|
Decoding The Da Vinci Code By Charles E. McCoy 5/22/2006
The French Enlightenment (1689-1789) spawned an intellectual assault upon Roman Catholicism, the Bible, and the Christian worldview during the “Modern Era” (1815-1963) that opened the way for old Greek materialism and naturalism to become the new “orthodoxy” in Western civilization. As it turned out, much of what the Enlightenment skeptics asserted about the Bible and nature to make their case, which succeeded in giving the impression to many that the Bible and Christianity were discredited, were incorrect. As needed as some criticism of Roman Catholicism was and continues to be, The DaVinci Code accuses Catholicism (with some heavy carry-over for Christianity in general) of falsehoods and crimes for which it is not guilty! The DaVinci bandwagon has also acquired some “me too” riders in the current market - the Jesus Papers and the Gospel of Judas. As with the Enlightenment, we shall see that a good deal of The DaVinci Code assault on the Biblical/Judeo-Christian worldview is incorrect. The DaVinci Code The Plot - The story begins in modern-day Paris with the murder of the Louvre's chief curator, whose body is found laid out on the floor in symbolic repose. Investigating the case is a Harvard symbol expert (Robert Langdon) and a French police cryptologist (Sophie Nevue), who happens to be the victim’s granddaughter. The two discover puzzling codes at the murder scene, which the dying curator wrote in his own blood, that point them to the fabled Holy Grail. However, as the story unfolds, it turns out that the “Holy Grail” is not the drinking cup used in the Last Supper, but the bones of Mary Magdalene (who was married to Jesus and held His blood in her womb as she bore Jesus’ daughter, Sarah). After Jesus’ crucifixion, Mary and the child were secretly moved to France, where their lineage eventually produced the Merovingian royal family and continues to the present in secret. That is the “big secret” that, if known, would threaten the very foundations of Christianity and Western Civilization. As their fast-paced search moves from France to England, the pair encounters two mysterious groups. The legendary Priory of Sion (a 1,000-year-old secret society whose membership included Leonardo DaVinci, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Claude Debussy), along with the Knights Templar, were loyal protectors of the lineage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene until the time would be right to reveal the secret to the world. As it turns out, the murdered Louvre curator also was a high-ranking agent of the Priory involved in protecting a sinister secret kept since the days of Christ. Opposing the Priory is Opus Dei, a secret group of Roman Catholic leaders devoted to preserving traditional Roman Catholicism (as distorted by Constantine) by destroying all evidence of the “big secret” - Jesus’ humanity/non-deity/marriage and descendants. The movie ends with the revelation that Sophie herself is the last descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s lineage, while Langdon figures out where Mary Magdalene’s body is now hidden (beneath the Louvre’s inverted glass pyramid). Along the way, Brown throws in some other notions. (1) He asserts that goddess-worship (the “sacred feminine”) is the original universal religion (thus Jesus wanted Mary to lead his church), suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church burned 500,000 women as witches during the Middle Ages, especially targeting educated women and mid-wives. (2) As for the New Testament, Brown claims that Christ and his followers wrote tens of thousands of pages and that there were over 80 Gospel records written and considered for the New Testament, with the Gnostic Gospels being the earliest and “unaltered” versions. However, Constantine called the Council of Nicea (325 AD) and his agenda was enacted - the writings of Jesus and the original Gnostic Gospels were suppressed in favor of the current four Gospels and the idea of Jesus’ deity was imposed. As Constantine’s suppression of the earlier story began, the writings of Jesus were stashed away in four chests hidden below Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, while the Gnostic Gospels wound up among the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic collections. (3) Clues about the original story were left by the Knights Templar in the symbolism used in the architecture of the Cathedrals of Europe and also the paintings of Leonardo daVinci, especially the feminine figure sitting next to Jesus in his Last Supper. The Problem Brown repeatedly claims that his book is supported by “religious historians, well-documented history, art historians, all academics, well-documented evidence, scores of historians, and historical evidence.” Of course, its one thing to assert that your work is in accordance with a broad range of scholarship, but quite another to actually document your statements and submit a long bibliography of sources for critics to investigate. Brown did not write a research paper, but a novel. As it turns out, most of the sources Brown does identify are either libraries, museums, internet sites that he may have just visited (or cited to pad his resources list) or feminist writers with their own philosophical “axes to grind” about men and Christianity oppressing women whenever they have the chance. Brown’s version claims that “true worship” is focused on the “Divine Feminine” and this provides the basis of his massive revision of Christian history.
