A murder in the Luvre catapults Robert Langdon, an expert in religious symbology at Harvard, and other unwitting accomplices into an adventure in which they discover the greatest cover-up of all time. The curator of the Luvre was murdered for knowing the truth about early Christianity; a secret history that passed through many generations to Leonardo Da Vinci, who encoded the secret in his art. Everything that has been taught about Christianity for the past two thousand years is a fabrication!
All of these claims, and many more, are made in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, a bestseller with incredible appeal. Although the book is technically fiction, it claims to be accurately reporting "FACT" about many things it records throughout its pages.
In reality, The Da Vinci Code is little more than the rehashed "lost gospel" quest that is so common in North American apocrypha. The ideas it contains are by no means new; many were refuted well before the pages of Dan Brown's novel saw the light of day. But to an eager and uncritical public willing to jump on the latest conspiracy theory hook, line, and sinker, The Da Vinci Code was the perfect novel to seize upon.
Many Christians were caught entirely off-guard by the growth of The Da Vinci Code. In fact, despite all the postive press the book has been receiving, on the whole Christians have been blissfully ignorant that their friends, loved ones, co-workers, and neighbors have been reading and absorbing uncritically the worldview of Dan Brown. We as Christians must become aware of the myriad of problems latent in this work of fiction, and be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within us. The excitement of The Da Vinci Code, rather than being an impediment to outreach, can become a springboard by which we can share why, at a fundamental level, Christians believe the Bible to be trustworthy, and that Jesus Christ continues to save today. Rather than shrinking back in a sullen retreat, let us step forward, speak the truth in love, pointing people from the Jesus of Dan Brown, toward the Jesus Christ that broke into human history transforming it forever.
If you have comments, issues, or concerns, please email me directly: michaelh@ductape.net
News articles pertaining to The Da Vinci Code are faithfully blogged by Religion News Blog.
Religion News Blog: The Da Vinci Code
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http://www.religionnewsblog.com/category-cat=703.html ]
"[D]oes anyone really take these ideas seriously? Yes; as a matter of fact, they do. This is partly due to the way Brown has written his story. If one sets out to read The Da Vinci Code, the first word he will encounter, in bold uppercase letters, is the word "FACT." Shortly thereafter Brown writes, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." And the average reader, with no special knowledge or training in these areas, will assume the statement is true.
"But it's not. And many articles have been written specifically documenting some of Brown's inaccuracies in these areas. But Brown also has a way of making the novel's theories about Jesus and the early history of Christianity appear credible. The theories are espoused by the novel's most educated characters: a British royal historian, Leigh Teabing, and a Harvard professor of Religious Symbology, Robert Langdon. When put in the mouths of these characters, the unsuspecting reader comes away with the impression that the theories are actually true. But are they?
"In the remainder of this article, I'll argue that most of what Brown tells us about Jesus, the Bible, and the history of the early church is simply false."
Michael Gleghorn, "The Secret Gospels and the Nag Hammadi
Texts"
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http://www.probe.org/secret_gospels.ppt ]
Kerby Anderson, "Was Jesus Married?"
[
http://www.probe.org/was_jesus_married.ppt ]
Sue Bohlin, "The Sacred Feminine and Goddess Worship"
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http://www.probe.org/sacred_feminine.ppt ]
"A few inquires have come our way concerning Dan Brown’s best-selling work of fiction, The DaVinci Code. This book muscled its way onto the bestseller list, inspiring a lot of media attention, and questions and concerns from critical readers, including Christians, who find problems with the historical “facts” woven throughout the narrative. Recently, it was the topic of a prime time television news special on the ABC network, and it has been announced that Sony Pictures has acquired the film rights to the book. Sony has assembled a talented group to produce the film, which is said to include prominent director Ron Howard.
"This review and critique is meant to examine the historical “facts” and conspiratorial leaps that permeate the story. It is important to remember, however, that the book is a work of fiction; as such, we will begin our critique with a short literary evaluation. The story of The DaVinci Code. brings to mind the proverb about eating Chinese food and being hungry again later: Though weighing in at 450 pages, the tale simply doesn’t satisfy. It begins with a murder, and for the next 400 or so pages, the major characters scramble around France and England. The hero races from one cryptographical puzzle to the next, taking extraordinary time to figure out solutions to puzzles that most of us figured out the moment they were introduced. In the process of zipping around, these characters leave behind nearly all vestiges of unique personality. The reader is introduced to the typical hero, heroine, turncoat, righteous villain, and a plethora of other cardboard secondary characters, like the flat detective who is in pursuit of the “good guys.” Brown’s idea of giving dimension to a character seems to be either having them switch allegiances without warning, or endowing them with a disabling condition, like albinism or walking on crutches. (Improbably, Brown’s albino character seems to suffer none of the usual loss of visual acuity, which accompanies that condition in reality.) The plot, though fast-paced and engaging on the surface level, is tiredly predictable. The most intriguing part of the book is the intermittent revelation of “facts” and conspiracies, the focus of this critique."
