The Da Vinci Code. A Novel

Transcription

1 The Da Vinci Code A Novel

2 A presentation compiled from various sources by Rev. David Stancil, Ph.D. Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bristol, Virginia

3 What s different about this story from all the weird and heretical stories that have gone before?

4 And many false prophets will appear and will lead many people astray (Matthew 24:11) Jesus

5 The good news is that if we do our homework we who follow Jesus are about to have more readymade opportunities to talk about the Real Story than we ve had in a long time.

6 This presentation will be very critical of Dan Brown, but not hostile toward him.

7 The Characters Dr. Robert Langdon, the professor ( long dong ) Captain Bezu Fache, the policeman (Bezu is from Holy Blood, Holy Grail; fache = angry) Sophie Neveu, the cryptographer ( wisdom, new Eve ) Bishop Manual Aringarosa Silas, the albino Monk Sir Leigh Teabing, the historian (anagram of Baigent added to Leigh from Holy Blood, Holy Grail)

8 Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, have sued Brown for stealing their story (they lost their case, 5.06). Isn t it interesting that, rather than being something revealed in myriads of documents across the centuries, these authors regard this idea as something to which they can lay claim? That s because they largely made it up.

9 The Plot Curator of Louvre is murdered; found in strange situation Capt. Fache suspects Langdon Sophie helps Langdon escape Opus Dei is trying to force the hand of the Priory of Sion Da Vinci s art provides clues Sir Leigh assists them with the Grail codes and with flight to England, then to Scotland The trail leads them back to Paris

10 Key Points Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a daughter, Sarah. Jesus intended for Mary to succeed him, but Peter banished her instead. Mary & Sarah fled to France, where the Merovingian kings were/are their descendants. The Holy Grail that contained Jesus blood was actually Mary Magdalene. The Church (RCC) has ruthlessly suppressed this information. Leonardo da Vinci knew these things, and cleverly revealed them in his art.

11 The Da Vinci Code is a good story. The problem is that it pretends to be telling the truth: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate (p. 1).

12 More Problems The book is a post-modern web of half-truths and deception that is decidedly anti-christian. The book is, in fact, wholeheartedly pagan. There is essentially no sex in the book, but the book is very much about sex. The book is overtly sacrilegious (that is, it profanes sacred beliefs).

13 Why is the book so popular? It has short, fast chapters. It plays on our suspicions about things not being what they seem. It plays on the current issues of abuse in the Catholic Church. It plays on the theme of conspiracy. It appears to (but really doesn t) advance the cause and power of women. Da Vinci himself is an intriguing and mysterious character.

14 About Dan Brown This is his fourth book. He continues to claim that the book s fundamental assertions are true ( He claims to be affirming the spiritual power of women the Goddess. He claims to be a Christian, but essentially empties the term of meaning.

15 Where did he get all this? Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels The Templar Revolution: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine, and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail, by Margaret Starbird The Women s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker

16 How good is Brown s history? Mr. Brown s central contentions are based on evidence so thin that calling them conjecture would be a compliment (John Miller). Brown s performance hovers somewhere between the pathetic and the reprehensible (Ronald Huggins). Shows a willful and malicious ignorance of the historical record (Sandra Miesel).

17 One of the central postmodern presuppositions of the book is that objective truth does not exist, and that history therefore has little meaning.

18 1. The Bible Teabing: The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book (p. 231). The Bible was compiled and edited by men who possessed a political agenda to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base (p. 234).

19 Brown s central claim is that Christianity as we know it is a political invention of the 4 th century, not a divine creation in the 1 st century. Such a claim could only be made by someone who had never read the New Testament, or by someone who didn t care what the New Testament really says, because another agenda is really being served.

20 1a. The New Testament Documents in General The revisionists who promote the Gnostic gospels argue that there was no identifiable orthodoxy in the 1 st century. Such a claim ignores the clear battle for orthodoxy reflected in Galatians, the very first book of the NT to be written, the controversies recorded in Acts, and those identified in 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and 1, 2, & 3 John, among others.

21 Five categories of documents existed prior to Nicaea (325): 1. The Hebrew Scriptures (the first canon against which further revelations were judged); 2. Those documents that eventually became the New Testament; 3. Sensational documents immediately dismissed (such as the Gospel of Nicodemus); 4. The writings of the Post-Apostolic Fathers (such as Ignatius); 5. Heretical documents that came later (such as the Gnostic texts).

22 The NT documents were circulated by hand across large distances, and it took a while for all of them to become widely known.

23 Criteria for Canonicity CONFORMITY: Was it consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures? APOSTOLICITY: Was it written by an apostle or by someone who had personally known an apostle? CATHOLICITY: Did the churches generally accept this document as bearing the witness of the Spirit?

24 Nothing written after A.D. 120 was ever considered for the New Testament, for the simple reason that it was impossible for such documents to have Apostolicity. Most of the Gnostic gospels were written in the 3 rd and 4 th centuries. Only one, the Gospel of Thomas, might possibly have been written within an appropriate time window, but Brown never mentions it.

25 From the Gospel of Thomas Yeshua [Jesus] said unto them, When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make the male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be the male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, a hand in the place of a hand, a foot in the place of a foot, an image in the place of an image, then you will enter the Kingdom. Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), p.51.

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27 The last verse of the Gospel of Thomas: Simon Peter said to them [the disciples], Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her, in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

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29 More than 80% of the NT was never questioned at all. Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2, & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were questioned in some places, but by A.D. 200, questions were dying out. The final list did not become official until the synods of Hippo-Regius (A.D. 393)and Carthage (A.D. 419), 75 years after Nicaea. The Church did not create the Canon. The Canon created the Church.

30 1b. The four Canonical Gospels By the middle of the 2 nd century, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were so clearly established as the only four authentic Gospels that Irenaeus wrote: So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting from these [documents], each one of them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine. (Against Heresies ).

31 1c. Gnostics & the Gnostic gospels Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound edition was postersized, like a huge atlas. The cover read, The Gnostic Gospels (p. 245). He went on to tell Sophie (notice how the men are always instructing the woman) that these were the earliest Christian documents.

32 Even worse is Teabing s assertion that more than 80 gospels were considered for inclusion in the NT (p. 231). The number of purported gospels of which we re aware is far less than 80. We ve already seen that the Gnostic writings were never candidates for canonicity on the basis of date alone. The only possible exception on the basis of date would be the Gospel of Thomas.

33 One expert who studied the Gospel of Thomas wrote that its character is so far removed from the four canonical Gospels that it cannot be put on a par with them. We ve already seen what Thomas said about women.

34 The 2 nd century proto-gnostic Marcion never mentioned the Gospel of Thomas when he published his own canon. That s quite strange if Thomas was in fact the first Christian gospel, because it s teachings would have clinched his case.

35 Teabing said that his book, The Gnostic Gospels contained the Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls would never have been put in a book with a title The Gnostic Gospels, because there was nothing Gnostic about them. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not Christian, and they did not contain any gospels. They were pre-christian Jewish writings.

36 The Nag Hammadi texts were found in Egypt in This is what people are talking about when they refer to secret gospels. These texts come from the 4 th century, not the 1 st. They reject the Hebrew Scriptures, and mock the Creator God as a blind fool.