So, how much of The DaVinci Code is true? Well, let’s see: Jesus and Mary Magdalene did exist, Constantine did call/preside over the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), the Knights Templar did exist, Paris is in France, London is in England, and Leonardo daVinci did paint some pictures. From there, the “truth” element rapidly retreats into the background and the fiction takes over. Brown has done a masterful job of weaving fabricated stories around a few facts and real historical people/events, in the same way that Clive Cussler novels employ some piece of real history or established legend as a “jumping-off” place from which to launch his semi-plausible sounding fiction. The same trick was used in the first and third “Indiana Jones” movies (upon the Biblical Ark of the Covenant and medieval Search for the Holy Grail legend), as well as the movie National Treasure, in which complex clues lead to the discovery of hidden information on the back of the original Declaration of Independence that eventually leads to a huge treasure buried deep underground. In fact, one critic suggests that Brown’s novel modified the traditional Grail legend from a search for the cup used in the original Last Supper to the bones of Mary Magdalene herself![2] Those with just a passing awareness of a few historical names and events could easily be duped into thinking such fictional thrillers are what really happened and thus a two-hour movie becomes part of their belief system about “reality.” Brown is depending on the ignorance and gullibility of his audience.
Revisionist Overload - My personal opinion is that Brown’s whole conspiracy theory might be more credible (not believable, but credible-sounding) if he had been more selective in what historical items he tried to incorporate in his story. However, he has tried to incorporate so many different elements that the sheer number of them strains the imagination - Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Herod’s Temple, the validity of the Bible and how it was produced, The Roman Catholic church, Constantine, The Council of Nicea, the Gnostics, the Knights Templar, ritual sex, feminism, the Inquisition against witches, the Merovingian dynasty, the Holy Grail legend, Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings, Tarot Cards, the Pentagram, the Olympic circles symbol, the planet Venus, the Hopi Indians, etc. But why did Brown stop there? Surely Christianity and the suppression of women must also be linked in some sinister way to the Egyptian pyramids, the Vikings, Marco Polo, the American Civil War, the Great Depression, the Teamster’s Union, the Kennedy assassination, 8-track tapes, the Goodyear blimp, and big-Screen TV’s! For those already “tuned-in” for anything that smacks of conspiracy, secret religious societies, religious fanaticism, ancient cover-ups, erotic spirituality, feminism, and/or savage vengeance, Dan Brown has served up a smorgasbord that many folks will “gobble up.” In early May 2006, a survey of 1,000 people revealed that 60% believed that Jesus had children by Mary Magdalene because such is asserted in The DaVinci Code. The Facts
The Four Gospels - While there were more than the canonical four gospels written (Luke notes that “many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us” - Luke 1:1), the number of known alternative versions comes closer to 35 than Brown’s claim of “80” and none but those four were given serious consideration by the various churches prior to 325 A.D. The four canonical gospels were not settled on because Constantine ordered it, but were well-researched and widely accepted as the most authentic original sources of information on Christ’s life long before Constantine was on the stage of history. Their credibility was rooted in their authenticity because they were traceable to the time and close associates of Jesus and in harmony with Christian beliefs from the beginning. Acceptance of the canonical Gospels was widespread and consistent amongst the churches prior to Constantine and the Nicean Council (325 A.D.). Even so, the records of the Nicean Council give no evidence of any attempt to “officially” confirm a canon or listing of 27 New Testament writings, as was done in the later Council of Hippo (393 AD) and Council of Carthage (397 AD). Various credible Christian leaders were citing and listing accepted New Testament writings in their own writings from the later first century A.D. and thus it becomes obvious that the Canon of 27 New Testament books was gradually arrived at by the various churches (and sound investigation) over several centuries and was NOT something foisted or forced upon the church by any single leader, Council, or Church hierarchy![4] Brown is simply offering up a commonly cited “baloney sandwich” on the formation of the New Testament that he hopes uninformed people will think tastes like steak!
