Da Vinci Debunked

Constantine called a council meeting. Bishops debated. But, what did they debate? Was it a debate about which books to include in our New Testament?

The debate was actually on the precise meaning of what had been written in scripture centuries before. All four gospels had probably been completed by A.D. 80. Some recent scholars date all New Testament books before A.D. 70! This means that some of the four gospels could have been written as early as twenty years after the events they record!

There is no historical evidence that the Council of Nicaea discussed any Gnostic gospels or anything pertaining to the canon of Scripture.

There is not even a hint about a debate concerning books of the New Testament. Twenty rulings were issued and the contents of all are still in existence. Not one refers to issues regarding the canon. (The Council at Nicaea simply debated whether Jesus was coeternal with the Father. The vote to endorse the Nicene Creed came down to a vote of 300 to 2. Hardly close as Brown asserts in his book!)

By the time Constantine calls his council, it is not for the purpose of selecting books but merely for the purpose of verifying books already recognized by Christians as inspired of God. They merely discussed what those books said about Christ’s deity.

The four gospels were written around two hundred years BEFORE the Council of Nicaea. The debate was long over. All the bishops had to do was recognize the historic teachings that had been in existence for over two hundred years in the early church.

Irenaueus writes in the second century (Against Heresies), over 100 years before Constantine, that the four gospels were so universally recognized that he refers to them as “four pillars.” Early Christians protected and passed on those early writings of the Apostles and their close disciples under severe persecution. They also warned against other writings which claimed authenticity under an earlier disciple’s name (such as Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Thomas.) History shows that well before Constantine, documents like the late second century Gospel of Mary were considered false by the overwhelming majority of Christians worldwide.

In the early days, the church was not as much an organization as an organism. It was NOT a highly organized hierarchy of scholars and clerics. The early church was people like Origen’s father and many of his friends. These early Christians were put to death for refusing to recant their faith in Jesus. So, when Origen talks about the church, he refers to a growing body of believers who recognized the writings of the apostles or someone close to them writing under their authority. In time, there arose among these early followers, a broad acceptance that these writings were trustworthy and others questionable.

In one of Peter’s last letters, he recognizes the fact that Paul’s writings are already being gathered. In 2 Peter 3:15, 16, Peter writes: “...which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Even before A.D. 70, followers of Christ are recognizing certain New Testament books as equal in authority to “scripture” in the Old Testament. Polycarp (A.D. 115) and a later church leader named Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150) both refer to Old and New Testament books with the phrase, “as it is said in these scriptures.”

We can see that it was not some clerical council that put together the early scriptures but actually early Christians. The writings of the earliest prophets and apostles were so unique that they became recognized as God’s own words. They were preserved over the centuries. With these writings, not only could true words be easily recognized but also false pretenders with their false gospels could easily be set apart from them.

That the early Christians collected and circulated an agreed-upon standardized list or index of accepted scriptures, is easily seen. In A.D. 303, the edict of Diocletian calls for destruction of the sacred books of the Christians. This proves that at least some form of a Bible existed twenty-three years before Constantine.

Many historians recognize that the majority of what we call the New Testament was acknowledged a hundred years before Constantine. Then, in A.D. 367, six years after Constantine died, Athanasius (a bishop at Alexandria) finally gives us the earliest list of New Testament books we would recognize as our present New Testament.

The first time a church council listed the complete twenty-seven books of the New Testament was in A.D. 393, The Synod of Hippo (which had nothing to do with deciding the canon) recorded the books universally recognized by the church.

The Da Vinci Code has it wrong. The early Christians gave us our New Testament, not Constantine, not some clerical hierarchy.

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Recommended reading: The Da Vinci Code, A Quest For Answers, by Josh McDowell, Green Key Books, Holiday, Florida.