A review of the Video “The secret family of Jesus”

A review of the video, “The secret family of Jesus”

(YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4kTNS18ses, uploaded by USAGnosticChurch)

It was presented by Robert Beckford of Oxford Brookes University, who early asserted that the program uncovers a conspiracy that Dan Brown missed, more significant than The Da Vinci Code… hidden for more than two thousand years … I personally believe this video tells how much Christianity, especially Roman Catholics tried to hide something really historical about Jesus Christ rather than tries to destroy some fundamental belief system of Christianity.

Robert Beckford asserted that Jesus had full brothers and sisters whose descendants are traceable in the Galilee for several subsequent centuries. It claimed that Mary Magdalene was a close friend and, possibly, one of the unknown apostles. It noted that the early Church was led by some of Jesus’s siblings and that John the Baptist was a relation of Jesus and his teacher. It further noted that, especially after the Fall of Jerusalem, the locus of power in the early Church moved from Jerusalem to Rome and, in the process, the Messianic Judaism of the Jerusalem Church was superseded by the form of Christianity pioneered by the apostle Paul. As such, it developed a strong anti-feminist and power-hungry character that marginalised the poor and needy to whom Jesus’s Gospel was directed and ‘wrote out’ the persona who led the early Church.

And for those alert to modern trends in contemporary theology, the placing of James/Jude and Paul as arch-rivals, the affirmation that the early Church adopted a ‘replacement theology’ and that the deity of Jesus and deification of Mary were a construct of the post-Jerusalem Church are scarcely novel views. Thus Beckford’s belief that by decoding of Bible and other ancient texts ‘for the first time’ he is able to tell the ‘real story of Jesus’s family’ does quite make sense.

During the process from Jerusalem to Rome, there were very significant parts, which tells the serious distortion of Roman Catholics’ Christian theology, through dealing with Syrian Orthodox churches and even East Orthodox churches who recognize Mary Magdalene as a Saint; even some of the traditions don’t recognize the Resurrection as their core dogma.

In other words, it is clearly revealed how the Romanized Christianity was distorted from what originally Christianity was taught by Jesus Christ.

It is even very suspicious to see most of the Christian theologies were not based on his original teachings, who was historical Jesus. Although it seems quite impossible to restore the historical truth of Jesus, it is very important to try to reveal the real truth about his life for us to understand and accept what he really taught and gave away to human beings, not only Christians.

This short review of mine was composed and reorganized based on my personal impressions of the video, with the help of Rev. Dr. Stephen Dray’s deep theological and methodological analysis as in the following link,

(http://www.e-n.org.uk/p-3718-The-secret-family-of-Jesus.htm)