Was Jesus married? - There is absolutely nothing in credible historical records prior to 1,000 A.D. that even hints that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene (or anyone else), had any children, or that she fled to southern France. However, such tales did appear in southern France during the Middle ages, but it is not that they were “suppressed” until the Middle ages as much as this is when such notions were invented or seriously entertained (there are inventive “Dan Browns” in every century)! Contrary to Brown’s assertion, Jesus did not have to be married as a Jew, for there are numerous examples of Jewish men in that era that were not married - the Qumran Community, John the Baptist, note Jesus’ comment about “Eunuchs for the kingdom” (Matthew 19:12), and Paul’s encouragement of celibacy for some Christians (1Corinthians 7:1,7-8,26-27). Jewish men needed to be married to serve on the SanHedrin, but marriage was not demanded of all men.
Suppressed Gospels and Jesus’ writings - The DaVinci Code asserts that the earliest “unaltered” Gnostic Gospels and thousands of pages of documents written by Jesus himself were hidden under Herod’s Temple in four great chests and some of the suppressed documents even became part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is utter foolishness. The basic construction of the Temple of Herod was finished before Jesus was born and it was under Jewish control until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., thus, it is highly unlikely that followers of Jesus could have buried anything in the Temple foundations. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Qumran Community and all were sealed in pots in difficult to reach caves out in the Judean wilderness by 68 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain no versions of Gnostic Gospels or anything like them - rather, the contents are Old Testament scrolls (all but Esther) and documents pertaining to the beliefs and life of the Qumran community. There is no evidence that any of the Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi (or anywhere else) even appeared before the 2nd Century A.D., long after the canonical New Testament writings were all finished. The only writings ordered burned by Constantine were the works of Arius and the Church did not try to suppress and destroy all evidence of Gnostic and pagan religions as Rome had tried to do with Christianity. Gnostic groups, especially those in Egypt, were not likely sources for “the truth” about a Jewish Messiah marrying and having children. Because they were rooted in Greek dualism (spirit is good, matter/flesh is evil), Gnostic Gospels were more likely to “de-Judaize” the New Testament story and remove or de-emphasize the human elements, especially since they viewed human sexuality and procreation to be evil (Gnostic groups often advocated celibacy). The DaVinci Code asserts that the word “companion” in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, applied to Mary Magdalene, means “spouse” in Aramaic (the problem here is that the Nag Hammadi text of the Gospel of Philip was not written in Aramaic, but Coptic).
The Council of Nicea (325) - While the council was called by Emperor Constantine, his interest was not to invent basic Christological doctrine, but to deal with the Arian heresy (which asserted that Christ was not deity, but a created being) and the term homousios. The deity of the Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament (Isaiah 9:6-7) and clearly a basic tenet of Christian belief from the beginning (attested in the New Testament and repeatedly in the writings of 2nd-4th century Christian leaders around the Mediterranean). Brown says the vote at the Nicean Council opposing Arianism was “close”! This seems baffling, as few would consider 300 to 2 “close”! Other matters discussed at the Council of Nicea were: the extent of the Roman bishop’s jurisdiction, a Patriarchal Bishop over Jerusalem, church discipline, communion for the sick, charging interest, and the role of deaconess in the early church. The contents of the New Testament Canon was not a prominent issue dealt with in that Council.
