The Da Vinci Hoax

Most people have heard of the incredibly successful novel The Da Vinci Code. Many have read it and likely a larger number will go to see the movie version when it is released in May. The book’s popularity is unfortunate because many people are either confused by its outrageous claims about Christ, Mary Magdalene and the Catholic Church or actually believe them. With so much attention being given to the matter it is important that Christians, and especially Catholics, be aware of the claims and accusations being made and have a response to them.

The PHENOMENON

In the spring of 2006 in New York City black placards were unfurled on the sides of high-rise buildings. On them was written, “Be Part Of The Phenomenon.” At the bottom, in smaller letters, the “phenomenon” was identified: the film version of The Da Vinci Code. It was advertising for the upcoming movie. While promoters are prone to exaggeration in this case one can say they were being accurate.

The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, was first released by Doubleday Fiction in April of 2003. As a marketing ploy for the book Doubleday distributed 10,000 free advanced reading copies to bookstores and the media. This, as The New York Times noted, was more copies than any one of Brown’s three previous novels had sold up till then.

Some early reviews gushed with praise. The Library Journal raved, “This masterpiece should be mandatory reading.” The Chicago Tribune said the book contained “several doctorates’ worth of fascinating history and learned speculation” while New York Daily News affirmed “his research is impeccable.” Such laudatory statements not only helped sell the book they helped sell the legitimacy of its premises. This type of uncritical adulation reflects poorly on the level of knowledge and objectivity found among some reviewers employed by respected journals and influential newspapers.

The Da Vinci Code became an instant success, debuting at #1 in Hardcover Fiction on the New York Times Bestseller List and remained in the top five for over three years (159 weeks). It has sold over 40 million hardcover copies worldwide in 44 different languages. It is the fastest-selling adult book of all time. When Anchor Books finally released a paperback edition in March 2006 it too debuted at #1 in the US, selling half a million copies in its first week. In response the Anchor Books upped its first print from 5 million to 6 million copies.

In the fall of 2004 CBS News reported that “Dan Brown's mystical thriller has spawned a mini-industry in European travel, with enthralled readers touring the locations in its plot to unravel its enigmas. From Scotland to France, they are scrutinizing old sites with new questions” (“Da Vinci Code Spawns Travel Fad, September 9, 2004). The Louvre Museum had a record number of visitors in 2005, up half a million over the previous year. While the museum officials accredit this to a number of factors General Administrator Didier Selles admitted to the Associated Press that Dan Brown’s novel was in part responsible for drawing fans to the museum, though likely “not in gigantic proportions.” Where the impact of the novel is more easily gauged is at Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland. This tiny chapel figures in the novel’s climax. A decade ago it received only 9,500 visitors a year but in 2003 it jumped to 37,200. By 2004 it was up to 68,600 and in 2005 reached 118,150. Travel companies like British Tours Ltd. and Fodor’s are offering guided tour packages of sites represented in the novel while Eurostar is mounting a campaign on the back of the movie to promote travel between Britain and France. Eurostar says the book already accounted for a 15 per cent increase in passengers on its London-Paris route in 2005.

Sony/Columbia Pictures have just released the inevitable movie version of the novel. It was directed by Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. The producers are said to have invested about $125 million in it. Rumours are that Dan Brown received $6 million up front for the movie rights. Long-time dissident Catholic theologian and media hound Father Richard McBrien was hired during production to be the “religious consultant.” He deflected any criticism of his role by saying “I think what bothered most critics was the fact that the question [of Jesus being married] was even being raised and that I was open to discussing it” (Kate Antonacci, “Professor consults for ‘The Da Vinci Code’,” The Observer, December 7, 2005). Never mind that the book and film deny Christ’s divinity, pervert His mission and teaching, and calumniate against the Church.

The film was selected to open the prestigious Cannes Film Festival two days before its official May 19, 2006 release in the UK and US. Critical reviews were largely negative. Film critic Stephen Schaefer, of the Boston Herald, said “Nothing really works. It’s not suspenseful. It’s not romantic. It’s certainly not fun.” In other words, it’s just like the book. But despite bad reviews, moviegoers lined up its debut weekend. The movie reportedly took in $224 million worldwide in its first three days and was the number one box office film in theatres in the U.S. and Canada. It had the second-biggest international opening of any movie in history (after Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith), putting its financial backers immediately into profit and vindicating their investment. Jeff Blake, Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures, gloated, “Basically, the people have responded with great enthusiasm and appreciated a provocative story.”

When some Christian groups asked that the movie include a mild disclaimer at the beginning the producers and director quickly dismissed the request. Yet, as Canadian columnist Michael Coren notes, “similar disclaimers have been inserted before movies many times in the past. For Asians before Year of the Dragon…gays before Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jews before Merchant of Venice, No, don't stop me. For Mormons before Big Love, Muslims before True Lies, Native Americans before Pocahontas II and the Nearsighted before Mr. Magoo. Oh, and for Wolves before White Fang. So Christians, it would appear, matter slightly less that our friends in the wolf community. No surprise there” (“Da Vinci Code a ‘Disgrace,” The Toronto Sun, May 20, 2006). Sony Pictures did acquiesce to an opening disclaimer in India and Thailand in order to get government permission to show it. In India only three percent of the population is Christian and in Thailand only one percent.

According to Forbes magazine in 2005 Dan Brown was the sixth best-paid celebrity in the world, earning $76.5 million (US) between June 2004 and June 2005. The British Times reported in February, 2006 that Brown’s “career earnings are estimated to be close to £200 million” and that he “has stopped taking commercial flights because of autograph hunters.” The Advertizer (March 1, 2006) makes him even richer – probably exaggerating – claiming the novel earned its author $106 million (US) in just one year and putting Brown’s worth at an estimated $470 million.

The POPULARITY

Why the incredible popularity of the novel? Veteran Catholic journalist Sandra Meisel wrote of The Da Vinci Code’s audience appeal: “With his twice-stated principle, ‘Everybody loves a conspiracy,’ Brown is reminiscent of the famous author who crafted her product by studying the features of ten earlier bestsellers. It would be too easy to criticize him for characters thin as plastic wrap, undistinguished prose, and improbable action. But Brown isn’t so much writing badly as writing in a particular way best calculated to attract a female audience. (Women, after all, buy most of the nation’s books.) He has married a thriller plot to a romance-novel technique. Notice how each character is an extreme type…effortlessly brilliant, smarmy, sinister, or psychotic as needed, moving against luxurious but curiously flat backdrops. Avoiding gore and bedroom gymnastics, he shows only one brief kiss and a sexual ritual performed by a married couple. The risqué allusions are fleeting although the text lingers over some bloody Opus Dei mortifications. In short, Brown has fabricated a novel perfect for a ladies’ book club” (“Dismantling the Da Vinci Code,” Crisis, Sept 2003).

Women are the major consumers of novels and my impression as I read the book was that its original target audience was educated, white, middle-aged women. While the novel is presented as a thriller it is rarely, if ever, thrilling. The Da Vinci Code is really a book about ideas. It is in fact a very preachy book filled with multiple lectures on everything from the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci to the sacred feminine. These are almost invariably given by the two main male characters (Langdon and Teabing) and ironically directed at the seemingly clueless principle female character (Sophie Neveu).

In an interview a couple years back Carl Olson critiqued the literary style of the novel and gave further possible insight into its popularity. He noted that “the novel reads much like a made-for-television movie script, with short chapters, curt conversations, little character development and sparsely constructed backdrops.” Like Meisel, he observed that “the book is based on a standard formula used for romance novels.” Yet it mixes with that some contemporary intellectual trends. “The novel mixes together elements that are quite appealing within a postmodern culture: a relativistic attitude toward truth and religion, conspiracy-based claims, radical feminism, dislike for religious authority and the implicit belief that reality is malleable and can be customized, so to speak, to each person's wishes” (“The Truth Behind ‘The Da Vinci Code,’” Zenit, March 13, 2004).

The Da Vinci Code plays upon people’s fascination with the controversial and exotic. It also supports the Western trend of the last several decades for an alternative “spirituality” to Christianity that is less dogmatic and moralistic, more subjective, slightly esoteric, and accommodating to contemporary mores. These are key components in what is called the “New Age” movement. It appeals to the baby-boomer rejection of Christianity in general and dislike of Catholicism in particular. The case presented by the book against the claims of Christ, Christianity and the Catholic Church offers simple pseudo-intellectual supports for those wanting to doubt, dismiss or detest it all. This is aggravated by the profound religious and historical ignorance of most people, of which they are unconcerned, and their inability or unwillingness to think critically (i.e. their irrationality and gullibility), of which they are blissfully unawares.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies and Pennsylvania State University. Jenkins said of the books success: “I think anti-Catholicism is a contributory factor but the main reason for the book’s popularity is deeper, a fundamental suspicion of traditional claims to authority, where they conflict with contemporary ideas and standards, especially over sex and gender. It mainly illustrates a broader suspicion about orthodoxy generally, and the idea that the truth is out there” (quoted by Gary Stern, “Unraveling the Myth: Catholic Church Decries ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ Academia Dismisses It,” Gannett News Service, Newspress.com, Dec. 27, 2003).

The PLOT

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist (a non-existent profession) Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre, whom Langdon was to meet, has been murdered inside the museum. Before he died, however, he was able to leave a complicated set of clues. Solving the enigmatic riddles Langdon discovers they lead to further clues subtly placed in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci.

The police suspect Langdon of the crime but he escapes their grasp. He joins forces with a French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion—a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. The Louvre curator sacrificed his life, murdered by a monk of Opus Dei, to protect the Priory's most sacred trust: the location of an important religious relic, hidden for centuries.

Langdon and Neveu are joined by British historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, who helps them unravel the ancient mystery. The secret involves the truth about Jesus Christ and His teachings. They are not what Christians have believed. Jesus Christ never claimed to be divine. He was a human teacher of an ancient religion that worshipped the sacred feminine. He married Mary Magdalene, who was supposed to lead His Church. After His crucifixion she fled to southern France where she had their child (Sarah). Their bloodline survived in the Merovingian dynasty and in the Priory of Sion.

The original matriarchal religion that Christ taught was suppressed and then recast by the Emperor Constantine. He had Christ declared Son of God at the Council of Nicaea, decided the canon of Scripture (excluding texts that recognized the role of Mary Magdelene and taught the divine feminine) and altered the remaining Gospels to reflect the newly declared divinity of Christ. This new state-approved patriarchal religion was institutionalized as the Catholic Church.

The sacred feminine was demonized and Mary Magdalene portrayed as a prostitute to discredit her. The followers of the true religion were persecuted by the Church and driven underground. The Priory of Sion still guards her relics and records which were excavated from the subterranean ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Priory’s military wing, the Knights Templar, during the Crusader kingdom.

The ancient search for the Holy Grail is not about the chalice Christ used at the Last Supper but a person, Mary Magdalene, whose womb carried Jesus’ royal bloodline, and a return to the worship of the sacred feminine. Da Vinci hinted at this truth in his paintings. In The Last Supper the figure beside Christ long identified as the apostle John is really a woman, Mary Magdalene.

The PROBLEM

Many people feign not to understand the controversy. Why get so upset over a novel? It’s just fiction, goes the refrain, and so not meant to be taken serious. Lighten up!

But the novel does claim a factual component: to mix real history with suspense and intrigue. This mixes up its readers as to what is supposed to be factual and what is not. Brown prefaces his novel with a “Facts” page: “The Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization. The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei…has been the topic of recent controversy due to reports of brainwashing, coercion, and a dangerous practice known as ‘corporal mortification.’ All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

In a 2003 interview given to The Philadelphia Inquirer Brown said, “When you finish the book, you’ve learned a ton. I had to do an enormous amount of research.” He assured the interviewer that the book is “meticulously researched and very accurate.” He has gone so far as to claim, “I began as a skeptic. As I started researching The Da Vinci Code, I really thought I would disprove a lot of this theory about Mary Magdalene and holy blood and all of that. I became a believer” (Dan Brown, Interview in National Geographic documentary, “Unlocking Da Vinci's Code: The Full Story”).

Even the secular media has noted that there has been substantial confusion among readers about whether and what in the book is factual. A number of real locations mentioned in the novel have had to post signs and publish information emphasizing that claims and descriptions made in Brown's book about them are not true.

Carl Olson asks a straightforward honest question: “What are people really talking about who have read the book? The intricate intellect of Robert Langdon? The mysterious past of Sophie Neveu? The psychological profile of the albino monk Silas?” No. If you read the reviews, blogs, and discussion forums it is quite clear. “Most discussion – and argument – centers on the historical and religious claims of the novel”. Olson observes, “TV specials on the Code (ABC, History Channel, National Geographic) spend mere seconds or minutes on the characters and plot, instead focusing on the historical and theological claims made by the characters and which support the plot.”

Many writers of historical fiction take some liberties with facts, Olson tells us. It is often meant to help develop the plot or the characters and make the story more interesting. “However, Brown’s novel (which is not historical fiction, strictly speaking) is unique because its historical claims are the central focus – they are the real characters and plot. A serious reading of The Da Vinci Code reveals that the characters are simply devices meant to help promote Brown’s central concerns, which are ideological. Without a radical rewriting of historical facts, Brown’s novel does not exist in any shape or form” (The Da Vinci Hoax, p.33).

Aviad Kleinberg, professor of history at Tel Aviv University, agrees: “What thrills many of its readers is its pretension to a revealing and daring interpretation of authentic materials from Christian history and the Christian religion. ‘The Da Vinci Code’ purports to reveal a Catholic conspiracy and show us its underpinnings” (Jerusalem Daily, “The feminist mystique,” Nov. 7, 2003).

The story is clearly a vehicle for ideas that Brown and many of his readers take more serious than they are willing to admit. It is disingenuous and cowardly to use ideas garnered from the book to throw doubt on Christian beliefs then retreat into “but it’s only a novel” whenever challenged on them.

A survey conducted by Decima Research Inc. (June 2005) of 1,005 Canadian adults was commissioned by the National Geographic Channel. It found:

- 1 in 5 Canadians claim to have read the book.

- 1 in 3 of Canadians who had read the novel believed that there are descendents of Jesus alive today.

• They also believe a secret society exists dedicated to keeping Jesus’ bloodline a secret.

An American Barna Group poll found that 53 percent of the book’s readers said The Da Vinci Code aided their “personal spiritual growth and understanding.”

Finally, even taken as mere fiction it can influence attitudes and actions. Michael Coren correctly points out: “As for the defense that none of this matters because it's just a novel, this defies common sense. Uncle Tom's Cabin was just a novel but changed attitudes towards race and slavery more than any noble work of non-fiction. Charles Dickens' novels transformed British social policy in the nineteenth-century, H.G. Wells' science fiction heavily influenced European views on disarmament and peace, George Orwell's fiction changed our vocabulary and our perception of state power. Brown is no Dickens or Orwell, but surveys have revealed that enormous numbers of people believe his book and assume that organized Christianity is indeed an international conspiracy based on lies and violence.

“You may not care. But in less time than it takes to read this column, statistics tell us that a Christian man, woman or child will have been imprisoned, tortured or killed because of their faith. In the Middle East, China, Cuba, North Korea, large parts of Muslim Africa and Asia there are concerted campaigns to eliminate followers of Jesus Christ. I'd like to think that this would have some influence over Dan Brown, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and their friends. Apparently not” (“Da Vinci Code a ‘Disgrace,” The Toronto Sun, May 20, 2006).

