DALLAS (ABP) — The most debated movie of the year, The Da Vinci Code, is built on a premise that was revealed as a hoax more than 10 years ago, say historians, art experts and theologians.
Dan Brown's best-selling book The Da Vinci Code, centers around a secret group called the Priory of Sion, which Brown claims protects the centuries-old secret that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had descendants of royal blood in France.
“What the book plays on is a complete hoax,” said New Testament scholar Darrell Bock of Dallas. “The Priory of Sion doesn't exist,” agreed scholar Craig Blomberg of Denver.
The Priory of Sion — depending on whom you believe — was created in 1099 and included such historical luminaries as Da Vinci and Isaac Newton or was created in 1956 by a deluded anti-Semite named Pierre Plantard, now dead, whom the French government convicted of fraud.
Scholars have worked for years to disprove Plantard's claims, which culminated with him claiming a right to the French throne by virtue of his connection to the ancient bloodline. One of the most recent investigations into the Priory of Sion came in an April 30 60 Minutes broadcast, which determined Plantard's claims to be utterly false.
Some Christians offended by the suggestion Jesus had a double life plan to boycott the movie.
Despite its questionable premise and a threatened boycott, industry observers say the movie — set for release May 19 — will be one of the biggest of the year. The Barna Research Group estimates the movie will make more than $300 million at the box office, putting it among the top 20 money-makers of all time.
While the movie promises to flourish at the box office, that success wouldn't come without the book as an ultra-successful precursor. A survey by Barna indicated two out of every three people who see the movie will have read the book. Brown's novel hit the top of the New York Times best-seller list 18 weeks in a row. With more than 47 million copies in print, the book has tapped a nerve in American culture.
Part of that cultural allure comes from the hidden information, secrets and riddles layered throughout the book. Much of what Brown writes hinges on his idea that many famous pieces of art include a code about biblical events. His riveting writing style combines every element of mystery writing, historical fiction and suspense. In short, readers become members of an elite club, and as those “in the know” feel an elevated status at being privy to such important information.
Secret societies in particular add to the history and mystery of the book. Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic society composed of priests and lay people who believe that ordinary life and work can become spiritual paths to sainthood, is one such mystery.
The movie depicts Opus Dei as a freakish sect involved in murder to hide evil church secrets. It's so integral to the plot, in fact, that real-life Opus Dei leaders recently requested director Ron Howard to post a disclaimer indicating the movie is fiction. Howard declined, saying a disclaimer would only state the obvious.
Even still, historians, theologians, film buffs and art critics alike have taken an active interest in the book, and many have spent countless hours trying to disprove the very specific historical claims Brown makes.
Bock, a New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, is one such man. Author of Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking, Bock said some of the core elements in Brown's book include fragments of truth.
For instance, Constantine, the Nicene Council and the canonical process are key elements to modern Christianity, he said. And that's what makes it so easy for readers to be misled.
But Brown's claims about Constantine, the council in Nicene and the canon, Bock said, are completely untrue. Many of his other claims, like the fact that Jesus himself never claimed to be divine, can easily be discredited by the New Testament alone.
“There's very little [of Brown's book] that's true,” Bock told Associated Baptist Press. “Virtually everything else is wrong. What the book plays on is a complete hoax.”
The book depends heavily on secret societies: Interpol, Knights Templar, the Masons and a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. According to Bock, the Priory of Sion, as Brown described it, didn't even exist. And if the society doesn't exist, much of the historical “facts” in Brown's book crumble as well.
“The Priory of Sion is a complete hoax by four Frenchmen in the 1950s,” Bock said.
At the front of the book, under a large heading titled “Fact,” Brown wrote, “The Priory of Sion — a European secret society founded in 1099 — is a real organization.” Others, however, have come to different conclusions about the little-known sect from the French town of Annemasse.
Some experts agree that the earliest traces of a Prieure de Sion appear in 1099 as a Hermetic or Gnostic society that combined paganism and Christianity. Later known as the Order de Sion, led by First Crusade leader Godfroi de Bouillion, it may have become the founding group for the Knights Templar, a medieval military order created to ensure the safety of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem.
