Dan Eaton > Quotes

“the discovery in Upper Egypt of a stash of manuscripts in 1945. In the village of Nag Hammadi, not far from Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, thirteen ancient codices were unearthed, containing over fifty crumbling texts once thought to have been destroyed during the early Church’s struggle to define orthodoxy.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“It was now clear why the aircraft was so far off course when it went down. He continued staring at the translation. The British agent who recruited Otto was not named, yet Alex easily recognized his friend from the description. He was dumbfounded. Morton Smith must have gone to the Brits soon after being recruited by the Nazis, told them his story, and offered his services. He had been working for both sides, a double agent.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“The story borrows from the real-life discovery of the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark at Mar Saba in Israel by the renowned American scholar Dr. Morton Smith in 1958. It was a find that sparked a furious debate in the popular press and among scholars over the manuscript’s authenticity, with some suggesting Smith was the perpetrator of one of history’s most brilliantly executed hoaxes. That debate continues today. Since Smith’s death in 1991, the speculation has only increased.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt. In 1941, a senior member turned up in Berlin, where he spent much of the war and met Hitler. For most of its history, the Brotherhood has been outlawed.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“St. Sergius through the small doorway in the southwest corner and was immediately enveloped in its cool, dim interior, infused with the scent of incense and beeswax. He loved the ancient Egyptian-Byzantine basilica and visited it often in his early days in the city. Its use of Islamic motifs, the inlaid wooden stars of the iconostasis screen, presented a certain harmony. It soothed him. An intermingling of Islamic and Coptic styles stretched back centuries and was a hallmark of this part of Cairo.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Perhaps, then, there’s another story to be told, a story about the dangers of allowing the obsession with texts and interpretations to cloud the profound simplicity of faith. We may never know with any real certainty if the manuscript, or the Secret Gospel it quoted, was genuine. But we don’t have the original text of any of the Gospels, do we? Seen in that light, at best the lack of academic inquiry into the professor’s find represents a stubborn refusal to deal with information that might challenge deeply held personal convictions. At worst, it’s about power and preserving it. I mean, think of all the volumes written about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Everyone is entitled to their perspective, and historical texts should be examined with academic rigor. Yet if we lose faith, or belief, or our common humanity in the process, haven’t we lost what is essential?”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“What is more, the early Church knew far more Gospels than those that eventually came to be included in the New Testament. Sadly, most have not survived the centuries. But they have turned up in this part of the world with incredible regularity, particularly in the period following World War II. The Dead Sea Scrolls themselves were found around that time, as was the so-called Gospel of Thomas.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“The idea that Jesus anointed someone other than Peter to lead the Church and that the Kingdom of God was not something to strive for, but already here, was anathema to the Holy Roman Church.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“quietly into the stairwell. 3 Tel Aviv, Israel The email arrived on the secure system just before midday and played on Eli Zeira’s”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“You and me both.” Something on the ground had caught his attention.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“As the wise man said: ‘Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“It was immediately obvious what the Church would have objected to. Peter, according to Jesus in the canonical Gospels, was the rock on which the Church was built. The two hundred and sixty-five men who’ve served as the head of the Catholic Church over the centuries all trace their lineage back to Peter, the first Pope whose authority was ordained by God. That line of papal succession, Alex knew, was based on Matthew 16:18. “The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.’” But here was a very different version of events, a suppressed version that had Jesus anointing a different disciple: his brother, James, as his earthly successor.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“After the war, you adopted the girl?” “Yes. Her name is Rachel. Like me, she is an old woman now.” “And you found him, tracked him down?” “It wasn’t hard. When Rebekah’s father learned of the pregnancy, she was abruptly pulled out of boarding school and returned to Germany. She and Morton corresponded until the letters stopped getting through. It was about a year after that that the family was rounded up and sent east to the camps.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Rebekah knew Morton was studying at Cambridge. He was easy for me to find from there. I was fairly sure he had not fought in the war, even though he would have been of the correct age. Did you know he’d had polio as a child, he was a cripple?” Alex did not, but recalled that evening at the riverside mansion in Phnom Penh when he’d first noticed Smith’s slight limp. It seemed a lifetime ago. “And you’ve been in touch ever since?” “Yes. The early days in Israel were difficult ones. He would send money to help out, still does, even though we don’t need it anymore.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“was one night early on in our time at the camp that Rebekah told me about the boy she’d met at boarding school in England, just before the war. It was a strange name, and I never forgot it. Morton. Morton Smith.” Alex swallowed, throat dry. He realized he had goose bumps. Finally they were getting to the truth. He took a sip of his tea and nodded for the old woman to continue.