To many, the Bible is a spiritual — and moral — guidebook,
depicting the word of God in all its glory. But to others, it's a puzzle,
loaded with secrets, codes, and mysteries waiting to be unraveled. Here are just
a few of the most eyebrow-raising conspiracies tied to the Good Book.
Just what the Bible says about the afterlife is up for debate. Neither the Old Testament nor Jesus
himself had much to say about what happens when you die. The conception of the soul,
its relation to the body, and whether it ascends to a spiritual plane or awaits
physical resurrection are all ideas that evolved over the centuries, and today,
the Abrahamic faiths have differing views from one another, and within themselves. But there
is a broad consensus in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths that our individual souls do
have an existence after this life, one that sees our souls and our identities carry on.
This puts the Abrahamic tradition at odds with religions that believe in reincarnation,
the idea that a spirit moves from one physical life to another. It's a divide that some believe
came from a conspiracy of suppression. Some New Age believers claim that the Council of
Nicaea removed biblical teachings supporting reincarnation in 553 AD. The idea has picked
up support among theologians, philosophers, and some practicing Christians in Eastern
countries. For evidence, believers have cited the condemned writings of Origen,
who believed that souls had a spiritual existence before physical birth. They also re-interpret
certain canon passages, believing that John the Baptist is the reincarnation of Elijah.
An issue for believers in this conspiracy — for a start — is that there was no Nicaean
council in 553. The Second Council of Constantinople met that year,
but it made no decisions on reincarnation. And Origen,
whatever New Age adherents have read into his work, was heavily critical of reincarnation.
Even in this age of mass communication, which lets conspiracy theories spread like never before,
many Biblical conspiracies haven't found their way into common knowledge.
Not so with the theory that Jesus Christ slept with Mary Magdalene.
"Who is she?"
"My dear, that's Mary Magdalene."
It's at the heart of "The Da Vinci Code," one of the most popular and
controversial fiction novels of the early 2000s. But the belief that Jesus and Mary
Magdalene were lovers existed well before Dan Brown put pen to paper.
Gnostic gospels have been interpreted as suggesting that Magdalene was a leader in
the early church and a rival to Peter. Some experts have turned to the Bible itself and
see in the New Testament evidence of an intimate relationship between Magdalene and Jesus. And the
realities of Jewish life in that era make Jesus having a partner more believable;
it was the norm for Jewish men and rabbis to take a wife. From that claim,
variant conspiracies have spread, including one that holds that Magdalene fled to France,
had a daughter, and so introduced Jesus' bloodline into the French royal family and
the wider world. The daughter, as related in "The Da Vinci Code," is the true Holy Grail.
Evidence for any piece of this theory is thin,
as multiple scholars said at the time "The Da Vinci Code's" film adaptation was released.
Some have even gone so far as to use it as a perfect example of conspiratorial thinking.
The Book of Revelation is a work of apocalyptic literature, a form of literature that was popular
for centuries before the birth of Jesus. The dominant view on the book among Christian
denominations is that it was concerned with persecution by early Christians in the Roman
world, during the first century A.D., albeit with provisions allowing it to function both
as historical literature and prophecy. The idea that Revelation is first and foremost
a literal foretelling is a comparatively modern and distinctly Anglo-American Protestant notion.
Besides the end of the world and the final judgment of God, Revelation has been said
to predict a time when America's freedom of religion would come under attack. The beast
with two horns in 13:11 is assumed to be America in this theory, with the two horns representing
civic and religious freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. Some believers saw a fulfillment
of this supposed prophecy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The temporary restrictions placed on
religious gatherings were taken as an assault on freedom, and some even likened vaccination
to the enforced branding of the number of the beast mentioned near the end of Revelation 13.
"To some, today's unrest is proof that the prophecies
contained within these texts are being fulfilled."
Adrian Petre of St. Network included this conspiracy theory in a trend he described
as "prophetic populism," which he blamed for the January 6 insurrection. Petre further
tied conspiratorial thinking in general to a Christian worldview, insofar as both posit a
struggle between good and evil where evil must be overcome through one true set of facts.
He advised biblical knowledge and critical reasoning as the antidote to conspiracism.
The New Testament holds a conspiracy theory in plain view. The Gospel of Matthew says
that when the tomb of Jesus was found empty after his crucifixion, the priests and elders
of Jerusalem conspired with soldiers guarding the cemetery to discredit his resurrection. The
soldiers were paid to say that the disciples of Jesus stole his body from its grave.
The allegation of grave robbing is presented in Matthew as a deliberate and false scheme, but the
"stolen body hypothesis," as the theory is known, has been embraced by some. However, the details of
these newer theories don't always align with the description in the Bible. Charles Freeman proposed
in his "A New History of Early Christianity" that Caiaphas, high priest of Israel, stole Jesus' body
away and engineered the claim of resurrection to try and quell civic unrest following the
crucifixion. For supporting evidence, Freeman cites the Gospel of Peter, which mentions two men
entering the tomb and three emerging, possibly an eyewitness account of the body being borne away.
It is worth noting, however, that the Gospel of Peter is…
"Non-canonical! Non-canonical!"
You've probably encountered simulation theory through science fiction — but the idea that our
experience of reality isn't true is an old one. Rene Descartes proposed a variation on it. Plato's
"Allegory of the Cave" discusses it. And it's been proposed through a religious lens as
well. Some have pointed out that biblical teachings imply that there is a greater
reality beyond physical existence, and that God stands apart from the material world — not
unlike proposals for a sufficiently advanced technology to engineer a simulated reality.
One student's expression of simulation theory got under the skin of Professor Gregory J. Rummo,
who wrote in the Christian Scholars' Review that he struggled to argue against his
student's claim. Accepting the divinity of Jesus, as Rummo does, meant accepting him as
a "trans-dimensional being" who defied natural laws. And it means accepting that the world does
not exist as originally intended, and that it is destined to be transformed at the Second Coming.
The irony is that many who accept secular versions of simulation theory reject religion, supernatural
powers, and life after death. But Rummo used his musings on simulation theory to argue for a
collaborative and harmonious relationship between faith and science in puzzling out the universe as
we perceive it. On the secular end, he said that meant entertaining the possibility of a spiritual
simulation, albeit a benign and transformative one, rather than a technologically engineered one.