Preface (May 2006):  I first wrote this critique two years ago, but have recently revised it.  Initially, three former students asked me about some unorthodox ideas purported by a book I had not read.  I was going to write them a short response based on their questions, but after learning how many people actually believe the book’s themes to be true, I decided it would be wise to know what it says firsthand.  Though what I read irritated me, I assumed such blatant nonsense could only be embraced by an agenda-driven minority (such as ultra-feminists, or angry defectors of Roman Catholicism), or by gullible conspiracy theorists.  Therefore, I also assumed the attention surrounding the book would be short-lived.  Apparently, I am a horrible prophet.

Never would I have imagined that a novel containing such monstrosities could endure for this long and intrigue the masses to such an extent.  One can hardly turn on the television, read a magazine or newspaper, or browse the internet without running into The Da Vinci Code.  Granted, this is mainly due to the novel’s recent release in paperback and the promotion of the new film.  But the persuasion and acceptance of the novel’s subject matter, and the subsequent media hype, not only amazes me, but it disturbs me, too.

The Da Vinci Code shamelessly bashes the Christian faith, specifically attacking Jesus’ identity, accusing the Christian church of promoting lies, and ridiculing the most cherished beliefs of over two billion people.  However, this in itself is not what bothers me, for I believe people are entitled to have their own opinions.  My disdain for The Da Vinci Code stems from the author’s irresponsible insistence that it contains truth, from the media’s careless promotion of an alternate version of Jesus and early Christianity, and from the overall tolerance of this phenomenon by society.

Is there another historical figure besides Jesus Christ (or one of his followers) whose life and dignity can be insulted without a public consensus of outrage, and about whom gross lies can rake in millions of dollars for the liars?  It appears we live in a culture that screams for tolerance and acceptance for all beliefs and values except for those of traditional Christianity.  If a tantalizing mystery novel offensively undermined what Muslims believe about Muhammad, would the author dare to suggest that his novel contains the truth?  I highly doubt it.  If a movie was produced that claimed we’ve all been deceived regarding our knowledge of Gandhi, or of Martin Luther King, Jr., would it be a blockbuster hit?  Not likely.  Would the media jump on the bandwagon if someone claimed that the common depictions of Hitler as an evil tyrant and of the Holocaust as an atrocity were in truth the result of a sinister conspiracy to fool the world?  Never.  But regarding Jesus Christ, one can get away with virtually any form of mockery, no matter how insulting and preposterous it is, and no matter how many Christians it offends.

What are Christians to do about this?  It is the duty of all Christians to be advocates of true doctrine and informed defenders of the Christian faith.  Most people who read the book or see the movie will do no more checking into the facts than watch flimsy television specials or read trendy articles.  These will almost certainly fail at the easy task of dismantling The Da Vinci Code, but will keep the intrigue alive and add false credibility to it.  Christians will only be successful in combating such destructive heresies if they take the time to inform themselves about the truth.  Perhaps my critique will be helpful in that regard.  However, plenty of other sources provide useful information as well: thetruthaboutdavinci.com; godandscience.org/apologetics/trinity.html (more links at the bottom); ankerberg.com (though this site changes its theme regularly); beliefnet.com/story/167/story_16783_1.html (an interview with a popular non-Christian scholar who normally leaps at the opportunity to belittle Christianity).

And, Christians might want to think twice before giving money to those who purposely bash Jesus.
The Da Vinci Code.  It is one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read.  No, wait – let me correct that statement: It is THE most ridiculous book I have ever read.

It is a very easy and engaging read, and in this sense I suppose one could say it is well written: the average chapter is about 2-3 pages in length, each ending with a sort of mini cliff-hanger; it appears to give little pieces of information, such as the origin of Friday the 13th, the origin of Tarot cards, the background of the name “Mona Lisa,” etc. – all of which make the novel more interesting (though many of these pieces of info aren’t true); and, as the author Dan Brown himself says, “Everyone loves a conspiracy!”  But this is no ordinary conspiracy, for Brown claims to know the truth behind the biggest conspiracy of all time, which appears to have real-life ramifications for you, the reader.