 

The SOURCES

Dan Brown actually cites what are likely his principal research sources for his novel within the text (p. 253). They are popular conspiratorial and esoteric histories: Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ (1997) by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; and two books by Margaret Starbird: The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine (1998) and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail (1993). Some critics think another source may have been Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels (1979), a work of feminist revisionist scholarship. This is because the same title is used on page 245, but Brown is not here referring to Pagels’ work. On his website (danbrown.com) the author gives a longer “partial bibliography” of books supposedly used in his research. Many are esoteric in genre others are not. All one can say is that his claimed use of the more scholarly works shows absolutely no influence on the finished product.

On February 27, 2006 Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), took Random House, the UK publisher of The Da Vinci Code, to court for breach of copyright, alleging plagiarism. Brown repeatedly and rightfully said in his defense that history couldn’t be plagiarized. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail claimed their book to be non-fiction. The suit revolved around Baigent and Leigh’s claim that Brown had “lifted the whole architecture” of their book for his fictional thriller. Brown admitted some of their ideas were indispensable to his book but claimed that there were many other sources behind it. He submitted as evidence 38 other books and over 300 documents as research materials. If he actually used that many sources why does he make so many basic factual errors? Is this a case of what university students once called “padding” the bibliography? One needs to look little further than the few books mentioned above to find most of Brown’s “historical” data and theory.

One of the basic principles of copyright law is that you cannot make private property of historical facts or theories based on historical fact. You may be able to copyright the specific expression of your theory but not the idea itself. History is not private property.

After six weeks of testimony and argument on April 7th the London High Court cleared Dan Brown and his publishing house of copyright infringement. Of interest were some observations made by Judge Peter Smith in his 71-page ruling. Judge Smith said of Baigent and Leigh’s case that “It would be quite wrong if fictional writers were to have their writings pored over in the way DVC [Da Vinci Code] has been pored over in this case by authors of pretend [italics added] historical books to make an allegation of infringement of copyright” (“Judge rejects ‘Da Vinci Code’ plagiarism claim,” CTV.ca, April 7, 2006). He said he had read Holy Blood multiple times and found their claims contrived and insupportable, though he did praise them for a “very interesting book to read whether or not it is credible” (“Da Vinci Code Judge Unimpressed, Forbes, April 7).

Judge Smith called Dan Brown a disciplined but passive figure on the witness stand, so dependent on the research of his wife, Blythe, that he could not give clear answers about when they first read Holy Blood. The judge wrote that, “[Brown’s] failure to address these points in my view shows once again that the reality of his research is that it is superficial” (italics added). The judge was deeply irritated by the complete absence of Brown's wife, Blythe, who stayed at home in New Hampshire throughout the entire court proceedings. Smith dismissed Brown’s concerns for her privacy as like a student saying the dog had eaten his homework – suspecting she did not want to admit she had read Holy Blood far earlier than her husband had believed. One might wonder if the couple was not simply avoiding being cornered as to the limited extent of their research? The Judge’s negative appraisal of the historical value of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and especially his assessment of Brown’s research as “superficial” got little media attention.

Earlier another author, Lewis Perdue, claimed the plot and content of The Da Vinci Code was too close in over thirty “elements” to his 2000 novel Daughter of God and so a copyright infringement. However, in November 2005 a District Court Judge ruled against Perdue and in favour of Brown.

The ERRORS

There are simply so many basic factual and historical errors in Dan Brown’s “meticulously researched and very accurate” novel that one cannot deal with all of them without writing a sizeable book. At the end of this essay I have included some references for those who wish to look into it further. Suffice to say Brown shows little competence in art history, secular or sacred history. His claimed extensive research could hardly be sloppier. I will take examples from each of these categories to illustrate.

ART HISTORY

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Brown writes that Leonardo was a “prankster and genius” who is “widely believed to have hidden secret messages within much of his artwork” (just like Walt Disney, according to the author, who “made it his quiet life’s work to pass on the Grail story to future generations,” see pp. 261-62). Widely believed by whom? It would be difficult to find any reputable art historian who would agree with that unfounded remark. Judith Veronica Field of the University of London and current president of the Leonardo Da Vinci Society calls the idea “absurd” (Gary Stern, “Experts Dismiss Theories in Popular Book,” The Journal News, November 2, 2003).

“Da Vinci”

The problems begin with the title of the book itself. The title The Da Vinci Code is not precise. His surname was not “Da Vinci” in spite of the fact that Brown constantly refers to the Renaissance artist in that manner. Leonardo was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary (Ser Piero) and a local peasant woman. He was born before modern naming conventions became firmly established in Italy. He is "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci," which simply means "Leonardo son of [Mes]ser Piero, from Vinci". Neither he nor anyone else called him “from Vinci” (da Vinci). As columnist Mark Steyn sardonically puts it, “Referring to ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ as ‘da Vinci’ is like listing Lawrence of Arabia in the phone book as ‘Of Arabia, Mr. L,’ or those computer-generated letters that write to the Duke of Wellington as ‘Dear Mr. Duke, you may already have won!’” (“The Da Vinci Code: bad writing for Biblical illiterates,” Macleans.ca, May 10, 2005). The artist signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Most authorities therefore refer to his works as “Leonardos,” not “da Vincis.”

Mona Lisa

Brown contends that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa as an androgynous self-portrait (p. 120) and that its title is a coded reference to the names of the Egyptian gods Amon and L’Isa (pp. 120-121). The name symbolized his supposed belief in a male/female principle in all of us.

The earliest biographical reference to Leonardo da Vinci is in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (published 1550, revised and expanded edition 1568) which covers many artists and was first published 31 years after Leonardo’s death. Since it records both plausible and fanciful details about the lives of its subjects historians approach this work with caution. In it Vasari writes, “Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa [Lisa Gherardini], his wife; and after toiling over it for four years, he left it unfinished.” Most art historians (e.g. Jane Turner, The Dictionary of Art) accept this identification. It was largely confirmed in 1991 with the publication of the 1525 death inventory of Leonardo’s assistant of 30 years, Gian Giaconno Caprotti, which included the portrait.

The title Mona Lisa stems from this entry in Vasari’s biography but there is no indication it was originally meant as a title for the painting. Rather Vasari was simply identifying the person in the painting. “Mona” is a common Italian contraction of “Madonna” meaning “My Lady.” Lisa is the subject’s first name. That this was not held to be the title of the masterpiece is demonstrated by the fact that for a couple hundred years afterward the painting was referred to by various descriptive phrases – such as “a certain Florentine lady” and “a courtesan in a gauze veil.” It was not until the 19th century that Mona Lisa, and its main alternative La Gioconda, became established as a title for the painting itself. So with no indication that “Mona Lisa” was the designated title chosen by Leonardo it becomes highly improbable that it could reflect some esoteric belief supposedly held by him.

The Last Supper

Much of Brown’s argument centers around Leonardo’s famous the Last Supper, found in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. He presents the mural as a coded message revealing the truth about Jesus and the Grail. Brown points to the lack of a central chalice (i.e. grail) on the table as proof that the Grail is not a material vessel. The figure seated next to Christ, he maintains, is not the apostle John, in fact not a man at all but a woman – Mary Magdalene. She is meant to be understood as the Grail. Brown observes the figure has obviously feminine characteristics. He further claims Peter in the painting is making menacing signs towards her. The Leonardo3 website states: “Leonardo made many preparatory studies for his painting of the Last Supper. None of these show any sign of the mysterious and ‘dangerous’ allegories or symbolism conjured up in Brown’s novel.”

Brown’s speculation about Leonardo and the Last Supper appears heavily dependent on ideas borrowed from the first chapter of The Templar Revelation (“The Secret Code of Leonardo Da Vinci”) by Picknett and Prince. Joe Nickell, researcher and writer for the Skeptical Inquirer, observers that Picknett and Prince’s “previous foray into nonsense” was to claim that Leonardo had created the Shroud of Turin [Turin Shroud: In Whose Image? 1994] – even though its appearance is recorded nearly a century before the artist was born (“Voice of Reason: Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax,” Skeptical Inquirer, May 2005).

Brown describes the Last Supper as a “fresco” (p. 243). Leonardo painted it on a dry wall (in secco) rather than on wet plaster (buon fresco) so it is not a true fresco. Brown notes there are glass cups in front of all the characters in the painting but no central chalice. This proves nothing since Leonardo may have wanted to portray a simple table setting. The furniture certainly evokes simplicity. And the sharing of the cup of wine that Jesus consecrated does not mean it had to be the only cup on the table, just the only one passed around.

That aside, there is a simpler explanation as to why there is no traditional style chalice on the table. The painting is not portraying the episode at the Last Supper when Christ instituted the Eucharist (when Christ took bread and wine and transformed them into His Body and Blood). Following a Florentine artistic fashion of the time (Leonardo studied and worked for years in Florence) the painting shows another episode from the Last Supper: Christ announcing to His apostles, “One of you will betray me” (John 13:21). That is why the dramatic representation of the apostles. Brown even states that the theme of the painting was the moment Christ announced His betrayal (p. 235).

As to the identity of the person beside Jesus, if it is Mary Magdalene then where is the apostle, John? Scripture records that it was “the twelve” who were present at the Last Supper (Mat. 26:20). If this figure is Mary Magdalene, then where is John? He was certainly present (Luke 22:8ff). There are six figures on each side of Christ framing Him, in other words the twelve apostles. If the person to Christ’s right were Mary Magdalene then there should be thirteen persons besides Jesus in the portrait.

The person sitting next to Jesus is not Mary Magdalene but John portrayed in the common Renaissance style as a rather effeminate beardless youth (see the male figure in Leonardo’s painting Saint John the Baptist). The Florentine school especially had a tradition of depicting males as sweet, pretty and rather effeminate. As the author of an article in Slate magazine puts it: “What any art historian could tell [Brown] is that the figure, always thought to be St. John the Apostle, resembles other Leonardo portraits of biblical figures as effeminate men. If Da Vinci thought John looked like a girly man, that's one thing. But a girlish-looking figure in a painting isn't proof that Mary was present at the Last Supper, let alone that Jesus and Mary were married. (Sian Gibby, “Mrs. God,” Nov. 3, 2003).

In fact, art historians have long agreed upon the identities of three of the apostles in the Last Supper: Judas, Peter, and John. The Gospel account of the episode gives sufficient clues for them. The parish church of Ponte Capriasca near Lake Lugano assists with the others. It contains a mid-sixteenth-century fresco copy of the Last Supper on which are the names of all twelve of the apostles. Leonardo seems to have done a large number of studies, sketches and preparatory drawings during the three years it took to complete the final version, only a handful of which remain. The Royal Library, at Windsor Castle, claims several. The most significant of the surviving drawings is sheet no.12542 for it contains an approximate and abbreviated version of two studies on how the apostles would be set into the painting. The lower sketch is the closest to the final version and identifies a number of the apostles (The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, p. 32).

The Madonna of the Rocks

Brown notes there are two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks (the author prefers to call them by the less common title The Madonna of the Rocks), the earlier version at the Louvre in Paris and the later version at the National Gallery in London. Brown is more interested in the one at the Louvre.

As historical background the Brown states that the Louvre version was commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, whom the author erroneously identifies as a group of nuns (p. 138). They were in fact a Franciscan brotherhood. Neither is there any evidence for his contention of it being rejected by them because Leonardo “had filled the painting with explosive and disturbing details.” What there is evidence of is a dispute over Leonardo having failed to follow the Confraternity’s directives. The contract was very complicated and detailed to ensure the monks received precisely the picture they wanted. A lawsuit followed over payments, initiated by Leonardo and Ambrogio de Predis (who painted the outside panels of the triptych), that took ten years to resolve in the artists’ favour.

The painting is a depiction of a legend that was unknown before the 14th century. It involves a meeting of the Holy Family with the future John the Baptist in the desert under the protection of the angel Uriel. It occurs after they had fled Bethlehem to escape King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Dan Brown reverses the identity of the babies in the painting so as to have John blessing the Christ Child. Experts have always understood the infant on the left, under the arm of the Virgin Mary, as John the Baptist and the infant on the right, next to the angel Uriel, as the Christ Child. John the Baptist is kneeling before Christ and receiving His blessing not vice versa as Brown contends (p. 138). The author is likely following the lead of Picknett and Prince in The Templar Revelation with these unfounded claims.

The novel states the Louvre version of The Madonna (Virgin) of the Rocks is “a five-foot-tall canvas” (p. 131). A quick check on the Internet or in any art encyclopedia would have shown our well-researched author that the painting is actually six-and-a-half feet in height. It was originally painted on wood panel but transferred to canvas.

Normally such an error as the size of a painting can be overlooked as relatively minor. But remember Brown assures his readers at the very beginning that his depictions of artwork are accurate (i.e. to be trusted). This and so many other errors go to show how truly sloppy a researcher Brown is. How can one trust his more involved and controversial assertions to be accurate if he cannot even get basic, easily verified information correct? If someone proves untrustworthy in his depiction and analysis of things you can verify, how can you give him credence in things you cannot verify?

In the acknowledgments to his novel Dan Brown describes his wife, Blythe, as an “art historian.” Why did she not correct him on these matters since in the plagiarism trial he has testified that she did much of the research? Maybe it is because investigators have been unable to find any record of Blythe having worked professionally as an art historian. During the British plagiarism trial she never left the States and so was conveniently unavailable to testify or be cross-examined. Brown also claims that while in college he went to Europe to study art history at the University of Seville in Spain, where he first began seriously studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Yet, the January/February 2006 issue of the Spanish-language magazine Epoca, states, “He was never registered at this university, unless he attended one of the Fall courses for foreign students at the Faculty of Geography and History.” It appears Dan Brown cannot even get the facts to his own life straight!

Nature Worshipper and Practitioner of the “Dark Arts”

Brown’s represents Leonardo as a “worshipper of Nature’s divine order” (p. 45). This is not substantiated by any respected biographical source. His notebooks focus on architecture, mechanics, painting and human anatomy and are, as Carl Olson relates, devoid of any supernatural or religious element. In the first edition of Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) Vasari did originally report that Leonardo’s “cast of mind was so heretical that he did not adhere to any religion.” However in the second edition (1568) the author excised this vague but incriminating sentence as being based more on gossip than on fact. Biographer D. M. Field summation is that “Leonardo was not a very religious man, but he was not antagonistic to religion or even to the Church” (Leonardo Da Vinci, 2002). This agrees with the assessment of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica that “Leonardo had never been either a friend or an enemy of the Church.”

Vasari describes Leonardo’s last months in these words: “Feeling himself near to death, [he] asked to have himself diligently informed of the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then, with many moans, he confessed and was penitent; and although he could not raise himself well on his feet, supporting himself on the arms of his friends and servants, he was pleased to take devoutly the most holy Sacrament, out of his bed.” The veracity of this description of events is impossible to prove but it is in keeping with what is known from his will. In it Leonardo made provisions for masses to be said and candles to be offered in three different churches for his soul, including Saint Florentin, where he desired to be buried.

Dan Brown further claims Leonardo “had a tendency towards the darker arts…he believed he possessed the alchemic power to turn lead into gold and even cheat God by creating an elixir to postpone death” (p. 45). But Leonardo’s Notebooks strongly criticize alchemy. Alessandro Vezzosi, biographer of Leonardo and director of a museum dedicated to the artist, tells us that “Leonardo was severely critical of the pseudo-sciences and the occult: astrology, necromancy, chiromancy, and alchemy. Yet, he acknowledged that the latter was respectable when it approached chemistry” (Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance 1997).

“Flamboyant Homosexual”

Brown matter-of-factly announces that Leonardo da Vinci was a “flamboyant homosexual” (p. 45). While gay advocates like to claim Leonardo as their own the historical record is less clear. The main incident that gives credence to the claim happened at the beginning of his painting career in Florence. Fifteenth century Florence has been described as the San Francisco of Renaissance Italy (the German word for “sodomite,” Florenzer, in an early 16th century dictionary literally translated as “Florentine”). Its homosexual subculture became such a public nuisance that the Uffiziali di Notte (“Officers of the Night”) court was formed to prosecute sodomites.