37 From the Gospel of Philip: There are many animals that exist in the world in human form. Winter is the world, summer the other realm. It is wrong to pray in winter. God is a dyer. The good dyes, true dyes, dissolve into thing dyed in them. So, too, for things God has dyed. His dyes are imperishable because of their colors. What god dips, he dips in water.

38 Apocalypse of Peter 81:4-24 (a dialogue between Peter & Jesus) I saw him apparently being seized by them. And I said, What am I seeing, O Lord? Is it really you whom they take? And are you holding on to me? And are they hammering the feet and hands of another? Who is this one above the cross, who is glad and laughing? The Savior said to me, He whom you saw being glad and laughing above the cross is the Living Jesus. But he into whose hands and feet they are driving the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute. They put to shame that which remained in his likeness. And look at him, and [look at] me!

39 Acts of John 93 I will tell you another glory, brothers, sometimes when I meant to touch him I encountered a material, solid body; but at other times again when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and incorporeal... as if it did not exist at all.

40 The Gnostic writings used Jesus name as a ploy to give legitimacy to their own ideas years or more after the Resurrection.

41 The fact is that no Gnostic gospel was ever seriously suggested by anybody as having canonical potential even in Nag Hammadi until the neo-gnostics found them in our own time.

42 So what was Gnosticism? Gnosis (gnwsi ): knowledge a-gnostic : without knowledge Gnosticism was an elitist, exclusive, and esoteric philosophical system for whom Jesus was a phantom-like creature who lectured at length about the deficiency of aeons, the mother, the Arrogant One, and the archons. Jesus sometimes inhabited a body and sometimes didn t. And he spoke in ways that only the initiated could understand.

43 Gnosticism was very eclectic and syncretistic. Gnostics believed that matter was evil, and that God could not have anything to do with it. They believed that this world was created by a wicked, arrogant being who only thought he was God. By definition, not everyone could have Gnosis. Most people were simply doomed.

44 Gnostic writings despise all created things, sexual distinctions, marriage, and motherhood (does this sound woman affirming yet?). They did not believe in either law or sin, since these came from the foolish Yahweh. To Gnostics, the fall of Genesis 3 was actually liberation, and the serpent was actually the source of wisdom (sounds a lot like the usual description of the unpardonable sin, doesn t it?).

45 For Gnostics, Jesus message wasn t about sin and forgiveness, but about discovering that we are really divine. If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you (Gospel of Thomas 45:30-33). Since body doesn t matter, only spirit, Gnostics taught that you could do what you wished with your body especially sexually.

46 Gnostics talked about the divine feminine, but we ve already seen that they also taught that the only way a woman could enter the Kingdom of Heaven was by becoming male (Gospel of Thomas 144). The Jesus taught by the Gnostic writings, while certainly not Christian, was not the Jesus The Da Vinci Code would have us know, either. The Gnostic writings do not portray a more human Jesus. They portray one more divine and not human at all.

47 No wonder the mark of a heretic in New Testament times was someone who denied the Incarnation: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God (1 John 4:2-3).

48 These Gnostic writings have reappeared at a time when patriarchy, doctrinal precision, canons, confessions, clearly-defined sexual morality, church institutions, and authority are out. What s in? The personal spiritual quest, diversity, individualism, egalitarianism, and sexual liberation. And the prospect of finding ancient Christian scrolls that support this new era s spiritual viewpoint is, for many postmoderns, a dream come true.

49 Contemporary Neo-Gnosticism Duncan Greenlees is a modern Gnostic who has written that Gnosticism is a system of direct experiential knowledge of God... the Soul and the universe;... in the early centuries of this era, amid a growing Christianity, it took on the form of the Christian faith, while rejecting most of its specific beliefs. Its wording is therefore largely Christian, while its spirit is that of the latest paganism of the West.

50 1d. A sanitized Bible? History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, What is history, but a fable agreed upon? (p. 256).

51 There are three lines of rebuttal to this statement: 1. The idea of winners 2. The honesty of the text 3. The number of manuscripts

52 #1 The idea of winners Nearly all of the New Testament was written before A.D. 70, and all of it was complete prior to A.D. 95. During these years, Christians were a minority, persecuted by both fellow Jews and the Romans. They could not, in any way, be considered winners when these books were written. They were killed for maintaining their faith when a simple verbal rejection of Jesus would have saved them from a cruel death. These are the ones Brown considers winners?

53 #2 The honesty of the text If the writers of the Bible were trying to manipulate history in their favor, why would they include so many accounts of the failures of their star players? For instance, the Bible clearly records the accounts of... Adam and Eve disobeying God and bringing death on us all (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12-14); Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lying and deceiving others (Genesis 12:10-20, 26:7-11, 27); Moses committing murder and giving in to bursts of anger (Exodus 2:11-14; Numbers 20:10-12);

54 David covering up his affair with a married woman by having her husband killed (2 Samuel 11); Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, showing profound lack of wisdom (1 Kings 4:30; 11); Peter being impetuous and frequently doing very foolish things (Matthew 16:22-23, 17:1-5, 26:33-34, 69-74); The mother of James and John, two of Jesus closest associates, showing selfishness in her ambitions for her sons (Matthew 20:20-28); and Paul and Barnabas getting into a feud, not resolving it, and parting company (Acts 15:36-41).

55 The Resurrection was not something the disciples plotted to carry out. They were as surprised by it as everyone else was. What s more, if the text had been altered, the news of Resurrection would certainly have been given to men, not to women, as actually happened.

56 If the pages of the Bible had been tampered with or rewritten to make its cause look good, those stories would have been deleted.... If Christians truly were the winners who could rewrite history in their favor, why did they include in the list of their great leaders people who were less than perfect? Origen misinterpreted a biblical text, and as penance, castrated himself. Augustine, the most influential figure in nearly 1,000 years of church history, had a mistress and both fathered and abandoned a son in his pre-christian life. Jerome, the first man who ever translated the entire Bible, had a very contentious personality.

57 Peter Abelard, one of the greatest theologians of the Middle Ages, had an affair that resulted in an illegitimate son. Canon Fulbert, who was the pastor at the Cathedral of Notre Dame at the time, overreacted and had Peter Abelard castrated. Martin Luther sometimes became drunk, during which times he said some unfortunate things. John Calvin was demanding and rigid. John Wesley had a pathetic marriage. D.L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon battled depression.

58 Aimee Semple McPherson, the well-known preacher of the early 1900s, tarnished her reputation by disappearing for a time in what appears to have been a staged kidnapping. If Dan Brown were right, we would know none of these things. Indeed, during the early history of the church, there was no reason to want to be known as a Christian, because it might well cost you your life. But Christians continued to grow in numbers faster than they could be killed. Clearly, those who chose to be identified as Christians did so because of their firm belief in Jesus and his radical teachings. Garlow & Jones, pp

59 #3 The number of manuscripts

60 The more lines of bearing, the more exact the position. God did not allow the autographs to survive because: We would have worshiped them and missed the real Gift; Our level of certainty about the text would actually have been much less. We have more copies of the New Testament documents than of any other important ancient writings.

61 We know what was actually written. Yes, there were occasional corrections or corruptions of individual copies of various texts. But because we have so many lines of bearing, these are easy to identify. There was never any systematic effort to correct or to change documents.

62 A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put. Bernard Ramm The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).

63 2. Jesus Teabing: The Bible was compiled and edited by men who possessed a political agenda to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base (p. 234). Langdon: Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false (p. 235).

