Conspiracy Theories


by

David Holden

Conspiracy writers; are they giving us the real story behind the headlines, or are they just lying through their teeth?

The following conspiracies are briefly covered in this paper:
  1. JF Kennedy Assassination
  2. International Bankers Conspiracy
  3. Port Arthur Massacre
  4. Dunblane Killer
  5. 11 September 2001 (9/11)
  6. The Roswell Incident
  7. Holocaust Denial
  8. Man On The Moon
  9. The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is in a different category to the others which involve to some extent the claim that we are being fooled by the government. The Da Vinci Code claims we are being fooled by the Church (a giant conspiracy). This conspiracy story by Dan Brown is dealt with separately at the end of the paper.

JF Kennedy assassination
      The assassination of JK Kennedy has intrigued people up to this day. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged, but did not stand trial for the assassination because he was shot by Jack Ruby, thereby robbing the public of any chance of learning first hand what his motives were.
One conspiracy theory put forward the claim that the assassination was the work of the US government. We now know that the Russians were directly involved in the false accusations. The collapse of communism in Europe in 1989 has resulted in more harmonious relations between Russia and the US. That in turn has brought about a greater openness from both sides as to what they did in order to gain information and cause trouble for the other side.
In a TV documentary which covered the subject of spying during the cold war, the subject of disinformation was discussed. You and I would call it just plain lying. A former KGB officer was interviewed. He claimed he worked with another KGB agent to write a book with the aim to get as many of the American public as possible to distrust their government. Their opportunity came with the assassination of JF Kennedy. Other than the basic facts, it was a work of fiction which made the claim that the assassination was organised and then covered up by agents within the government.

Wealthy bankers and communism
Claims that governments are involved in dirty tricks have been on the increase in the last few years. A conspiracy theory which gained a lot of attention in the 1970s claimed that many governments around the world were under the influence of powerful bankers. The theory involved a rewriting of history to make the claim that communism was set up in Russia, China and every other communist state as a means of controlling people.
A book promoting the above says, “‘Communism’ is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world ... first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a ‘Great Merger’, into an all-powerful world socialist super-state probably under the auspices of the United Nations.” (1).
When the above is achieved, the world would be under the control of the bankers according to this theory. Several good and decent people were made out to be greedy and treacherous to back up the false claims. With the collapse of communism and the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see that the story is false. You can read more about the theory and the rebuttal on my web site at (.pdf format): BankConsp.pdf

Port Arthur massacre
The massacre of 35 people and wounding of least 20 others in Port Arthur by Martin Bryant in 1996 has been presrented as a conspiracy by conspiracy writer, Joe Vialls, and some sections of the pro-gun lobby. There are many problems for the theory. Australia has many good and thorough investigative journalists working for the various TV, radio and newspaper outlets. Joe Vialls does not come from this band of good, honest and reliable reporters. Furthermore, his book does not carry an endorsement from any reliable witnesses at the scene. A pro-conspiracy theory advocate says Vialls is lying when he claims the shooter shot all the people in the Café in just ninety seconds. He was informed that it was more like five minutes, but he persists with the ninety-seconds lie in order to advance his false claims.
It is claimed that someone ordered the massacre so that the government would take advantage of the community back-lash against firearms in part of a process to disarm Australians. The theory is quite vague on the point of who ordered the massacre, and on many other crucial points.
A plot involving murder is not something any sane and sensible person could involve himself in. Not only would it have a high degree of discovery, the discovery would bring about the very opposite of what the plan was trying to achieve - the disarming of Australians. In the resulting atmosphere of mistrust, people would want to arm themselves more heavily than before. You can read more about the theory and the rebuttal (around four pages) at: Port Arthur

Dunblane killer
Another conspiracy theory makes the claim that the man who killed 16 schoolchildren and their teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane in March 1996 was actually a government agent. The goal being the same or at least similar to that of the Port Arthur massacre. However, the government did not bring in strict gun controls after the massacre. They were already strict by Australian standards at the time.
Regarding the killer, Thomas Hamilton aged forty-three, after committing his terrible deed, turned the gun on himself. Papers from the inquiry into the massacre reveal an explanation for his actions. They were meant to be kept secret for 100 years, but were published following an appeal by families of the victims.
The papers reveal Hamilton bore a grudge verging on paranoia against the parents, police and scouts’ movement. One person who had known Hamilton for years told police Hamilton would regularly vent his grievances in phone calls. “‘I would say he did have a thing, almost paranoia, about the scouts, police and parents in Dunblane,’ the witness said. ‘He felt everyone was against him...’" (2).