At that time in Florence one could put anonymous accusations in a wooden box (called a tamburo) in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. On April 8, 1476 Leonardo (then age twenty-four) and three others were accused by an anonymous person of sodomy with a male prostitute named Jacopo Saltarelli, 17. Leonardo was jailed for two months but he and all the accused were acquitted after two hearings due to lack of evidence and possible family intervention. Anonymous accusations were not infrequently used in Florence to simply cause someone trouble. Sherwin Nuland, author of Leonardo da Vinci (2000) writes, “This episode is the only hint of sexual activity by Leonardo, and those who have been the most painstaking students of his life assume it never happened.”

Leonardo never married and had few friends. He wrote, “The painter must be solitary ... For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are half yourself.” The rare friendship he did develop with the opposite sex tended to be with older women and likely platonic. The only long-term friendship in his life appears to have been with Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, who entered into his household in 1490 at the age of 10. Leonardo nicknamed him “Salai” or “il Salaino” (“The Little [Devil]) and wrote in his notes that he was “a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton.” Nevertheless, il Salaino remained with him as a companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years. In 1505 Leonardo took in another young protege, a 15-year-old named Francesco Melzi. He remembered both in his will, leaving Salai a house and half a vineyard, and naming Melzi executor. There is no evidence these were sexual relationships, and given the gravity of such an accusation and the right of a person to his good name (even when long deceased) it is best to withhold speculation without proof.

While speculation has naturally arisen over Leonardo’s sex life, in the end it remains a mystery. Sigmund Freud thought Leonardo a homosexual (Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, 1910). Art historian Kenneth Clark thought him probably a passive homosexual. Whatever he may have been Leonardo was definitely not “flamboyant” about it.

Prolific Artist

Brown makes reference to Leonardo’s “enormous output” of Christian art (p. 45) and that he had “hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions.” In fact he was only in Rome from 1513 to 1515 or 1516 but was not in good health during much of that time (He died in 1519). He was attracted by the patronage of the newly elected Medici pope, Leo X, and his brother Giuliano. The aging master was possibly assigned to various architectural and engineering projects and received commissions for several paintings. Some attribute his work St John the Baptist to this period. Leonardo might also have received a commission to paint two small panels for an official of the papal court: one of the Christ Child, the other of the Madonna. If ever completed both are now lost or unrecognized. This is the extent of his conjectured and known commissions while staying in Rome.

As for Brown’s claim that Leonardo was a prolific artist, he was not. Leonardo was infamous for his unfulfilled commissions and meagre production. According to the 1964 Encyclopedia of World Art, “Leonardo's output of paintings was unusually small. A total of seventeen commonly accepted works has been preserved, and of this total, four are unfinished.” The Last Supper was only finished after his patron threatened to cut off all funds. Mona Lisa took four years to complete. The Adoration of the Magi was never finished.

There is currently being established a Universal Leonardo Project. It intends to be the first scientific examination of all the artist’s paintings. In an article related to it Martin Bailey notes: “Scholars are still unable to agree on which paintings should be attributed to Leonardo, with the number accepted by individual specialists varying from one dozen to two dozen (including unfinished works and those done in collaboration with other artists).” Professor Martin Kemp, the Oxford-based art historian and co-director of the project, attributes 22 paintings to him. Carmen Bambach, curator of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, (which recently had a Leonardo exhibit) is more restrictive, putting the number at just 15. While there is disagreement as to the exact number of existing paintings there is none as to the paucity of Leonardo’s output.

Where Leonardo proved prodigious was in volume of material contained in his private notebooks. Approximately 7000 whole or fragmentary sheets survive. They are estimated to represent only a quarter to a fifth of his total production. Here he left almost 2,500 drawings and sketches of human anatomy, architectural ideas, plants, animals, weapons, engineering designs and much else. Although it appears Leonardo always intended them for publication a codex of a small portion of them was not published until 1817.

Leonardo seems to have suffered from being both a perfectionist and a procrastinator. His talents and energy were often wasted in doodles and unfinished projects. Historian of science Jacob Bronowski noted his tendency to get distracted and leave much undone. Bronowski relates that toward the end of his life Leonardo wrote across a number of pages in his notebooks, “Tell me if anything ever was done.” It is said that on his deathbed he apologized to “God and man for leaving so much undone.”

SECULAR HISTORY

Priory of Sion

In the opening “Facts” section of his book Brown claims a secret society called the Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 and that parchments discovered in Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale in 1975 identified numerous members including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli and Victor Hugo. This is incorrect.

Brown appears to be confusing two different organizations. There was a community of Augustinian canons regular attached to a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary at Sion founded in 1099 by Godefroi de Bouillon and called the Prieure du Notre Dame de Sion (Priory of Our Lady of Sion). A priory is a religious house or order. Sion or Zion is the ancient name for Jerusalem. An 1178 act by Pope Alexander III indicates that the Priory of Our Lady of Sion had monasteries not only in the Holy Land but in Calabria, Sicily, and elsewhere. After their church was raised by the Sultan of Damascus in 1219 the Order transferred its headquarters to St. Leonard d’Acre. In 1291 Acre was taken by the Muslims and the monks withdrew to Sicily. By the early part of the 17th century the community was dying out due to lack of recruitment, aging monks, no money, etc. The last members appear to have been absorbed into the Jesuits in either 1617 or 1619, but the main source for this information is unreliable, being Gerard de Sede (Les Impostures, 1988). Unfortunately there is no entry for this Priory in the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia. They appear to have been an obscure religious community devoid of prestige.

The other Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion), the one with the documents in the Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale, was founded a tad later – in the mid-1950s. This is known because every group, club and organization in France has to register itself with the French Authorities to comply with the 1901 Law of Associations. Le Prieuré de Sion registered with the Sous Préfecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois (Haute Savoie) on May 7, 1956. Four officers are listed (actually its entire membership): André Bonhomme, President; Jean Delaval, Vice-President; Pierre Plantard, Secretary-General; and Armand Defago, Treasurer.

The organization broke up after a very short time but in 1962 Pierre Plantard (1920-2000) – who had once served six months in jail for fraud and embezzlement – revived it, claiming he was the “Grand Master” of the organization, and began making outrageous claims regarding its antiquity, prior membership, and true purposes. It was Plantard who claimed that the organization stemmed from the Crusades and was guarding a secret royal bloodline that could one-day return to political power. Take a guess who was the legitimate heir to the French throne?

This is not the first time Plantard had created a phony organization. Near the beginning of the Second World War he had created Renovation Nationale Française. In December 1940 he wrote a letter to Field Marshal Pétain, whom he admired, warning of a Jewish Masonic conspiracy. This resulted in various investigations being carried out on him by French and German authorities. The French report, dated May 9, 1941, and held at the Bureau of Associations in the Paris Prefecture of Police states: “Plantard, who boasts of having links with numerous politicians, seems to be one of those dotty, pretentious young men who run more or less fictitious groups in an effort to look important…” (File Ga P7).

In a 1996 statement made to the BBC, the Priory of Sion's original president, André Bonhomme stated: “The Priory of Sion doesn't exist anymore. We were never involved in any activities of a political nature. It was four friends who came together to have fun. We called ourselves the Priory of Sion because there was a mountain by the same name close-by” (i.e. the Col du Mont Sion located outside the town of Annemasse).

Dan Brown asserts that “in 1975 Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments, known as Les Dossiers Secrets, which revealed the story of the Priory of Sion.” He goes even further and says, “the Dossiers Secrets had been authenticated by many specialists” (p. 206). Really! The documents referred to were not “discovered” in 1975 but rather deposited there in 1967. They are not parchments either but typographic texts which speak about the way to interpret certain parchments – which were neither then nor now at the National Library of Paris but were in the possession of Pierre Plantard.

There is no doubt that both Les Dossiers Secrets and the parchments are forgeries compiled in the year 1967. Why? All three of the culprits involved in the falsification have subsequently admitted it. The publisher of the Dossier, Gérard de Sède (1921-2004), wrote twenty years later that it was an “apocryphal” work inspired by “market sensationalism” (G. de Sède, Rennes-le-Château. Le dossier, les impostures, les phantasmes, les hypothèses, 1988, p. 107). He named the fabricator of the parchments as Philippe de Chérisey (1923-1985), an impoverished French marquis, writer and radio humorist. De Chérisey not only repeatedly admitted to the fabrications, both in letters and published texts, but from as early as October 8, 1967 (as confirmed by a letter from his lawyer, B. Boccon-Gibod) he began working – albeit without significant success – on getting paid by those who commissioned his services, Plantard and de Sède.

Even Pierre Plantard eventually admitted it was all a hoax. His confession came about this way. Plantard “officially retired” from Priory of Sion activities during the mid-1980s following a conflict with the French author Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who had discovered details about Plantard's past. In 1989 Plantard made a comeback with a new version of the Prieuré de Sion – giving it a different pedigree and revised list of Grand Masters. He alleged the previous version was a fake produced by one Philippe Toscan du Plantier under the influence of LSD. This time there was no connection with the Templars or with Godfrey de Bouillon – the Prieuré de Sion was now founded in 1681 at Rennes-le-Château. The revised list of Grand Masters contained the name of Roger Patrice Pelat. Pelat, a close friend of then President François Mitterrand, had died in 1989 while under investigation for insider dealing. Plantard voluntarily came forward in September 1993 offering evidence to the enquiry that Pelat had been a “Grand Master of the Priory of Sion” during the interim period of 1984-1992. Judge Thierry Jean-Pierre, who was in charge of the investigation, ordered a search of Plantard’s house that uncovered a hoard of Priory of Sion documents, claiming Plantard to be the “true King of France.” The Judge subsequently detained Plantard for a 48-hour interview and, under oath, Plantard admitted that he had made everything up. Whereupon Plantard was given a serious warning and advised not to “play games” with the French Judicial System. This was all reported in the French press at the time. The Priory of Sion was terminated that year and Plantard disappeared into self-imposed obscurity. He died in Paris on February 3, 2000.

The Knights Templar

Brown claims the Knights Templar, which he identifies as the military wing of the Priory of Sion, were founded by Godefroi de Bouillon in 1099 (p. 157) and eventually suppressed in a “Machiavellian” scheme devised by Pope Clement V in concert with King Philippe IV (pp. 159-160). In an “ingeniously planned sting operation” the Pope issued secret orders for “his soldiers all across Europe” to arrest all the Templars on the same day. He then had them tortured into confessions and burnt as heretics. Finally their ashes were “tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber” (p. 338).

The Knights Templar were created in the aftermath of the First Crusade to ensure the safety of the large numbers of European pilgrims who flowed towards Jerusalem after its conquest in 1099. The Templars were unusual in that they were soldiers who lived by monastic rules (though not monks themselves). They were not founded in 1099 or by Godefroi (Godfrey) de Bouillon. The Order was founded around 1119, nearly two decades after Godefroi’s death, by the French nobleman Hughes de Payens. A veteran of the First Crusade, Hughes led the Order as Grand Master for almost twenty years until his death.

Brown further claims that the Templars’ initial headquarters was “a stable under the ruins” of the Temple in Jerusalem (p. 159). This is inaccurate. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem gave them quarters in a wing of the royal palace on the southeastern portion of the Temple Mount platform. We know this from the history of the Crusader State written by Archbishop William of Tyre (1130-1185).

 

The Da Vinci Code

Brown writes that the Templars were “master stonemasons” (p. 434) who created the Gothic style of architecture, encoding secret messages of the sacred feminine in its very structures. He says the cathedral layout represented the body of the Goddess. In reality the Knights Templar had no reputation for learning, building or architectural skills. They were a Military Order founded at the time of the Crusades. They were known as knight-Brothers, landowners and bankers. Templar wealth came from their development of an international banking system that used credit transfers, originally meant to safeguarded pilgrims’ money, not from, as Brown has it, blackmailing the Church with the “truth” about Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

The Knights were not involved in the building of medieval cathedrals. A cathedral is the principle church of a diocese, the seat of the bishop, and was generally commissioned by the local bishop and his canons. The first rib vault which made the Gothic style possible was used at Durham Cathedral in England in 1091 – a generation before the founding of the Templars. The first major Gothic church was the remodeled Basilica Abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris, where the French kings were buried. The renovations began around 1140 under the direction of Abbot Suger. Unfortunately the originators of the Gothic style left little record as to its symbolic meaning. But Robert Branner, in his book Gothic Architecture (1961) gives a standard explanation: “Medieval man considered himself but an imperfect ‘refraction’ of the Divine Light of God, Whose temple on earth, according to the text of the dedication ritual, stood for the Heavenly City of Jerusalem. The Gothic interpretation of this point of view was a monument that seems to dwarf the man who enters it, for space, light, structure and the plastic effects of the masonry are organized to produce a visionary scale.” The Gothic style used linearity and luminosity to give a sense of progression toward God and the Heavenly Jerusalem. Their general shape was often cruciform.

Brown suggests that all churches used by the Templars were built round and that the Catholic Church considered roundness an insult. But historian Peter Partner tells us the Templars had no standard style (The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and Their Myth, 1981, pp. 12-13). Dr. Helen Nicholson, Reader in History at Cardiff University and a specialist on the Military Orders, concurs that “...for the most part [Templar churches] were built in the local style, even when the Order built from scratch. Clearly these Orders did not bring in their own architects and masons from outside when they wanted to build, but hired local workers on the spot” (The Knights Templar, A New History, 2001, p. 158). There are a number of round non-Templar Catholic churches. In Rome there is San Stefano Rotundo, San Costanza, and Bramante’s Tempietto of San Pietro (built for Pope Julius II on the site of St. Peter's crucifixion). In England only three round churches survive, one of which is the Temple Church in London that appears in the novel.

The myth that Templar churches were round because inspired by “Solomon’s Temple” runs into a historical glitch. The Knights Templar never saw Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and the Second Temple, eventually built to replace it, was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. And neither was round. What may have formed Crusaders’ impression of Solomon’s Temple were the contemporary Muslim buildings standing on the Temple Mount: the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the octagonal Dome of the Rock. But what could just as easily inspired circular churches was Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre – which was itself round. Odd thing to do, have the church that houses the most sacred site in all Christendom built in an “insulting” round fashion? In Christian art the circle is often used as a symbol of eternity, being without beginning or end. Three intertwined circles or a circle combined with a triangle symbolizes the eternal nature of the Blessed Trinity. The suggestion that circles were considered an insult to the Church is inane.

As for the suppression of the Order, any serious history of the Templars, even a standard encyclopedia, would have told the author the initiative to crush them was actually the work of King Philip IV (“the Fair”) of France. Even Brown’s key sources, Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation identify the king, not the pope, as the main culprit. “Yet,” Olson and Miesel observe, “Brown deliberately chooses to contradict his own sources and makes the papacy responsible for that tragedy. Whatever the cost to truth, the Church must be shown to be murderous, deceitful, and treacherous. Any stick will do for beating Catholicism, even an invented one” (The Da Vinci Hoax, p. 209).

While there were rumours of Templar misconduct, for they had enemies, the king was probably motivated by a financial desire to seize their assets (having already seized the assets of the Jews in his realm a year earlier). It was his royal officials, not the pope’s, who did the arresting in 1307. Having made a preliminary inquiry and on the strength of the testimony of a few untrustworthy and expelled members he ordered the arrest of all the Templars throughout France. He then obtained further incriminating evidence by state-appointed torturers. It is said that 36 Knights died from the horrific maltreatment and more than 20 committed suicide. Philip then pressured the weak Pope Clement V – who resided within the king’s domain – to condemn the Order based on confessions of blasphemy, sodomy, and idolatry.

