Easter attacks are a burden to bear

It used to be the first sign of Easter’s imminent arrival ? the appearance of drugstore and supermarket shelves loaded with chocolate rabbits, jellybeans and marshmallow Peeps. Now these sweet temptations arrive well before daylight saving time, in plenty of time to tease those trying to keep a devout, pre-Easter fast during Lent.

These days, a barrage of Christian-baiting stories and broadcasts hails Easter.

Last week, Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball” helped kick off the season by inviting Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, to volley with him about whether Christianity is under attack.

It reminded me of the “Newlywed Game.” Get these folks on and get ‘em to fight. Or at least make them look stupid.

“Do you believe, Tony, that you feel under attack? Or is this a clever marketing tool?” Matthews asked Perkins. “No,” Perkins replied.

Matthews moved on, leaving the “no” as a one-for-two answer. “You know, if you say circle the wagons ? that’s a great way to get them rallied, that’s a way to get them juiced up, and they may vote more frequently. They may get out there and vote, where if they don’t feel under attack, they’re not going to vote,” he proposed.

As an example of Christianity under attack, Perkins cited the court case threatened by the ACLU, which caused the county of Los Angeles to remove a cross from its county seal.

Sharpton bit: “But that is not because they’re attacking the cross,” he said. “They’re saying that there are those citizens that don’t believe in the cross.”

The difference between proselytizing and an accurate portrayal of civic history seems to escape Sharpton. But, hey, it eluded three Los Angeles County supervisors, too.

On the same day as the Matthews-Perkins-Sharpton tete-a-tete, ABC News produced a report about a recent study published in Britain’s Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine claiming to challenge the “established medical theories and the leading hypotheses of how Jesus died.”

ABC found it a witty moniker: “Right Side Up or Right Side Down? Doubts Cast on Jesus’ Crucifixion.”

Halfway down the story, the reporter mentions, contrary to the headline, that the study authors, Matthew Masien and Piers Mitchell of Imperial College London, “do not attempt to dispute whether the crucifixion actually occurred, but they question whether subsequent drawings of Christ on the cross have been accurate.”

Ah. A medical journal practicing art criticism. That makes sense. And news.

Mitchell and Masien point out that none of the four Gospels of the Bible ? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ? gives a detailed account of the manner by which Jesus was crucified. The authors don’t seem to have unearthed much other evidence either.

They seem unaware of an earlier study, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March 1986. Its authors, a medical doctor named William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel and Floyd E. Hosmer gathered a broad spectrum of evidence.

They gleaned details about the Roman legal system, scourging and crucifixion at the time Jesus was crucified from the records of Christians, Jewish, Roman and non-Roman writers and historians, among them Seneca, Livy, Plutarch, Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Thallus and Phlegon, satirist Lucian of Samosata and Flavius Josephus (while noting problems of authenticity with portions of Josephus’ work).

But, by jumbo, if Mitchell and Masien or ABC were to mention this well-recognized work, it would spoil all the doubt-casting fun. Now wouldn’t it?

Oh, and Michael Baigent is back. This time on “Dateline.” If you don’t remember, Baigent authored the book “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” which he’s accused “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown of using as a swipe file.

In “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” ? which Baigent first identified as a work of nonfiction but later described as “historical conjecture” ? he claims that Jesus was married. Now here he is with “The Jesus Papers.” You got it ? its release date is scheduled to coincide with Easter.

Baigent says this book really is nonfiction. Dateline is helping him hawk it with its story: “What if Jesus survived the crucifixion? ? Author Michael Baigent makes shocking assertions against the conventional account of Jesus’ death in his new book.”

In “The Jesus Papers,” says Dateline’s story, Baigent “reveals ‘the truth’ about Jesus’s life and crucifixion.” Too bad it didn’t come out before Mitchell and Masien did their study.

But we couldn’t possibly know just how much we don’t know about Jesus until we watch the National Geographic Society’s documentary, “The Gospel of Judas.” It and a companion article, followed by three books, have long been planned for an Easter 2006 release.

The film, billed as a “two-hour global event,” will first air on the West Coast on Sunday, April 9, at 7 p.m. The gospel itself is said to tell the story of Jesus’ life through the eyes of Judas, portraying Judas not as a traitor but as Jesus’ closest friend, entrusted to carry out a task at once terrible and, for the world’s salvation, necessary. Reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Or the other way around. Well, gee, don’t we always paint ourselves in the best light.

National Geographic says it tells the story of “what has happened to the document since it was found, the recent authentication process and analysis, and key insight gleaned from its laborious translation and interpretation.”

I can hardly wait.

As early as 180 years after the death of Jesus, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, France, wrote of the Gospel of Judas in “Against the Heretics.” His appraisal? It was written in the middle of the second century, of Gnostic origin, from a sect of the Cainites, who were known for putting a positive spin on all the dark figures in Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Looks like the media have picked up a few tips from the Gnostics. Make Jesus out to be less than he claimed. Make his enemies look good.

It’s not chocolate rabbits, jellybeans and marshmallow Peeps, but it’s quite a gift for the media to present to Christians at Easter, I’d say.