Front Page story for May 11, 2006
By Jim White, Editor
On May 19, the movie version of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code will open in theaters around the country. Just in case you have recently awakened from a three-year coma, the author asserts that even though it is a novel, “all depictions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals are accurate.” He then begins an absorbing work of fiction that introduces the belief that Jesus survived his crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene and together they had a daughter named Sarah. The Church, according to Brown, attempted to squelch this information because it doesn't like women.
Teabing, a professorial character in the book, provides a series of “facts” stating that Jesus was never considered anything but human until the Roman Emperor Constantine called a council and the delegates voted to make him divine. No wonder church folks take exception to the book, which has sold in excess of 60 million copies.
With the release of the movie, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, many church leaders anticipate a new wave of Bible bashing by viewers whose total spiritual training consists of a 120-minute course of study from Columbia Pictures. Other church leaders, however, see the questions generated by the film as a great opportunity for the church to address spiritual needs. They advocate helping individual Christians prepare for questions they are apt to be asked. Peter Jones of Westminster Seminary in California reasons, “Actually, Brown gives permission‚ to raise the question of spirituality and provides a wonderful occasion for evangelism, when evangelism in the postmodern world seemed to be going out of style.”
What then are the assertions Brown makes and how shall the church answer them? The assertions claiming to be factual are too numerous to list in an article, but among the most glaring are the following:
Was Jesus married? Brown asserts that scores of historians know about the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. He then lists four “history” books as evidence. On page 244, “It is a matter of historical record.” Facts: Of the four books listed, not a single author has a degree in history. Speculation by an occasional scholar in years past raised the question of Jesus' marriage with further speculation that if he were, Mary Magdalene would have been the most likely candidate. Not until a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) did any book claim to have historical evidence of their marriage, however. How reliable is Holy Blood, Holy Grail? Critics have proved that the authors relied upon “evidence” which was completely fabricated by a French ex-con named Pierre Plantard. Dan Brown relied heavily on Holy Blood, Holy Grail for his “facts.”
Was celibacy condemned by Jewish religious custom in Jesus day? Brown: “The social decorum during that time virtually forbids a Jewish man to be unmarried” (page 245). Facts: A prominent sect of Judaism was a group called the Essenes. The Dead Sea scrolls are their primary legacy to us. This group advocated celibacy although it was not a requirement. Celibacy, then, was an accepted practice among the radically religious.
Did the emperor Constantine really decide which books would be part of the Bible? Brown: At the Council of Nicea, “Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those Gospels that made him godlike. The earlier Gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned” (page 234).
Facts: Constantine did finance the copying of some Bibles, but for Brown to suggest that he omitted portions and added other parts is contrary to historical evidence. Three existing fragments of scripture, two of portions of Matthew and one containing a passage from Mark, can be dated 66-68 A.D. A collection of manuscripts purchased by an American collector in 1930 and thus called the Chester Beatty papyri contains the Gospels, along with Acts, the Pauline Epistles and Revelation and date from about 200 A.D.-predating the Council of Nicea by 125 years. The significance of these early manuscripts is that when they are compared to manuscripts written after the Council of Nicea, no changes were made. A list, dated about 170 A.D., containing books accepted generally by the church at that time was discovered and published in 1740. The unidentified author accepts four Gospels (the names of the first two are missing, but the last two are Luke and John). Also accepted by the author are the Acts of all Apostles and 13 of the Pauline Epistles (but not the anonymous Hebrews). The author accepts Jude and says that two epistles of John were among the accepted books. The Apocalypse of Peter is mentioned as a book which “some of us will not allow to be read in church.” By 170 A.D. then, the church had, through common usage and acceptance as inspired by God and thus authoritative, largely settled the question of what books would be included in the New Testament. Constantine had nothing to do with it.
The epistles teaching a human Jesus are from a strain of early heresy called Gnosticism, from the Greek word for knowledge. They taught that one could achieve a special knowledge or spiritual insight. They also taught that everything physical is evil. Therefore, Jesus just appeared to have a physical body. The “gospels” that Brown says were kept out of the New Testament were of Gnostic origin.
Did the Council of Nicea vote to make Jesus divine? Brown: “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless … . Jesus' establishment as ‘the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicea” (page 234). He says it was a relatively close vote.
Facts: As in many of his other assertions, Brown takes a kernel of truth and twists it to suit his purposes. A persuasive bishop named Arius had begun to teach that Jesus was not really divine, but something like a lesser god. He gained quite a following and their views began to threaten the church. Constantine called the council so the bishops could decide what to do. The bishops ultimately proposed a creed that defined what the church believed to be faithful to the teaching of Scripture. They voted on the creed, which asserted that Jesus was “of one Being with the Father”-not on whether Christ was divine or not. Only two of more than 300 bishops did not sign the creed.
If, as Brown says, the clear teaching of the church until this time was that Jesus was just a man, why were Christians willing to be martyred? C.S. Lewis wrote that followers might be willing to suffer martyrdom if they were deceived and believed a lie, but very few are willing to die for what they know to be a lie.
Unfortunately for the reader, Brown's credibility is not much better in the areas of architecture and art. Almost no reputable art historians agree with his assertion that the disciple John in DaVinci's Last Supper painting is really a woman. They point to other paintings of that era depicting young men as rather effeminate. Brown depicts the heroine of the story carrying Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks before her as a five-foot canvas shield. In reality, the painting is more than six feet and painted on wood.
Brown even gets the number of windows in the Louvre's famous glass pyramid wrong. He says exactly 666-a number of special significance. In fact there are 673.
Am I splitting hairs? After all, is it a big deal if there are seven more windows than he thought? Ordinarily, no. But Brown makes it so with his claim that everything he says about the art, architecture and documents is accurate.
The Da Vinci Code is many things. Accurate, however, it is not.