64 2a. Jesus Divinity Brown s assertion is that neither Jesus disciples nor the early church thought Jesus was divine. This claim was the result of a close vote at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Once again, such a statement could only be made by someone who didn t know the facts... or who didn t care what the facts are.

65 In order for Brown s theory to work, Peter and the rest of the New Testament disciples must have twisted the writings of the allegedly original Gnostic disciples who would have had to come first, and to have written first (Garlow & Jones, p. 87.). But we ve already seen that the Gnostic documents were written much later mostly centuries later than the New Testament documents.

66 Before we look at the NT... Nothing but the Resurrection can explain the transformation of the dejected believers 72 hours after Jesus died. Nothing but the Resurrection can explain the fact that nearly all of the disciples and thousands of other believers chose to die affirming that Jesus is alive is God. If the Church did not believe Jesus to be divine, and many had died for this belief, does it make sense that they would let Constantine change their most central belief with no protest?

67 Our earliest Christian writings come from the pen of the apostle Paul, who wrote from around A.D. 48 to around A.D. 60. All recognized scholars and historians support this fact. They agree that Paul was a historical figure, a contemporary of Jesus, who, as a convinced rabbi, knew the early Christians well enough that he at first sought their extinction. In the late thirties he converted to Christianity, became a recognized Christian apostle, and finally was executed for his faith by Nero in A.D. 66. There is no fact of early Christianity more historically verified and generally accepted by foes and friends alike.

68 What is more, Paul s writings constitute the backbone of the New Testament. Since the life and ministry of Paul overlaps the historical beginnings of the Christian movement, he is the most historically dependable window into the faith of the earliest disciples of Jesus.... If any historical person was in a position to identify what the original faith of the church was and what the original founders believed about Jesus, it was Paul. Garlow & Jones, pp

69 And here s the VERY FIRST verse Paul ever wrote: This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group or by human authority. My call is from Jesus Christ himself and from God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead (Galatians 1:1, A.D ) My message came by a direct revelation from Jesus Christ himself (after he was raised from the dead Galatians 1:12).

70 When Paul argued for the physical resurrection of Christ, he pointed to hundreds of people who could verify or negate this claim (1 Corinthians 15:6). Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form (Philippians 2:5-7, A.D. 61).

71 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15, A.D. 60). In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God (John 1:1, A.D. 90). Before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58). My Lord and my God! Thomas exclaimed (John 20:28).

72 The Father and I are ONE (John 10:30). Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). Then the High Priest asked him, Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God? Jesus said, I am, and you will see me, the Son of Man, sitting at God s right hand in the place of power and coming back on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:61-62, c. A.D. 60).

73 Examples from the New Testament and from the writings of the early church could be multiplied by the hundreds.

74 2.a.(1). Constantine 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 (p. 234).

75 When Constantine converted to Christianity and ended the persecution of Christians, the Church became able to convene universal councils to discuss doctrine and deal with heretical challenges. Through these meetings, a consensus emerged in the church s understandings of itself and of its documents.

76 It would be a gross oversimplification to think that Constantine could only benefit from becoming a Christian and publicly supporting the Church.... The senatorial aristocracy of Rome were pagan almost to a man; the higher grades of the civil service were mainly pagan; and above all the army officers and men were predominately pagan. The goodwill of the Christians was hardly worth gaining, and for what it was worth it could be gained by merely granting them toleration. Olson & Miesel, 2:8

77 In 313, Constantine and his fellowemperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which recognized Christianity as a legal religion no longer to be persecuted. What Constantine did on March 3, 321 was to decree Sunday to be a day of rest from work. He did not make Sunday a day of worship for Christians; it had been that since the very first Resurrection Sunday.

78 Far from strengthening Christianity, its growing acceptance and officially approved status after A.D. 380 weakened the church considerably as large numbers of people declared themselves Christian simply because it was the thing to do. Brown s character Robert Langdon has it wrong. Rather than Christianity crushing paganism, the paganistic influence within the church caused great confusion among the [true] believers (Garlow & Jones, p. 110).

79 The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his wishes. Actually, the Emperor had desired to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River, where Jesus had been baptized, but it was not to be. Not long after the Easter of 337 he called together some bishops, removed his purple robe, and put on the white garments of a catechumen, then was baptized by Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia (Jones, ). He died a few days later. It was common for Christians at the time to put off baptism until their deathbed. Serious sins committed after baptism would require severe penance, so some considered it safer to wait until the end of life to be baptized. Olson & Miesel, 2:9.

80 2.a.(2). The Council of Nicaea My dear, Teabing declared, until that moment in history [the Council of Nicaea], Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. Not the Son of God. Right, Teabing said. Jesus establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. Hold on. You re saying Jesus divinity was the result of a vote? A relatively close vote at that (p. 233). This is another falsehood that Brown took from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (p. 368).

81 The very first Church Council is recorded in Acts 15, where the issue was how the Law of Moses should be applied to Gentiles. Councils continued to be important in focusing the faith, deciding what was in bounds and what was out of bounds.

82 One such false teaching was being spread by Arius in A.D Arius taught that Jesus was a created being, just like other humans, and not the begotten Son of God. He was opposed by Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, who declared Arius a heretic in a local council in A.D So Arius moved to Palestine and continued his teaching there. If he had kept his teaching to his own followers, there would not have been cause to call a council. But Arius began sending letters to area churches promoting the idea of Jesus as a created being. The debate grew over the next few years, finally gaining the attention of the emperor, Constantine.

83 Constantine, who had consolidated his hold on the Roman Empire, sought unity in all regions. He knew that a division within the Christian church would be one more destabilizing force in the empire, so he moved to restore peace. Constantine call together more than 300 bishops from around the empire, primarily from the east. (This would have favored Arius s cause, since that was where his influence was greatest.) Bishops traveled thousands of miles to attend the conference held in Constantinople. Many were confessors, bearing wounds and scars from torture they had endured for their faith.

84 On May 20, 325, a number of bishops, the vast majority of them from the East, convened at Nicaea (modern day Iznik, north of Constantinople); the council lasted until July 25 of the same year. The number of bishops in attendance has traditionally been listed as 318, likely a symbolic number (cf. Genesis 14:14); the actual number was probably

85 The issue at Nicaea was not whether Jesus was God, but exactly how he was God: begotten or created? By a vote of either 250:2 or 318:2 (does that sound close to you?), the Council agreed that the Son of God is begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father, and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God came to be from things that were not and that he was from another substance than that of the Father

86 Teabing also states that at the Council there were many aspects of Christianity that were debated and voted upon. The wording implies that these aspects were somehow new and unique; they are listed as the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus [p. 233; see Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 368]. The truth is that the twenty canons or laws of the Council were actually rather mundane and were, in great part, a repetition of measures enacted eleven years earlier in the Latin council held at Arles, in Gaul (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, [New York: Image Books, 1964], 36].

87 There is no doubt that Constantine was a key figure and that his rule was a turning point in Christian history. Further, the Nicene Creed was to some extent an effort to control what was to be believed. Third, the collection of texts into an official list that became the canon of Scripture did gain momentum in this period. The main thing to remember, though, is that this Council and this Creed represented what most Christian communities had already believed for more than two hundred years.

88 2.b. Was Jesus married? The novel argues the case for Jesus marriage on two primary bases: (1) that it was un-jewish to be unmarried (p. 245), and (2) that according to the Gnostic texts the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary Magdala, Jesus kissed Mary on the mouth, and the apostles were jealous of His special relationship (pp ).