"These days, one of the questions I often receive about Jesus has to do with his marital status. This question didn't just drop out of heaven, however. It was born of the popularity of Dan Brown's controversial novel, The Da Vinci Code. This novel advocates the thesis that Jesus was in fact married to the woman we know as Mary Magdalene, that they had a child together, and that this "truth" was covered up by the church for self-serving reasons.
"Many readers of The Da Vinci Code, believing the fictional history of the novel to be true, have been buzzing about the possibility of Jesus' having been married. In a recent survey conducted by the online religious website beliefnet, 19% of respondents said they believe that Mary Magdalene was in fact Jesus' wife.
"In this article I will examine the historical evidence for and against Jesus' purported marriage. Whether we'd like to think of him as married or not is not particularly relevant here. What matters is historical evidence. We don't need more ranting and raving about this issue, no matter what the position of the ranters and ravers. Rather, in the mythical words of Joe Friday, we need "Just the facts, ma'am."
"Brown has argued that historical arguments are themselves suspect because history is written “by those societies and belief systems that conquered and survived.” This is a cop-out. It is disingenuous for Brown to present his book as factual and then hide behind questions like “how historically accurate is history itself?” He should stick to fiction."
"[M]y problem with The Da Vinci Code is that the book blurs the lines between fiction and fact - in a way that comes across to me as deceptive, false and willfully misleading. Most of all, I am troubled that many readers finish the book with grave questions about the essentials of the Christian faith and Church history. As a pastor, and a public Christian authority, I have spoken with countless numbers of confused people - who have read the book, and simply don't know what to make of the supposedly factual remarks by the book's scholarly characters. People don't know what to make of the claim to factuality made in the title pages of the hard-cover edition. People in my church, all of whom are normally highly educated, don't know what in the book is true and what is pure fiction.
"Now, I wouldn't normally be offended by a work of fiction. Indeed, I like historical fiction. James Michener, Ken Follett, and Umberto Eco are three favorites of mine. Michener, Follett and Eco have each written books which merge bible or church history with legend and their own invention. Michener and Follett are known for a high degree of factual content in their novels, and Umberto Eco is himself a university academic." ...
"I suppose the key difference between the two is this: Eco doesn't create his stories out of claims of fact which are completely phony or mistaken. Brown does. And what is stranger, Brown could have written pretty much the same book, without inventing any major historical facts. He could have criticized historic Christianity, taken up the cause of women, and triumphed the place of the "sacred feminine" within the factual context of real Church history. He likewise could have retold the same Holy Grail stuff - with little or no need to invent anything outside of the now vast canon of established Grail Lore. But instead of citing only historical facts, Brown makes numerous claims about historic Christianity and Christian doctrine which if he is right - undermine the essential beliefs of Christianity."
"While the ABC News feature focused on Brown's fascination with an alleged marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, The Da Vinci Code contains many more (equally dubious) claims about Christianity's historic origins and theological development. The central claim Brown's novel makes about Christianity is that "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." Why? Because of a single meeting of bishops in 325, at the city of Nicea in modern-day Turkey. There, argues Brown, church leaders who wanted to consolidate their power base (he calls this, anachronistically, "the Vatican" or "the Roman Catholic church") created a divine Christ and an infallible Scripture—both of them novelties that had never before existed among Christians." ...
"Though unoriginal in its allegations, The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away. They just reappear periodically in a different disguise. Brown's claims resemble those of Arius and his numerous heirs throughout history, who have contradicted the united testimony of the apostles and the early church they built. Those witnesses have always attested that Jesus Christ was and remains God himself. It didn't take an ancient council to make this true. And the pseudohistorical claims of a modern novel can't make it false."
"The mere fact that I'm a historian of early Christianity does not mean I don't like picking up an occasional pulp-thriller, checking my brains at the door, and spending a couple of evenings riding a surging wave of cheesy prose down an implausible course of events that eventually breaks with the bad guy getting his comeuppance, and the good guy getting whatever it was he was looking for, and the girl he was looking for it with.
"When one is in my position, as a historian that is, one must learn early on, if one wants to embark on such escapist adventures, to wink at great heaping multitudes of blatant historical errors. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is fantastic as a flash-in-the-pan pulp thriller. It takes you on a white-knuckle ride, without ever once distracting you with a well-turned phrase or a round character. Not only so, but its plot is also a good deal tighter than many of its market competitors. Still the only reason I can conceive of anyone wanting to do The Da Vinci Code twice is that they forgot what it was about."