Other historians, however, say the Priory of Sion simply turned into Jesuits in 1617. They pinpoint the founding date of the society much later –1956 — and insist that Plantard capitalized on a supposed secret fortune and papers hidden by a French priest in his extravagant church in Rennes-le-Chateau.
The rest of the evidence supporting the significance of the society, researchers like Bock say, is bogus.
The Priory of Sion, says Blomberg, distinguished professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, “was a hoax created by a group of friends in order to try to present Pierre Plantard as a living Frenchman with a (made-up) genealogy claiming him as heir to the French throne.”
Author of The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Blomberg wrote a critique of The Da Vinci Code for the Denver Seminary's theological review. He maintains the society was disbanded in the 1980s.
French records do show a society registered July 20, 1956, and they list Plantard at the helm. Plantard's integrity, however, remains suspicious. Laura Miller wrote in a Salon.com article titled “The Da Vinci Crock” that Plantard had a history of “fraud, embezzlement and membership in ultra-conservative, quasi-mystical and virulently anti-Semitic Catholic groups.”
The priory, as keeper of supposedly ancient bloodlines, “sought the reunification of Europe under the dual leadership of an orthodox Roman Catholic Church and a divinely ordained monarch, somewhat like the Holy Roman Emperor and preferably French,” she wrote.
In the 1960s, Plantard and his cronies began fabricating parchments alluding to a line of Merovingian and Frankish kings. Plantard used this “evidence” to substantiate his claim to the throne. During the same time, Plantard deposited the parchments into the French national library, hoping later to use the library as outside verification for his scheme.
Unfortunately for Plantard, his plans didn't last as long as he hoped. In 1993, an investigative judge searched Plantard's home and uncovered evidence that Plantard's claims to royal blood were a fraud. Plantard eventually admitted under oath that he had fabricated everything, and he had to cease all activities related to the promotion of the Priory of Sion. He lived in obscurity until his death in Paris in 2000.
Despite the debunking, a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail raised interest again in the Priory of Sion. Written by Jonathan Cape in 1982, the book — like The Da Vinci Code — argues that Jesus survived the cross to marry Mary Magdalene and their descendants emigrated to southern France. Once there, Cape wrote, the descendants established a Merovingian dynasty that the Priory of Sion protected.
Now, more than two decades after Cape's book, Brown has restarted interest in the line of French kings. According to Bock, that trend in historical Jesus fiction won't end soon. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “Brown's book is not the first one [to make the claim]. There have been a lot of other books out there. I think we'll see a lot more of this stuff coming out.”
For his part, Blomberg said the reason why there's such a market for Da Vinci-type books is the pop culture mentality. Unfortunately, he said, people will believe things they read in an “ahistorical” setting, especially if it appears to challenge historic Christianity.
“Paradoxically, those same people will not accept far better documented evidence in support of historic Christianity when presented with it,” Blomberg said. “This demonstrates that there is a spiritual as well as historical problem present.”
According to Barna's latest survey, only 5 percent of the 45 million people who claim to have read the book “cover-to-cover” changed their religious perspectives after reading it.
The book confirmed what many people already believed, Barna said May 10. Only a few people approached the novel with a “truly open mind” regarding the controversial theology inside, the researchers said.
“The book generates controversy and discussions, but it has not revolutionized the way that Americans think about Jesus, the church or the Bible,” Barna said.
“On the other hand, any book that alters one or more theological views among 2 million people is not to be dismissed lightly. That's more people than will change any of their beliefs as a result of exposure to the teaching offered at all of the nation's Christian churches combined during a typical week.”
On the positive side, Blomberg said, that spiritual challenge provides an opportunity for Christians to tell others the facts. Books like The Da Vinci Code don't have to be negative for society, he said, even if they do make false claims.
While some Christian leaders are calling for a boycott of the movie, most theologians urge Christians to see the movie in order to talk with non-Christian friends about its content. Both Bock and Blomberg advocated reading the book and seeing the movie.
“If we react as if we're threatened, if we censure the book and movie, we play into the hands of those who are already deceived into thinking we have something to hide, or that we're anti-intellectual, or that the facts aren't on our side,” he said. “As the great English writer, G. K. Chesterton, put it a century ago, ‘When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything!'”
-30-