89 Here are the texts: And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene [...] her more than [...] the disciples [...] kiss her [...] on her [...]. (The Gospel of Philip 63:33-36; brackets indicate that the manuscript is unreadable).

90 But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, Say what you [wish to] say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Savior said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas. Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak with a woman without our knowledge and not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us? Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

91 Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter, you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as he commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said (The Gospel of Mary Magdala 17:10-18:21).

92 That s it. Out of all of the canonical and noncanonical documents that exist, these are the only two passages that might even remotely suggest an unusual relationship between Jesus and Mary. How does the evidence strike you?

93 Of these two, the first has the most possibility for Brown s case, because it suggests that Mary was a companion of Jesus. Still, this text was composed in the second half of the third century, a full two hundred years after the time of Jesus.

94 The Da Vinci Code makes the claim, As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse (p. 246). Brown disregards the fact that this account did not come to us in Aramaic, but in Coptic. And it probably came to Coptic through Greek.

95 Companion is a translation for koinwno, which is a Greek word found in this Coptic text. This word can mean wife, or simply sister in a spiritual sense, but the usual word for wife would have been some form of the word gunh (Bock, p. 23).

96 Huggins, Ronald. Cracks in The Da Vinci Code, Institute for Religious Research Online, Huggins researched the citations related to Brown s explanation of companion and concluded that four levels of increasing exaggeration can be identified, with no shred of evidence for the case that companion means partner or consort. Huggins points out that koinwno occurs ten times in the New Testament, and not once does it have anything to do with either a sexual or a marital bond.

97 Let s keep looking at this. There is no evidence anywhere that explicitly says that Jesus was married. Both liberal and conservative scholars agree that Jesus was not married. Still, we have no explicit statement that Jesus was single, either. It would have been easy for NT writers to say that Jesus was married if that had been the case. Even if Jesus had been married, there was no need to cover it up.

98 It s true that marriage was the normal expectation for men of Jesus day. But singleness was by no means unheard of. The Essenes were one well-known group that was respected for their convictions about celibacy (Josephus, Jewish War ; Sirach 9:8, 23:18-22; Philo, Hypothetica ). We also need to remember that Jesus frequently cut across the grain of cultural convention. Jesus was not the servant of culture. He was its Master. Jesus took marriage so seriously that his disciples, hearing his guidelines for marriage, responded, Then it is better not to marry! (Matthew 19:10). And we have no indication that any of the disciples, except Peter, was married.

99 It is unlikely that Jesus fathered children for the same reason that God preserved the Bible s message without preserving the autographs: to protect us from idolatry. Whenever the Bible mentions Jesus family, it refers to his mother and to his brothers and sisters. Why would a wife not have been mentioned? And there is no indication that he was widowed, either. In the four places where Mary is mentioned with other women, the others were each mentioned in connection with their husbands, but Mary Magdalene was never associated with any man (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:2; John 19:25). Jesus showed no special concern for Mary Magdalene at the Cross (John 19:26-27).

100 This is my answer to those who question my authority as an apostle. Don t we have the right to live in your homes and share your meals? Don t we have the right to bring a Christian wife along with us as the other disciples and the Lord s brothers and Peter do? (1 Corinthians 9:3-5). If Jesus had been married, this would have been the place to mention it, because it would have cinched Paul s case.

101 Since the Roman church elevated Mary, the Mother of Jesus, quite early, perhaps out of the recognition of the importance of the feminine dimension of creation, had Jesus ever been married, such a woman could scarcely have disappeared without any historical trace. While God is clearly beyond any idea of gender as we know it, Protestants frequently consider the Holy Spirit to be the feminine member of the Trinity (cp. Genesis 1:2; Ruth 2:12; Psalm 91:4; Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34; see also Luke 15:8-10).

102 A sex ritual with Mary Magdalene that produces a child hardly explains the influence of Jesus. Only a redeeming act of God with cosmic proportions can explain the impact of Jesus on the world (Garlow & Jones, p. 232). Of course, one day Jesus will indeed be married, and he is even now engaged to us, his Church, the Bride of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7-9). Given this perspective, Jesus celibacy was both natural and proper.

103 3. Mary Magdalene In The Da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene is the wife of Jesus and the mother of His children, and that is a secret the church wanted to cover up to protect the divinity of Jesus. But the truth is that the question of Jesus divinity has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not he was married.

104 There are 7 Marys in the NT: 1. Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:30-31) 2. Mary of Bethany (John 11:1) 3. Mary the mother of James & Joseph (Matthew 27:56) 4. Mary, the wife of Clopas (John 19:25) 5. Mary, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12) 6. An unidentified Mary (Romans 16:6) 7. Mary Magdalene (from Magdala; Luke 8:2)

105 Here s what we know about Mary Magdalene: 1. Ministry: Not long afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby cities and villages to announce the Good News concerning the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women he had healed and from whom he had cast out evil spirits. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod s business manager; Susanna; and many other who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples (Luke 8:1-3).

106 2. Crucifixion: And many women who had come from Galilee with Jesus to care for him were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James and Joseph), and Zebedee s wife, the mother of James and John (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; John 19:25). 3. Burial: Both Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting nearby watching (Matthew 27:61; Mark 15:40).

107 4. Resurrection: Don t cling to me, Jesus said [to Mary Magdalene], for I haven t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, I have seen the Lord! Then she gave them his message (John 20:11-18; Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1-9; Luke 24:10). John s Resurrection account is the only place in the NT where Jesus and Mary Magdalene were alone together.

108 It was to Mary that Jesus first appeared after his Resurrection, a fact that the Church (both East & West) has commemorated by naming her the apostle to the apostles.

109 The first mention of Mary as a prostitute comes from a sermon delivered by Pope Gregory the Great in A.D In all likelihood, this notion resulted from confusion concerning passages in the gospels of Luke and John. In 1969 the Vatican rightly corrected centuries of misrepresentation and acknowledged that there was no reason to make Mary a repentant harlot. The Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Mary Magdalene every year.

110 After the Resurrection, Mary passes completely out of the biblical story. The legend of Mary in France is no earlier than the 9 th century. The connection of Mary to the legend of the Holy Grail is a 20 th century invention. Brown s treatment of Mary Magdalene is sheer delusion (Miesel).

111

112 #4 General Historical Errors With respect to historical accuracy, Brown s performance hovers somewhere between the pathetic and the reprehensible. [1] Knowing the difference between fiction and reality is important, especially when it comes to claims related to God, gender, and the history of faith. [2] What we have is several ideas built into a huge construct, a construct in which each component is suspect, and in which a clear underlying agenda can be seen.[3] [1] Ronald Huggins, Cracks in The Da Vinci Code, Institute for Religious Research Online, [2] Darrell Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone s Asking (Nashville: Nelson, 2004), p. 2. [3] Bock, p. 4.

113 The widespread acceptance of most of Brown s claims is rather amazing, especially since many of them won t even pass what we call the desk encyclopedia test. For instance, the novel states that Leonardo da Vinci s Virgin of the Rocks, which is in the Louvre, is a five-foot-tall canvas, even though a quick check on the Internet or in an encyclopedia shows that it is actually six-anda-half feet in height. Normally, this sort of detail could be chalked up to artistic license. But Brown s insistence that his depictions of artwork are accurate and that his wife is an art historian indicates that he is not being careful with the truth. Carl Olson, The Truth behind The Da Vinci Code, March 13, 2004.