11 September 2001
It is claimed the George W Bush Administration ordered the attack on the Twin Towers in New York to establish a case for going to war in Afghanistan.
A problem for the theory is the same as above. Discovery of the plot would not only put the perpetrators behind bars for a very long time, it would bring about the opposite to what they were trying to achieve. A claim made by some that the war was about achieving cheap oil has proven to be false. The price of oil went up after the commencement of the war, not down. In the first half of 2006, it reached record heights.

The Fire
The theory claims the Twin Towers should not have collapsed as a result of the aircraft impact and fire. It is claimed explosives were placed in the building to make it collapse. In support of the claim, video footage of the building collapsing is shown. As the building collapses air pressure builds in the floors immediately below the section which is collapsing. That results in some of the windows popping out and exuding black smoke. A careful look at the so called ‘explosions’ reveals that they do not have the force you would expect from dynamite or a similar type of explosive. Also, the instances are random, not well placed as would be the case for a controlled demolition.
Placing explosives in the building in addition to crashing a plane into it would only double the chances of getting caught with serious consequences. Who would want to increase their chances of getting caught after Watergate? The conspirators in that case spent years behind bars on charges that were a lot less serious than murder.
The conspiracy film, “Loose Change” by Dylan Avery gives several examples of buildings on fire which do not collapse. However, in the examples given, the fires are not fuelled by very large quantities of jet fuel (kerosine) which burns at a very high temperature (around 1,000 degrees C.).

Some facts on the fire
Fire can be very destructive. The Romans used fire fuelled by timber to crack the walls of strongholds. The aircraft which struck the towers had tens of thousands of litres of jet fuel. Newsweek magazine puts the figure at 60,000 gallons that’s 272,000 litres (3). The aircraft were originally destined for a flight across to the other side of the country - San Francisco and Los Angeles - so they were loaded with a large amount of fuel for the flight.
The fire was easily hot enough to severely weaken the structure which was carrying a very heavy load. It was no surprise to experts that the towers collapsed because of the severe weakening of the supporting columns.

Another claim is that share trading in the airlines which lost planes were not normal, indicating that someone knew something. That claim is false. Share trading in the stocks was not out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the crash.
It is claimed that the aircraft which crashed into the Pentagon is different to the one claimed in the official account. The real aircraft - or possibly a missile - was quickly taken from the crash scene so that it could not be correctly identified. That claim is false, and does not make sense. Given the fact that the Pentagon has a lot of intelligent people in it, it is not a good building to choose to organise a hoax on the public. The Pentagon takes in more than 22,000 staff. Around 200 people saw the aircraft crash into the building. Crash investigators examined the aircraft thoroughly. Regarding the condition of the aircraft, it has been reported that it was almost turned inside out. The front of the aircraft stopped quickly in the strong structure of the building, and the back of the aircraft kept going to meet the front.

The Facts
Some basic facts regarding the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks:
American Airlines Flight 11, leaves Boston at 7:59 a.m. bound for Los Angeles. The Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew, crashes into the North Tower at 0845. At 1029 the 417 metre, 110 story tower collapses.
United Airlines Flight 175 departs Boston at 7:58 a.m. and crashes into the South Tower at 0903. The Boeing 767 was carrying 56 passengers and nine crew. It was originally headed for Los Angeles. At 0950 the 415 metre, 110 story tower collapses.
United Airlines Flight 93, headed for San Francisco, departs Newark at 8:01 a.m. The plane, a Boeing 757 carrying 38 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendants, crashes at 10:00 a.m. near Pittsburgh.
American Airlines Flight 77 departs Washington at 8:10 a.m. bound for Los Angeles. The Boeing 757, carrying 58 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants crashes into the Pentagon (4).
I won't say any more on this theory. For a more thorough rebuttal, go to the following web site (Wikipedia):
Conspiracy

The Roswell Incident
On 08 July 1947, the headline of the “Roswell Daily Record” read, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”.