Watchman Fellowship
Review by Craig L. Blomberg Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary
... "[W]hat concerns me most, as a New Testament scholar, are the number of people who think that the occasional comments about Jesus, his associates and the literature and events of first three Christian centuries are at all accurate. Put simply, they are not, and even very liberal biblical scholars (as in, for example, the famous Jesus Seminar) agree" ...
"The most sweeping of all the fictitious claims in this book is the idea that the Priory of Sion has preserved "thousands of ancient documents as scientific evidence that the New Testament is false testimony" (p. 341). Such documents simply don't exist. This is part of Brown's fiction. The apocryphal and legendary post-New Testament material that does exist has been scrutinized intensely by biblical scholars and is available in English translation (see above; the New Testament Apocrypha has a second volume devoted to "acts," "epistles" and "apocalypses") for all to read (published in 1992). Nothing in them undermines the New Testament. There is no hidden cache (earlier novels accused the Vatican itself of hiding such documents, not an organization fighting against the Vatican!) being suppressed from the general public."
"[I]f the contents of The Da Vinci Code are examples of Dan Brown's idea of accurate statements, I sure wouldn't want to see what his inaccurate statements are like. The book is not all bad, as an imaginative work of fiction (except for the pointless swearing, the depiction of handicapped people as the villains, a description of a sex rite, and the somewhat thin character development). Still, the statements on page 1 are egregiously deceptive; there seems to be no reason for page 1 to exist except to mislead readers.
"On page 267, Teabing asks what would happen if people found out that the greatest story ever told (a reference to the Biblical story of Christ) "is, in fact, the greatest story every sold." I think these 30 points demonstrate who's using misinformation to sell a story."
"[T]he human characters take a back seat to the grand conspiracy that gives the book its plot, and in that conspiracy is the heresy. "The Da Vinci Code"'s driving claim is nothing less than that Christianity is based upon a Big Lie (the deity of Christ) used by patriarchal oppressors to deny the true worship of the Divine Feminine. Still hanging in there? If you thought "The Last Temptation of Christ" was explosive, "The Da Vinci Code" is thermonuclear. The book claims that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, that a child was born of this marriage, and that Mary and her child fled after the crucifixion to Gaul, where they established the Merovingian line of European royalty. [...] Brown has crossed the line between a suspense novel and a book promoting a barely hidden agenda, to attack the Christian church and the Gospel."
"The evidence against these revisionist forms of Christianity is massive. Belief in the veracity and historical credibility of the New Testament is the great dividing line between Christianity and this new religion posing as Christianity."
An article at GodAndScience.org answers claims made in The Da Vinci Code
"The book sends us back to Christianity's "founding fathers" - and the Bible we share with them" ...
"In the face of spurious claims from a man who poses himself as a historian even as he writes a novel ("All descriptions of ... documents ... in this novel are accurate"), some of you turned to the apostles and church fathers, to see what they and their Bible really had to say about the divinity of Jesus Christ. Anything that leads people back to those dynamic early centuries of the church can only help the Christian cause."
"How many of the following 'hidden gospel' accounts are familiar to you?" ...
"If you receive the impression that this list could go on, it does - or, at least, it has been for centuries, and perhaps may even more now at the beginning of the 21st century."
"The following special Planet Envoy is the first part of a critique and examination of the best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. In this opening edition, we examine the success of The Da Vinci Code, the apparent agenda of its author, Dan Brown, the major flaws of the novel, and the Gnostic background and neo-Gnostic beliefs the book relies upon so heavily. Future editions of this critique will discuss Mary Magdalene, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, Brown's Christology, the search for the Grail, the Knights of Templar, the Priory of Sion, witchcraft and the Middle Ages, and Leonardo da Vinci and his artwork."
"This second part of Envoy magazine's special Planet Envoy critique of the best-selling novel examines Brown's depictions of early Christianity, especially his claims about Jesus Christ, the Emperor Constantine, the supposed reliance of early Christianity on pagan beliefs and rituals, and the Council of Nicaea. As we will see, Brown not only plays fast and loose with the facts, he consistently makes statements that are inaccurate, baseless, and even completely contrary to historical fact."
"A controversial best-selling novel tries to undermine the foundations of the Christian faith and of the Catholic Church in particular. How should Catholics respond?"
"So error-laden is The Da Vinci Code that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth. [...] In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism.gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths?"
"This 4-CD set contains four lectures by Probe Staff on various responses to "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. Michael Gleghorn examines "The Secret Gospels: The Nag Hammadi Texts." Kerby Anderson debunks the claim of "The Secret Marriage of Jesus." Pat Zukeran explores "The Suppression of the Secrets: The New Testament Canon," and Sue Bohlin addresses "Goddess Worship and the Sacred Feminine."