114 4a. Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo was an illegitimate child who, according to his grandfather s diary, was born on Saturday, April 15, 1452, in Vinci, a village some twenty miles west of Florence. (Hence da Vinci is not his last name but a reference to the village in which he was born). Jack Wasserman, retired art history professor at Temple University, said simply, Just about everything [Dan Brown] says about Leonardo is wrong.

115 Brown s revisionist interpretations of da Vinci are as distorted as the rest of his information. He claims to have first run across these views while I was studying art history in Seville, but they correspond point for point to material in The Templar Revelation. A writer who sees a pointed finger as a throat-cutting gesture, who says the Madonna of the Rocks was painted for nuns instead of a lay confraternity of men, who claims that da Vinci received hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions (actually, it was just one... and it was never executed) is simply unreliable.

116 Brown s analysis of da Vinci s work is just as ridiculous. He presents the Mona Lisa as an androgynous self-portrait when it s widely known to portray a real woman, Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo. The name is certainly not as Brown claims a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities Amon and L Isa (Italian for Isis). (How did he miss the theory, propounded by the authors of The Templar Revelation, that the Shroud of Turin is a photographed self-portrait of da Vinci?)

117 Much of Brown s argument centers around da Vinci s Last Supper, a painting the author considers a coded message that reveals the truth about Jesus and the Grail. Brown points to the lack of a central chalice on the table as proof that the Grail isn t a material vessel. But Passover isn t celebrated with a central chalice so much as with either four shared cups or with individual cups filled four times. And the person sitting next to Jesus is not Mary Magdalene (as Brown claims) but St. John, portrayed as the usual effeminate da Vinci youth, comparable to his St. John the Baptist. Jesus is in the exact center of the painting, with two pyramidal groups of three apostles on each side.

118

119 About The Last Supper Leonardo painted this on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy between 1495 and The painting doesn t represent reality, but rather Leonardo s conception of reality. If John was really Mary, then where was John?

120 p. 243 the hint of a bosom Even if a fertile imagination saw a hint of a breast in the folds of John s cloak on the left side (Freud would be so proud!), the cloak is absent on the right side, and a breast would be all the more apparent there... but it is not. As to the effeminate features, this was frequently true in Leonardo s paintings, and may have had something to do with his purported homosexuality.

121 p. 248 the dagger in the disembodied arm There are, in fact, 12 hands and arms. The knife is in Peter s right hand. The knife is not a dagger, but a singlebladed knife such as might be used for eating. This is clear in the most recent restoration of the painting, completed in 1999, but The Templar Revelation was written two years earlier. Brown simply repeats the errors of his Templar source without doing any research of his own.

122 4.b. Gold, Frankincense & Myrrh Brown asserts that there have been many other so-called deities who were visited by angels, shepherds, and wise men and who received gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This idea comes from Kersey Graves s The World s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (Frontline, 1999).

123 Note: the scholarship of Kersey Graves has been questioned by numerous theists and nontheists alike; the inclusion of his The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors in the Secular Web's Historical Library does not constitute endorsement by Internet Infidels, Inc. This document was included for historical purposes; readers should be extremely cautious in trusting anything in this book.!!!!!!!

124 4.c. The Holy Grail Brown claims that the quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene, a conclusion that would surely have surprised Sir Galahad and the other Grail knights who thought they were searching for the Chalice of the Last Supper. [1] In the past, we have been led to believe that the Holy Grail if it ever existed is the cup Christ drank from at His last supper, and then was used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect blood from the crucified Christ. But according to Dan Brown s characters Langdon and Teabing the true Grail is not a thing, it is a person. [2] [1] Sandra Miesel, Dismantling The Da Vinci Code, Crisis, September 1, 2003, cited at [2] James Garlow and Peter Jones, Cracking Da Vinci s Code (Colorado Springs: Victor, 2004), p.21.

125 The Grail lore came about in the latter part of the 12th and early part of the 13th centuries. It varied from a simple dish a hermit saw in a vision to fantastic tales of miracles done by a cup or dish. The stories that tell of the quest for the Grail became intertwined with legends of King Arthur, but they all disappeared after the 13th century, later reappearing in the 19th century in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (Idylls of the King) and music by Richard Wagner. And, of course, the latest manifestations have been in several 20th century films (Monty Python and Indiana Jones). The Roman Catholic Church did not originate the idea of the Grail, nor does it promote the Grail as a sacred relic.

126 Is there a real Holy Grail? No, there is no physical Grail. There is no magic dish like the one mentioned in the medieval stories, nor is there the simple, wooden cup Indiana Jones chooses in The Last Crusade. And we can say for certain that the Holy Grail is not, as Brown would have you believe, Mary Magdalene or her offspring (Garlow & Jones, p. 121).

127 But there is a spiritual sense in which the Holy Grail might be said to be real. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail unknowingly hit on a truth in the legend of the Grail. They write that the Grail is the receptacle or vessel that received and contained Jesus blood. They are absolutely correct, but they are looking for this vessel in all the wrong places. In fact, the Grail can be seen clearly in Leonardo da Vinci s fresco, The Last Supper. Listen to Jesus words during that meal:

128 While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26-28).

129 The Holy Grail is the receptacle of Jesus blood, shed on the cross by a sinless man to provide forgiveness for sinful men and women. But this Holy Grail is not a limited biological or ethnic reality (the physical seed of Jesus, as Brown contends); rather, it s a multi-ethnic, global, spiritual fellowship made up of all kinds of forgiven sinners. In other words, those who receive forgiveness through the blood of Jesus are the Holy Grail. The real Church, made up of forgiven sinners from every gender, race, nation, and socioeconomic group, is the spiritual Holy Grail (Garlow & Jones, pp ).

130 4.d. The Knights Templar Brown likewise misrepresents the history of the Knights Templar. The oldest of the military-religious orders, the Knights were founded in 1118 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. Their rule, attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was approved in 1128 and generous donors granted them numerous properties in Europe for support. Rendered obsolete after the last Crusader stronghold fell in 1291, the Templars pride and wealth they were also bankers earned them keen hostility.

131 Brown maliciously ascribes the suppression of the Templars to Machiavellian Pope Clement V, whom they were blackmailing with the Grail secret. His ingeniously planned sting operation had his soldiers suddenly arrest all Templars. Charged with Satanism, sodomy, and blasphemy, they were tortured into confessing and burned as heretics, their ashes tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber.

132 But in reality, the initiative for crushing the Templars came from King Philip the Fair of France, whose royal officials did the arresting in About 120 Templars were burned by local Inquisitorial courts in France for not confessing or retracting a confession, as happened with Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Few Templars suffered death elsewhere although their order was abolished in Pope Clement, a weak, sickly Frenchman manipulated by the king, burned no one in Rome inasmuch as he was the first Pope to reign from Avignon (so much for the ashes in the Tiber).

133 Moreover, the mysterious stone idol that the Templars were accused of worshiping is associated with fertility in only one of more than a hundred confessions. Sodomy was the scandalous and possibly true charge against the order, not ritual fornication. The Templars have been darlings of occultism since their myth as masters of secret wisdom and fabulous treasure began to coalesce in the late 18th century. Freemasons and even Nazis have hailed them as brothers. Now it s the turn of neo-gnostics (Miesel, Dismantling ).

