Biblically illiterate

Mark Steyn reviews The Da Vinci Code (well, the title and first sentence) and The Judas Gospel (well, the title and first sentence). In doing so, he reveals all on Dan Brown's use of the anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier and the footloose footnoting of the editors of The Judas Gospel. This latest earth-shattering publication he describes as

a fourth-century Coptic text by some guy, but it's believed to be pretty close to the original second-century Greek text. Okay, Judas wasn't around in the second century, but the fellows who wrote his "Gospel" likely got it from a friend of a friend of a friend of his. As Dr. Simon Gathercole of the University of Aberdeen told my old pal Dalya Alberge in the London Times, the alleged Gospel of Judas "contains a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord Of The Rings and her CD collection."

And that would probably sell, too, if you put in a bit about how she was the love child of John the Baptist, but the Knights Templar covered it up until the manuscript was discovered at an Elks Lodge.

Quite.

(via Ninme)

Tagged: Culture, Books, Religion