**What does Brown claim regarding Mary Magdalene’s role in the early Church?
**
Brown asserts that in the original Gospels, Mary Magdalene rather than Peter was directed to establish the Church:
Code:
According to these unaltered gospels, it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene. . . . Jesus was the original feminist.24
Again, there is no basis for this claim. None of the early manuscripts of the Gospels nor any of the quotations of the Gospels in the writings of the early Church Fathers suggest that anything of the kind was said at any stage in the history of the Gospels. Brown’s assertion that “Jesus was the original feminist” is simply pandering to modern secular sensibilities. It in no way represents the historical evidence that exists.
Appealing to prior “unaltered” gospels that had not been doctored by Constantine or others in the early Church is fatuous. There is no evidence that Constantine ordered any copies of Scripture to be changed. If one wishes to claim that he did give such an order, one should be able to back it up with a citation from a contemporary source, but no such passage can be found. None of the surviving records of the period-or even the records of later centuries-record Constantine or any one else attempting to alter the texts of the existing canon to change this or any other doctrine. Brown simply has no evidence to back up his claim.
If Constantine or any one else had tried to change Scripture, Christians would have refused. The Christian Church had just come through an age of persecution in which Christians had been burned at the stake for refusing to deny their Lord and the Scriptures he gave them. To allow those writings to be mutilated would be unthinkable, and any attempt to change them would have resulted in an enormous controversy that would be mentioned in the writings of the period.
It would have been a practical impossibility to change Scripture, because thousands of copies were in existence all across the Mediterranean world, from Europe to North Africa. There was no central registry of who had copies of the Bible, so there was no way to track them down and edit them. There were simply too many copies floating in circulation.
But even if all of the copies then known to exist had been tracked down and altered, this would not have affected the copies of Scripture that by this time already had been lost. Many of the early manuscripts of Scripture that we now have were waiting, lost, in the desert until their discovery by modern archaeology. But when we look at these copies, they teach the same doctrines as later copies and show no evidence of having been censored.
Moreover, the writings of the early Church Fathers from before the time of Constantine show the same teachings and quote the Gospels as saying the same things as in the canonical Gospels.
If you want to read more of feel you have been influenced by the Da vinci code see the full article here:
catholic.com/library/cracking_da_vinci_code.asp
I hope you can see why your current beliefs are not believed by The Church. If possible try and read the CCC( Catechism Catholic Church).
REMEMBER, the devil tries to change our beliefs constantly, it is not wrong to think that what you hold true now is right, it is only natural to defend your current beliefs, BUT the devil has ingrained them upon you, it is up to you to push him out. Is has been said that the Devil uses three main weapons:
Tolerance(of others actions and beliefs)
Adaptation(to include others and their actions and beliefs)
Change(Changing our beliefs to fit in with others)
These three are VERY dangerous and have already infiltrated the church. Without being harsh, scarlet, your current beliefs are wrong and you cannot be a true Catholic unless you realise why they are wrong and cease to believe in them.
Three things to do :
Pray
Pray
Pray
The best cure for anything. You have taken the first step by coming to this forum, now complete the action by pushing the falsehoods out and letting Jesus back in.
I will pray for you.
Andre.