134 4.e. The Olympics Brown says the Olympic rings symbolize the pentacle... NOT. The Olympic Rings are the one symbol that is now synonymous with the Olympic Games. Designed in 1913 by Pierre de Coubertin, they symbolize the five continents of Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. No one color represents any one continent. However, the colors are significant in that every country who is part of the Olympic Family has one of these colors, including the white background, in their national flag.

135 4.f. Opus Dei Almost everything crucial to the plot line about [the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei] is made up. [1] Threatened with the loss of their personal prelature at the hands of a new, liberal pope, the bishop who leads Opus Dei promises help to the secretary of state, curiously called the Secretariat Vaticana, who is the head of the Secretariat Council (a group that does not exist in the Roman Curia). [2] No datum is too dubious for inclusion, and reality falls quickly by the wayside. For instance, the Opus Dei bishop encourages his albino assassin by telling him that Noah was also an albino (a notion drawn from the apocryphal 1 Enoch 106:2). Yet albinism somehow fails to interfere with the man s eyesight as it physiologically would.[3] [1] Craig Blomberg, review of The Da Vinci Code in the Denver Journal, vol. 7 no. 20. [2] Gerald O Collins, S.J., Claire Shaeffer-Duffy, and Peter Heinegg, Sensational Secrets, a review of The Da Vinci Code in America, December 15, [3] Miesel, Dismantling.

136 4.g. The Priory of Sion Priory = a monastery whose leader is called a Prior (no particular meaning) The Priory of Sion, according to The Da Vinci Code, is one of the oldest secret societies still in existence. Further, the Priory has been charged with guarding the secret of the true Holy Grail, starting in 1099 when the Knights Templar discovered longlost documents beneath the ruins of Solomon s Temple. According to Robert Langdon, Leonardo da Vinci was Grand Master of this society from 1510 to The only problem is this: It is all a hoax.

137 Brown relies on a 1982 publication, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, for his information on the Priory of Sion. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail relied on documents provided them by Pierre Plantard, an anti-semitic Frenchman who spent time in jail for fraud in Plantard and three other men started a small social club in 1954 called the Priory of Sion, taking the name from a nearby mountain. Their club s cause was the call for more low-cost housing in France.

138 In 1956 the Priory of Sion was officially registered as a society, with Plantard being named as its Secretary General. (The other officials listed have never been identified, and seem to be either pseudonyms or completely fictitious individuals.) The club dissolved in 1957, but Plantard held on to the name.

139 Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, Plantard created a series of documents proving the existence of a bloodline descending from Mary Magdalene, through the kings of France, down to the present day to include (surprise!) Pierre Plantard himself. He began using the name Plantard de Saint-Clair, saying the Saint-Clairs were direct descendants of the line of Jesus and Mary. In 1993, Plantard s name came up in light of a political scandal involving a close friend of then French president Francois Mitterrand.... When called before the court to testify, Plantard, under oath, admitted he had made up the whole Priory scheme. The court ordered a search of Plantard s house, which revealed further documents that proclaimed Plantard to be the true king of France (!). See also

140 4.h. Shekinah Brown says that the Holy of Holies housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah (p. 309). Shekinah, that which dwells, is not found in the Bible, but is in later rabbinic writings. It refers to the glorious presence of God, not to some female consort.

141 4.i. Sunday & Christmas Day Teabing states, Even Christianity s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans (The Da Vinci Code, 232). This is false. Equally false is Langdon s declaration that originally Christians worshipped on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but changed to Sunday under Constantine s influence so that it would coincide with the pagan s veneration day of the sun (p ).

142 Sunday Christians have worshiped on the 1 st day of the week since Resurrection Sunday itself. John 20:19 Acts 20:7 1 Corinthians 16:2 Revelation 1:10

143 The Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably written before the end of the first century, states, This is why we also observe the eighth day with rejoicing, on which Jesus also rose from the dead, and having shown himself ascended to heaven (Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15). Ignatius of Antioch writes around 110, How, then, shall we be able to live apart from Him, seeing that the prophets were His disciples in the Spirit and expected Him as their Master, and that many who were brought up in the old order have come to the newness of hope? They no longer observe the Jewish Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord's day, on which, through Him and through His death, our life arose (Epistle to the Magnesians, ch. 9). Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the second century, makes the first known reference by a Christian author to Sunday ; all prior references had been to the day of the Lord.

144 Brown apparently thinks that since the observance of Sunday as a day of rest wasn t sanctioned by civil authorities until the fourth century, then, it must not been observed prior to that time. But over one hundred years earlier, around 200, Tertullian writes about Sunday as a day of rest: We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord's Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil (De orat., xxiii; cf. Ad nation., I, xiii; Apolog., xvi). The Council of Elvira, a local Spanish council that convened around 303, decreed that Sunday was to be a special day of worship and rest, stating, If anyone in the city neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him be excommunicated for a short time so that he may be corrected (Canon xxi).

145 Since Christians considered Jesus to be the Sun of Righteousness spoken of in the Old Testament (Malachi 4:2) and the light of the world (John 8:12; 9:5) in the New Testament, they thought it fitting that the true Son would supersede the old Roman Sun-god. St Jerome (c ) wrote, The Lord s day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called the Lord s day because on it the Lord rose victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the day of the sun, we willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays [St. Jerome, Pasch.: CCL 78, 550. Quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1166].

146 Christmas Did Christians take December 25, the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus, a use it for their celebration of the birth of Jesus? The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ s birth on December 25th was one of the many paganizations of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many degenerations that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism.

147 None of the Roman cults had major celebrations on December 25. It was the Emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270) who appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual rebirth of the sun..... In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for rebirth, or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule.

148 There was much confusion about dates, since the Eastern Church and the Western Church used different calendars. Here an obscure idea, known as integral age, comes into play. This was a notion that great prophets died on the same date as either their conception or their birth. For whatever reason, the Eastern Church thought Jesus was conceived on April sixth; the Western Church thought it was March 25.

149 This meant that the Eastern Church celebrated Jesus birth on January 6 (which the Western Church celebrates as Epiphany, or the arrival of the Wise Men 2 years later), while the Western Church celebrated Jesus birth on December 25. The pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on December 25 in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan Birth of the Unconquered Sun to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the Sun of Salvation or the Sun of Justice (Tighe; cf. Malachi 4:2).

150 4.j. Tarot & other playing cards Contrary to yet another of Brown s claims, Tarot cards do no teach goddess doctrine. They were invented for innocent gaming purposes in the 15th century and didn t acquire occult associations until the late 18th. Playing-card suites carry no Grail symbolism. The notion of diamonds symbolizing pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation by British occultist A. E. Waite. And the number five so crucial to Brown s puzzles has some connections with the protective goddess but myriad others besides, including human life, the five senses, and the Five Wounds of Christ (Miesel, Dismantling ).

151 4.k. Witches Those deemed witches by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women suspiciously attuned to the natural world.... During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women (p. 125). The reference here is to Malleus Maleficarum, The Witches Hammer (1486).

152 Any deaths were too many. Still, Most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20-25% were men. Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors (New York: Penguin, 1998), cited in Garlow & Jones, p. 66.