Pressured by the French monarch and with accusations of heresy being made, a papal inquiry was established that was not restricted to France. It extended to all the Christian countries of Europe and even to the Middle East. It did not resort to torture and allowed third-party evidence (unlike in France). In most of the other countries – Portugal, Spain, Germany, Cyprus – the Templars were found completely innocent; in Italy, except for a few districts, the decision was the same. But in France the episcopal inquisition had no stomach to challenge the conclusions of the earlier royal inquiry and so took as fact the evidence established at the state trials. Instead the clergy confined themselves to reconciling repentant members and imposing various canonical penances. Only those who persisted in heresy were to be turned over to the secular arm (i.e. the state). The testimonies gathered by the royal investigation under torture were accepted. Those who withdrew their former confessions were therefore treated as relapsed heretics. Thus 54 Templars who had recanted after having confessed were condemned as relapsed, turned over to the state, and publicly burned outside Paris on May 12, 1310. Subsequently most of the other Templars who had been examined at the trial declared themselves guilty to escape a similar fate. The few exceptions included nine Templars at Senlis, who were subsequently burned, and an unknown number in Cyprus, then a territory of the French monarch. The total number of deaths during interrogation and burnings is unknown, though some estimate it at about 120.

The papal commission appointed to examine the whole Order submitted its documents to Pope Clement V, and to the General Council of Vienne called to decide their fate. Convictions of individual members did not involve the guilt of the whole Order. Consequently, with no proof that the Order professed any heretical doctrine or had a secret rule distinct from the official rule, the majority of bishops at the General Council in October 1311 favoured the maintenance of the Templars. The pope however, harassed by the king, adopted a middle course. He decreed the dissolution, not the condemnation, of the Order by Apostolic Decree on March 22, 1312. With the suppression the pope was to decide the fate of its members and the disposal of its property. The property was turned over to the Order of Hospitallers, to be applied to its original purpose of defense of the Holy Places. In Portugal and in Aragon the possessions were vested in two new orders, the Order of Christ in Portugal and the Order of Montesa in Aragon. As to the Templars themselves, recognized as guiltless they were allowed either to join another military order or to return to the secular state. In the latter case a pension for life, charged to the possessions of the Order, was granted them. On the other hand, the Templars who had pleaded guilty before their bishops were to be treated “according to the rigours of justice, tempered by a generous mercy.” This can hardly be seen as the ministrations of a “Machiavellian” pope.

Pope Clement V could not have had anyone’s ashes tossed into the Tiber, if for no other reason than physical impossibility. He was the first pope to live and reign from Avignon, in southern France. He never set foot anywhere near Rome. That is why the king of France could exert such pressure on him. What Dan Brown is probably confusing is the tragic fate of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Order. At their secular trials de Molay and three Templar dignitaries had confessed their guilt. The pope reserved to himself judgement of their cause. The pope sought to reconcile them with the Church after they had testified to their repentance with the customary solemnity. The solemnity was given publicity by having a platform erected in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris for the reading of the sentence. But at the ceremony the Grand Master recovered his courage and proclaimed the innocence of the Templars and the falsity of his own alleged confession. He declared himself ready to sacrifice his life in atonement for his moment of weakness. Immediately he was arrested as a relapsed heretic along with Geoffrey de Charney, Master of Normandy, who chose to share his fate. By order of Philip IV they were burned at the stake in front of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame. Their brave deaths deeply impressed the people. The king’s agents ground up their ashes and threw them into the Seine River so as to leave no relics.

Brown alleges that the belief that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day stemmed from the mass arrest of Templars on Friday, October 13, 1307. It is true that the mass arrests occurred on that date. However there is no evidence that Friday the 13th was considered especially unlucky until the 19th century. The belief in the number 13 as unlucky is ancient, going back at least as far as the ancient Babylonians.

The Holy Grail

Dan Brown says the story of the Holy Grail is “the most enduring legend of all time” (p. 249). He claims that the Grail was actually Mary Magdalene. She was the vessel that held the bloodline of Jesus Christ in her womb. Moreover it was also the symbol of the sacred feminine. “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, eliminated by the Church” (p. 238). “The quest for the Holy Grail is literally the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine” (p. 257).

The development of the Grail legend has been traced in detail by reputable historians. Mary Magdalene factors in none of them. And the most cursory investigation would tell one that it is not that ancient of a legend, being of late medieval origins. It first came together in the form of French romances written in the latter 12th and early 13th centuries.

The Grail first features in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (“Percival, The Story of the Grail”) by Chrétien de Troyes. Scholars detect Celtic influences in Chrétien’s stories. The author claimed to work from a source given to him by Philip, Count of Flanders, for whom it was written. The poem is dated sometime between 1180 and 1191 but left incomplete by Chrétien, possibly due to his death. It relates the coming of age and adventures of the young knight Perceval. The graal makes its appearance at a banquet held in the great hall of the mysterious Fisher King. During the feast there is a procession led by a squire bearing a sword with an engraved blade, followed by another carrying a bleeding lance, two squires follow with golden candelabras, then a beautiful maiden bears the graal, and finally another beautiful maiden carries a silver carving dish. The room illuminates when the graal is brought in. It is described as a wide, somewhat deep dish, made of gold and elaborately decorated with precious stones, and containing a single consecrated Host. The Host has been the sole nourishment of Percival’s uncle for twelve years. The maimed Fisher King cannot be healed until Perceval starts asking questions about the graal.

It was in the work of the Burgundian poet, Robert de Boron, that the Grail became the legendary “Holy Grail” and assumed the form most familiar to modern readers. In his verse romance Joseph d’Arimathie, composed between 1191 and 1202, Robert turns the dish into the cup of the Last Supper and has the king wounded by the Holy Lance of Longinus that had pierced the side of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea acquires the chalice to collect Christ’s blood upon His removal from the cross. Following adventures in the Near East, Joseph brings the Grail to England, where his relatives become the hereditary Grail-keepers and the ancestors of Perceval.

Brown’s grail scholar Teabing informs the reader that “the word Sangreal derives from San Greal – or Holy Grail. But in its most ancient form, the word Sangreal was divided in a different spot…Sang Real literally meant Royal Blood” (p. 250). “Grail” actually has many variant spellings. In Sir Thomas Malory’s famous Le Morte D’Arthur it is “Sankgreall” and “Holy Grayle.” Old French renderings include graal, greal, greel and greil. Carl Olson says its usage as a common noun predates all reference to the Holy Grail (The Da Vinci Hoax, p. 183). According to Wikipedia: “The word graal, as it is earliest spelled, appears to be an Old French adaptation of the Latin gradalis, meaning a dish brought to the table in different stages of a meal [as in Perceval, le Conte du Graal]. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, after the cycle of Grail romances was well established, late medieval writers came up with a false etymology for sangreal an alternate name for ‘Holy Grail.’ In Old French, san grial means ‘Holy Grail’ and sang rial means ‘royal blood’; later writers played on this pun. Since then, Sangreal is sometimes employed to lend a medievalizing air in referring to the Holy Grail. This connection with royal blood bore fruit in a modern best-seller linking many historical conspiracies.” Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and an atheist, concurs: “Supposedly the old French word sangreal is explained not as san greal (‘holy grail’) but as sang real (‘royal blood’). Although that concept was not current before the late Middle Ages” (“Voice of Reason: Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax,” Skeptical Inquirer, May 2005).

So Brown claims that the Grail story is “the most enduring legend of all time” (p. 249). Never mind that the legend he speaks of was unknown until the late twelfth century. The author further says that the Grail has been the object of wars and quests – as if these were real and not literary creations! It seems Brown has the same problem as many of his readers: a difficulty separating fact from fiction, reality from fantasy.

The Witch-hunts

Dan Brown presents the Church as misogynist and violently so. As New Testament scholar, Margaret M. Mitchell, puts it, “Brown propagates the full-dress conspiracy theory for Vatican suppression of women” (“Cracking the Da Vinci Code,” Sightings, Sept. 2003). In this vein he promotes the common feminist accusation that the Church’s misogyny resulted in the infamous witch-hunts. “During three hundred years of witch-hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women” (p. 125). “The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum – or The Witches Hammer – indoctrinated the world to ‘the dangers of freethinking women’ and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them. Those deemed ‘witches’ by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any woman ‘suspiciously attuned to the natural world.” Oh, and midwives too.

Jenny Gibbons is a self-professed Wiccan and extensive researcher on the European witch-craze (which she calls “the Great Hunt”). In her excellent essay, “Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt” she points out that while, “for years, the responsibility for the Great Hunt has been dumped on the Catholic Church's door-step…we know that there is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. When the Church was at the height of its power (11-14th centuries) very few witches died. Persecutions did not reach epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had lost its position as Europe's indisputable moral authority.”

Gibbons informs us that modern scholarship has found that while Church courts tried many “witches” they usually imposed non-lethal penalties. A witch might be excommunicated, given penance, or imprisoned, but she was rarely killed. The ecclesiastical inquisitors almost invariably pardoned any witch who confessed and repented. The vast majority of witches were actually condemned to death by the secular courts, the worst being local courts. State courts killed about 30% of those accused while “‘community-based’ courts were often virtual slaughterhouses, killing 90% of all accused witches,” says Gibbons. These flourished where central authority had broken down – for example in the loose and rival confederacies of Germany (where an estimated 26,000 died) and Switzerland, and in England during its Civil War. “The worst panics definitely hit where both Church and State were weak.”

In countries like Italy, Ireland and Spain, “where the Catholic Church and its Inquisition reigned virtually unquestioned” witch trials were rare. In all Ireland only four were ever executed. An initial investigation by representatives of the Spanish Inquisition came to the conclusion that persons claiming to be witches were deluded and the whole thing a product of groundless hysteria. La Suprema (the ruling body of the Spanish Inquisition) responded by issuing an “Edict of Silence” forbidding all discussion of witchcraft, for “there were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about.”

What can be said about the infamous Malleus Maleficarum? Because it is the only manual readily available in translations authors have naively assumed that the book painted an accurate picture of how the Church tried witches. “Heinrich Kramer, the text's demented author,” Gibbons informs us, “was held up as a typical inquisitor. His rather stunning sexual preoccupations were presented as the Church’s ‘official’ position on witchcraft. Actually the Inquisition immediately rejected the legal procedures Kramer recommended and censured the inquisitor himself just a few years after the Malleus was published. Secular courts, not inquisitorial ones, resorted to the Malleus.”

As for it being a persecution of freethinking female followers of ancient pagan beliefs, Gibbons notes that “there was no such thing as an ‘average’ witch: there was no characteristic that the majority of witches shared, in all times and places.” Those accused “had nothing in common except having been accused: not age, sex, religion or wealth.” She goes on to say that misogyny does not explain the trial patterns. Overall, 75%-80% of those accused were women. However this percentage varied dramatically. In several of the Scandinavian countries equal numbers of men and women were accused. In Iceland over 90% of the executed were men. “Trials clustered around borders – are borders more misogynist than interior regions? Ireland killed four witches, Scotland a couple thousand – are the Scots that much more sexist?” Gibbons concludes: “The diversity of witches is one of the strongest arguments against the theory that the Great Hunt was a deliberate pogrom aimed at a specific group of people. If that were true, then most witches would have something in common.” As for midwives, D. Harley demonstrated in his article “Historians as demonologists: the myth of the midwife-witch” (in Social History of Medicine 3 [1990], pp. 1-26.) that being a licensed midwife actually decreased a woman's changes of being charged.

Oxford historian and expert on the witch-craze, Robbin Briggs (Witches and Neighbors: the Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, 1996) poured over the actual trial records. He found that most of the witch trials took place between 1550 and 1630 in France, Switzerland and Germany – areas that were already racked by the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation. The accused witches, far from including a large number of independent-minded women, were mostly poor and unpopular. According to Briggs the quarrelsome, spiteful, aggressive individual who stood apart from the rest of the community most often attracted suspicion. He notes, “At any one time a particular community probably had a small group of suspects, to whom misfortune could be credited” (p. 28). Gibbons concurs, “many were poor or elderly; many seem to be unmarried. Most were alienated from their neighbors, or seen as ‘different’ and disliked.” But there is no evidence that one group was targeted. Briggs found that their accusers were typically ordinary citizens (often other women), not clerical or secular authorities. In fact, the authorities generally disliked trying witchcraft cases and acquitted more than half of all defendants. While the courts were male many women participated in the witch-craze as accusers, witnesses, and sometimes as examiners (e.g. prickers). Briggs could find no evidence that any person executed for witchcraft was ever accused of specifically practicing a pagan religion. He found persons of any age or either sex could be accused and executed. He estimated the number of men killed for witchcraft at about 20-25% of the total. In northern and eastern Europe the male proportion could rise to 90% (as in Finland). Sociologist Christina Larner stated it succinctly, that early modern witchcraft accusations while “sex-related, were not sex-specific” (Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief, 1996).

As for the total number of people executed in the four centuries that witch-craze occurred, it was nowhere near 5 million. Jenny Gibbons notes that “to date less than 15,000 definite executions have been discovered in all of Europe and America combined. Even though many records are missing scholarly calculations now put a maximum at 40,000 - 60,000.”

While the execution of even a single innocent human being is a terrible thing, Father William Slattery reminds us (The Da Vinci Code: Truth or Hoax, 2004, CD) that one must not be so quick as to condemn an entire religion or age for the witch-hunts. There is a difference in culpability between those who do wrong based on a sincerely held but false belief (thus thinking themselves doing right) and those who do wrong out of hatred or intentional malice. The history of early modern psychology and psychiatry, for example, is rife with injury done to people with good but misguided intentions. Likewise, one should remember that the first European secular state, the French Republic, executed as many if not more people in just nine months during the infamous “Reign of Terror” than the witch-hunts did in 400 years (c. 17,000 executed with “trial” and 12,000-40,000 without trial). The vast majority of them were innocent of any real crime. And yet France is proud of the French Revolution and celebrates “Bastille Day” (July 14) as a national holiday. And in the last century “atheistic, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian Nazi and communist regimes,” Father Slattery observes, “murdered more Jews, Christians and other peoples than in all the ages of religious history put together.”

It is commonly estimated that 12 million people, half them Jews, died in the concentration and extermination camps of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Among those who died in the camps were 7,000 Catholic priests. Stephane Courtois, in The Black Book of Communism, estimates the death toll under atheistic communist regimes at between 85 and 100 million. Rudolph Rummel, in Death By Government, puts total communist-inflicted deaths at 110,198,000. Soviet historian Roi Medvedev claims that 200,000 people were imprisoned by Stalin for simply telling political jokes (“Radio interview with Roi Medvedev, Historian and writer on Joseph Stalin,” Ekho Moskvy Radio, March 5, 2003). Former US Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski (Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993) put the number of “lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage” (i.e. for secular reasons not religious) in the 20th century at 167 million to 175 million. And yet Westerners live under the myth that secularism, nationalism and statism are innocuous things. David Barrett, in the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001, estimates the number of Christian martyrs in the 20th century at 45.5 million. An untold number of others have suffered grievously for their faith. Most of these were at the hands of communists and socialists, Nazis, and Muslims, but not all. Hostility and contempt toward Christians is today widespread in the West and growing. It is having effects on political and legal decisions. Insult and calumny can be heard against the Catholic Church in university classrooms, media programs, and workplace conversations. The Da Vinci Code is an example of just how mainstream and acceptable it has all become.