The Priory of
Sion - It was not an ancient society protecting secrets, but
the title can be linked to three different entities. The first of these was
a monastery in Jerusalem begun around 1100 and later absorbed into the
Jesuit order in 1617. There is little to nothing that could
possibly be linked into Brown’s scenario from this actual monastic
effort related to the Crusades. The later two uses of the name
are associated with a 20th century hoaxer named Pierre Plantard.
The second "Priory of Sion" resulted in Plantard being charged with fraud and
embezzlement over a scheme concerning low-cost housing. In fact,
the only authentic documents associated with Plantard in the Paris
Library are newsletters from the 1950’s for a rather boring housing
association, complaining about the state of the streets, and even
this is in extremely poor French. It is the third
Opus Dei - Unlike Brown's alleged ancient society involved in centuries of murder and cover-up, the real Opus Dei was founded in 1928 and emphasizes positive spiritual discipleship.
The Holy Grail - Traditional “Grail” lore arose in the Middle Ages and focused on finding the cup used in the original Lord’s Supper, which supposedly later contained some of the blood of Christ from the crucifixion. However, Brown’s novel makes the body of Mary Magdalene the real vessel (Grail) that held the blood of Christ (in her womb as she bore Jesus’ children). Thus, Brown asserts that the real “search for the Grail” is seeking the bones/remains of Mary Magdalene, before which seekers would kneel. Inventive fiction built upon reinterpreting shadowy legends from centuries past is hardly the stuff upon which “truth” is found.
DaVinci’s painting “The Last supper” - Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an extremely talented man of the Renaissance. However, to assume that an unusual figure in a 16th century AD painting tells us more truth about first century AD Christianity than the New Testament or the records of Church History for the first thousand years is quite far-fetched. In DaVinci’s painting, there is a “feminine-looking” character to the left of Christ that conspiracy-buffs identify as Mary Magdalene.
The Knights Templar - the oldest of the military orders arising in connection with the Crusades, the Templars were an order of warrior monks concerned with protecting pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land. The Templars were also bankers and accumulated great wealth. However, they were not suppressed by Pope Clement V in Rome (the popes of this era were residing at Avignon), but by King Philip the Fair of France (who may have wanted their money) and rather than just a few survivors, only about 120 were burned at the stake and most survived. They had nothing to do with the architecture or symbolism found in medieval cathedrals across Europe.
Medieval Persecution of Witches - One of the segments of the Inquisition was focused on persecuting witchcraft. However, here also Brown's assertions are not even close to reality. His claim is that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were targeted by an oppressive male-dominated Church and that 500,000 women died. The number of witches actually killed, according to a number of credible historical sources (including even Wiccan estimates), places the number of people killed between 30,000 and 80,000. This is quite a few people, but only a fraction of Brown’s figure. Men were also targeted and the records give no indication that educated women or midwives were specifically targeted. What evidence there is indicates that “village level” witch-hunting was usually not initiated and carried out by men, but by women accusing other women! Conclusion So what should you do about the book and movie The DaVinci Code? Like the fictional “Left Behind” series of books, you can enjoy them as clearly well-written and engaging fiction. If this is what many people in the world are eagerly reading and watching, use it as a bridge to conversation and leading people towards some REAL truth. However, if anyone is taking Brown’s book as “historical truth,” then they are quite deluded and gullible - the errors are numerous and often concern major issues! The Jesus Papers
The Gospel of Judas Officially called the
Codex Tchacos, it surfaced through a Zurich-based antiquities
dealer in 2000. It probably is an authentic 3rd-4th
century A.D. Gnostic text. It was written with ink on papyrus and
was one of four Gnostic Christian works bound together in this codex
(a book, with loose sheets bound on one side). Rather than being
the earliest and most reliable versions of the story of Christ,