153 It was secular courts, not the church, that relied on Malleus Maleficarum, and secular courts, not church courts, handed down the majority of capital sentences. Persecutions did not reach their highest levels until after the Protestant Reformation, when the Roman church had lost much of its power. Church penalties tended to be non-lethal, such as excommunication, or bread and water for a year. It was, in fact, Christian missionaries who encouraged kingdoms and courts to pass laws protecting men and women from charges of witchcraft.

154 4.l. YHWH It is also breathtaking nonsense to assert as a fact that the sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre- Hebraic name for Eve, Havah. YHWH is written in Hebrew without any vowel signs. Jews did not pronounce the sacred name, but Yahweh is considered to be the correct vocalization of the four consonants. In the 16th century some Christian writers introduced Jehovah, which is YHWH pronounced using the vowels of Adonai, or Lord. Thus, Jehovah is an artificial name created less than 500 years ago, and certainly not an ancient, androgynous name from which YHWH derived.

155 5. Paganism Jacques Sauniere s corpse on the floor of the Louvre is not just any old dead body. It forms da Vinci s Vitruvian Man, the five points within a circle, which is the pentagram. The pentagram, Langdon tells his Harvard class, is one of the most powerful images you will see.... [It] is considered both divine and magical by many cultures (p. 96). It is one of the pre-christian symbols favored by The Da Vinci Code, going back four thousand years before Christ (p. 35), and is, says Langdon, primarily a pagan... religious symbol (p. 35).

156 The Da Vinci Code is quite fond of the pagan pentagram, choosing to call it the pentacle, and making it a very positive symbol of the divine (pp ).

157 It is no accident that as the first chapter introduces Langdon, the main character, he is lecturing on pagan symbolism. Pagan : a follower of a polytheistic religion; one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods

158 The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century. The answer to that latter question is simply, NONE. In fact, there is strong evidence that many of the pagan mystery religions may have taken elements of Christian belief in the second and third centuries to use as their own, especially as the strength and appeal of Christianity continued to grow.

159 Unlike the deities of the Mysteries, who were nebulous figures from an imaginary past, the Divine Being whom the Christians worshipped as Lord was known as a real Person on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New Testament were written. From the earliest times the Christian creed included the affirmation that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, Plutarch thought it necessary to warn the priestess Clea against believing that any of these tales [concerning Isis and Osiris] actually happened in the manner in which they are related.

160 In terms of prophecy, Teabing said, we are currently in an epoch of enormous change. The millennium has recently passed, and with it has ended the two-thousand-year-long astrological Age of Pisces the fish, which is also the sign of Jesus. As any astrological symbologist will tell you, the Piscean ideal believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. Hence it has been a time of fervent religion. Now, however, we are entering the Age of Aquarius the water bearer whose ideals claim that man will learn the truth and be able to think for himself. The ideological shift is enormous, and it is occurring right now. (pp ).

161 Simply put, "It is up to us, up to us in Aquarius!" Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures the Lord God had made. Really? he asked the woman. Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden? Of course we may eat it, the woman told him. It s only the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God says we must not eat it or even touch it, or we will die. You won t die! the serpent hissed. God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil (Genesis 3:1-5).

162 5. a. Goddess & the divine feminine The author s admiration for pagan spirituality is best evidenced in the special place his book grants the Goddess. This is no innocent choice, for the Goddess represents one of the most powerful paganizing forces in modern society. Garlow & Jones, p. 203.

163 Mary Daly, an ex-roman Catholic theologian with two doctorates, now calls herself an eco-feminist lesbian witch who has moved from Christianity to the Second Coming of the Goddess : The antichrist and the Second Coming are synonymous. This Second Coming is not the return of Christ but a new arrival of female presence.... The Second Coming, then, means that the prophetic dimension in the symbol of the great Goddess... is the key to salvation from servitude.

164 5.b. Mithraism Langdon s reference to God-eating is likely an appeal to Mithraism, for it was the only mystery religion that celebrated anything resembling Holy Communion (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 148-9).

165 It is generally agreed that Mithra was originally a Persian god who was depicted as a bucolic deity who watched over cattle. Mithraism was not introduced to the West and the Mediterranean world until the first century at the earliest, where it emerged as one of the most striking religious syntheses in antiquity: in the first four centuries of the Christian era it swept across the Roman world, becoming the favoured religion of the Roman legions and several Roman emperors. Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy [Yale University Press, 2000], 75.

166 In the Persian legends, Mithra was born of a virgin mother, Anahita (once worshipped as a fertility goddess), who swam in Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan where Zoroaster/ Zarathustra had left sperm four hundred years earlier. The central feat of Mithras life on earth was the capturing and killing of a stolen bull at the command of the god Apollo, symbolizing the annual spring renewal of life.

167 Mithraism did not originally have a concept of a god who died and was then resurrected (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 136-7; E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 246-9). Despite the claims made in The Da Vinci Code, there is no ancient account of Mithras dying, being buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days (p. 232). That assertion apparently is taken (either directly or from a second-generation source) from Kersey Graves The World s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), a work of pseudoscholarship and anti-christian polemics that is so shoddy that even atheists and agnostics disavow it.

168 The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century. The Mithraic beliefs and practices that Christianity is accused of stealing did not come into vogue until the end of the first century at the earliest, far too late to shape the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus. Mithraism which was a strong adversary of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries was overcome by Christianity, not by being absorbed, but because the Church was able to meet its adversary on the sure ground of historical fact.

169 6. Sexuality For the early church, Langdon explained in a soft voice [notice that men are still instructing women], mankind s use of sex to commune directly with God [cultic prostitution] posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their selfproclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the same (p. 309).

170 The Da Vinci Code is not a sex book. And yet it is a book very much about sex.... The Da Vinci Code is ultimately... an appeal for free sex, separate from the parameters established by God.... Brown s Hieros Gamos is no sacred union. It is simply free sex disguised by using Neo-Pagan quasireligious language. In reality, Brown, through his character Langdon, is using a philosophical device called casuistry. Casuistry is using wellthought-out and well-presented reasoning, especially on moral issues, in order to justify what the individual wants to do.

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173 6. b. Crushed Matriarchy Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever (p. 124).

174 Brown misses no opportunity to criticize Christianity and its pitiable adherents. Worst of all, in Brown s eyes, is the fact that the pleasure-hating, sex-hating, womanhating Church suppressed goddess worship and eliminated the divine feminine. He claims that goddess worship universally dominated pre-christian paganism with the Hieros Gamos (sacred marriage) as its central rite. Brown s enthusiasm for fertility rites is enthusiasm for unfettered intercourse, not for joyful sexuality within marriage.

175 Yes, there have been many misogynists in the church, and we have much about which to be ashamed. But the Message is not so.

176 In Alvin Schmidt s groundbreaking book, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, we see that before the coming of Christ, when the world of paganism was dominant, the lives of most women were held in very low regard. [exposing female infants] In Greece, India, and China, women had no rights and were considered the property of their husbands.... Aristotle taught that a woman ranked somewhere between a man and a slave. Plato taught that if a man lived a cowardly life, he would be reincarnated as a woman.

177 The advent of Christianity radically transformed the fate of women. Even ancient Roman pagan scholars agree that Christianity was the turning point for the freedom and dignity of women. Wherever Christianity has been introduced, it has lifted up women, not just in antiquity but also in modern times. Chinese foot binding Indian suttee

178 6.c. Cultic Prostitution Astonishingly, Brown claims that Jews in Solomon s Temple adored Yahweh and his feminine counterpart, Shekinah, via the services of sacred prostitutes. There is no convincing evidence for sacred or ritual prostitution [among the Jews], and none at all for Israelite men coming to the temple to experience the divine and achieve spiritual wholeness by having sex with priestesses (p. 309).

