Title: The Anti-Da Vinci Code
However, when I came here today, I found that many people had already lost their fame at a young age that many of them could not have imagined, and it is difficult to bear the surprise and human woes.
For me, Saegil Church was the material of sermons, and it was the cause of my preaching. Not only that, Saegil Church was the first place I tried to write a sermon, the first audience I met, and the first laboratory I worked with. I envisioned a new sermon here, I would preach it first here, and then I would preach it over and over again in other churches. It is the first and last thing I have done in my life to write a sermon I gave at Saegil Church to the members of Saegil Church, and to publish it as a sermon book called “The Joy of God and the Hope of People.”
While I was away with you, my sermon creation wasn't plentiful because I didn't have the motivation to write a creative sermon. The “Anti-Da Vinci Code” I have prepared for you today is not the first sermon I am preaching today. I did it in several places last year, and this year's monthly magazine introduced the main content in the form of an essay, and a Taiwanese publication was also translated into Chinese.
However, since the place where this sermon was conceived was the Saegil Church, today I am giving a long introduction that is outside of this usual practice. On January 18 of last year, I preached the Word while having a Sunday worship service with you here. After the worship service, while we were talking with Brother Wan-Sang Han at a communal meal, we talked about Da Vinci Code, a new novel by Dan Brown, which was a bestseller at the time. At that time, a weekly magazine featured it in the year-end issue of 2003. It is a novel that was considered taboo, a novel that made Christians look back on the history of the church, a novel that made Christians look back on the history of the church, a slightly sensational relationship between Jesus and women, especially all sorts of fantasies about Mary Magdalene veiled under the veil. has begun to be discussed publicly. We had vowed to each other that this year we would need to peruse the novel. That was January of last year. In March of last year, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the World Bible Society was held at St. It was at Paul Cathedral. On my way to England, I stopped by a bookstore and was able to get the book easily. I read it all the way on the way. And I wrote today's sermon.
Anti-Da Vinci Code - Text: Luke 1:1-4
1 Concerning the facts of what happened among us 2 There are many people who have taken up their brushes to write the story as it was told by those who were witnesses and ministers of the word from the beginning. I thought it was good, 4 so that you may be more certain of what you know. (Luke 1:1-4)
Written by Dan Brown, the novel, , was a long-time #1 bestseller in the world of English-speaking reading fiction in 2003. The book maintained its best-seller position in the first 36 weeks of its publication, selling 4.3 million copies. In Korea, this book was translated in 2004, and it has always been the bestseller in bookstores. I'm sure many of you sitting here have either read or heard of this novel.
I have been told that some countries where Christianity is the dominant religion prohibit the importation, translation and reading of this book. This book is undoubtedly an interesting novel, but churches, Catholics and Protestants alike, regard it as harmful to the Christian faith. However, if we routinely conduct academic critical study of our Christian scriptures, we can not only establish our own opinions about our scriptures, the Bible, but even if we come across any information that challenges the Christian faith, we You will be able to keep your faith well.
The shock of this novel for Christians is that it refers to the descendants of the historical Jesus. Mary Magdalene is the real wife of Jesus, the wedding feast of Cana is the wedding of that woman and Jesus, the miracle of turning water into wine is the miracle performed by Jesus, the groom himself, and Mary Magdalene, the wife of Jesus after the resurrection. After meeting the resurrected Jesus first (John 20:11~18), he became a leader who matched Peter as a female leader of the early church, so the Roman Church Fathers who preferred male clergy After hiding the fields, Mary Magdalene and the men she led were defeated in the battle. After that, Mary Magdalene fled to Egypt, where she lived and gave birth to a daughter of Jesus. The Rovinger Dynasty (447-750) comes out.... This novel uses these legendary stories as the basic material of the novel. This novel is not based on a canon, nor is it based on an apocryphal or apocryphal canon. Based purely on legend, the novel unfolds an interesting story.
There are several reasons why we, as Christians, are interested in this novel. One is that the author of this novel mixes fiction and non-fiction into a novel and deliberately distorts history in a novel way about the background of the historical Jesus and the New Testament, the canon of Christianity. The second reason I am interested in this novel is that in the 4th century AD, when Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion of Rome, he intentionally damaged the historical Jesus records in the New Testament and destroyed many of the original human features of Jesus. It is stated through the mouths of the characters in his novels that they did, concealed, or altered. The third reason I am interested in this novel is that the New Testament, whose authenticity has been tested, has been denigrated as having changed a lot, and the story about Jesus in the legend, which has not been tested or even worth testing, is rather more historical. We are using them as material for the novel as if it were a more reliable source of reflection. We are interested in this novel because this interest-based distorted view can shake the faith of Christians.
