The Da Vinci Code All Over Again

Should King have known better? As a scholar of modern Christianity, I am not qualified to weigh in on the scholarly merits of her work. My interest concerns the fascinations of Gnosticism itself. I cannot entirely fault King for being intrigued by the Gnostic gospels and alternative Christian origins. When I first heard of these matters, I asked for a copy of the Gospel of Thomas for Christmas. Somewhere in every scholar lurks a conspiracy theorist, and no field of study taps into this sentiment quite like the field of early alternative Christianities. Scholars hope that new discoveries will reveal the true Jesus, stripped of the cloak draped over him by so many orthodoxies. Such hopes led to the duping of King.