179 6.d. Hieros Gamos One of the most powerful scenes in The Da Vinci Code takes place in early spring in Normandy. Sophie Neveu discovers her grandfather, Jacques Sauniere, engaged in a secret sex ritual in the basement of his old country house, as masked worshipers look on, rocking back and forth and chanting. The men are dressed in black, the women in white. Later Robert Langdon explains to the distraught Sophie that the ritual she saw was Hieros Gamos, sacred marriage, and that it was not about sex, it was about spirituality... a perversion... [but] a deeply sacrosanct ceremony (pp ). {Notice the men still instructing the woman.}

180 Hieros Gamos: sacred marriage : Sexual relations of fertility deities enacted in myths and rituals, characteristic of societies based on cereal agriculture (e.g., Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Canaan). At least once a year, people dressed as gods engaged in sexual intercourse to guarantee the fertility of the land. The festival began with a procession to the marriage celebration, which was followed by an exchange of gifts, a purification rite, the wedding feast, preparation of the wedding chamber, and a secret nocturnal act of intercourse. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, 2004

181 The Da Vinci Code explains why Hieros Gamos fell on hard times: Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God [sacred prostitution] now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil (p. 125), and thus the rite was banished by the narrow-minded church. The goal of the ritual is to gain, at the moment of orgasm in a sexual union with a woman, spiritual completeness and gnosis, or secret knowledge (p. 308). The Da Vinci Code does not say how the woman gains gnosis, since she is only a chalice in this rite (p. 309), but the male, with the help of the chanting crowd, could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God (p. 309).

182 The Da Vinci Code is fond of the word androgynous (i.e., without gender distinctions). This view of sexuality makes homosexuality normal, as The Da Vinci Code indicates in its celebration of da Vinci s gay identity (p. 120). It even makes pansexuality that is, all forms of sexuality normal.... Any kind of orgasm will do ( Garlow & Jones, pp ).

183 The New Testament knows no secret chambers, drumming, dancing, or drugs used to produce altered states of consciousness. No, Jesus said, I have said nothing in secret (John 18:20). Jesus may have been speaking of mantras when he said, When you pray, don t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again (Matthew 6:7).

184 Brown ignores the positive teachings the Bible offers on sexual experience within marriage, substituting instead a ritual sex orgy as the highest form of physical and spiritual pleasure. The Song of Songs... So do not deprive each other of sexual relations. The only exception to this rule would be the agreement of both husband and wife to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time, so they can give themselves more completely to prayer (1 Corinthians 7:5).

185 God is so thoroughly pro-sex that [God] has established boundaries by which to protect it, to maximize its joy. Since [God] designed sex and sexual expression, [God] knows what works and what doesn t.... These protectors are (1) heterosexuality and (2) monogamy (Garlow & Jones, p. 47). The God of the Bible, though called our heavenly Father, has no gender God has no genitalia, no X or Y chromosomes. Neither is God some mix of human maleness and femaleness. God is not androgynous. God is Spirit (John 9:24), and the mystery of God s Person goes far beyond anything we can imagine.

186 6.e. Medieval Architecture

187 Brown suggests that Gothic architecture is full of goddess-worshipping symbols and coded messages to confound the uninitiated. Building on Barbara Walker s claim that like a pagan temple, the Gothic cathedral represented the body of the Goddess, The Templar Revelation asserts: Sexual symbolism is found in the great Gothic cathedrals which were masterminded by the Knights Templar... both of which represent intimate female anatomy: the arch, which draws the worshipper into the body of Mother Church, evokes the vulva. In The Da Vinci Code, these sentiments are transformed into a character s description of a cathedral s long hollow nave as a secret tribute to a woman s womb... complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway.

188 These bizarre interpretations betray no acquaintance with the actual development or construction of Gothic architecture, and correcting the countless errors becomes a tiresome exercise: The Templars had nothing to do with the cathedrals of their time, which were commissioned by bishops and their canons throughout Europe. They were unlettered men with no arcane knowledge of sacred geometry passed down from the pyramid builders. They did not wield tools themselves on their own projects, nor did they found masons guilds to build for others.

189 Actually looking at Gothic churches and their predecessors deflates the idea of female symbolism. Large medieval churches typically had three front doors on the west plus triple entrances to their transepts on the north and south. Romanesque churches including ones that predate the founding of the Templars have similar bands of decoration arching over their entrances. Both Gothic and Romanesque churches have the long, rectangular nave inherited from Roman public basilicas. Neither Brown nor his sources consider what symbolism medieval churchmen such as Suger of St.-Denis or William Durandus read in church design. It certainly wasn t goddess-worship (Miesel, Dismantling ).

190 6.f. What Brown REALLY says about Women Notice that throughout the book, older men (Sir Leigh and Langdon) instruct a younger woman (Sophie) telling her how the world really is. In the end, Teabing proves to be a man for whom murder is no object in attaining his ends; and Langdon gets a very chauvinistic reward: a virgin of his very own to exploit.

191 7. What does the Bible REALLY say about women? Theological Determinants of Gender Roles: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence Rev. Dr. David C. Stancil, Ph.D. (blush) and_ordination_of_women.pdf

192 8. What difference does this all make? Why bother with such a close reading of a historically worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes paganism mainstream in a way that makes it very difficult for lay readers to recognize gross deceptions presented as buried truths. What s more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown s book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake.

193 The Da Vinci Code is not a neutral fictional tale that adds a few historical facts for a ring of truth. It is a propaganda piece for a religious worldview. And that s fair enough, because it could be said that authors worldviews impact any work of fiction. But readers of Brown s novel need to realize that his commitment to Neo-Pagan religious assumptions also colors his choice of facts and everything he affirms through his characters. One of the great tragedies of Robert Langdon s legitimizing of the anti-biblical pagan understanding of sexuality is that it ultimately hurts people, and badly; not just sexually, but in every dimension of their lives.

194 It is at this deep spiritual level that the book s attack on Christianity is the most vicious.... the real significance of the book is its clear intention to undermine the very foundation of biblical faith and to establish in its place an opposing religious system. The Da Vinci Code is a reader-friendly, airbrushed version of a spirituality that denies the essence of biblical faith and, in particular, the biblical revelation of God. This spirituality is not a version of Christianity, as contemporary skeptics claim by appealing to the early Gnostics. It is instead a denial of all that Christianity holds dear.

195 In a sense, nothing has changed. In the ancient world, there were two kinds of Gnostics: those with no relationship to Christianity, and those who tried to pass themselves off as Christians. In the early centuries of the church, Christian leaders... consistently showed that Gnosticism was a religion different from true Christianity. In the first three centuries of the church, Christians fought on two fronts. On the outside, they were persecuted by the pagan authorities of imperial Rome who forced them to confess Caesar is Lord. On the inside, they had to withstand the Gnostic wolf in sheep s clothing who claimed to be Christian but adopted the pagan spirituality of the Roman Empire. We are now seeing a repeat of this two-front battle (Garlow & Jones, pp ).

196 For a time is coming when people will not longer listen to right teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever they want to hear. They will reject the truth and follow strange myths (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

197 If you can take this film no more seriously than you took You ll probably be okay.

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