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The Narrow Minded Christian

God is narrow minded: 1 God 1 Way NO EXCEPTIONS. Jesus Christ is the ONLY door to salvation John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. "

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Location: United States

Favorite composer: Debussy; Favorite artist: Monet; Favorite old author: Charles Dickens

Monday, August 13, 2007

The Da Vinci Code and the Jews

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

The controversial book highlights the
fundamental differences between
Judaism and Roman Catholicism.

{{{C~B~N's comments enclosed--
Theologically, we are VERY different
from the Catholic faith. But that
not withstanding, Evangelical
Christians do not support this book
or its premises. }}}
† † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † †

It's commonly called "the runaway
best seller of the 21st century."
The numbers are staggering.
Forty million copies sold round
the world. Translated into 44
languages. Soon to be released
as a movie starring Tom Hanks.
Critics agree: There hasn't been
anything like Dan Brown's The
Da Vinci Code in publishing history.

And that, truth be told, hasn't made
the Catholic Church very happy.
This, after all, isn't just an exciting
mystery novel. Woven into a story
of the aftermath of a murder in
the Louvre Museum is a tale of
Christian conspiracies, high level
cover-ups, and ancient secret
societies that the author repeatedly
hints is more fact than fiction.

Written in breezy roman-a-clef style,
the reader is introduced to Catholic
orders that really exist, prominent
holy sites that can readily be visited,
and famous people of past and
present -- all of whom share in
what is presented as the greatest
theological falsification of history.

"Almost everything our fathers
taught us about Christ is false,"
laments one of Brown's characters.
"Faith," he has one of his heroes
tell us, "is based on fabrication."
{{{LIES OF SATAN}}}

Mingling fact with fiction in a
combustible mixture that leaves
readers perplexed by the boundaries
between one and the other, Brown
leads us to believe -- with more
than an author's wink -- that an
incredible hoax has been played
on millions of pious Christians
who've never been told the truth
about the Holy Grail.

For centuries, pious Christians
have been taught that the Holy
Grail is the cup from which Jesus
drank at the Last Supper. But for
Brown's all-knowing art critic and
alter-ego Robert Langdon, that isn't true.

"The Grail," Langdon tells us in
a scholarly voice that appears to
echo the author's personal
conviction, "is symbolic of the lost
goddess. When Christianity came
along, the old pagan religions did
not die easily.

{{{Yet die they did. And yet Christianity
has survived 2000 years. That
tells me right there that the Bible
and Christianity can and DO
survive the test of time
AND truth.
Mark 4:30-32 The Parable of the
Mustard seed. While the mustard
seed is one of the smallest seeds,
it grows into one of the largest
plants. Just as Christianity
started small...it has grown
world-wide. Within the first
generation of believers, it had
spread to Ethiopia, India and
Europe.}}}

Legends of chivalric quests for
the Holy Grail were in fact stories
of forbidden quests to find the
lost sacred feminine. Knights who
claimed to be 'searching for the
chalice' were speaking in code
as a way to protect themselves
from a Church that had subjugated
women, banished the Goddess,
burned non-believers, and forbidden
the pagan reverence for the sacred
feminine."
(The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)

{{{What a bunch of new age lies.
Satan is having a field day with this.}}}

And there is more. A woman's body
is symbolically a container, and the
most famous of these has a name
every Christian will immediately
recognize. Brown claims that the
Holy Grail was actually Mary
Magdalene. She was married to
Jesus and was the vessel that bore
his children.

The secret that could not be
revealed since the birth of
Christianity is that Jesus' bloodline
continues to flourish to this day.
The Grand Masters of the Priory
of Sion (an actual Christian
organization), among whom
Brown lists Leonardo Da Vinci,
Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo,
have -- according to the book's
premise -- kept to their oath
never to reveal any of this to the
public and the Roman Catholic
church is committed to suppressing
this information. Brown strongly
hints that only the fortunate
readers of this "documentary
disguised as fiction" may at
last share in this incredible
revelation.

Small wonder the Church is
profoundly disturbed. Brown's
book is for the Vatican blasphemy
masquerading as history. If the
Da Vinci Code premise is true --
and the entire book is replete with
suggestions that the reader is
permitted entree to secret truths
merely couched in a fictionalized
framework -- Rome needs to revise
its faith and its past, its beliefs as
well as the story of its beginnings.

Chilling Effects

But what strikes me, as a rabbi,
is the remarkable irony that the
very theories about Jesus presented
by Brown that make the book
blasphemous to Christians are
concepts that make Jesus far more
comprehensible to Jews.