But as far as the content and theories, holy cow!  I have never found something so utterly laughable and, at the same time, so frustrating.  I hardly know where to start, and a full, complete critique would take a LONG time (due to the seemingly countless errors).  Since I am presenting factual, scholarly information, it will not be nearly as entertaining as Brown’s fiction, but here are a few important comments anyway:

He starts the book with a page entitled “Fact,” and specifically claims “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”  This is VERY misleading, to say the least.  Were this a non-fiction book, this page’s heading would have to be changed to “Lies.”  But because the average reader probably knows next to nothing about the life of Jesus, the history of the Christian church, documents that the early church had access to, etc., after reading The Da Vinci Code many believe Brown’s revisionist account of history – and this based on no careful research, but simply because they read a fast-paced, suspenseful, best-selling novel of fiction!  Ack – I hate our society.

Here are examples showing that each of the above mentioned “facts” in the book are nothing of the kind:

Artwork:  Brown says Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper has Mary Magdalene sitting at Jesus’ right.

In reality, the vast majority of art historians completely reject this notion, saying the figure is the boyish-looking apostle John, as he is normally portrayed in art pieces from Da Vinci’s time. (John did not die until the very end of the first century, making him quite young at the time of Jesus.)  Even an ABC television special on The Da Vinci Code could find only one art historian who said the figure is a woman, and this was based on the faint resemblance of the figure to a woman in another painting.
But the final word on this should be that of Leonardo Da Vinci himself, for in a preliminary sketch of the Last Supper he labeled each of the 12 disciples, naming the one to Jesus’ right “John.”

Architecture: Brown says the Pyramid of the Louvre has 666 panes of glass.

In reality, it has 673 panes of glass.  Brown used the number 666 because he knows people identify it with some sort of biblical concept of evil.

Documents:  Brown says the (so-called) Gospel of Philip is among the earliest Christian records, and that it reads as follows: “And 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.”

In reality, this document was written in the late 3rd century, at least 200 years after the time of Jesus.  The four Gospels in the New Testament were all written during the first century, with Matthew, Mark, and Luke having been composed at least within 40 years after Christ.  And this section of the (so-called) Gospel of Philip that Brown quotes from is actually a broken text – that is, the original has words that cannot be read at all due to the manuscript being damaged.  Here is what we can actually read: “And the companion of the [unreadable] Mary Magdalene.  [unreadable] her more than [unreadable] the disciples [unreadable] kiss her [unreadable] on her [unreadable].”  This text can hardly be used as support for anything.

Secret rituals: Brown says a sex ritual called Hieros Gamos was performed in Solomon’s temple as worship for the male and female Jewish deities, Yahweh and Shekinah.

In reality, there is zero evidence for this.  Zero.  Shekinah is a term that refers to the “glory of God.”  That is all.  Since there is no Jewish goddess, there would be no Hieros Gamos at the temple.
(Brown also says that Yahweh, the name of God, is derived from the word Jehovah, which itself is an androgynous combination of the masculine “Jah” and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, “Havah.”  In reality, the word Jehovah comes from misspelling/mispronouncing the name of Yahweh on purpose.  The Jews made certain never to say this holy name of God, so they would add a few vowel points to pronounce it differently.  Jehovah is that “new” word, taken from Hebrew, through Latin, into English.  Again, there has never been anything feminine associated with Yahweh, the God of Israel.)

Also, Brown states the Priory of Sion is a secret European society erected in 1099 in Jerusalem to preserve the secret of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene and to watch over their descendents, and that famous people from history such as Da Vinci and Isaac Newton were grand masters.

