DECONSTRUCTING the Code

DECONSTRUCTING THE CODE is a story of love and lost meaning, treachery and distrust, creative expression and blatant forgery, book burnings and the chance discovery of priceless writings of antiquity. In a new epic play by writer Jack Forbes, DECONSTRUCTING the Code tells the true story of the origins of Christianity and reveals long-hidden truths of ancient Gnostic Gospels (the ';Nag Hammadi Books').Saul of Tarsus is tormented by Jehovah's mandate that Gentiles, including Saul's childhood friend Thecla, could not be saved. As an ordained Rabbi, Saul recognized countless contradictions and impossible edicts within the Torah. Along the road to Tarsus (the so-called ';Road to Damascus'), however, Saul experiences a liberating spiritual revelation in a mandate from God—a new religion of a metaphorical Christ where ';the Christ is in you.' But the Apostle Paul (his Greek, or ';Hellenized,' name) could never have anticipated how his new, ';Gnostic' (Knowledge) Christian religion would later become distorted, challenged and annihilated by the Catholic Church in a violent conspiracy of convenience with Roman Emperor Constantine. For centuries, the literalist Christian church became the sole claimant to Christian doctrines—until one day in 1945 with discovery of the Nag Hammadi Books.