The story begins with the discovery of some wreckage in June 1947 by W.W. ‘Mac’ Brazel on his ranch near Roswell, New Mexico USA. The local sherif believed it had military significance, so he contacted Major Jesse Marcel at the local Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). His view on the source of the wreckage becomes the initial impetus for the UFO story.
Marcel and counterintelligence officer Sheridan Cavitt went to Brazel’s ranch to examine the wreckage. Cavitt thought the wreckage probably came from a weather balloon. Marcel however, had more sensational ideas. He believed the source of the material was extraterrestrial. The public information officer at the base announced on 08 July that they had recovered a flying disk. The claim was retracted a few days later. A press conference explained that the wreckage was no more than a weather balloon. With that explanation, minds were laid to rest and the whole affair was largely forgotten.
The Roswell incident was revived in 1978 when world-famous UFOlogist Stanton Friedman became acquainted with Marcel and took an interest in his claim that the government substituted the original wreckage with materials from weather balloons. This view fuelled conspiracy theories that the government was trying to hide something.
Actually the government was trying to hide something. 1947 was in the ‘Cold War’ period when relations between the US and the USSR were tense - at times verging on real war. The US had the atomic bomb, the USSR didn’t. The US wanted to be among the first to know about any success by the Russians in that area, so they established a secret monitoring system using high altitude balloons. The USSR finally met with success detonating their first atomic bomb in 1949.
The US didn’t want the USSR to know that they were being monitored, and they certainly didn’t want them to know how they were being monitored. In addition to the secrecy factor, the wreckage was different from that of a regular weather balloon because it was of a special design for a special task.
The balloons carried radar reflectors, low-frequency microphones, sonobuoys and battery packs high into the stratosphere. On 04 June 1947, one of these balloons was launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field, New Mexico, not far from Roswell. After launch, some of the balloons burst from the thin atmosphere and exposure to the sun. The military lost contact with the balloon only 27 km (17 miles) from the crash site. Information about the secretive launch remained classified for over forty years. People who did not need to know about the secret operations were not informed, and that included Marcel.
In addition to the puzzle Marcel observed - a puzzle because it was not a regular weather balloon - his mind was fuelled with stories of flying saucers. A few weeks prior to his examining the wreckage at Roswell, businessman Kenneth Arnold became a media sensation when he claimed his light plane had been buzzed over Cascade Mountains, Washington by nine disks like ‘sauces’ that skipped across the water. The story led to an explosion of sightings that year - 850 in total. With all of the above background, Marcel was able to jump to the conclusion that the wreckage was that of a flying saucer.
In 1980, two UFO-believing authors Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, published “The Roswell Incident”. It became the most widely-read book on the Roswell crash. The authors claimed to have interviewed more than ninety witnesses. The book showed alleged extracts from secret government documents. One had the signature of President Harry S. Truman, authorizing a covert group to deal with UFO incidents. His signature was eventually found to have been ‘lifted’ from another memo.
A 1995 documentary aired on many TV channels claimed to show secret footage of an autopsy being carried out on an alien body recovered from the Roswell crash site. This story was big enough to warrant investigation and was found to be a hoax. A documentary called, “World’s Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed” exposed the false claims. It interviewed one of the actors paid to take part in the autopsy movie. He confessed the body in the movie was a dummy.

There have been numerous investigations into the Roswell incident. None have come up with any solid evidence to support the claim that the source of the wreckage found near Roswell is extraterrestrial.
A problem for the conspiracy theory is that no extraterrestrials are known to have visited our planet in order to rescue their comrades. It defies logic that a civilisation supposedly more advanced than ours would simply abandon one of their own.
The claim that the government is involved in a coverup has lost credibility with the discovery that President Truman’s signature which was put forward as key evidence has been found to be a fraud. Furthermore, why would any government want to hide information about a visit from another planet? The US government regularly warns its citizens about threats, perceived or real from other nations, so why would beings from another planet be treated differently?