In reality, the Priory of Sion was erected in 1956 in France.  There was a hoax in which someone planted material in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris which described the Priory of Sion as Brown does in his novel.  It was proven to be a hoax in 1996 (seven years before The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003), with one of the planters admitting his guilt.  Brown’s most important strand of the central plot of his novel, then, is a total fabrication.  So much for the “facts” he claims on the first page!

(Interestingly, Brown also seems to have “borrowed” his themes from other fictional accounts, such as Michael Baigent’s novel Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1983), and two of Lewis Purdue’s books, The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000).  In both The Da Vinci Code and The Da Vinci Legacy, the following elements are the same: a Da Vinci art expert is killed; he is the forth of his type to be killed; he leaves a secret message before he dies; the message is written on his own body and in his own blood; the hero is a suspect; a murdered curator leaves a unique gold key to the heroine; the key is inside a wood painting that refers to a holy woman; this key turns no lock, but leads to a Zurich bank; the safe deposit box holds another container requiring a combination; inside is a puzzle, causing distant travels.  Purdue’s site lists similarities: http://www.davincilegacy.com/Infringement/expert-report.html)
 

Now for a little bit on each of the main themes of The Da Vinci Code:
 

The Supposed Conspiracy: Covering Up and Burning other Books; Who Is Jesus?

Brown claims that the Christian church purposely hid, tried to destroy, and changed the true identity of Jesus Christ.  This was supposedly done by destroying other records of Jesus, then rewriting history.  In fact, Brown says, the deity of Jesus Christ wasn’t even decided on until a vote at the Council of Nicea in the year 325, and it was a close vote at that.

This charge is certainly not a new one, but Brown has made it as popular as it’s ever been.
Which books belong in the New Testament? is an important question.  But the criteria used in determining this was reasonable and easy for us to understand. The author’s identity and the time of the book’s writing are the main factors.  (There are others, but these will suffice to show that Brown is mistaken in his account.)

First, it should be noted that every single one of the 27 books that make up the New Testament was written in the first century, while ALL of the “other books” were not written until the second and third centuries, and in some cases even later.  In fact, at least 20 of the 27 New Testament books were written within 40 years after the time of Jesus.  And all 27 of them were written by people who either had direct contact with Jesus, themselves being eyewitnesses, or who had contact with eyewitnesses of Jesus.  The other books, being composed at such a late date, were not written by the person whose name is associated with the book (such as Philip, Mary, Thomas, etc.), for those people were long dead by then.

Brown would have us believe this to be the chronological order of events: the other books were written first, then destroyed or covered up, and then the current New Testament books were written.  But because the majority of the New Testament was composed at such an early date, it was also accepted by Christians as being the norm and standard for truth about Jesus.  And this occurred while enemies of Christianity were still around who had seen Jesus for themselves and could protest any errors – but they never did!  There is not one account from the first century that says the report of the 4 New Testament Gospels, or the letters of Peter, Paul, and John, are false.  Not one.  These New Testament books, then, became the standard by which all other books written afterwards were to be judged.  Historians always take the eyewitness accounts and the accounts closest to the actual events as being the most reliable, for embellishment occurs over time.  Therefore, when the (so-called) Gospel of Thomas made its debut in the second century, it was easily dismissed by comparing it with the 4 New Testament Gospels.

Additionally, even if all New Testament books are dismissed, there remain at least 10 other records of Jesus, ALL of which were written before any of the other so-called Gospels, either reporting him to be a supernatural figure or as being believed by others to be a supernatural figure.  Plus, all of the other so-called Gospels ALSO say that Jesus is a supernatural figure.  Many of these non-New Testament texts also specifically refer to his deity and his resurrection from the dead.  Brown would have us believe the New Testament writings are the sole source for a supernatural Jesus, and that it wasn’t until years and years after Christ that anyone dared say he is God.  The evidence simply doesn’t support this.  (Besides, why would Christians be persecuted and murdered from the year 64 to 313 if not for their views on Jesus being God?  Brown never addresses this issue.)

