Since Forrest Brought It Up (# 92)

I remember watching one of those history channel documentaries on the Davinci Code and thinking, "people actually believe this stuff?"

I don't see how the great conspiracy would have even gotten started in the first place. To a Roman, it would take a bit of faith to see an absent (and presumed dead) Jewish guy as the Son of God; but the idea of Gods or Demi-Gods having wives and children was nothing new. If anything the Gomer-ized Magdalene and her child would have made more sense to polytheists being 'converted' into the catholic church.

By the time canon was being decided on, the church was hardly Jewish in culture (presumably the reason the divine feminine was obscured). If it was just a sexist thing .. why not leave in the concubine/wife figure and tweak Jesus into the image of a slipper-wearing, pipe-smoking, lovey-poor-me-a-drink patriarchal mysoginist?

I can see twisting the facts to support a premise ... that's just everyday bad theology (not a vast papal conspiracy). On the other hand though, suppressing huge portions of scripture, killing/silencing large numbers of people and fighting an ages old struggle with the Templars seems to be a bit out of scope.

Think of the poor monks that took all those vows. All they would have had to do was "erase" the little bit about Paul saying it was better for him not to be married and they could have had it all: power, women, land etc. Even (recovering) prostitutes would have been acceptable ... and how fun is that!?

It's fine to suppose that after a millennium or so, the church would want to keep something quiet that would make them look fallible (a.k.a. stupid). But I still haven't seen what the motivation was to tell the lie in the first place. Conspiracies are formed to protect a deeply held secret or maintain control. In this case, I don't see what control or privilege would have been lost if the secret had not been kept from the beginning.