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DAN BROWN AND RAYMOND BROWN
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| Dan Brown wrote “The Da Vinci Code” and the
current best seller, “Angels and Demons.” Raymond Brown was a Catholic
New Testament Scholar who wrote “The Death of the Messiah,” as well as
other scholarly books. |
| If you have read either of Dan Brown’s books
you have probably wondered how much is historical fact and how much
fiction. I take him at his word when he states in the author’s note
that “References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture
in Rome are entirely factual (as are their exact locations). They can
still be seen today. The Brotherhood of the Illuminati is also
factual.” |
| The title page states that “This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.” |
| Some people don’t read such pages and are subject to turning fiction into fact. |
| Nevertheless, one wonders how much is true
and how much is history. If you’ve visited Rome and been inside St.
Peter’s or beneath St. Peters where tombs of the Popes are located, the
story seems very vivid. You have to separate historical accuracy about
physical places and facts from the created story. |
| Are you with me? I sometimes wander. I’m noticing lilacs about to bloom outside my window. |
| Anyway, here comes Easter again. Since Paul
Pritchard is singing Bach’s “The Passion of Saint John” (along with the
rest of the Corvallis Repertory Singers) I decided to refresh my mind
regarding the story told in the Gospel of John. One of my sources is
Raymond Brown’s, “The Gospel According to John,” and “The Death of the
Messiah.” Another source is the Gospel of John itself. I’m not sure
where the story actually starts, but I started with Chapter 11. In
addition I looked into “The Five Gospels – What Did Jesus Really Say?”
(The Search for the authentic words of Jesus) by the famed Jesus
Seminar, as well as “The Acts of Jesus – What Did Jesus Really Do?” by
the same group of scholars. |
| I know that you will not read most or any of
these writings. In fact, I don’t even see how busy preachers find time
to go very deep into actual scholarship as they guide their
congregations down the days until Easter. Is there anything beyond the
“same old same old?” |
| If you read the Gospel of John you will find
names of historic places. Some of these have been located by
archeologists. If you have traveled to the Holy Land you will remember
having some of these sites pointed out to you. (I was even shown the
footprint in a rock where Jesus launched his ascension!) There is the
tendency to believe that because the place is historical, then the
story is historical. A slight wave of suspicion overcame me when a
guide showed us a place some think was Christ’s tomb. He said, “Look,
see. He is not there.” Sure enough, the tomb he showed was empty. I
think we were supposed to take that as proof of the resurrection. |
| Enough of that. If you read the actual Gospel
of John through the eyes of Raymond Brown you will have some of the
same feelings and questions you had when reading the story by Dan
Brown. For instance, all the conversations in the Gospel story. If you
read fiction, you hang on to the conversations. Even in a historical
novel you know that the conversations were created. Possibly something
like them occurred, but probably not. So it is with the Gospel of John.
Raymond Brown doesn’t leave us with the feeling that he takes John’s
Gospel as literal history. From Chapter 11 on, the Jesus Scholars
found only one quote that even rated a “gray” code (“Jesus probably
didn’t say this, but the ideas in it are close to his own”) |
There are some likely historical acts, however. The “acts” of Jesus
reported most likely to be authentic are these three only:
“They then take Jesus from Caiaphas’ place to the governor’s residence.” (John 18:28)
“Only then did Pilate have Jesus taken away and beaten.” (John 19:1)
“And so, in the end, Pilate turned him over to them to be crucified.” (John 19:16)
“…they crucified him…” (John 19:18) |
| That’s it. What do you do with a story that
rests on a certain level of geographic details and some historic
traditions and a bare outline of the fate of Jesus? Is there something
we are missing? Raymond Brown and others (like Marcus Borg) suggests
that the story came to be because of a faith that emerged after Jesus’
death. It is the nature of that faith we seek as we re-visit the
Christian story of Easter. |
Fiction or history? Or something entirely different? Maybe
Raymond Brown and Dan Brown offer some clues.
— Art Morgan, March 2005
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