So Jesus was married! Well why
shouldn't he have been? Reared
as a Jew, celibacy would have
almost certainly been an idea
totally foreign to him. "Be fruitful
and multiply" was the biblical
creed that all Jews considered
sacred. Celibacy as a Christian
ideal wouldn't become law until
the Council of Elvira (300-306)
decreed (Canon 33): It is decided
that marriage be altogether
prohibited to bishops, priests,
and deacons, or to all clerics placed
in the ministry, and that they keep
away from their wives and not
beget children; whoever does
this, shall be deprived of the
honor of the clerical office.
Christian scholars explain the
reason: The Church wanted to
insure that the wealth of its
leadership would not be dissipated
by way of family inheritance.
A non-married clergy would
always return their possessions
to Rome. {{{Protestants have always
thought this was nuts. A man is a
better preacher who can identify
with the troubles and temptations
of his parishioners.}}}

Historians have pointed out the
chilling effects of this doctrine.
The "best and the brightest" were
invariably encouraged to enter the
prestigious life of the priesthood.
That effectively condemned their
genes to hereditary oblivion. Jews,
on the other hand, turned those
with the greatest intellectual
potential to rabbinic lives of
learning and teaching combined
with an emphasis on large families.
That, claims Will Durant in his classic
The Lessons of History, is what in
all probability accounts for the
statistically unbelievable
preponderance of Jewish Nobel
Prize winners and achievements.
{{{In Support of Israel }}}

More troubling for Christians, a
married Jesus is far too much a
human figure instead of a god to
be worshipped. Christianity can't
conceive of their object of divine
reverance as a sexual being -- or
even as one conceived by the sexual
act.

{{{Most of us are NOT quite that
prudish. Envisioning Jesus as having
sex does not disturb me as much
as the fact that Jesus my Savior,
a Messiah who is going to die for
MY sins, so I can someday join God
in Heaven, cannot be a corrupted
Savior. Jesus and God both
knew/know that sex is one area
of human existence that is so easily
corrupted. Just look at all the
references that deal with this subject
and the many perversions that result
in this area, then tell me it is not
important! }}}

It is a troublesome relationship
with physical pleasure that turned
Christian teachings away from
their Jewish biblical source. But
Jews have no problem with a
married Moses.

{{{But Moses is not God, nor
the Messiah and never claimed to
be!}}}

It is the Torah that Moses brought
to us that not only commands
marriage but calls it Kiddushin
-- an ideal state of holiness.

Here is the crux of a crucial concept
that has separated Judaism from
Christianity throughout the centuries.
Jews spared no effort to insure that
their greatest leader never be
confused with God; Moses was always
to be viewed as human, mortal,
less than divine, even capable of sin
for which he was punished and denied
entry into the Promised Land.
His very burial site was to remain
hidden so that it not become revered
beyond measure. The greatness of
Moses rests precisely on his human
qualities. He represents mankind's
potential. In him we see what we fellow
human beings are capable of becoming.

Christians, on the other hand, insisted
that Jesus be viewed not as man but
as god; {{{Think it is GOD who has
insisted on this.....not Christians!}}}
his human form could never be allowed
to overshadow his divinity. Jesus was
not elevated man but a god descended
to earth. Physical frailties and human
weaknesses couldn't possibly be part of
his makeup.

And that is what Brown has breached
in revealing, albeit in an ostensibly
fictionalized account, a " human" truth
about Christianity's founder. A
married Jesus with children is,
for the Church, nothing less than
a diminished god.

That's why Jews shouldn't be upset
about the success of The Da Vinci
Code. After all, it's responsible for
making more than 40 million people
question what Jews have long
recognized about Christianity's
founder:

Jesus was not God; he was human.

{{{This is why having only
HALF of the inspired word of
God doesn't work:

Divinity of Jesus: Luke 5:21;
Colossians 1:15-16; 1 John 2:22-23}}}


And perhaps the day will come
when the world will acknowledge
what Judaism teaches: It isn't
God who became man, but man
who must strive to become more
like God.

{{{This philosophy is
dangerously close to secular
humanism--anathema to
GOD.

Jesus IS divine. Otherwise how can
a Jesus who is not divine, die for
MY sins if HE is sinful? It won't
work. What is not covered here
is the "sacrificial" aspect of Jesus.
To be the sacificial lamb, according
to the Torah, He had
to be without blemish or spot.
This rules out marriage.

As a Christian, we have to take
a lot of slaps from others: Muslims,
Buddhists, Agnostics, Athiests;
but now from our Jewish brethran
as well??????

I'm not easily offended. You can't be
and still be a Christian...at least in
this day and age. But this article
did offend.}}}


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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear CBN:

You might enjoy this:

http://altreligion.about.com/librar y/davinci/bl_differentdvc.htm

It's called "A Different da Vinci Code."

8:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Sir:
As a Jew, I am very touched by your love of our people and strong support for Israel. I don't understand your offense at Rabbi Blech's aticle, though. The article is from aish.com, a Jewish website with no intentions to convert anyone, and explains the Jewish attitude towards the Da Vinci book and yes, the divinity of Jesus. Surely it is no surprise to you or anyone else that Jews do not believe in the divinity of Jesus (or in the concept that there is human sacrifice permitted by the Torah, for that matter)?? You're welcome to disagree, but why take offense when a Rabbi states the obvious.
Sincerely and admiringly, an Israeli friend

1:34 AM  

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