The Gospel of Judas, scene 1, open three days before Passover, with Jesus talking privately with Judas. Judas is portrayed as the Apostle that Jesus had the most intimate contact with and discussing mysteries with him that none of the other Apostles can handle. Scene 2 continues the negative portrayal of the other Apostles. Scene 3 presents a Gnostic view of creation, with immortals emerging from a primordial cloud - Nebro creates Sakla, the assistant/demiurge. Sakla then creates Adam and Eve. Judas has a vision that portrays him as the one who “will exceed all” and receives Christ’s commission to betray Jesus so that, through death, Jesus’ spirit will released from the evil body to return the heavenly realm. The Gospel of Judas ends with his betrayal of Jesus and receiving the money. I have read the seven-page translation of the Coptic text of the Gospel of Judas and it is pretty clear why such works were condemned as heretical, later works and not seriously considered for inclusion in the New Testament. Such documents add nothing of value to our understanding of authentic Christianity, but they do clarify why the 2nd-4th century Church felt the need to officially identify the “authentic” New Testament documents. Guys like Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) were around in the 2nd century AD also - cooking up their own stories because they did not want to be confined by the authentic one. The National Geographic Society’s project seems to be another expression of the skeptical Enlightenment mindset that is eager to sanctify anything other than the traditional biblical perspective, no matter the ultimate worth of the material. They will surely produce enough videos and books to recover what they invested in the research. Final Thoughts All of this stuff - The DaVinci Code, Holy Blood Holy Grail, The Jesus Papers, and National Geographic’s hoopla over the Gnostic Judas Gospel - offer very little in the way of “new insights” about early Christianity that hasn’t been known in conservative Christian scholarship circles for a long time. The only historical validity present is that the Gospel of Judas is a 3-4th century Gnostic text that confirms what Irenaeus was saying about the Gnostic heresies in the second century A.D. Brown and Baigent’s conspiracy and cover-up works are nothing more than fiction. What is the real bottom line? Brown and Baigent know that many in Western civilization are sufficiently ignorant of the Bible/history and hooked on Hollywood conspiracy fiction that they will believe their stories are what "really happened." If you already don’t like the Bible and/or Christianity for some reason, these books/movies offer more quick justification to “confirm your unbelief.” Just watch the money - a few fiction writers and Hollywood folks are going to make a bundle off of this baloney. What is unfortunate is that many people will embrace Brown and Baigent’s books as “truth” and with the same kind of uncritical “blind faith” that skeptics accuse Christians of doing with the Bible. However, the Bible is an anvil that has worn out a lot of bogus hammers - how popular will The DaVinci Code be after 2,000 years? Don’t invest your life savings on that one. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: Abanes, Richard. The Truth Behind the DaVinci Code (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2004). Brown, Dan. The DaVinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003). Byers, Gary. “After the Hype: The Significance of the Gospel of Judas (from the ABR ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER, Vol. 6, Issue 5 (May 2006) Cottrell, Jack. “The DaVinci Code is a Fraud,” review of The DaVinci Code in the Restoration Herald (November 2004), pp. 4,6. Miesel, Sandra. “Dismantling the DaVinci Code,” Crisis Magazine online. Mohler, Albert. “Deciphering ‘The DaVinci Code’ (Crosswalk.com / 7/29/2003) White, James Emory. Breaking DaVinci, http://www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/newsletter/2006/cin60424.html Witherington, Ben (III). Review of The DaVinci Code in Biblical Archaeological Review (May/June 2004, Vol. 30, No. 3 - pp. 58-61) ----------------------- “’DaVinci’ undermines faith, survey claims,” MSNBC.com News Services, Updated 4:11 p.m. ET May 16, 2006. “‘DaVinci Code’ takes on ‘Jesus Papers’” MSNBC.com, The Associated Press, Updated: 10:51 a.m. ET March 28, 2006 “God, this conspiracy is getting bigger” The Sunday Times (March 5, 2006), www.timesonline.co.uk Notes: [1] Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code (Doubleday, March 18, 2003). [2] Sandra Miesel, “Dismantling the DaVinci Code,” http://crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm [3] Ontario, California - DailyBulletin.com - 5/22/06 [4] See my web articles - http://chuck.severnchristian.org/Bible/How_We_Got_the_Bible/HWGTB-Index.htm
|
On May 19, 2006 the much anticipated movie, The DaVinci Code,
began showing in theatres around the world. The movie is based on
Dan Brown’s book
The DaVinci Code makes many assertions about historical
matters that can be investigated and the list of errors Brown has
made, while claiming “accuracy,” is pretty lengthy. The following
items are but a sample. Let’s begin with the Louvre Museum pyramid
(right). Whereas Brown tries to hijack the apocalyptic number “666”
as the number of panes of glass used in the Louvre’s pyramid, other
non-DaVinci Code websites claim the pyramid is made up of somewhere
between 673-698
"Priory
of Sion" that Brown found most useful for his story. Another Plantard scheme,
in this one he claimed to be an occultic
master and descendant of a hidden royal bloodline of kings, with a
legal claim to the French Throne. Plantard and associates planned
to deposit falsified documents in libraries to bolster his claims,
but the documents of the Priory secreted into the Biblioteque
Nationale in Paris were all proven to be forgeries. Under oath, Plantard admitted
that he had fabricated everything and was ordered, by the French
Court system to discontinue his promotion of the Priory of Sion,
which he did until his death in February 2000.