Bibliography
“Creation”, Vol. 29 No. 4, September-November 2007, p. 19-21.
Roswell Incident, Wikipedia, Accessed on 18 December, 2007.
This article added to file in January 2008

Holocaust denial
Some have denied the holocaust. A man who caught the public attention for a while in that regard is David Irving, a far-Right British historian. He had freely proclaimed his offbeat views for a time until he made the mistake of denying the holocaust in two speeches in Austria in 1989 where denying the holocaust is a crime. He was arrested when he re-entered the country in November 2005.
Irving was forced to reconsider his views. He told the Austrian court in fluent German, ‘I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,’ adding that he changed his mind in 1991 after coming across personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust, during a speaking tour in Argentina. ... The Nazis did murder millions of Jews,’ he said. But after handing down his sentence, judge Peter Liebetreu said: ‘The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law.’”
David Irving, aged sixty-seven, was found guilty by the Austrian court in February 2006 and sentenced to three years jail. A news report on the case says, “The verdict will end for good the career of a man banned from a dozen countries - from Australia to Canada to South Africa - for belittling the murder of the Jews and glorifying the Austrian born Hitler. In 2000, Irving was forced into bankruptcy when he unsuccessfully sued Deborah Lipstadt, an American academic who had called him a Holocaust denier. He was ordered to pay £3 million ($7.08 million Australian) in legal costs and had to sell his Mayfair home.” (5).

Man on Moon
Some conspiracy theorists have put forward the claim that Neil Armstrong’s walking on the Moon in 1969 was faked. Men in space suits were simply filmed walking about in a carefully setup studio with the film speed adjusted to give the impression of weak gravity. It is claimed all of the photos of the men on the moon should have stars in the background, therefore, they must be fake. However, as any person who has tried to photograph stars should know, starlight is very weak and requires an exposure hundreds of times longer than that of an ordinary daylight photo. Daylight on the moon is always bright because there is never any cloud cover. Shutter speed and aperture must be set for bright conditions (around f11 at 1/125 second), consequently, all of the photos of men on the moon have a black background - no stars.
Another claim is that the Russians knew the Moon landing was a fake. A problem for that claim is that I occasionally listened to shortwave radio broadcasts from other countries in 1969, and that included Radio Moscow which was quick to pick up on the faults of the Americans. The faults did not include the claim that the Americans had faked the moon landing.
A movie has been produced and screened on TV which takes advantage of the conspiracy theory, or perhaps it started the conspiracy theory. It spins a clever yarn of the efforts the US government made in protecting the alleged secret. Those who remember the Vietnam war period will recognise parts of speeches from government and military officials lifted out of context and placed into the film for maxim effect. Towards the end of the film, the story starts to get a bit ridiculous. Deliberately so as a signal to people that it should not be taken seriously. However, I have come across a couple of people who failed to pick up the subtle signals that it is just a good yarn.

Are they logical
Conspiracies which involve huge risks and deception on a large scale just aren’t logical. Let me just spin a yarn at this point for the benefit of those who think a government in an open and democratic society can kill a few people and get away with it.

Terry: Hello Harry. Our attempts to get that bill through parliament just won’t succeed the way things are at the moment. I propose we take some drastic action.
Harry: What do you suggest Terry?
Terry: We place a truck full of explosives outside a building, detonate the explosives, the building comes down killing at least 100 people, then in the shock and confusion of the period, we push the bill through parliament.
Harry: Sounds like a great idea, but I am worried I could get caught. I’m in a lot of trouble at the moment from the opposition parties and the press because I have unfairly used my position and knowledge for financial gain.
Terry: I’m afraid you don’t stand much hope. You’ll just have to cop it on the chin.
Harry: Why are you so sure my case is lost?
Terry: That’s just the way it is. Make a few quick bucks on the side like that and all the top journalists and political hounds are on to it. The only thing you can get away with is murder.
Harry: I’m not so sure about that Terry. The government conspired to have some people land in Cuba back in April 1961. When the invaders came under attack from the Cubans, they were to call out for help. That would be the pretext for our government to invade the country. The trouble is, someone leaked the plan to a newspaper. The plan was published and read by the Cubans before it was put into effect.
Terry: Let me just clarify something here. For a plan to succeed, you have to conspire against your own people. The problem with that plan was that it was against foreigners.
Harry: You could be right there Terry. I remember the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ incident. That ship was protesting loudly against the French nuclear tests in the 1970s, so agents were secretly sent to New Zealand to destroy the ship. The explosion sank the ship and killed one of the crew. The agents were caught before they could get back to France. Obviously they were caught because they were conspiring against foreigners.
Terry: That’s right. If they had conspired against their own people and perhaps blown up a building killing a hundred people, they could have easily gotten away with it. Conspiring against foreigners just doesn’t work.
Now lets get to work on our own conspiracy. You get in contact with the owner of the building, tell him to take out extra insurance on the building, then remove the security guards on Thursday night. We will place explosives on every floor of the building ready for detonation the next day while it is full of people. I will arrange for someone to park a truck outside full of explosives.

