Censors in India Ban Jesus --- Sort of

The film The DaVinci Code has inspired many Christians to retreat to the Dark Ages -- where we will all be if these Christianists get their way. In India Christians teamed up with Islamists to threaten violence and intimidate the Board of Censors into preventing the film from being shown.

The Censors demanded that the film include a disclaimer saying that the film "is a work of pure fiction."

Let's put aside the absurdity of these know nothings deciding what is or is not good history. And for the record this film is lousy history. But do the Christians really think that this film ought to be portrayed as "a work of pure fiction?" Now what is in the film that is being potrayed as pure fiction?

Sure there are the bits that have the lunatic fringe upset. But try a few other things that would be equally described as pure fiction. Would they admit it is pure fiction that a man named Jesus was born? Are they saying it is a work of pure fiction to describe the existence of the Roman Catholic Church? Or do they really mean that they want parts of the film portrayed as fact and other parts as fiction? And would the Censors be willing to outline all things they accept as factual and all things they believe to be fictional? Would a disclaimer doing this make the film two hours longer?

One report has the censors saying the disclaimer should read that the film is "a work of pure fiction and has no correspondence to hisotricalfacts of the Christian religion." Suddenly the censors, a gang of criminals if ever one existed, are now experts on history and religion. And which "historical facts of the Christian religion". Hell, even Christians have no idea what those are and fight over them all the time. Are they going to let a bunch of Hindu's, uneducated in Christian history and theology, decide what is or is not the "facts" of Christianity?

What we do know, and I mean KNOW in capitals with emphasise, about Christ is not a whole lot. We have no contemporary documents outlining anything of substance about this man. We have "Gospels" that were not written in his lifetime and those we suspect were written dozens of years after his death are useless as no original copies exist. All we have are hand copies of hand copies by scribes with no hesitation to add their own material where they thought fitting or deleting that which they didn't like. We are left realizing that if The DaVinci Code is fiction so is the New Testament. And if it is not entirely fiction, at the very least we have zero evidence that is history or factual in anyway. And the last people who ought to have any say so over what is historical fact about Christian theology is a bunch of bureaucrats totally unstudied in the field.