The Sacred Feminine & Goddess Worship

The main idea being promoted by Brown’s book is a return to what he sees as a more masculine-feminine balanced, sex-positive, peaceful and nature-attuned spirituality like the cult of the sacred feminine that supposedly dominated pre-Christian European paganism, with its respect for the female power to produce life and with the hieros gamos – sacred marriage or sexual union – as its central communion rite with God (pp. 36, 124-126, 238, 308-310). Of course “nothing has done more to erase that history [of the goddess] than the Catholic Church” (p. 46).

Hieros gamos was the sexual relations of fertility deities enacted in myths and rituals. According to the 2006 Britannica Concise Encyclopedia it was “characteristic of societies based on cereal agriculture (e.g., Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Canaan).” Thus it is not associated with the ancient European peoples.

In truth, the “sacred feminine” or goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world – not in the religions of Rome, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice. There is no indication the ancient world was permeated by a sacred feminine cult.

Philip Davis, professor of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, in his work Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (1998), traces the origins of contemporary Goddess worship to the early 19th century. Neo-paganism was born, along with other manifestations of Romanticism, in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment (much like our “post-modernism”). In surveying the archaeological remains of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age cultures where feminists claimed proof existed of Goddess-centred worship, Davis found little hard evidence to support their theories. The ideologically driven scholarship which extrapolated from these artifacts not only a widespread cult of the Goddess in pre-literary times, but an entire pacifist, egalitarian, woman-centered civilization, has been either dismissed outright or severely criticized by virtually all serious archaeologists working in the field today. Previously claimed sites of matriarchal, pacifistic societies have actually turned out to contain defense fortifications, masculine symbols, indicia of hierarchical social organization, and other evidence that life back then was neither so utopian nor so gynocentric as feminists have made it out to be. ).

In an article in the Atlantic Monthly Charlotte Allen agreed that recent scholarship refuted the historical and archeological claims made for the Wiccan religion and Goddess worship (“The Scholars and the Goddess,” January 2001*). She cited as a modern invention the claims of self-professed Wiccan and author Starhawk that “a nature-attuned, woman-respecting, peaceful, and egalitarian culture prevailed in what is now Western Europe for thousands of years… until Indo-European invaders swept across the region, introducing warrior gods, weapons designed for killing human beings, and patriarchal civilization. Then came Christianity, which eventually insinuated itself among Europe's ruling elite” (Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, 1979). In a “refutation” of Allen’s article on her own website (www.starhawk.org) Starhawk protested, “Goddess religion is not based on belief, in history, in archaeology, in any Great Goddess past or present. Our spirituality is based on experience, on a direct relationship with the cycles of birth, growth, death and regeneration in nature and in human lives” (“Religion from Nature, Not Archeology,” January 5, 2001). In other words Goddess religion is purely subjective, if not egocentric. Contrary data or rational argument cannot refute it because based on feelings, imagination and moi. Such flights of fantasy might be dismissed as harmless if its advocates – like Dan Brown and his supporters – could make up their minds whether they want us to take their claims serious or not, and if they did not use their unsupported views to viciously attack real people and institutions.

Allen points out that “one problem with the theory of Goddess worship, scholars say, is that the ancients were genuine polytheists. They did not believe that the many gods and goddesses they worshipped merely represented different aspects of single deities. In that respect they were like animistic peoples of today, whose cosmologies are crowded with discrete spirits. ‘Polytheism was an accepted reality,’ says Mary Lefkowitz, a professor of classics at Wellesley College. ‘Everywhere you went, there were shrines to different gods.’ The gods and goddesses had specific domains of power over human activity: Aphrodite/Venus presided over love, Artemis/Diana over hunting and childbirth, Ares/Mars over war, and so forth. Not until the second century, with the work of the Roman writer Apuleius, was one goddess, Isis, identified with all the various goddesses and forces of nature.”

Allen traces the largely male origins of the Goddess myth: “As Christianity spread, the classical deities ceased to be the objects of religious cults, but they continued their reign in Western literature and art. Starting about 1800 they began to be associated with semi-mystical natural forces, rather than with specific human activities. In the writings of the Romantics, for example (John Keats’s ‘Endymion’ comes to mind), Diana presided generally over the woodlands and the moon. ‘Mother Earth’ became a popular literary deity. In 1849 the German classicist Eduard Gerhard made the assertion, for the first time in modern Western history, that all the ancient goddesses derived from a single prehistoric mother goddess. In 1861 the Swiss jurist and writer Johann Jakob Bachofen postulated that the earliest human civilizations were matriarchies. Bachofen’s theory influenced a wide range of thinkers, including Friedrich Engels, a generation of British intellectuals, and probably Carl Jung.

“By the early 1900s,” she concludes, “scholars generally agreed that the great goddess and earth mother had reigned supreme in ancient Mediterranean religions, and was toppled only when ethnic groups devoted to father gods conquered her devotees.”

In 2000 self-described feminist Cynthia Eller published The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future which agreed that the golden age of matriarchy was a myth. Eller had previously written a sympathetic sociological study of feminist spirituality, Living in the Lap of the Goddess (1993) but in her more recent work she too observed that there is almost no serious archaeologist working today who believes that the ancient European cultures were necessarily matriarchal, predominantly goddess worshipping, or even woman-focused. Neither is the idea supported by detailed studies in anthropology. Eller illustrated how advocates of matriarchalist theory read difficult-to-interpret archaeological finds in a manner deliberately designed to show the existence of prehistoric matriarchy. She claimed that in documented primitive societies paternity is never ignored and that the sacredness of motherhood or the presence of female deities does not of itself improve the status of women. Her book is in fact heavily laden with feminist critique of matriarchalist stress on the nurturing qualities of women and motherhood.

John Michael Greer, an active occultist and author of The New Encyclopedia of the Occult (2003) defined the Goddess as “the principal deity of the modern Neo-pagan movement, associated with nature, fertility, the moon, the cycles of biological life, and the planetary eco-system of the earth, conceived as a single vast entity” (p. 198). After a careful review of the historical evidence he concluded: “Many of her modern votaries hold that the worship of the goddess has been handed down continuously in its present form since pre-historic times. The actual history of the goddess, however, is a good deal more complex...The Goddess herself, though, is essentially a modern figure and her emergence is the most recent and best documented example of the birth of new divinity” (p. 198). He found the myth of the Goddess had more to do with the needs of modern romantics than the facts of history.

Phillip Davis observes: “It has been clear from the outset, however, that goddess books are not simply about the history of religion and culture. They are, in and of themselves, the expression of a particular religious mindset which shapes both their presuppositions and conclusions...Goddess books, accordingly, should be seen as professions of faith and their authors as neo-pagan evangelists.” (The Goddess Unmasked, pp.86-87).

So, contrary to Brown’s calumny the Church did nothing to suppress the memory of the Goddess. There was no historical memory to suppress. The enemy of Brown and likeminded people is not the Catholic Church, its reality. The reality to which they are especially hostile is objective moral norms based on actual human nature. This interferes with willful desire, especially in the sexual realm. So they seek to kill the credibility of the ecclesiastical messenger who bears this inconvenient message. And any accusatory missile, whether half-true or completely false, will do.

While many “educated” people promote the idea that Christian sexual mores oppressed women (and men) while modern ones have given liberation, I beg to differ. While obviously modern economic and political forces have given women, as well as everyone else, greater independence in the West I would contend that the results of the sexual revolution have been on the whole very destructive to the wellbeing of women (and men), the family, and society. How can any reasonable person still believe that a movement that has resulted in rampant adolescent and adult promiscuity, divorce, serial relationships and cohabitation, fatherless households, contraceptive depopulation, abortion, the sexualization of childhood, and the normalization of pornography and sexual aberrations (i.e. homosexuality, transvestitism, etc.), among other things, be in any way considered as promoting healthy sexuality or the good of the person or society? Only cultural blindness, moral corruption, self-interest, and the exaltation of unfettered individualism can explain such a nonsensical belief.

* http://jbburnett.com/resources/atlmo-goddesses/atl-mo-allen-goddesses.html

Opus Dei

Brown’s depicts his albino killer, Silas, as a monk of Opus Dei. But Opus Dei is not a religious order and so has no monks or distinctive garb. It is primarily a lay institution with its own secular priests who minister to its spiritual needs. About ninety-eight percent of its members are laypeople. It was founded by Saint Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975), who was canonized in 2002, to help people turn their work and daily activities into occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society. The bulk of its 87,000 members worldwide are supernumeraries, who are often married men and women with families. Brown acknowledges that fact on page 29. The much smaller group of celibate lay members that dedicate themselves fully to its apostolate are called numeraries. They do not, however, take vows, wear robes, sleep on straw mats, spend all their time in prayer and corporal mortification, or in any other way live like The Da Vinci Code’s depiction of its monk character. Numeraries have regular secular professional jobs. The ones I have known included teachers, lawyers, and doctors.

Brown calls Opus Dei “a personal prelature of the Pope himself” (pp. 30, 40). The term personal prelature does not refer to a special relationship to the Pope (like some private army) but means an institution in which the jurisdiction of the prelate is not linked to a geographic territory (like a diocese) but is directly over persons (like a military ordinariate). It therefore can serve the pastoral needs its members wherever they may be. The current prelate of Opus Dei is Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez.

The Da Vinci Code casts suspicion on the elevation of Opus Dei to a “personal prelature of the pope” the same year “the wealthy sect allegedly transferred almost a billion dollars into…the Vatican Bank – bailing it out of an embarrassing bankruptcy” (pp. 40-41). There is no evidence of any such “bailed out” during the Vatican Bank Scandal, or “Calvi Affair,” of the early 1980s. Nor could Opus Dei do it even if it wanted.

John Allen Jr. is CNN’s Vatican correspondent and a journalist for the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal newspaper that is highly critical of Rome, the hierarchy and a number of Church teachings. His associations cannot be seen as biasing him in favour of Opus Dei. In his 2005 book, Opus Dei: an Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church (Doubleday) he dispelled a number of myths surrounding “the Work,” one of which is their great wealth. At that time Allen said Opus Dei’s assets in the United States were estimated to be at $344 million. Worldwide an incomplete estimate of their assets was $2.8 billion, with an annual budget of $1.7 million. Opus Dei’s total annual revenues are only that of a mid-sized American diocese. Allen tells us these figures are based on financial statements for programs in Rome, Spain, the US, UK, Kenya, Peru and Argentina. Many of their corporate works like schools and universities are not owned by Opus Dei but by lay members who operate them. This includes the $69 million, 17-storey headquarters in New York City. Opus Dei itself has little need of real estate outside of its centres and retreat houses since the great majority of its members live and work independently.

The Da Vinci Code suggests that the Pope put Opus Dei’s founder, Josemaría Escrivá, on the “fast track” to being named a saint the same year it supposedly “bailed out” the Vatican Bank (p. 41). The canonization of Saint Josemaría Escrivá on October 6, 2002 came 27 years after his death (June 26, 1975), not 20 years as the book claims. It was one of the first to be processed after the Church streamlined the procedures for canonization in order to expedite causes. This probably benefited his as it will other causes. Mother Teresa has since been beatified just 6 years after her death, as opposed to the 17 years it took for Escrivá. No doubt Opus Dei put a great deal of energy into his cause as well, but what else would one expect? In the end, if Msgr. Escriva was found unworthy or there was no accompanying miracle to help confirm his presence in Heaven, he would not have been canonized. Even under the old procedures the canonization of Saint Therése of Lisieux made it through the process in less than 28 years (died September 30, 1897; canonized May 17, 1925) and Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in 29 years (died December 22, 1917; canonized July 7, 1946).

Through a minor character, Sister Sandrine, Brown accuses Opus Dei of “views on women [that] were medieval at best. She had been shocked to learn that female numeraries were forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay…[and] slept on hardwood floors, while the men had straw mats, and women were forced to endure additional requirements of corporal mortification…all as added penance for original sin” (p. 41).

It is a popular misconception that the Catholic Church has held Eve, and by implication women in general, responsible for original sin. In fact the Church has never taught that women are responsible for original sin. Neither are men. The Church teaches with Saint Paul that sin and death entered the world through the disobedience of Adam (1 Cor. 15:22). In his letter to the Romans Paul says, “sin entered the world through one man” (5:12) and that “by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners” (5:19). Saint Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) is considered the great theologian on the nature and consequences of original sin. He likewise taught that “the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin” (De nupt. et concup., II, 26.43). And the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul’…”(n. 403).

Opus Dei teaches with the Church that women and men are of equal dignity and value. Women members of Opus Dei can be found in all sorts of professions, those that society views as prestigious and those which society today tends to undervalue, such as homemaking or domestic work. Opus Dei teaches that any kind of honest work done with love of God is of equal value. The founding director of the Institute for Women's Studies at Emory University, and a convert to Catholicism in 1995, Prof. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Ph.D., concurs with this. She says that “Opus Dei has an enviable record of educating the poor and supporting women, whether single or married, in any occupation they choose.” John Allen Jr. claims half of the lay leadership positions in the organization are held by women who often supervise the work of men. He also notes many women members are respected professionals in their own field: business, education, journalism, etc.

About 55 percent of its members worldwide are women. In Canada it is closer to 60 percent. Some women numerary members have freely chosen to make a profession of taking care of Opus Dei’s centers, both women’s and men’s. They also run conference centers where activities of cultural and spiritual formation are held. Opus Dei says these women are professionally trained and are paid for their services, which include interior decorating, catering and other skilled work. “The Da Vinci Code’s insinuation that their work lacks dignity and value is demeaning to these women” retorts an Opus Dei webpage.

Brown says at the US headquarters of Opus Dei, “Men enter the building through the main doors on Lexington Avenue. Women enter through a side street and are ‘acoustically and visually separated’ from the men at all times within the building” (p. 28). This is inaccurate. People, whether male or female, use the doors leading to whichever section of the building they are visiting. The building is divided into separate sections, for the straightforward reason that one section includes a residence for celibate women and another for celibate men. But these sections are not sex-restricted, and it is the women’s not the men’s section that fronts on Lexington Avenue, the opposite of what is said in the book. The book sometimes erroneously calls the building Opus Dei’s “world headquarters.”

In The Da Vinci Code the killer Silas is presented as morbidly preoccupied with inflicting pain on himself with a cilice (in this case a spiked metal chain/belt worn tight around the upper thigh but it can also be a hairshirt) and a rope with which he scourges himself until bloodied (p. 128). On his “Facts” page Brown mentions controversy around Opus Dei’s use of “a dangerous practice known as ‘corporal mortification.’” While Brown is referring to actual forms of bodily mortification he exaggerates and distorts the description. Some numeraries do practice these traditional forms of mortification but they do not abuse their bodies like Silas in the book.* Allen reported that it appears a well-regulated, marginal practice within Opus Dei, but one that has received undo publicity. Opus Dei actually emphasizes small sacrifices rather than extraordinary ones, in keeping with its spirit of integrating faith with secular life.

Modern saints like Blessed Mother Teresa and Saint Padre Pio used the cilice or scourged themselves as a way of doing penance, disciplining the flesh, and uniting themselves to the sufferings of Christ (Col. 1:24). Pope Paul VI was known to wear a hairshirt. Corporal mortification is an ancient Church and biblical practice. The Old Testament records the patriarch Jacob (Genesis 37:34), kings David (1 Chronicles 21:16) and Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:1), the prophet Daniel (Daniel 9:3) and many others wearing sackcloth as an act of repentance. Saint John the Baptist clothed himself in coarse camelhair and ate locusts (Mark 1:6). Saint Paul disciplined his body in some manner (1 Cor. 9:27; see Col. 1:24) and Christ Himself may have suggested the same, although with hyperbolic example (Mark 9:43-48; see Luke 9:23). Unlike other issues about Opus Dei, notes Allen, the issue of corporal mortification cannot be easily resolved, for it goes against the tide in the contemporary world. Modern people are comfort loving and can only understand a regimen that involves physical suffering if for worldly purposes, such as beautifying or strengthening the body or improving physical health (e.g. cosmetic surgery, rigorous exercise, or dieting) but not for spiritual ends. We tend toward a dualism that makes the physical and spiritual aspects of man radically separate realms – with little influence on each other and less opposition. This is not the teaching of Christ (Matthew 6:22-23; 15:10-20), Saint Paul (Rom. 12:1) Saint Peter (1 Peter 2:11), or the Church. “There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2015). We also tend to see “spirituality” as a subjective thing, embraced more as a cordial. It is not (Matthew 12:36; Mark 9:43-48; John 12:25; Rev. 21:8).