Ok, if that is a woman, then where is the 12th Apostle?
Had Judas already departed and this brought the number to eleven
disciples and Jesus’ wife? Others have pointed to the Mona Lisa as
being not quite feminine enough and suggested that the sitter must
have been a boy - perhaps
Leonardo was a homosexual.
So what is the truth? Solid evidence that Leonardo was a homosexual
is meager. Is that a lady in the Last Supper? No! There
was a tradition of painting the disciple that Christ loved, John the
Evangelist, as a slightly boyish individual. It was also part of
the hidden tradition of the painter’s guild of the time to include
androgynous elements within their paintings - Leonardo’s John the
Baptist (right) portrays that rugged fellow in what could easily
be viewed as an effeminate form. In reality, there was little or no
attempt to portray what Jesus actually looked like in the early
decades of Christianity, so DaVinci (like all later Medieval and
Renaissance painters) created artistic portrayals of Jesus and all
characters associated with Him upon nothing more than their own
imagination and whatever cultural trends and influences existed in
their own time. 
DaVinci’s
painting of the Mona Lisa was not an androgynous
self-portrait named as a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility
deities, as Brown asserted, for Leonardo did a “self-portrait”
sketch (left) that looks nothing like the figure in the Last
Supper. The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a well-known real
woman of the time from Florence - Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco di
Bartolomeo del Giocondo.
In 1982, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh published Holy Blood,
Holy Grail. Their story was that Jesus was not considered deity
until long after his time, but he did have a child with Mary
Magdalene. His assertion was that the New Testament writings were
fiction. Because of the basic (and sometimes rather specific)
similarities, Baigent filed suit against Dan Brown for his very
successful 2003 publication, The DaVinci Code, alleging that
Brown plagiarized and embellished his 1982 plot. The courts decided
in March-April 2006 that Brown did not borrow Baigent and Leigh’s
plot, but there are significant similarities that make one wonder.
About the same time, Brown’s DaVinci Code came out in
paperback, Baigent came out with his next installment, The Jesus
Papers (right). In this book, Baigent moves beyond his earlier
position to add that Jesus did not die, but that Pilate was in on
the plot and took steps to make sure Jesus survived the
crucifixion. Then Jesus was spirited away (with wife and child) to
recuperate, possibly in upper Egypt where he taught mystical lore
that inspired ancient Gnostic wisdom. Later, he may have moved to
France..jpg)
these
documents were recognized and criticized by 2nd century
apologists, like Irenaeus, as heretical versions arriving too late
to make any claims to being more reliable than the canonical
Gospels. Irenaeus notes a group of Gnostics, called the Cainites,
who specialized in trying to rehabilitate the reputations of Old
Testament bad boys, like Cain, Korah, Esau, and the Sodomites. This
document appears to attempt the same thing with Judas.
