Stigmata

Stigmata was on TV tonight, I tuned in about a 1/3 of the way through. It's some horror flick from the late 90's. I rather liked the film. Of course, when I heard "the kingdom of God is inside you", I was like..psht - rippin off the Gospel of Thomas. I was like meh, still a good movie. The end 'blurb', however, was rather amusing. It spoke about the 'Gospel of St. Thomas' which was found in a library in Nag Hamadi in 1945. Except for the fact that I learned it as 'Nag Hammadi', true on all counts. It goes on: the Gospel of Thomas contains sayings that scholars from all around the world believe come closest to the words of the historical Jesus (my paraphrase, that's the gist of it). Throughout the movie it is portrayed that these secret sayings could topple the Roman Catholic church, and in effect present a challenge to modern day Christianity. It also plays it out as an Aramaic document. Unfortunately, I haven't ever heard of an Aramaic Gospel of Thomas. What I do know is that the Nag Hammadi version was written in Coptic, and there are a few Greek fragments found in Egypt which date to the second century (quite a bit earlier than the Coptic one @ Nag Hammadi). As far as we can tell, the Gospel of Thomas was written in Greek in the early to mid second century CE. All of this is no big deal, but for the movie to claim such high things about its historical value is a rather bold move. The value of the Gospel of Thomas for reconstructing the historical Jesus is precisely the question on the table, hardly something close to worldwide consensus! I guess they seem to have overlooked people like John Meier, or Ed Sanders, or Tom Wright - all central figures in historical Jesus scholarship. I don't mean to take a shot at scholars who give great weight to the Gospel of Thomas; however, I just found it pretty rude for the movie to give the impression that there is widespread agreement amongst scholars. I guess it's just the misrepresentation of present scholarship on the historical Jesus which bugs me. But, ending 'blurb' aside, really cool movie.

And if you haven't figured it out already, I don't agree with celibate priesthood. I still can't figure out why priests have to be celibate in the Roman Catholic tradition. I can dig the Pope and the sacraments and all that, but no woohoo for the priests! Ouch. Anyways, word on the street is Peter, Jesus' brothers, and even some of the apostles were all married. Poor Paul though, guess he never went for it.