bit about Christian history and left me wanting more, so I’m now working my way through Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by the same author. It’s answering so many of the questions I’ve been carrying around in my head for years: What do historians know about Jesus? How much of the New Testament is "true"? Who wrote the four gospels of the New Testament and when? Who decided which gospels made it into the bible and why?

I even hauled out the bible my mother gave me when I was confirmed ohsomanyyearsago and read the passages referred to by Ehrman. Poor old Mr. Cowan (he of the never-ending sermons) would probably have a heart attack from the shock if he knew.

Am I going to become a bonafide Christian at the end of all of this? Probably not. But it sure is interesting learning about it, and that’s something that the teenager who was so immensely relieved when her Confirmation classes were finally over never thought she’d say.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I took a class a few years ago - Women of the Old Testament. It was one of the most interesting classes I've EVER taken, and left me with a taste for more about the Bible as history (because, of course, the Bible was written by humans, and has been translated so there are gaps and...exaggerations)

If you don't mind me recommending it, you might friend poliphilo. He was a clergyman at one time and knows a GREAT deal about religious history.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Exaggerations, heh. I read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas online last week. Yowza. You can see why it wasn't included in the New Testament.

[perpetualstroll.livejournal.com]

One of my profs whose specialty is early and medieval Christianity despises Dan Brown. Now, when he attends conferences that are open to the general public, the questions are dominated by Da Vinci Code related questions.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose they would be, and that might get a little wearying after a while. OTOH, at least people are asking something about it.

[deathisyourart.livejournal.com]

The only real problem with Dan Brown's books (besides the fact that he is not a story teller) is that too many people don't know where the facts stop and the fiction begins.

And though you are enjoying Bart Ehrman, might I suggest trying a few different authors as well? The problem with an author seeking to debunk another is that -- like with numerology or Dan Brown's attempts to make connections -- when you are actively looking for a pattern you will find one. Most authors will leave out anything that they don't believe has enough facts to support it, but there are several pieces to Christian history that are fascinating, but are not widely accepted by many groups.

And though I too am agnostic and have not been to a church sermon for anything other than a wedding or a funeral, I love this stuff too! I would really like to get a whole stack of books on the history, and all the religions that were present between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D., and just see how they all overlap and intersect.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

I think Dan Brown is a reasonably good story teller, but he's not a very good writer. Some of his sentences were just painful.

If you have any suggestions for other historical authors, fire away! I realized that Bart Ehrman is only telling history as he sees it, and that someone else's view might be different. But he sure writes a lot better than Dan Brown.