In Chapter five Brown gives a brief historical background to Opus Dei and says its “escalating wealth and power” makes it a magnate for suspicion. After noting “many call Opus Dei a brainwashing cult” or “an ultraconservative Christian secret society” the author gives something of a defense of the institution through the fictional “president-general” Bishop Aringarosa. But then Brown proceeds to give examples of real scandals involving members of Opus Dei that the media “always gravitated toward.” He then lists the web site of the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), www.odan.org, an organization that relays “frightening stories from former Opus Dei members who [warn] of the dangers of joining” (p. 30). An odd thing to do if the novel is meant strictly for entertainment? It makes his earlier sympathetic remarks look calculated. What Brown does not mention (or probably know) is how few are the former members who have posted complaints on ODAN’s website. By its foundresses own admittance there are about twenty-five of them (“Opus Dei: Beyond Dan Brown's fiction,” CBC Online, May 10, 2006). I would suggest as a more balanced assessment than either Brown or ODAN the article on “Opus Dei” at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. A worthwhile article entitled, “Opus Dei and the Anti-cult Movement,” by Massimo Introvigne, can be read at www.cesnur.org/2005/mi_94.htm, a web page of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR).

* Andrea Tornielli, journalist for the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, described an incident in the life of Saint Josemaria Escriva that took place in Madrid in 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Hiding from the Republican anti-clerical forces, Father Escriva and his early band of followers were stuck in the Honduran consulate. Typically Escriva would ask for the use of a bedroom alone when it was time for his spiritual practices. Once, however, his chief aide, Fr. Alvaro del Portillo (who would later succeed him as head of Opus Dei), was sick and could not leave the room. Escriva told Portillo to cover his head with his blanket. Portillo described what followed: “Soon I began to hear the forceful blows of his discipline. I will never forget the number: there were more than a thousand terrible blows, precisely timed, and always inflicted with the same force and the same rhythm. The floor was covered with blood, but he cleaned it up before the others came in.” Saint Escriva kept his personal mortifications a secret and never encouraged others to engage in such extreme practice.

SACRED HISTORY

Divinity of Jesus Christ

Dan Brown claims the establishment of Jesus Christ as "the Son of God" was part of a politically motivated scheme by the Roman Emperor Constantine. To this end it was proposed and voted into existence (by a "relatively close vote at that") at the Council of Nicaea in 325. "Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless" (p. 233). The Bible as we now know it was supposedly collated by the Emperor Constantine (p. 231). Further, “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.” (p. 234).

Council of Nicaea

The First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, in AD 325, was called by the Emperor Constantine but did not define that Jesus was divine or the Son of God, since that was believed by all. It was called to address the Arian controversy. Arius, a North African theologian, insisted that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father at some point in time and not eternally existent. The Council Fathers formulated a response in the shape of a creed that affirmed that God the Son was of one substance (consubstantial) with God the Father, begotten by Him but uncreated and co-eternal, and formally condemned the Arian position. Besides the Creed about twenty decrees were issued by the Council.

Dan Brown claims that the supposed vote on the divinity of Christ was “relatively close.” He is trying to evoke the idea that the doctrine is a human invention, a political ploy, rather than a divinely revealed truth. The exact number of bishops present at Nicaea is uncertain (three participants have left us different head-counts: Athanasius of Alexandria, 318, Eustathius of Antioch, 270, and Eusebius of Caesarea, 250). What is certain is that the fathers sent an official letter to the church of Alexandria announcing that they had “unanimously agreed that anathemas should be pronounced against [Arius’] impious opinion and his blasphemous terms.” Actually the decision might have been just slightly short of unanimous. Originally about seventeen of the bishops present may have objected to the Creed that was formulated but in the end all but two agreed to sign. The objections were to the use of the term homoousias (“consubstantial” meaning “of same substance”) – some out of Arian sympathies but others simply because the word was not found in Scripture.

Christians before Nicaea

In his standard history Early Christian Doctrines (1960), noted scholar J. N. D. Kelly affirms that before Nicaea, “the all but universal Christian conviction in the preceding centuries had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human” (p. 138). A few quotes:

“There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even Jesus Christ our Lord” (Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians, 7, AD 107). Later in the same letter he speaks of “our God, Jesus Christ.”

“We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man” (Tatian the Syrian, Address to the Greeks, 21, AD 170).

"The Father of the universe has a Son, who also being the first begotten Word of God, is even God" (Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 63, AD 150).

Clement of Alexandria (d. 211-216), a leading theologian of the Church at the end of the 2nd century, offers this testimony: “Despised as to appearance but in reality adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine Word, He that is quite evidently true God, He that is put on a level with the Lord of the universe because He was His Son” (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1, AD 190).

"God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God" (Tertullian, The Soul 41:3, AD 210).

"Although he was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God" (Origen, The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4, AD 225).

Pliny the Younger, the pagan Roman governor of Bithynia-Pontus, wrote to Emperor Trajan, around AD 112, that the Christians “were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before dawn and singing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god” (Letter 10.97).

Holy Scripture

Dan Brown says Nicaea gave Jesus Christ the title of “Son of God.” Yet Jesus is referred to by this title 54 times in the Gospels and 46 times in the rest of the New Testament (John McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, 1965, p. 830). Brown implies, of course, the Bible was altered by order of Constantine to reflect Nicaea’s decision. We will address that accusation in the next section. While the title “Son of God” when applied to Christ can be understood as referring to His divine sonship (e.g. “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’” Matthew 16:16), it is used in the Old Testament sometimes to refer to heavenly or angelic beings, to the children of Israel, or to Israel’s kings. Independent of this title Christ’s divinity is affirmed in other ways in the New Testament. Here are a few examples:

The Gospel according to John opens with a prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us….” (John 1:1,14)

 

The Da Vinci Code

Jesus tells Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16).

After the resurrection Jesus appeared to Thomas who professed, “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28).

Saint Paul attests “For in Him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily…” (Colossians 2:9)

Saint Paul tells his readers to renounce impiety and worldly passions and to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly “while we wait for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us…” (Titus 2:13-14)

When Jesus told His audience that “Abraham rejoiced when he saw My day,” His listeners responded, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” to which Jesus authoritatively responded, “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I Am” (John 8:58). With these words Jesus was declaring His pre-existence and deity. For He was referring to Himself by God’s very name. In the Book of Exodus Moses asked God His name. “God replied, ‘I Am Who Am’ [Yahweh]. Then He added, ‘This is what you shall tell the Israelites: ‘I Am has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). The Jews understood what Jesus was claiming for “they picked up stones to stone him.” The punishment for blasphemy was stoning (Leviticus 24:16). This was not the only time Christ’s Jewish audience was scandalized by His exalted claim: “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

Constantine: The Bible & Canon

Altered Scriptures

Do references in our Bible to the divinity of Christ simply reflect the embellishments made by Constantine to the Gospel text? No. The integrity of the text of our Bible is proven by early fragments and manuscript copies that still exist* that predate the Edict of Milan (AD 313), Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea, and by paraphrases and quotes of scriptural passages made in the writings of earlier Christian authors.

The Bodmer Papyrus II, discovered in 1956, has been dated to about AD 200, and contains fourteen chapters and portions of the last seven chapters of the Gospel of John. Also of import are the Bodmer Papyri XIV and XV (c. AD 175-225, containing much of Luke and parts of John).

The Chester Beatty biblical papyri, discovered in 1930, has been dated to AD 200-250 and contains portions of the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's Epistles, and Revelation.

From the Bodmer and Chester Beatty papyri we can construct virtually all of Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, and portions of Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Revelation. They confirm the integrity of these parts in our New Testament.

Among Greek manuscripts there are known to exist 97 papyri and 210 uncials. The papyri are the oldest, written before the 4th century, and the uncials the most important for textual critics. They confirm the trustworthiness of our biblical texts.**

There are an estimated 36,000 patristic citations (paraphrases and quotes) of the New Testament surviving in the writings of the early Church Fathers. With these references alone it has been suggested that one could reconstruct all but fifteen to twenty verses of the New Testament from material written 150 to 200 years after the time of Christ (and well before the time of Constantine).

* See http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/papyri.html

** A new best-selling book also attacks the integrity of the Bible (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, 2005). While a non-fiction work and more competently researched than Brown’s, it too makes rather outlandish claims of theological tampering – basing itself on textual variances in ancient manuscripts. For Bible scholars these are not as problematic as the author would have us believe. Nor are they sources of scandal or uncertainty. Scholars have long known about variant readings in different manuscripts. It is the raison d'être for the field of textual criticism. One estimate is that there are about 200,000 variances scattered among the 4,288 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. While this may seem like a staggering figure it must be remembered that it is a cumulative total for over four thousand manuscripts. Also 4,011 of these manuscripts are either lectionaries, meant for congregational reading, or minuscules that do not antedate the 9th century, and so of little significance. And most of the extent variants are simply changes in spelling, transposition of words, omission of lines, etc. These follow no pattern that shows intentional tampering and no doctrine of the Christian faith or moral commandment is dependent on an affected text.

That said there are a couple of noteworthy exceptions. Two significant passages in some later manuscripts do show signs of intentional alteration. Probably the most important is 1 John 5:7-8 as found translated into English in the old Douay-Rheims and King James versions of the Bible. Added to the passage is an explicit Trinitarian formula not found in any ancient Greek manuscript or in thousands of subsequent Greek manuscripts. In fact, it only appears after the 16th century in the text of eight Greek manuscripts – four of which include it as a variant reading in a marginal notation. It likely originated as a marginal note added to certain Latin manuscripts during the Middle Ages, which was eventually incorporated into the text of most of the later Vulgate manuscripts. This included the standard version of the Latin Vulgate promulgated in the 16th century. From the Vulgate, then, it seems that “the Comma,” as it is called, was translated into Greek and inserted into some printed editions of the Greek text and into the few aforementioned Greek manuscripts. All scholars consider it to be spurious, and it is not included in modern critical editions of the Greek text or in English versions based upon them. Those who try to make a big deal out of the alteration fail to note that it never appeared in Orthodox church Bibles and that the Catholic and Protestant churches willing printed the corrected passage in later editions once the Comma was firmly established as spurious. It could not have effected Trinitarian doctrine since that was formulated without reference to the Comma and centuries before it even existed.

The other noteworthy example of a spurious addition to a Scripture passage is the famous doxology (“for thine is the kingdom…) found at the end of the Lord’s Prayer in the King James Version of Matthew 6:9-13. Its absence in early and important manuscripts, as well as in early patristic commentaries on the Lord's Prayer, suggests that it was composed (perhaps on the basis of 1 Chr 29:11-13) in order to adapt the prayer for liturgical use in the early Church and then ascribed into the text. It has been removed from most recent Protestant translations of the Bible.

As Dan Brown plays upon common ignorance of early heresies and their writings to sow seeds of doubt into the minds of readers, so Ehrman plays upon popular ignorance of textual variances within ancient biblical manuscripts for similar effect. Not knowing how to objectively evaluate competing claims, the general readership is left confused and uncertain, often weighing things according to subjective opinion based on presentation, popularity or personal preferences.

Canon of Scripture

Brown has Teabing say that Christ’s “life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land…more than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament” but only the four we presently have chosen. He claims “The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great” (p. 231). Brown limits his attack upon the integrity of the biblical canon to the New Testament and so we shall limit our response likewise.

One would like to give Brown the benefit of the doubt and dismiss his incredible claim about thousands of Christ’s followers recording His life as mere hyperbole but unfortunately on page 234 he again says that “Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man.” If we interpret Brown’s reference to “Constantine [upgrading] Jesus’ status” to mean the Council of Nicaea it was only three centuries after Christ’s earthly life not “almost four.”

As for documents purporting to be lives of Christ, of the 45 writings found at Nag Hammadi only five were “gospels:” the gospels of Truth, Thomas, Philip, the Egyptians, and Mary Magdalene. Bard D. Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures (2003) contains a total of seventeen “non-canonical gospels,” including the ones just mentioned. A liberal conjecture of pseudepigraphal gospels puts the total at possibly several dozen to fifty. The Gnostic gospels rather than emphasizing Christ’s humanity, as Brown seems to think, actually de-emphasized or denied it.

Constantine did commission “fifty copies of sacred Scriptures” to be made around 325 AD. This is known through a letter to Eusebius. Only an emperor could afford the exorbitant cost of making that many hand copied reproductions of such a large document.* Nowhere in the letter does Constantine command that any of the Gospels be embellished in order to make Jesus appear more godlike. Neither Constantine nor the Council of Nicaea ever established the canon of Scripture. It was a protracted process that began long before Nicaea and continued for a while afterward. We shall examine the formation of only the New Testament canon.

The author of 2 Peter seems to consider the writings of Paul as inspired for in 3:16 he warns against those who twist the meaning of some things written in Paul’s letters “as they do the other Scriptures” (i.e. the Old Testament). In 1 Timothy 5:18 Paul appears to combine quotes from Deuteronomy (25:4) and Luke (10:7) under the common heading of “Scripture” (though “oral tradition” has been proposed as the source of the second quote). Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians (AD 115) quotes Ephesians 4:26: “As it is said in these scriptures, ‘Be ye angry and sin not,’ and ‘Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.’” The so-called Second Epistle of Clement (written in the mid-second century) after quoting Isaiah adds: “And another scripture says, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’” (2:4) – a quote found in Matthew 9:13.

The very first harmony of the Gospels was Tatian’s Diatessaron (“Through Four,” c. AD 175). It demonstrates, contra Brown’s eighty gospels, that the four we have today were alone considered authoritative by then for no others were included (possibly save the occasional phrase or clause). Irenaeus, in his work “Against Heresies” (AD 182-88) testifies to the acceptance of a Tetramorph, or quadriform Gospel, given, as he says, by the Word and unified by one Spirit; to repudiate it or any part of it was to sin against revelation and the Spirit of God.

The earliest known list of New Testament books dates possibly from the late 2nd century. It is called the Muratorian Fragment and is dated to between AD 170-190. It contains at least 22 of the books in our canon. The part that likely mentioned Matthew and Mark is missing but begins with Luke “the third book of the Gospel,” then mentions John, Acts, 13 letters of Paul, 1 and 2 John, Jude, and Revelation, plus the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter (“which some among us would not have read in church”). Gnostic writings are not included.

The 2nd century Catholic writers Hippolytus, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria quote as authoritative from twenty or more of the books that appear in our canon. So does Tertullian. Origen (AD 185-254), the most influential biblical commentator of the first three centuries and the first to use the term “New Testament,” listed the books that all churches acknowledged as Scripture: The four Gospels, Acts, thirteen Pauline epistle, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. The disputed books were 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, James, and Jude. Origen calls the Shepherd of Hermas “divinely inspired” and may have likewise considered Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache. Once again, none of these are Gnostic works but orthodox writings from the early Church.

The first person to list the 27 books that all Christians today accept as the New Testament was not the Emperor Constantine but Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt, in a circular letter to all the churches in Egypt written in AD 367, forty-two years after the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea.