It is necessary to first look at the historical background of the time of Constantine the Great. He was the first Christian emperor to make Christianity the religion of Rome. If we look at the history of the church, the important doctrines of the church are determined under his leadership when he reigns. The first Christian council he convened in AD 325 was held in Nicaea. From there, the doctrine of the Trinity, that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are all one God, is established, and Jesus' humanity is weakened and his divinity is confirmed. The Arius sect, which emphasized the human aspect of Jesus, that is, humanity, is condemned as heresy. It is known that the 27 books of the New Testament, the canon of Christianity, were also confirmed at this time.
Another shock that this novel gives to us Christians is that there are no New Testament manuscripts written before the 4th century A.D. for this novel, which is our scripture, the New Testament, and the manuscripts written in the 4th century are manuscripts with many modifications from the original. that's called In the 4th century AD, during the reign of Constantine the Great, the New Testament was rewritten, and the human aspect of Jesus was erased, leaving only the divine aspect.
As we read this novel, we should keep in mind that the canonical New Testament manuscripts from the 4th century AD onward, which were under the influence of Constantine, as well as the apocryphal and apocryphal manuscripts outside the sphere of influence of Constantine the Great. ) that none of the manuscripts speak of a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, or any pedigree as to the fertility of a son or daughter of Jesus. This novel is purely fictional based on legend.
Among the New Testament manuscripts recorded and preserved outside of his influence before Constantine the Great in the 4th century AD, there are fragments of papyrus from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD excavated in Egypt. , these manuscripts also rule out the possibility that the New Testament manuscripts from the 4th century onward may have been distorted or damaged by Constantine the Great.
It is said that there are 5,500 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament alone. As we know from the saying, “Many of us took up a pen to write a record of what has been done among us, just as it was told by eyewitnesses and ministers of the word from the beginning” (Luke 1:1-2). As can be seen, it seems that there were indeed many accounts of Jesus. Luke 1:1-4 tells the circumstances in which there were many who saw Jesus and raised their brushes to write about Jesus. These manuscripts differ so slightly from one copy to another that no two copies are exactly the same. However, the difference is not caused by the forging or altering of the text by a king like Constantine, but by human errors that can often occur in the copying process. Of course, there are also texts whose origins are difficult to determine. However, recent textual criticism of the New Testament has restored the text close to the original text by comparatively examining these manuscripts. According to the results of the study of the Bible manuscripts, the readings in the manuscripts occurred during the process of transcription, and the causes are being elucidated in detail.
It is worth noting that there is no significant difference in content between the content of the papyrus fragments written before Constantine the Great and the uppercase manuscripts of the 4th-5th centuries of Constantine, or the later lowercase manuscripts of the 9th-11th centuries. At least there is no evidence that Emperor Constantine tampered with the account of Jesus. The scientific study of manuscripts and texts of the Bible over the past 200 years has revealed that the text of the New Testament has been delivered accurately. No unverified legends or sources will overturn this. The Word of God recorded in the Bible has been accurately communicated despite human scribal errors. Therefore, it can be concluded that there were no new New Testament manuscripts written during the time of Constantine or that there was no intentional damage to the manuscripts of the New Testament by an existing emperor. Many of the errors that occurred during the copying process were corrected as a result of textual criticism. And we have translated, and are translating, that very restored text into the 2,000 or hundreds of languages that we now use.
A novel is, after all, a novel. Fiction is not used to prove historical facts. Fiction has a unique reason for its existence. If you read Dan Brown's novel as if it were a pure novel, there would be no problem. The problem is that there are those who say they can't believe the Bible's records, who say they can believe the apocryphal, apocryphal, or legend.
The historical church has created a canon by examining the authenticity of many documents through theological work, correcting errors in manuscripts, and delivering the correct New Testament to us. You have that Bible in your hands right now.
Prayer
God, prepare orators who have orally communicated the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, his words, and the love he put into practice, and send biblical writers to translate the oral traditions into writings, the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of the Apostles, Revelation I give thanks and praise to God for all these things that have sent editors to edit the New Testament and make the scriptures.
There were many people who took up the brush to write the history of salvation, and there were many books they wrote, but I am thankful that the Church selected 27 of them and delivered them accurately over the past 2,000 years. May we continue to read, meditate, and study these words so that we may be transformed and our lives may be enriched. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.