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“There are numerous manuscripts of the books of the New Testament, and none of them are identical. In fact, there are more than five thousand partial or full versions in Greek, and you may be shocked to learn there are more differences than anyone has been able to count. Estimates go up to three hundred thousand. Nobody knows for sure.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“The Coptic Church was founded on the teachings of the Apostle Mark, who introduced Christianity to Egypt in the first century during the Roman emperor Nero’s reign. Alex wondered how Father Boutros would view his quest to track down an alternative, and possibly blasphemous, version of the venerated saint’s sacred writings. Christianity spread rapidly throughout Egypt within fifty years of Mark’s arrival in Alexandria in about AD 68. A fragment of the Gospel of John, written using the Coptic language, was found in Upper Egypt and dated to the early second century. The Coptic Church was now more than nineteen centuries old. Copts liked to point out that their Church was the subject of prophecy in the Old Testament. The Prophet Isaiah foretold that “in that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“During their seventy-plus years of existence, there have been cycles of growth, followed by factional splits forming violent jihad-oriented groups, such as al-Jihad and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya here in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. In Egypt, the Brotherhood is a far-reaching operation. Its members see themselves as unjustly oppressed. The current president routinely has them arrested.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Jesus said, ‘If your leaders say to you, “Look, the Father’s kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Father’s kingdom is within you and it is outside you.’ “I can see from the look on your face that the second saying here is more confusing to you,” said Father Boutros. “It is indeed a little more cryptic, but think carefully and you can see what the Church might object to. Holding out the promise of a reward, paradise in the next life, is a very powerful thing. In Catholicism, it is only priests who can grant absolution and entry into the Kingdom of God. That kingdom is a reward for a life of hard work.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“You know, Muhammad originally had his followers pray in the direction of Jerusalem, turning their backs on the pagan associations of the Kabah in Mecca.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“But how well do we ever know anyone? Human beings are like dark continents with only the edges explored. The middle remains uncharted territory.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Few people know this, but the four Gospels of the New Testament were written anonymously and only later came to be called by the names of their reputed authors. I often hear people these days bemoaning what they see as the decline of Christianity into liberalism, by which they mean beliefs they see as unorthodox, not matching their own. Yet, if anything, the faith is becoming narrower. The diversity of early Christianity is staggering when compared with today. “What is more, the early Church knew far more Gospels than those that eventually came to be included in the New Testament. Sadly, most have not survived the centuries. But they have turned up in this part of the world with incredible regularity, particularly in the period following World War II.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Al-Banna had supplemented the traditional Islamic education for the Brotherhood’s male students with training in jihad, holy war. It was not a fact many people knew, said Bairstow, but while studying at university, Osama bin Laden was influenced by the religious and political ideas of several professors with strong ties to the Brotherhood.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“The Nag Hammadi Library, as its collection of works is now known, has, since its miraculous discovery just after the war, been published in its entirety. It is freely available on the Internet.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Moqattam sat in a quarry on the far side of a large hill that essentially hid it from the city. It was home to nearly thirty thousand people who spent their days picking through the detritus of one of the world’s biggest urban sprawls. They combed it for food scraps, which they fed to their livestock. The rest was carefully sorted, washed, resold, reworked, or simply used again. Many of the garbage collectors suffered terribly from disease.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“A decade later, Nasser granted amnesty to the imprisoned Brothers, evidently hoping their release would weaken interest in Egypt’s recently formed Arab Socialist Union party. Three more assassination attempts occurred in quick succession. The most senior-known members of the Brotherhood were executed in 1966. Hundreds of others were imprisoned.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Deep in thought, Alex was startled by the clink of the garden gate opening and closing again. Avigail’s face brightened as she replaced her teacup on its saucer and stood. “Ah, there you are. You look exhausted!” In her sixties, the woman walking up the garden path was tall and olive skinned, hair white as snow. The likeness to the professor is remarkable, Alex thought as he shook her hand. She even moves like him. “Dr. Stern, I’m Alex. I knew your father. I’m so sorry.” It was all he could think to say.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“Like the Protestants of the sixteenth century, the Muslim fundamentalists are a relatively new force on the wider Islamic scene. Wahhabism—the dour, repressive creed espoused by the Saudis and the Osama bin Ladens of this world—only dates from the mid-eighteenth century. The strain of Islam that inspired the Taliban, which has become pretty much indistinguishable from Wahhabism, cropped up in India just a little over a century ago. So when we talk about Islamic fundamentalism, we are not talking about some ancient essence of Islam, we’re talking about something relatively modern.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel

“His disciples said to him, ‘When will the kingdom come?’ Jesus said, ‘It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, “Look, here!” or “Look, there!” Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”
― Dan Eaton, The Secret Gospel