The Gelasian Decretal (c. AD 492-496) claims that a Council at Rome in AD 382, under Pope Damasus I, enumerated the canon of the Old and New Testament – one identical with the modern Catholic Bible. However the authenticity of the list is disputed. Local North African synods at Hippo Regius (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397, 419) listed as inspired the books contained in the present-day Catholic Old and New Testaments. In 405, Pope Innocent I in a letter (to Exuperius) described a canon of both Testaments that is identical to the present-day Catholic Bible.

As we can see it was not Constantine who determined the canon of the New Testament as part of a political power play but the Church, in the person of its bishops.

* The Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus are the oldest nearly complete Bibles known to exist. Both are from about the mid-fourth century, shortly after Nicaea. Only portions of the Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint, survive in Codex Sinaiticus but its New Testament is complete. Included with the New Testament are The Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas – valuable early Christian writings but not included in the canon today. A large portion of the Old Testament has survived in the slightly older Codex Vaticanus but it is missing more of the New Testament. Vaticanus originally contained a complete copy of the Septuagint except for 1-4 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh. The first thirty-one leaves of Genesis are lost (1:1-46:28a) and ten leaves of the Psalms (105:27-137:6b). In addition to the books found in the modern Jewish Bible are 1 and 2 Esdras, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Most, but not all, of these are considered inspired by the Catholic Church. The extant New Testament of Vaticanus contains the Gospels, Acts, the General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews (up to 9:14) but missing 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Revelation.

Jesus: Married or Celibate

Jesus was not Married

In chapter 58 Brown has Teabing say “…Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor…Because Jesus was a Jew…the social decorum during that time virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried.” Brown is not alone in this argument. In 1970 Protestant scholar William Phipps created a stir with his book, Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradition. In it he argued, like Brown, that the silence of the New Testament about the marital status of Jesus indicates that He was in fact married. Why? Because it needed no comment, being taken for granted as virtually every Jewish man in Jesus’ day did marry; especially those who were considered to be rabbis. Phipps book is frequently cited on Mormon websites.

A major problem with the argument of Brown (and Phipps) is that it makes no room for exceptions. Jesus was not required by law – either civil or religious – to marry. And in no society are all the men and women married. While in many ways Jesus fitted into His Jewish milieu, in other ways He was utterly different. His unique mission would make marriage quite difficult and encourage His remaining single. While this might have been perceived by His contemporaries as unusual, even counter-cultural, Christ never shied away from the unusual or counter-cultural, especially when it came to his relationships with women. And let us not forget that Jesus Christ was no ordinary man. He was the Messiah. He is also the Incarnate Son of God. Phipps seems to suffer from that disease of modern exegetes of intentionally suspending from consideration Christ’s divinity and its impact on everything that He said and did; thus falling into the error of viewing Jesus solely through His humanity and reinterpreting the Gospel accounts according to how Phipps thinks a first-century Palestinian Jew would think and act. This is neither true to who Jesus Christ is nor faithful to how He is presented in the Scriptures.

What of the argument from silence? It is true that the New Testament contains no statement as to Christ’s marital state. It never explicitly mentions if He was married or unmarried. But whenever the Gospels do refer to Jesus’ natural relatives they speak only of His (foster) father, mother, “brothers” and “sisters” (Matthew 13:55-56; Mark 6:3), but never of a wife.*

Jewish teachers in Jesus’ day usually didn’t teach women or include them as followers. Yet Jesus had close relationships with women, many of whom were His followers (Luke 8:2-3) and learned from Him (Luke 10:38-42). Several of these women are mentioned by name, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, who together helped to financially support Christ and the apostles (Luke 8:2-3). But nothing in the New Testament suggests that Jesus was ever married to any of these women, or to any other woman. Several women were present at the crucifixion and at His tomb on the morning of His Resurrection – including Mary Magdalene – but none of them is ever described as His spouse. On the cross Christ made provision for the care of His mother (John 19:25) but showed no special concern for the care of Mary Magdalene, His alleged soon-to-be-widow.

Christ Himself recommended celibacy (i.e. being unmarried) for the sake of the kingdom: “Not all can accept this teaching; but those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who were made so by men; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him accept it who can” (Mt 19:12).

Paul was an adult Jewish convert to Christianity who was himself celibate (1 Cor. 7:8: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am”). He expressed his preference that in this present time of distress people remained single. Paul further explained that being single made it easier to serve the kingdom without divided interests. (1 Cor. 7:25-35).

St. Jerome tells us that “Christ and Mary, both virgins, laid the basis of virginity for both sexes” (St. Jerome, PL 22,510). It is the constant belief of the Catholic Church that Jesus Christ was celibate all His life. Virtually all other Christians hold this belief too.

* All ancient churches – Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic – hold that Mary never had other children besides Jesus. Some interpret Jesus’ “brothers” and “sisters” to likely be children of Joseph by a previous marriage (making him a widower) while others think them cousins. There was no word in Aramaic (the common language of first-century Palestine) or biblical Hebrew for “cousin” or “step-brother” and so the Hebrew and Aramaic word ach (“brother”) was used for various types of masculine relations (Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, [Bar Ilan University Press, 1990, p. 45]). The Greek New Testament may thus be transliterating non-sibling relations in these passages much like the Septuagint, the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, does for example in Genesis 14:14,16 and 29:12,15.

Celibacy was not Condemned by all Jews

Brown writes that, “according to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned” (p. 245). Was it?

Celibacy was not common and generally disapproved of by the rabbis. But even they accepted postponing marriage for students of the Law so that they might concentrate on their studies. While evidently infrequent there were cases like that of the famous rabbi Simeon ben 'Azzai (who lived in the late 1st and early 2nd century), who never married. He gave as his reason devotion to the study of the Torah.

The Judaism of Jesus’ day was diverse and went beyond the rabbinical school. It had groups that either required celibacy or allowed it. The Essenes were described by Josephus, Philo, and Pliny as being celibate (Josephus, Antiquities and Jewish War; Philo, Hypothetica). Philo of Alexandria describes another Jewish sect of both men and women – the Therapeutae – who were celibate in their studies and pursuit of wisdom and the holy life (De Vita Contemplativa 68f).

But the dominant class of individuals who were allowed or expected to be celibate were prophetic figures throughout Jewish history: The prophet Jeremiah; the wilderness prophet Banus (Josephus, Life 2.11) and John the Baptist. The prophet Elijah may also have been celibate.

Why Jesus was Celibate

To be celibate means to be unmarried. In a society where marriage was the morally and religiously expected norm why was Jesus celibate? Everything He did had meaning and purpose. What was He saying by His unmarried state? Obviously He was not saying anything against marriage. At a time when divorce was permissible Jesus said that marriage was indissoluble. He often used parables of wedding banquets to illustrate the kingdom of God.

Christ’s celibacy was a sign of His total dedication, His consecration, to the mission He received from His Father. Our Lord demonstrated that He was single-minded and single-hearted in His commitment to His vocation. It is in this context that we can understand His praise of those who freely leave all to follow Him, and those who choose to “not marry for the sake of the kingdom” (Mt 19:12)

Christ’s celibacy also has a more profound, supernatural meaning. The Old Testament sometimes spoke of God as Israel’s husband (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:16-19) who would one day rejoice over Israel as a bridegroom over his bride (Isaiah 62:5). John the Baptist announced Christ as the Bridegroom (John 3:29) and the Lord affirmed it Himself (Mark 2:19; Mt. 25:1-13). Saint Paul spoke of the great mystery of the “one flesh” union between Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:25-33). The Church, as a chaste virgin, is promised to her divine Husband (2 Cor. 11:2), so that we who are one Body may become one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:15-17). We therefore await His return in glory (Rev. 22:17) and our eternal communion with the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-9). Understood in this context, Jesus Christ took no natural wife because He was already betrothed in a supernatural way to His Bride, the Church. “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Mary Magdalene

Brown presents a number of claims that come from Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Teabing says: "Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene" (p. 248). Along with Jesus’ supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene and fathering of a child (p. 255) this is "the greatest cover-up in human history" (p. 249). After Constantine the new patriarchal Church engaged in a “smear campaign,” “perpetuating her image as a whore” (p. 254) and in fact “outlawed speaking of the shunned Mary Magdalene” (p. 261).

In the Gospels when identifying a woman, if she is married she is usually referred to as “the wife of…” (e.g. Luke 8:2-3) or “the mother of…” (e.g. Mark 15:40). Mary Magdalene, however, is always associated with her place of origin – Magdala, a village in Galilee – and never referred to as anyone’s wife or mother. This may indicate her unmarried status.

If Christian leaders were determined to suppress Mary Magdalene’s role in their history to the point that “her name was forbidden by the Church” (p. 254), they did a lousy job of it. She is mentioned twelve times in the Gospels. Why was her name not removed when the Church was doing all those alterations to the Bible The Da Vinci Code claims? Instead she is mentioned more often than most the apostles except Peter and John! The Gospels record her as present at the crucifixion and every Gospel presents her as the first witness to the empty tomb. The Risen Lord even sends her to the apostles to announce His resurrection. Hippolytus (AD 170-236) therefore calls her the “apostle (apostolos: one sent forth) to the Apostles.” The Eastern Church still refers to her by this title.

If the Church wished to demonize her they went about it in an inept way too, considering that by the 8th century her feast day had been officially established (July 22nd) and she was, after the Blessed Virgin, one of the most widely-revered saints of the Middle Ages. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (1978) tells us that “her popularity in England is reflected in the 187 ancient dedications of churches and in her universal appearance in medieval calendars.”

The popular concept of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was not a “smear campaign” but due to a conflation of biblical persons by Pope Gregory I. He wrote in AD 591, about two and a half centuries after Nicaea. At the end of Luke 7 there is an episode of an anonymous woman from the city who anointed Christ’s feet with oil and wiped them with her hair (vs. 36-50). She was evidently well known in the city as a sinner. Later popular speculation thus held her to be a prostitute. The passage is almost immediately followed by the naming of Mary of Magdala as one of Christ’s followers, “out of whom seven devils were gone forth" (Luke 8:2). The demarcation of the Bible into its present chapters and verses did not occur until the 13th and 16th centuries respectively. In John’s Gospel, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha (John 11), also anointed Christ’s feet with oil and wiped them with her hair (John 12:1-8). Pope Gregory simply combined these three women into one. This melded image of Mary Magdalene became popular in the West but with no evidence of disparagement and never as an official teaching. In the Eastern Church (where Constantine lived and Nicaea was located) they always kept the three women separate. If there was a conspiracy to defame Mary it sure was poorly coordinated in terms of timeline, geography and consistency.

In The Da Vinci Code the Priory of Sion is hiding the bones of Mary Magdalene from the Church, which sees them as a threat. Twice in the novel we hear that “the quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene.” The novel ends with Langdon kneeling beside the inverted glass pyramid at the Louvre – beneath which, for dramatic effect, the relics are intimated to be. The Church has never felt threatened by Mary Magdalene nor by her remains. In fact two churches have long claimed major relics: the basilicas at Vezelay and St.-Maximin-la-Ste.-Baume, both in France. An arm is claimed at Vezelay and a skull at St.-Maximin-la-Ste.-Baume. No one knows if they really belonged to Mary Magdalene. There is no record of her relics being at these locations before the 13th century. But if the quest is to kneel before her bones then an inestimable number of Catholic pilgrims over the centuries can say that at least with pious intent, “Been there, done that.” Ironically, at least one of Mary Magdalene's supposed relics is to be found at a museum, although not the Louvre. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has a reliquary that was made to house one of her teeth.

Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic Gospels

Brown refers to the Gnostic Gospel of Philip and Gospel of Mary Magdalene to prove the special status of the Magdalene. In the Gospel of Philip it says, “And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene.” The protagonist in Brown’s book says, “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse.” (p. 246).

The Gospel of Philip was not written in Aramaic but originally in Greek and translated into Coptic (which is Egyptian not Aramaic). The Greek word translated as “companion” or “consort” is κοινωνός (koinōnos). It has a number of meanings, including spouse or consort, but usually means simply fellow partaker or co-worker. For example, Paul refers to himself as Philemon’s koinōnos in the Philemon 1:17. The Gospel of Luke uses the term to describe James and John as Peter’s business partners (Luke 5:10). An extensive and fairly impartial web-site dedicated to investigating everything about Mary Magdalene (www.magdalene.org) notes a “conjugal context is almost unprecedented in contemporary texts.” Brown’s suggestion that the Magdalene and Jesus had a conjugal or romantic relationship (p. 246) does not align with the majority of scholars in the field. Antti Marjanen, author of the monograph The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (1996) writes that her role in the Gnostic texts is not established but varies in them. “Not all of them portray Mary Magdalene as the privileged disciple and only in the Gospel of Philip can the idea of her spiritual marriage with Jesus find support.” In other words it is only by a very selective use of texts and passages that one can create such an impression.

Brown further quotes from Philip that the other disciples were offended because Christ loved Mary more than them “and used to kiss her often on her mouth.” This passage (verse 59) is actually incomplete in the Nag Hammadi manuscript – the word “mouth” is not in the text, there being a hole at that place. The quote given is according to common reconstruction. Here is the Patterson Brown translation of the text with bracketed areas indicating missing reconstructed text: “And the consort of the [Christ] is Mariam the Magdalene. The [Lord loved] Mariam more than [all the (other)] Disciples, [and he] kissed her often on her [mouth].” As one can see “cheek” could just as easily fit the text. But one can wonder if Mary was married to Jesus why his apostles would take offense to him so kissing her? Brown is giving this passage a modern and not a Gnostic interpretation. For in a preceding passage of Philip where kissing occurs it is described not as an act of romantic love but spiritual nourishment: “For it is by a kiss that the perfect conceive and give birth. For this reason we also kiss one another. We received conception from the grace which is in one another” (58:30-59:6). In fact, it is from this passage that scholars have reconstructed the missing word in the other. When the disciples ask Jesus why he loves Mary more he does not speak of sexual love but of Mary’s spiritual insight into what he is conveying to her (Philip 64:7). In The [Second] Apocalyse of James, another Gnostic text, the risen Jesus imparts his secret mysteries to James by kissing him on the mouth and calling him, “My beloved.” It is a non-sexual, symbolic act, Marjanen tells us, demonstrating James’ privileged position. In the canonical First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians the apostle tells them to “salute all the brothers with a holy kiss” (1 Thess. 5:26).

While one can argue that at least in the two Gnostic documents Brown cites Mary Magdalene is given a special status as the disciple whom Jesus “loved more than all the disciples,” that in itself is no indication he made her head of his Church. But even if the documents explicitly said he did, it would make no difference. Why? Because these writings are spurious and have no historical link to Jesus of Nazareth or His apostles. They were written over a century after Christ’s death and resurrection and the founding of the Church. More will be said about this in the appendix to this essay.

Interestingly Dan Brown fails to mention the most famous Gnostic document from Nag Hammadi, The Gospel of Thomas. This is the manuscript the controversial Jesus Seminar esteemed as a “fifth Gospel.” Its final verse does not fit well with the image Brown is trying to convey of Gnosticism’s view of Mary Magdalene or any supposed belief in the sacred feminine. It reads: “Simon Peter said to him, ‘Let Mary [Magdalene] 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’” (v. 114). That is certainly an odd way to honour Mary and exalt the status of women!

MISCELLANEAOUS ERRORS

The name “Jehovah”

Brown claims that “the Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH – the sacred name of God – is derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Habraic name for Eve, Havah” (p. 309).