Likewise, the idea that the Council of Nicea determined the divinity of Jesus is ludicrous.  Brown says that “until that moment in history [the year 325], Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet” and the modern 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 power base.”

The primary purpose of the Council was to discuss the views of Arius, someone who said Jesus was not God.  His followers, the Arians, were allowed to present their case.  Was there a vote on this?  Yes.  But out of the hundreds of bishops present, only two of them disagreed with the Council.  That was hardly a close vote, though Brown claims it was.  In fact, the two bishops who differed did so regarding issues that had nothing to do with the deity of Christ. The Council did nothing more than re-affirm that which had already been held by Christians for nearly 300 years: Jesus is nothing less than God Himself.

Brown also claims that Constantine, who convened the Council, was politically driven such that the New Testament records of Jesus were either changed or invented to fit Constantine’s own agenda.  But if that was the case, why doesn’t the New Testament equate the importance of the Roman Empire’s success with the success of the church?  Why doesn’t the New Testament combine the institutions of the church and the state?  On the contrary, when we compare documents that have been shaped for one’s own political agenda with the New Testament documents, there are no similarities.  Moreover, why was Christianity not named the official religion of the Roman Empire until about 50 years later, and this by someone else?  Though Constantine’s own personal beliefs are a bit enigmatic, he certainly didn’t drive the Council of Nicea, but rather thought the bishops should decide the outcome.  He also allowed the old Roman paganism to remain alongside Christianity, as opposed to wiping it out, even setting up pagan statues in close proximity to Christian sites.  Does this sound like the actions of a ruler who was bent on forcing his own version of an exclusive Christianity upon his subjects?  Hardly.

Also, it should be noted that the Old Testament, all of it having been composed at least 400 years before Christ (with some books having been written much earlier), speaks of the Jewish Messiah being God Himself (Jeremiah 23:5-6; Isaiah 9:6; Daniel 7:9-14; Micah 5:2), dying a sacrificial death for the salvation of others (Isaiah 52:13-53:12), and rising from the dead (Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 53:10-12).

But Brown would have us believe that “nothing about Jesus is original,” and that ideas about Jesus were borrowed from the pre-Christian god Mithras, who, as Brown asserts, was called the Son of God and the Light of the World, was born on Dec. 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days.  Brown then follows this by saying Dec. 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus.  However, what is unoriginal is Brown’s claim that the Christian fabrication of Jesus was created from various elements of ancient pagan mystery religions.  He is doing what all who want to demean the biblical Jesus in the court of public opinion are forced to do – he is lying.

It is not Jesus, but the idea of the god Mithras that is a combination of other beliefs, having been mentioned in Hindu and Zoroastrian texts before being fused with the great mass of Greco-Roman magical ideas.  Mithras evolved from god of the green land, wild pastures, and solar light to the sun god of Rome.  He is not referred to as the “Son of God” or the “Light of the World” except by people who take phrases describing Mithras and interpret them to match Christian terminology, yet the meaning is not the same at all.  The date of Dec. 25 is irrelevant, for nowhere in the Bible is this date given as the birth of Jesus and no Christian doctrine bases anything on this date.  Mithras did not die, and therefore was never buried and never resurrected.  Again, those who try to make such parallels do so based on no scholarship, but try to re-phrase information about Mithras so that it sounds somewhat Christian.  (Osiris is said to have some sort of a resurrection, but it in no way matches the resurrection of Jesus.  The Egyptian and Judeo-Christian concepts of the afterlife and of a resurrection are thoroughly dissimilar.)

(Brown likewise says that most Christians have no idea why they attend church on Sunday: it is because Constantine changed the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun.  But numerous documents written long before Constantine’s day – including New Testament books, writings of other Christians, and even a pagan’s work – report Christians as worshipping Jesus on Sunday because they considered it to be “the Lord’s Day,” honoring Christ’s resurrection from the dead on that day of the week.)

Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

The Da Vinci Code claims these two were married and had children who carried on the royal bloodline of Jesus.  The search for the holy grail is actually a search for Mary Magdalene, and the goddess worship she symbolizes.

The evidence for this simply doesn’t exist.  The (so-called) Gospel of Philip, as mentioned above, is entirely dubious as to its content.  The (so-called) Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which Brown selectively quotes from for support, does not indicate that Jesus and Mary were married.  In context, Peter is upset merely because Mary received information from Jesus that the other apostles did not have.  Brown also says Jesus gave this information to Mary right before he was crucified, but the (so-called) Gospel of Mary Magdalene places this supposed event after Jesus was resurrected.  This clearly shows that Brown even had to change what the “other books” say because they, too, disagree with his claim that Jesus never rose from the dead.  Plus, this (so-called) Gospel of Mary Magdalene was written in the second century, much later than the 4 New Testament Gospels.

And certainly nothing in the Bible itself indicates that Mary and Jesus were together, though Brown also says that in order to cover up their marriage, Mary was reinvented as a prostitute – though the Bible doesn’t say that about her either.  The idea that she was a prostitute (which merely came from a mistake of confusing two biblical characters) didn’t originate until the year 591 – over 250 years after Brown says the church conspiracy at Nicea took place.

Brown goes on to claim that Jesus, being a Jew, would certainly have been married, for Jewish custom condemned celibacy.  But two Jewish sources from the first century (Josephus and Philo) discuss both the admiration one received for being celibate as well as there being pious Jews who deliberately avoided marriage.  And Paul was also a devoutly religious man (both as a Jewish Pharisee and as a Christian apostle) who remained unmarried and encouraged others to do the same, if they had the gift of celibacy.  Therefore, it cannot be claimed that Jesus, an admired, pious, devout Jew, would certainly have been married.

The Sacred Feminine.

Brown basically claims that Christianity, as we know it today, destroyed the idea of the goddess and even demonizes and suppresses women (by blaming sin on woman and by hunting down and killing more than 5 million women), and the matriarchy of pre-Christianity ruled civilization until Constantine.

But there has never been any matriarchal society, and western cultures (including the gods they believed in) were always male-led, not female-led.  So there was nothing in the way of a matriarchy for “Constantine’s Christianity” to subvert.  In fact, non-Christian civilizations mainly held women in very low regard.  On the contrary, the Bible teaches that men and woman are of equal status, and it is Adam, not Eve, who gets named the most when the Fall of man into sin is discussed.  It is true that, at times, Christians have committed horrendous sins, some regarding the treatment of women.  But it is hardly like Brown describes.  Even author Jennifer Gibbons, a self-proclaimed pagan, says that no more than about 40,000 women were killed during the supposed “Great Witch Hunt” from 1450 to 1750.  Granted, even one such death is indefensible, but it is not nearly the 5 million that Brown asserts.

Besides, the Catholic Church practically treats Mary the mother of Jesus as a goddess herself, so how can Brown claim that this same Catholic Church has been anti-feminine since Constantine?  Furthermore, the New Testament names Mary Magdalene as the first person to see the risen Jesus, and it is she who proclaimed this good news to the timid men.  This does not fit with Brown’s claim that Mary Magdalene was purposely devalued in order to promote the superiority of men over women (or to cover up her marriage to Jesus, as mentioned above).  On the contrary, the New Testament reports this fact about Mary on Easter Sunday despite the assertion of the Jewish rabbis that a woman’s testimony as a witness is unreliable.

