Pete's Blog

If you know me, it might shock you that a post with the word "Vatican" in the title isn't critiquing Roman Catholicism.

In the first interview of Lee Strobel's The Case for the Real Jesus he's talking to a (Canadian) expert on alleged alternative gospels (Dr. Craig A. Evans). The six documents they deal with are The
Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Peter, The
Gospel of Mary, The Secret Gospel of Mark, The Jesus Papers,
and The Gospel of Judas. Pretty interesting.

There was an interesting quote about conspiracies, but it's not funny if it's out of context, so I'm going to try to give enough background.

From Wikipedia:

The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History is a book released in 2006 by author Michael Baigent. He explores the detailed history of Jesus' life and crucifixion; using papers that, according to Baigent, were covered up. The work documents the political context of Jesus' birth, and then goes on to examine the history of the migration of the family of Jesus, the chronicles of his teachings, and his death.

And here's how Dr. Evans explains it:

"Baigent describes how he went into a walk-in safe of an antiquities collector and saw the papyri under glass. He couldn't take a picture of them, of course. He has admitted that he doesn't read Aramaic and said the [coauthor of The Jesus Papers] doesn't either—so how does he know what they say? He's assured that two well-known archaeologists, Yigael Yadin and Nahman Avigad, have confirmed it. Oh, but did I mention that Yadin and Avigad are dead?

"So we have an author with dubious credibility in the first place; an antiquities dealer who can't be identified; documents that Baigent can't read or produce and for which we have no translation or verification; and two archaeologists who are dead. This is just the dumbest thing." (p. 53, "International Trade Paper Edition")

But he's made loads of money off the book that is exposing the information in these documents. How does he explain the absence of the documents? Conspiracy, of course. This is how Evans describes it:

"He's playing on the ignorance of people as well as the desire for a titillating tale of conspiracy, intrigue, and hiding the truth. And it's always the Vatican getting involved—buying off people or pressuring people into silence. Baigent says Pope John XXIII asked the archaeologists to destroy these incriminating documents, but they refused."

Evans's sarcasm hit full stride. "It's astonishing for as active and energetic as the Vatican is when it comes to bribing people and destroying documents that they are never able to cover their tracks," he said, smiling. "Baigent can always find out." (Author's emphasis, pp. 53-54)

Strobel had actually started the discussion on The Jesus Papers criticizing Baigent's reliability: The second sentence reads, "Scholars uniformly scoff at Baigent's conspiracy theories and poorly supported allegations, which sound convincing to those untrained in ancient history but which quickly collapse upon examination by experts" (p. 52).

Maybe this isn't as funny as I think it is. It's a good thing, for Baigent's sake, that there exists a denomination with a centralized church government, whose power spans over each of the populated continents, so that he has someone to accuse of the conspiracies that put his scholarship in such hot water. With that in mind, I'm very satisfied with my independent, congregationalist polity, thank-you-very-much.

--

The book's worth reading. Some of it seems to be repeating some of the information from The Case for Christ, but some of it is new. My interest in it rests in two of the discussions, the one above on alleged alternative gospels, and one on the accusation that the Jesus story was taken from pagan myths pre-dating Christianity.