Next day
Harry: Everything went smoothly yesterday Terry. When the owner discovered we are going to blow up his building, he threatened to call the police. When I explained the plan is much bigger than that, we will make sure it is full of people first, he gave his full cooperation. After some hesitation, even the local police decided they would give their full support by turning a blind eye to crucial pieces of evidence. This has been a huge learning experience for me. It is incredible regarding the amount of help government officials like us receive when we decide to committ a terrible act of atrocity against our own people. Everyone wants to help, or turn a blind eye to what is going on.

I will leave that story right there. The above makes for terrible reading, but hopefully it illustrates the fantasy world of the conspiracy writer.

Lies, lies and more lies. Why do they do it?
Cold War
It has been said, “In warfare, the first casualty is truth”. You can weaken your enemy if you can get the people to fight amongst themselves and distrust their government. In the cold war period, the Russians wanted the Americans to distrust their government, so they put out a false story regarding the assassination of John Kennedy.

Hate
Some Arab leaders hate the Jews and don’t like the sympathy the Jews receive from the holocaust atrocities. Their answer is to claim the holocaust history is all false, a big lie. Various pieces of alleged evidence have been put forward to support the claim. Unfortunately for that conspiracy theory, the evidence for the holocaust has been well documented. Details include names of perpetrators, names of victims and how they suffered and died. Some who have survived the death camps are still living and can give their own testimony regarding what happened.

Personal glory
It is possible for a conspiracy writer to gain a bit of glory and praise for himself and perhaps some money as well from those who swallow his logic.

Mischievous intent
Just as some write computer virus which can cause thousands of dollars worth of data loss, some enjoy spreading false information.

Mental illness
Paranoid schizophrenia is an illness where the sufferer can believe he is being watched by some government authority e.g. ASIO (Australia), CIA (USA), police etc., or at least, he believes the government authority is conspiring to cause harm. Back in the 1980s a conspiracy writer was putting out a newsletter in which he claimed the then new Police Headquarters in Roma Street Brisbane had secret passageways. People could be taken down these passageways for investigation without anyone knowing. He started to team up with other radical thinkers until his stories became too bizarre. About the time he was rumoured to be mentally ill, his newsletters stopped.
Just for the record, the headquarters are not guarded by the police, a security firm is used. That is a strange arrangement if the police have something to hide.

Most people have no experience of reading a book where the writer is deliberately lying. People are accustomed to a reasonably accurate reporting of the facts from the various media outlets - apart from the occasional instances of political bias. That is an advantage to the conspiracy writer. When he makes false statements, they are uncritically accepted by many readers.

Those who want to find out just how much history can be twisted by conspiracy writers might like to read my paper on the world domination conspiracy theory.

I want to make some predictions regarding the next twenty years. Over that period of time, nobody will:
  • Capture a unicorn (the mythical horse with the horn in the centre of its head).
  • Find and convict the International Bankers who conspired to enslave the entire world through communism.
  • Capture the man who is supposedly the real killer of the thirty-five victims at Port Arthur in 1996.
  • Capture the government official who gave the order to bring down the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001 (9/11).
  • Capture an extraterrestrial or his craft
  • Capture the government official who ordered the assassination of John F Kennedy.
  • Find and convict the man who ordered the holocaust hoax.
  • Find and convict the man who ordered the moon landing hoax featuring Neil Armstrong in 1969.

I can confidently predict the above, because, just as the unicorn is simply an interesting story, so are the above conspiracy theories.

Points to consider
If you come across a conspiracy theory, you might like to put it to the following test:
  1. Is the person who has written the conspiracy theory a reliable reporter with a good track record for reporting the truth, or is he someone who can be dishonest with the facts and still make money or perhaps increase an otherwise meagre income?
  2. Are knowledgeable people such as investigative journalists investigating points raised in his story? Are people who would like to see a change in government loudly proclaiming the points raised in the story from the floor of parliament and through the various media outlets?
  3. Some conspiracy writers will quote a professor or two to back up their claims. However, can the quote be taken out of context and craftily placed in the story for maximum effect? If the professor really believes the story, why doesn’t he expose the conspiracy by writing a book?
  4. Are parts of the story at variance with the known facts? Are other conspiracy writers disagreeing with some of the points in the story? Does he answer your letters or just run for cover?
  5. President Nixon tried to cover up the fact that his men had committed a burglary in the 'Watergate' building. He failed because the US enjoys a free, open and democratic form of government. That situation continues today. If any government official within that form of government commits a crime, then he may find himself under the judgment of the free and democratic process that he is sworn to serve.