Part 1:
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http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?currSection=sermonsspeaker&sermonID=6230493341 ]
Part 2:
[ Part
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?currSection=sermonsspeaker&sermonID=7604152538 ]
"Released in March 2003, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown has sold more than 4.5 million copies (as of January 2004, despite the six percent decline in hardback sales overall). It has camped atop the New York Times bestseller list. In November, ABC aired a primetime special entitled Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci: Exploring Controversial Theories About Religious Figures and the Holy Grail. Variety.com recently announced, "Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman - the Oscar-winning triumvirate from 'A Beautiful Mind' - are reteaming to make 'The Da Vinci Code' for Sony Pictures Entertainment.. According to USA Today, "Code' s popularity shows that 'readers are clamoring for books which combine historic fact with a contemporary story line,' says Carol Fitzgerald, president of Bookreporter.com.... 'They say, "I like being able to learn something as well as read a story".'" USA Today also noted at least 90 related books on religion, history and art, which have seen sales rise as well." ...
"Critics assail Brown's appeals to scholarship and history, which range from questionable to outlandish to (some say) outrageous. Yet, hot sales and fawning reviews by the press and readers alike (see Amazon.com's listing of the book and accompanying opinions) indicate that many are buying into this brew of conspiracy theory, romance novel and pseudo-scholarship. Perhaps postmodernists, given to thinking via emotions and wide-open to conspiracy theories surrounding empowered groups, have found the perfect mix. Do Brown's claims and implications line up with evidence, historical fact or truth? Does this matter or is "truth" only a bargaining chip for the empowered group of the day, such as the Catholic Church?"
Apologetics Index maintains a collection of resources on The Da Vinci Code.
Official site for Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code
Random House's official Da Vinci Code website.
The following letter was recently received by Quest Christian organization:
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 20:31:50 EDT From: Melissa To: Quest Did Jesus get married to Mary Magdelene?
Hi Melissa,
Actually this has been a pretty popular question in the last six months, which is kinda funny considering that it takes a fictional book to get people to question such a basic thing :)
In summary, no. Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code tries very hard to show that there was a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. To do this, he has to try to show that the gospel accounts in the Bible aren't reliable, which is swimming upstream against the majority of scholarship. Next, he has to try to argue that the Nag Hammadi gospels have a higher likelihood of validity, in spite of the fact they were written at least one hundred years after the four gospels. Then, he has to figure out a way to take a couple of verses of these Gnostic texts out of any context they were intended to be read in, and then force them to be read to indicate a deeper relationship between Mary Magdalene and Christ. In one of these Gnostic texts he uses, the parchment is so old that the word he insists means "kiss" is actually completely faded by time so that it is unrecognizable. Further, any of the Greek words for "kiss" couldn't possibly fit into the small amount of space given the writing style of the text. Even if this hypothesis were correct, it is a huge logical leap from a special relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalene to them being married, having sexual relations, and bearing children - a logical leap which Dan Brown fails to provide evidence for. The book is literally riddled with factual errors - even the title, The Da Vinci Code, refers to the painter Leonardo not by his surname, but by the city he was from (da Vinci)!
UT-Dallas culture, following the trends in North American culture, has begun to be influenced at a small level by Dan Brown's novel. Students are being exposed for the first time to very old and rehashed spiritual ideas. During the summer of 2004, it was not unusual to see students carrying The Da Vinci Code with them to class, or reading the book while lounging between classes. Other students watch made-for-television specials, absorbing the ideas uncritically as fact.
Particularly affected are international students, who having not heard these concepts before, are willing to turn fictional ideas on other international Christian students as "proof" that Christianity is a "fraud." International students may find their faith shaken by this work; however there is so little factually correct information that in the long term, learning the missteps of The Da Vinci Code becomes faith-building rather than faith-crushing.
In a recent presentation, Jeffrey E. Miller (teaching pastor of Trinity Bible Church) presented on The Da Vinci Code. Tapes are available through the church.
Probe Ministries in Richardson, Texas, has prepared a series on The Da Vinci Code. Churches and ministries may contact Probe to see about hosting the series at their church of as part of a special event.
Dr. Darrell Bock, author of one of the books critiquing The Da Vinci Code from an Evangelical standpoint is Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas.
Despite its predictable plot, dry two-dimensional characters, trivial puzzles, and its outrageous claims that stretch beyond the point of believe-ability, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code will continue to be popular, finding a wide audience of people who find its simple style less challenging to read and its conspiratorial vision compelling evidence that two thousand years of Christian history are some sort of cosmic forgery. For Christians, it is important to recognize this piece of fiction for the publishing phenomena that it is, while at the same time preparing ourselves to answer the questions being raised by those who read the book. The Da Vinci Code serves as an amazing opportunity and challenge for the Christian church to present a detailed case for the most important facets of the Christian faith, showing that despite all the "lost gospel" hypotheses that have come and gone, the Bible and Christianity have continued to stand solid.
"I'll always be younger than this society. What do you expect
me to do, keep silent all my life?"
Oleg Kostoglotov, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward
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