Additionally, some of the most anti-female sentiments come from the very writings that Brown cites as his evidence.  Before the recent frenzy over the (so-called) Gospel of Judas, the most famous among the “other books” was the (so-called) Gospel of Thomas.  This book comes from the same people (the Gnostics) who produced the two other books that Brown cites as “evidence” for the marriage of Jesus – namely, the (so-called) Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene.  But Brown doesn’t cite the (so-called) Gospel of Thomas.  Why not?  Because it has Jesus saying that Mary Magdalene must, like all females, first become a male in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Brown obviously left this out of The Da Vinci Code because it sharply clashes with his own fabricated ideas of Jesus’ view of the sacred feminine.  (This is similar to Brown leaving out sections of the other (so-called) Gospels that refer to Jesus as being more than a mere human and rising from the dead, as mentioned above.  Why would Brown be deceitful in citing his sources?  Clearly because his claims would be exposed for the tripe they are if he were to disclose the full story.)

Sex.

The Da Vinci Code has a lot to do with sex, namely by saying both the Bible and the Christian church have made people think sex is bad, while it is really an aspect of true religious experience.

But the Bible is certainly not anti-sex: in Genesis 2, God’s original, sinless creation was set up with man and woman having sex; in Proverbs 5, man and woman are to satisfy each other sexually; the entire Song of Songs is an erotic love poem filled with all sorts of sexual expression; in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says it is the duty of both husband and wife to fulfill the sexual desires of each other; Hebrew 13 says the marriage bed is pure.  Perhaps what Brown doesn’t like is the Bible’s moral principle that sex is only to be had within marriage.

In a not-so-subtle statement of male bashing, Brown tells of females who “smiled knowingly, nodding” when told by a professor that Hieros Gamos is a “religious” act where man can “see God,” and the males simply giggled because they are really only boys, not grasping the supposed spiritual significance of an orgasm.  From this, we are to get the idea that viewing sex as mere physical pleasure is juvenile, for it is actually much, much more – even a sacred and religious act.  Therefore, the more sex the better, and as long as it is between male and female (never mind husband and wife), it’s a good thing.

Brown also invokes Eros as support, saying the name of the Greek god of sexual love is symbolic of female genitalia.  Hence, man’s noble goal is this sacred chalice, the female vagina.  Well, Brown has an interesting take on this Greek word for love.  Eros is hardly more than a self-satisfying love, the most selfish of the four Greek words/concepts of love – hence, eros is over once the male gets what he wants.  But what kind of female wants to be loved only in this way?  With eros, the man discards the woman when sex is over, and he is only interested in “her” at all because she happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus for sex.  Yet Brown seems to focus the essence of the male-female union around this concept.  The Bible, on the other hand, emphasizes agape as the type of love that should exist between a man and a woman.  This is the most selfless type of love there is, in which one is to unconditionally care for the other, seeing him/her as having value as a person, not an object.

As additional “evidence,” Brown says Eros is an anagram of “rose,” and he lists languages in which “rose” is always rendered as “rose,” despite the translation from one language to another.  What he fails to mention is that “rose” is a different word in both Greek and Latin, the two main languages of Greco-Roman times, and therefore could not have been seen as such an anagram by those ancient Greeks who worshipped Eros.

Brown also claims that the other major religions of the world followed Christianity in saying sex is “bad.”  Apparently Brown is unaware of the teachings of the world’s second and third largest religions, Islam and Hinduism, respectively.  Islam approves of males having sex with multiple wives and possibly with any slave girls the man may own.  Islam also teaches that eternal paradise (for males) may consist of having sex with 70 perfect ever-virgins.  Hinduism fully endorses sexual escapades as way to find “enlightenment” or to aid in becoming “one with the universe” (as does some forms of Buddhism).  A reading of Hinduism’s Kama Sutra would make that clear.
 
 
 

And to keep from being accused of plagiarism, I should note that I consulted and borrowed from a few sources in writing this (in addition to what I knew off the top of my head): The Penguin History of the Church, Volume I: The Early Church by Henry Chadwick; Cracking Da Vinci’s Code by James Garlow; Breaking the Da Vinci Code by Darrel L. Bock; Not InDavincible by James Patrick Holding. (This last one is another decent web site that has links to other sites.  If clicking on the title doesn’t work, try this web address: http://answers.org/issues/davincicode.html)