I will conclude this article with an appropriate passage of Scripture.

“Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread,”
(Isaiah 8:12-13).

--------------------------------------------

End Notes
  1. Gary Allen with Larry Abraham, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy”, Concord Press, California, 1971, p. 35.
  2. Reuters, quoted in, The Courier Mail, Brisbane, 05 October 2005, p. 18.
  3. Newsweek, ‘Bulletin’ supplement, 25 September 2001, p. 46.
  4. Facts from Newsweek, ‘Bulletin’ supplement, 25 September 2001, p. 50-51.
  5. Roger Boyes, The Australian, 22 February 2006, p. 9.
For a printer friendly version of this paper (.pdf), Go to: Consps.pdf
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The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown has made a lot of money out of his novel, “The Da Vinci Code”, first published by Bantam Press (a division of Transworld Publishing) in the UK in 2003. The Courier Mail reports that five years ago, Dan Brown was just another struggling writer who at one stage resorted to selling books out of the back of his car. “Forbes magazine placed him 12th on its 2005 celebrity 100 list and estimated his annual income at $US76.5 million” (Sandra McLean, “The Courier Mail”, etc, 06-7 May 2006, p. 9).
American writer, Lisa Rogak, author of The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code: An Unauthorised Biography of Dan Brown makes the point that Brown realised he needed to incorporate religion and controversy into his stories in order to gain a lot of book sales. That strategy is certainly working. The problem with his book, The Da Vinci Code, is that Dan Brown makes the claim that the story is based on fact. A further problem is that society in general has a poor grasp of early Church history. That means many readers do not have the knowledge base to notice the historical errors in the book. For instance:
Dan Brown gets the date for the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls wrong. He places the discovery in the 1950s (See p. 234). They were actually discovered in 1947. He claims they make reference to early Christianity. They don’t. The scrolls predate Christianity. They are fragments of Old Testament Scriptures and documents which relate to the Quamran community.
At the beginning of his book, Dan Brown reports that his previous occupations were teaching English and creative writing. He does not report that he is an authority on history, nor do we find a statement in the book from anyone who is an authority on history giving support to the historical claims made in the book.

Dan makes the claim that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus. He is not able to find a shred of evidence for this claim in the gospels, so he resorts to using a false gospel (not in the Bible) called the Gospel of Philip for proof. Actually I should say he missuses it. The only copy of the Gospel of Philip available to us is in Coptic, not Aramaic, and the Coptic word Koinonas simply means ‘companion’, not ‘wife’, as Dan Brown claims.
Dan Brown makes the claim that the divinity of Christ is an invention of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Here again, Brown is wrong. The Bible reveals that Jesus was worshipped as God and Saviour from the foundation of the Church. For instance:

“while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ,” (Titus 2:13).
“‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ - which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:23).
“Then those who were in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matt. 14:33).
Those who read the book of Mark do not have to read far to find his deity proclaimed. The very first verse says, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1).
Jesus said, “... ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.’” (John 5:17-18).
See also Matt. 16:16, 26:62-65, 27:43, 54. Mark 1:24, 2:7, 3:11, Luke 8:28. John 5:17-18.

Quite clearly, the Bible, which was completed in the first century, proclaims the divinity of Christ. Some in the past have had the erroneous view that the Bible was completed in the second or third century. Evidence within Scripture proves that is no the case. Jesus foretold the destruction of the temple (Matt. 24:1-2, Mark 13:1-2). That prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD when the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. There is no mention in Scripture of the fulfilment of the prophecy. Also, Scripture mentions the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7) but there is no mention of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in the 60s. That indicates the Bible was completed before the destruction of the temple, and the deaths of Peter and Paul.

“The Da Vinci Code” is definitely not a book for the gullible reader. Because others have written extensively on the errors in Dan Brown’s book, I will not write any further on the subject. Those who want more information should consider other web sites such as breakingthedavincicode.com or go to www.creationontheweb.com then enter Da Vinci Code into the search box on the main page. The last mentioned site is highly recommended.
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