The basic message of the novel is a) the church has completely rewritten the Bible to make Jesus appear divine when in actuality He was simply a very wise man, b) Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and produced descendents who are hidden away somewhere in France, and c) the Catholic church has covered this up and “demonized" women and sexuality.

It’s a plot-twisting, page-turning piece of fiction, but all the way through the book my doo-doo detector kept going off concerning Brown’s alleged historical “facts."

Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea “deified" the man Jesus in 325 A.D.

Brown argues that before that time, Jesus was viewed as simply as very wise, but very human, man. Doo-doo!

Two and a half centuries before the Council of Nicaea, first century documents repeatedly taught the deity of Christ. For instance, in his letter to the Colossians (60-62 A.D.), the apostle Paul declared, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." The Gospel of John (85-95 A.D.) proclaims, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us."

There is even secular evidence. In a letter from Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan, dated around 112 A.D., the Roman senator observed that early Christians "were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day when they sang a hymn to Christ, as to a god."

On page 234, Leigh Teabing, the fictional royal historian in The Da Vinci Code, argues “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." Doo-doo!

Portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been found that date 175 and 225 A.D.--at least one hundred years before Constantine was even born! Any re-writing would have been exposed.

Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene

On page 246, Teabring quotes the non-biblical Gospel of Phillip. “The companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?'" The fictitious historian claims that the Aramaic word for "companion" literally meant "spouse." Doo-doo!

First, if Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, the disciple’s question would make no sense. Of course He loves his wife more than His buddies! Second, the Gospel of Phillip doesn’t specify where Jesus kissed her. And third, it’s not written in Aramaic but Greek. (In Greek, spouse is not the connotation.)

But more important, not one of the non-biblical books Brown references ever mentions Jesus being married--not even the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene. You would think she would have known.

Female goddess worship was the original religion: the Sacred Feminine

On page 238, Teabring claims, "The Grail is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church. The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy." Doo-doo!

Brown does have it right that when Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of Rome in 325, the Church adopted the Roman practice of men alone holding institutional authority. Up until that time, history documents that women served as priests and pastors in the early Church. In 494 Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood.

However, women were hardly the “enemy" of the early church. Jesus had female followers including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, the mother of Zebedee's sons, Joanna, Salome, and Susanna. The apostle Paul taught, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This statement comes in a culture and time when the rest of the world considered women “chattel" or property.

And today, many Protestant denominations ordain women. (Brown seems to think that Roman Catholicism is the only branch of Christianity.)

The church has suppressed sexuality

Finally, as far as the church condemning or suppressing sexually, Brown has obviously never read the Bible’s book of Song of Songs, an R-rated celebration of sex. Nor has he read Jesus and the apostle Paul glorifying sexual intercourse as a symbol of spiritual intimacy or Paul instructing husbands to satisfy their wives sexual needs.

Brown also fails to mention that his highly touted matriarchal religions often demanded the castration of male worshippers. Nothing sacred or feminine about that!

I have no problem with the book as simply fiction. It’s a fascinating read. But when Brown uses it to preach that his fiction is fact, well, all I can say is doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. I think Hemingway would agree.

© 2006 James N. Watkins

An effective way to protest the film:

Here's an excerpt from a recent email that originated with Janet Batchler:

What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie? I'm going to offer you the usual choices -- and a new one.

Here are the usual suspects:

We can ignore the movie

The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot box closes on the Sunday of opening weekend. If you stay home, you have lost your chance to make your vote heard. You have thrown your vote away, and from Hollywood's point of view, you don't count. By staying home, you do nothing to shape the decision-making process regarding what movies will make it to the big screen.

We can protest

The problem with this option: It doesn't work. Any publicity is good publicity. Protests not only fuel the box office, they make all Christians look like idiots. And again, protests and boycotts do nothing to help shape the decisions being made right now about what movies Hollywood will make in the next few years. (Or they convince Hollywood to make *more* movies that will provoke Christians to protest, which will drive the box office up.)

We can discuss the movie

We can be rational and be ready with study guides and workshops and point-by-point refutations of the lies promulgated by the movie.

The problem with this option: No one's listening. They think they know what we're going to say already. We'll lose most of these discussions anyway, no matter how prepared we are, because the power of story always trumps the power of facts (why do you think Jesus taught in parables?!). And once again: rational discussion of history does nothing to affect Hollywood's choices regarding what movies to make.

But there's a fourth choice

On May 19th, you should go to the movies. Just go to another movie.

Save the date now. May 19th, or May 20th. No later than Sunday, May 21st -- that's the day the ballot box closes. You'll get a vote, the only vote Hollywood recognizes: The power of cold hard cash laid down on a box office window on opening weekend.

Use your vote. Don't throw it away. Vote for a movie other than DVC. If enough people do it, the powers that be will notice. They won't have a choice...

Let's rock the box office in a way no one expects -- without protests, without boycotts, without arguments, without rancor. Let's show up at the box office ballot box and cast our votes. And buy some popcorn, too.

May 19th. Mark your calendars now...

links

• Breaking The Da Vinci Code (Christian History)

• Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code (Planet Envoy)

• Cracking Da Vinci's Code (James Garlow and Peter John)

• Cracking The Da Vinci Code (University of Chicago)

• Crash Goes The Da Vinci Code (Leadership U)

• Da Duh Vinci code (To The Source)

• The Da Vinci Code Blog (Hollywood Jesus)

• The Da Vinci Code: a biblical response (CBN)

• The Da Vinci Dialog

• The Da Vinci Hoax (Links from BreakPoint)

• Da Vinci Sermon Resources (Outreach.com)

• Decoding Da Vinci (Liz Curtis Higgs)

• Decoding The Da Vinci Code (Probe Ministries)

• Dismantiling The Da Vinci Code (Catholic Educator's Resource Center)

• The Hoax Behind the Fiction (About Bible Prophecy)

• How to communicate effectively about The Da Vinci Code (Yvon Prehn)

• Jesus Decoded (US Conference of Catholic Bishops)

• My DVC rant (Barbara Nicolosi)

• No Gospel in Da Vinci Code Claims (National Geographic)

• Opus Dei Tackles Da Vinci Code image problem (Reuters)

• The Real "Divine Feminine" (Melanie Kierstead, Asbury College)

• Rev. magazine resources

• Screwtape on DVC (Lewis' favorite demon instructs "Wormword" on using the Code)

• Separating Fact From Fiction (Radio Bible Class)

• What is the Priory of Sion? (Center For Studies of New Religions)




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