Scholarly Smackdown: Were Mary Magdalene and Jesus Married?

Continued from page 4

Dear Dr. Ehrman,

Thank you for your reply. As you have probably foreseen, I feel that each of your disagreements with the evidence I brought forward comes from conservative opposition to new sources that would be damaging to traditional Christian beliefs. Your approach is not to explain, but to explain away.

My article giving the full reasons why the Gospel of Philip was written before 70 CE was published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1995, pp. 102-111. You have misrepresented my point about its statements on "Hebrews" by saying it was a "mention." It is the starting point of the Gospel of Philip that some people were still "Hebrews," as Paul was before his conversion (Philippians 3:5-6), and some had just become Christian. The New Testament's epistle to Hebrews has the same context.

In the Beliefnet smackdown, "Is the Da Vinci Code Anti-Christian?", I gave my opinion that we are in the middle of a new kind of Reformation, one that is inevitable because of social changes and advances in knowledge. The Protestant Reformation is a model for what is happening now. Luther and the Reformers taught that "every peasant at the plough" was capable of learning for himself by reading the Bible, setting aside the priestly domination that encouraged ignorance and idolatrous cultism. The only new learning he could offer at that time was the Bible.

Now, there is reason to say that the Bible itself has become the idol, one that must be superseded by spiritually aware people in favor of the knowledge to which we all have access. Universal education has made a vast difference to worldviews. We can no longer live in the first century CE.

The present fashion for TV documentaries on ancient history comes from people's hunger to know all about the past of our culture, including the religious past. People have become aware that a great deal has been kept from them in the name of a religious orthodoxy. That has always been the case with orthodoxy. Thomas Aquinas was condemned by the bishop of Paris for heresy because he took account of new scientific knowledge coming from the East through the Crusades!

My understanding of theological scholarship is that it goes first to the sources, all the available sources, and deals with them directly and thoroughly, setting aside matters of social power and position. That has been the European approach that has brought us so far forward. I think that scholars today should feel similar pressure to study all the new sources that have become available, not reading them superficially and selectively, but with the rigorous reasoning that a sound scientific method requires.