A novel is a novel, and novelists succeed through the skillful exercise of the imagination. However, this particular novel imagines the best of American scholarship (Harvard) and the finest of British scholarship (Oxford) agreeing on what are presented as facts regarding the origin of the Christian faith.
This one-hour lecture was originally delivered at Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA in April 2004. Dr. Kenneth Bailey, Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, reviews the origins of the four Gospels of the New Testament, the origins of the four Gospels of the New Testament, the formation of the Canon, the Council of Nicea, the role of emperor Constantine, and the emergence of the Gnostic gospels in the 3rd to 5th centuries. He then compares established historical facts with the imagination of the novelist, Dan Brown, who created the mystery thriller, The Da Vinci Code.
