Affirmations and Confessions of a Progressive Christian Layman
Modern Novelists Spread Unorthodox Christian Ideas
Part 2 – The Da Vinci Code

Do Christians – the more fundamental or conservative ones, at least – read anything other than the Bible? If they’re reading contemporary fiction or seeing movies like The Da Vinci Code, they are not screaming heresy as loudly as would one might expect. Eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code were sold worldwide and millions more saw the film version even though author Dan Brown makes many claims that are unorthodox.

Many Christians feared the book and film would damage people’s conservative theological beliefs. However, fifty-three percent of adults in a national survey who read The Da Vinci Code said the book was helpful in their “personal spiritual growth and understanding.”

Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003), which was a New York Times bestseller for 32 weeks, raises the question of whether history, as we know it, is necessarily the truth. Some critics have labeled the book “The Gospel According to Dan Brown” or “The Da Vinci Deception” and claim he muddles facts and fiction.

For those who may not be familiar with the book, Brown’s thriller follows Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Nevue who, after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris, become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.

Although a novel, Brown’s thriller claims to contain facts that question some fundamental Christian beliefs. Among other things, the book claims:

• Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were imposed upon the church as the only gospels by the Roman emperor Constantine and a cadre of powerful theologians at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. All the other Gospels were systematically hunted down and burned.

• The Bible didn’t materialize as a “fax from heaven;” the current form of the New Testament didn’t become official until 367.

• Jesus never claimed to be God. He was a prophet, who was proclaimed divine by the Council of Nicaea.

• The virgin birth and resurrection were borrowed from pagan mythology. “Nothing in Christianity is original. The pre-Christian god Mithras – called the Son of God and the Light of the World – was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus.”

• There was no resurrection (or should we say “resuscitation”). The resurrection is metaphorical according to Robert Langdon.

• Jesus married Mary Magdalene. Very few Jewish men of Jesus’ day did not marry. It was considered the duty of every Israelite male to marry as early in life as possible. Anyone who was not married by age 20 was considered to be cursed by God; he could be compelled to marry. Study of the Torah could be used as a reason for delaying marriage, but it was extremely rare for a man to be permitted to remain celibate for his entire life.

• After Jesus’ death, Mary Magdalene fled to France with their child. One of the novel’s central plot points is that the Merovingian kings of France descended from the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

• The truth has been kept for centuries by a secret society that included Leonardo da Vinci, who encoded secrets that ecclesiastical history had hidden in his most famous art works, such as his “Last Supper,” “Madonna of the Rocks,” and “Mona Lisa.” He particularly suggests that these art works hide symbols of the sacred feminine and the truth about Mary Magdalene. For example, the name of the “Mona Lisa,” comes from two Egyptian deities: the god Amon and the goddess Isis. The painting’s name is “an anagram of the divine union of male and female.” These works of art have been viewed by millions of people who don’t recognize their hidden meanings.

• There were competing versions of Christianity, but the Church, meaning the Catholic Church, the only church at the time, did its best to subjugate all challengers.

Brown also lambasts the Church (meaning the Church universal, not a specific one) for ignoring scientific investigation and covering up the existence of Jesus’ descendants. He thinks that true believers will be able to accept the idea that the Bible is full of metaphors and is not literal. In other words, faith can withstand the truth.

Sir Leigh Teabing, a Holy Grail expert, shows Sophie Neveu, who has red hair, that Mary Magdalene is typically depicted as having red hair. And Langdon suggests that Ariel’s red hair in The Little Mermaid is most likely because Disney’s film was an allegory of the story of Mary Magdalene.

Other books that have explored similar ideas include The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Templar Revelation (1997) by Clive Prince and Lynn Picknett, Picknett’s Mary Magdalene: Christianity’s Hidden Goddess and Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alabaster Jar.

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here
Read Part 6 Here
Read Part 7 Here