Any Scripture student could tell him Jehovah appears nowhere in Hebrew or Greek versions of the Bible. Its origin is much later and rather curious. In the ancient Hebrew alphabet vowels were normally not indicated. This was true of sacred texts. By Jewish custom no one but the High Priest in the Temple could pronounce the sacred Name of God. Instead of saying YHWH (יהוה) one substituted for it either Adonai (“Lord”) or Elohim (“God”). Beginning in the 8th century some rabbinical study texts began adding vowel markings (called niqqudot) and cantillation signs to written Hebrew. In the case of the sacred Name the vowels for Adonai or Elohim were added under the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton. Not knowing this rabbinical custom some Christian assumed that one was to read the consonants with the vowels in יְהֹוָה, thus rendering in the Latin alphabet the name Jehovah. It is thus a mistaken transliteration of the four consonants (YHWH) that most closely represent the Hebrew Tetragrammaton יהוה with the vowel markings for Adonai (אֲדֹנָי). The earliest known example of this error (rendered “yohoua”) is in the Pugeo fidei (1278) by a Spanish Dominican monk Raymundus Martini. “Jehovah” appears first in late medieval German transcriptions. It became popularized in English Protestantism through four instances of its use (in capital case “IEHOVAH”) in the 1611 edition of the King James Version of the Bible.

Tarot Cards

Brown claims “originally, Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church” (p. 92).

While many hermetic claims are made as to their origin historically the earliest extant specimens of Tarot decks are of North Italian origin and date to the early 15th century. These were called carte da trionfi or “cards of the triumphs.” They were soon being used for a game called Tarocchi. Tarot cards are still used in a number of European countries to play different versions of the game. Their association with esoteric studies appears to have come about in the 1780s, when occult philosophers mistakenly associated the symbols on Tarot cards with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Brown has his character Teabing, the historian, state that, “some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950's hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert” (p. 234).

The Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian documents at all, let alone Christian gospel accounts. They are Jewish writings. The fragments span at least 800 texts. About 30% have been identified as fragments from the Hebrew Bible, about 25% are extra-biblical traditional Jewish religious texts (e.g. Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees), another 30% contain biblical commentaries or texts related to the beliefs, regulations, and membership requirements of the sect, finally the last 15% of the fragments are unidentified (Wikipedia). Some think they may have belonged to the Jewish sect called the Essenes.

A controversy has arisen over a very small papyrus fragment found in Cave 7 and designated as 7Q5. Beginning in 1972 this previously unidentified fragment has been claimed by a few scholars to be a portion of the Gospel of Mark (6:52-53). Others have since identified 7Q4 with 1 Timothy 3:16-4:3. Whatever is their final determination these two fragments represent a miniscule portion of the otherwise Jewish texts found at Qumran.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were not found in “a cave” but eleven caves in and around Wadi Qumran beginning not in “the 1950’s” but 1947 – continuing however till 1956.

Nag Hammadi Documents

In The Da Vinci Code Brown writes that the Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls represent “the earliest Christian records” (p. 245).

We have already discussed the Dead Sea Scrolls. As for the Nag Hammadi documents they are not “the earliest Christian records.” The actual manuscripts found in Egypt date from the fourth or fifth centuries. The lost autograph (i.e. original) texts are believed by most experts to have been written in the second to third centuries. Every book in the New Testament is earlier. Analysis of textual families, comparison with fragments and quotations, plus historical correlations securely date the New Testament to the first century. The Nag Hammadi texts are largely Gnostic documents. We shall address Gnosticism in the Appendix.

The Olympic Games

Brown asserts that the original Olympic Games were held “as a tribute to the magic of Venus” every 8 years (p. 36) and that the five-pointed star almost became the “official Olympic seal” for the modern games but was modified to five intersecting rings (p. 37).

Although the origins of the ancient Olympic festivals remain in obscurity it has been well documented that they were religious festivals in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Venus, and occurred every four years – just like today. Further, “Venus” is the Roman name for the goddess of love. The Greek name for her is Aphrodite.

The emblem of the Olympic Games – five interlocking rings – was originally designed in 1913 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. Upon its initial introduction de Coubertin stated the following in the August, 1913 edition of Revue Olympique: “The emblem chosen to illustrate and represent the world Congress of 1914.…five intertwined rings in different colours – blue, yellow, black, green, red – are placed on the white field of the paper. These five rings represent the five parts of the world [i.e. continents] which now are won over to Olympism and willing to accept healthy competition.” The flag and emblem were adopted and first officially debuted at the VII Olympiad in Antwerp, Belgium in 1920.

In an article in the same Revue in November 1992, American historian Robert Barney explained that the idea of the interlaced rings came to de Coubertin when he was in charge of the USFSA (Unión des Societes Française de Sports Athletiques): The emblem of the union was two interlaced rings (like the typical interlaced marriage rings) and originally the idea of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung because for him the ring meant continuity and the human being.”

Astronomy

Brown originally depicted the star Venus as visible in the east shortly after sunset (p. 448). This is an astronomical impossibility. It was corrected to "west" in later editions.

Likewise Brown characterized the cycle of Venus as tracing “a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years.” Venus actually completes five cycles in eight years. These successive conjunctions plot the points of a pentagram around the sun as viewed from the Earth. This too was corrected to “eight years” in later editions.

Krishna

Brown contends that at the birth of Krishna the Hindu god was given gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (p. 232).

The story of the Hindu deity Krishna's birth and the presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh apparently comes from Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. Graves conveniently provided no sources or citations, which is one of many reasons his book has been long been discredited by scholars working in the field of comparative religion. There’s good reason for this absence of evidence. The Bhagavad-Gita (first century AD) doesn’t mention Krishna’s childhood, and the stories of Krishna’s childhood recorded in the Harivamsa Purana (c. AD 300) and the Bhagavata Purana (c. AD 800-900) don’t mention the gifts.

Pictographs of Isis and Horus

Brown has Langdon say, "Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus" (p. 232).

It’s a curious statement since any sensible person recognizes that the image of a baby with its nursing mother is hardly unique to one religion or culture.

Pagan Sunday

Brown’s character Teabing states, “Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans” (p. 232). Langdon concurs declaring 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. 232-3).

Christians by New Testament times were already worshipping on Sunday, or the “day of the Lord,” as it is described in Revelation 1:10. This was to honor the day that Christ rose from the dead. This practice is referred to in Acts 20:7: “And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread….” The Didache (c. AD 70-90) uses the designation “the Lord’s day” several times, explaining it to be “the day of the resurrection of the Lord, that is, the Lord’s day.” Ignatius of Antioch, writing around AD 110, declares, “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, chapter 9). Notice how these early Christian texts make no reference to it as “Sunday” but simply as “the Lord’s day” or the “first day” of the week. It was also called “the eighth day” (Epistle of Barnabas, AD 100-150) – an allusion to it being a new day of creation. In the Bible there are no Hebrew or Greek equivalents for the names of the days of the week as we have in English. From Genesis to Revelation the days of the week were identified by numbers. The exception is the seventh day, which was called the Shabbat or Sabbath, which means, “rest.” The Church was initially uncomfortable using designations that were based on pagan gods and so continued the Jewish custom of numerical nomenclatures, which still partially persists in European languages like Portuguese.

Constantine’s Baptism

The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his wish, being “too weak to resist” (p. 232). One wonders who could force an emperor to be baptized?

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote the Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini). It is written as a eulogy and so suffers from inherent limitations. Yet he was Constantine’s biographer and gives us an account of the Emperor’s baptism. He says Constantine had desired to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River where Jesus had been baptized but was instead baptized on his deathbed in Nicodemia not long after Easter 337. Eusebius relates: “When he thought that he was near his death, he confessed his sins, desiring pardon for them from God, and was baptized.” Constantine died a few days later.

It was not uncommon for Christians at the time to put off baptism until adulthood (e.g. Saints Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose). Some even put it off till near death. Augustine reported that his mother considered having him baptized when he nearly died from a childhood illness. But upon his recovery “my cleansing was deferred as if it was inevitable that, if I should live, I would be further polluted; and further, because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism would be still greater and more perilous.” The rationale was probably that all sins were remitted with Baptism but serious sins committed afterward would require severe penance and delay before absolution would be given, so it was considered safer to postpone baptism – for some until adulthood, for others till near death.

Left-handedness

On page 125 Brown says, “Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church’s defamation.” He blames the Church on the French and Italian languages having words for “left” with negative overtones (gauche and sinistra).

However, the association of “left” with terms such as “sinister” and other negative overtones is older than Christianity. The pre-Christian Latin word for left was sinister, with negative implications, and the word for right was dexter, with positive implications. A negative connotation associated with the left and especially lefthandedness has existed among peoples and cultures as diverse as Hindu India, the Japanese, Zulus and Inuit.

Rosslyn Chapel

Brown writes that “Rosslyn Chapel – often called the Cathedral of Codes – stands seven miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the site of an ancient Mithraic temple. Built by the Knight Templar in 1446….It is from the hallowed Rose Line that Rosslyn – originally spelled Roslin – takes its name.” (p. 432).

There is no archeological evidence of a previous Mithraic temple on the site. Mithraism was a Persian religion popular among the Roman legions during the first three centuries of the Christian era. The Midlothian district, where the Rosslyn Chapel is located, is well north of Hadrian’s Wall, the northern-most extent of the Roman Empire. The region was inhabited by the Votadini and the Picts, whose tribal religions are presumed to have generally resembled Celtic polytheism.

And how could Rosslyn Chapel have been built by the Knights Templar? It was founded in 1446, over a century after the suppression of the Military Order. The Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, as it was called, was founded by Sir William St Clair, third and last St Clair Prince of Orkney. It was one of thirty-seven collegiate churches built in Scotland between the reigns of James I and James IV (1406-1513). Excavations in the 19th century indicate Sir William originally intended to build a larger cruciform church but it was never completed due to his death in 1484. Only the choir, Lady Chapel and part of the transepts were completed.

As for the name “Rosslyn Chapel,” according to Ian Robertson (co-author with Mark Oxbrow of Rosslyn and the Grail, 2005), “Rosslyn definitely does not derive from any hallowed Rose Line. It has nothing to do with a bloodline. The name actually originates from the Scottish words ‘Ross’ which means hill, and ‘Lynn’ which means waterfall.” Thus it means, “hill of the waterfall” in Scots Gaelic. It is located in the small village of Roslin in Midlothian, Scotland. Finally, there is no indication it has ever been popularly called “The Cathedral of Codes” till now. It has been referred to as “a Bible in stone” and “a Cathedral in miniature.”

 

The Da Vinci Code

In The Da Vinci Code it says “The Knights Templar had designed Rosslyn Chapel as an exact architectural blueprint of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.” More likely Rosslyn Chapel is built along the line of St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, which follows the common architectural style and structure for churches of the time. And Brown’s claim that the “The Star of David” is engraved on the chapel floor is untrue. It is not beneath the red carpet covering the floor today nor do any of the old engravings of the chapel show it to have ever existed. These and other inaccuracies led “Stuck on Scotland” Internet Travel and Holiday Guide to conclude, “Dan Brown claims that ‘All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate’ which in the case of the chapel in Roslin, could not be further than the truth.”

Paris and the Merovingians

It is Teabing who informs Sophie that Paris was founded by the Merovingians (p. 257). The Merovingians were the rulers of the Franks, a Germanic people who conquered what is now France in the late fifth century. Archeologists have established that the Gauls settled Paris by the 3rd century BC. The Romans, who knew it as Lutetia, captured it in 52 BC under Julius Caesar. This means that by the time of the Merovingian dynasty (AD 448-751) Paris was already seven hundred or more years old.

The Louvre Pyramid

The book states that at the explicit demand of French President François Mitterrand, the Louvre Pyramid in Paris was constructed with 666 panes of glass (p. 21).

The pyramid actually contains 603 diamond-shaped and 70 triangular panes of glass, for a total of 673. Any number of readily available sources could have easily supplied Brown with the correct specifications. This is simply more evidence that, for all his claimed research and concern for accuracy, Brown shows himself incredibly unreliable.

A Brief List of Further Mistakes

Margaret M. Mitchell is Associate Professor of New Testament and the Chair of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago. In an article for the journal Sightings entitled, “Cracking the Da Vinci Code,” (Sept. 23, 2003) she listed a number of statements from Brown’s book that are factually in a “gray area” (“where complex issues are misrepresented and distorted”) and others that are “patently inaccurate.” Her catalogue is not exhaustive nor is it meant to be. In fact it is garnered from just three chapters (81-83), or 16 pages, of the 105-chapter (plus epilogue), 454-page book. Below is her list of the “patently inaccurate” claims, a few of which we have already discussed.

* In his own lifetime Jesus “inspired millions to better lives” (p.231)

* There were “more than eighty gospels” (p.231)

* “The earliest Christian records” were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (including gospels) and Nag Hammadi texts (pp.234, 245)

* The Nag Hammadi texts “speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms” (p.234)

* The marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is “a matter of historical record” (p.244)

* Constantine invented the divinity of Jesus and excluded all gospels but the four canonical ones

* Constantine made Christianity “the official religion” of the Roman Empire (p.232);

* Constantine coined the term “heretic” (p.234);

* “Rome's official religion was sun worship” (p.232).

* In his own lifetime Jesus “inspired millions to better lives” (p.231)

* There were “more than eighty gospels” (p.231)

* “The earliest Christian records” were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (including gospels) and Nag Hammadi texts (pp.234, 245)

* The Nag Hammadi texts “speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms” (p.234)

* The marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is “a matter of historical record” (p.244)

* Constantine invented the divinity of Jesus and excluded all gospels but the four canonical ones

* Constantine made Christianity “the official religion” of the Roman Empire (p.232);

* Constantine coined the term “heretic” (p.234);

* “Rome's official religion was sun worship” (p.232).

CONCLUSION

Dan Brown has penned an atrociously researched mess. On top of that he substitutes opinions for facts and hypotheses for history in order to lead readers to his arbitrary conclusions. His novel is not so much historical fiction as fictional history. Critics Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel conclude that “the misrepresentation of Christian beliefs in The Da Vinci Code is so aggressive and continual that we can only conclude that it is a result of willful ignorance or purposeful malice” (The Da Vinci Hoax, 2003).

Here is an example of detraction-as-entertainment by Dan Brown: “Teabing laughed coldly. ‘My dear, the Church has two thousand years experience pressuring those who threaten to unveil its lies. Since the days of Constantine, the Church has successfully hidden the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus. We should not be surprised that now, once again, they have found a way to keep the world in the dark. The Church may no longer employ crusaders to slaughter non-believers, but their influence is no less persuasive. No less insidious’” (p. 407).

Yet The Da Vinci Code has successfully taken esoteric and anti-Christian conspiratorial literature mainstream and is helping it to gain popular acceptance. After all, how many readers will recognize the blazing inaccuracies? It is unfortunately all too apparent today that for the vast majority of people their primary sources of historical knowledge are popular novels, television, and motion pictures. Their slothfulness and ignorance makes them easily swayed by unsupported statements, inaccurate data, weak arguments, or slick presentations. Especially if the arguments or presentations feed preconceived cultural or personal prejudices. The public’s perception of the Crusades is formed by movies like Kingdom of Heaven; of the interaction of settlers and Native Americans by Dances with Wolves; and of the Second World War by Saving Private Ryan. Now their perception of Christ, the Church, and the Bible is to be influenced by Brown’s novel-cum-movie The Da Vinci Code.

Professor Ian Campbell, who teaches Scottish and Victorian literature at Edinburgh University, lamented to The Sunday Herald that the difference between previous debates on biblical matters and Brown’s claims is that in the past, people knew their Scriptures. “There have been several incidences like this, notably in the 1800s. But in those times everyone knew their Bible, they could argue their corner. Now the mass of the public have picked up isolated parts and became fascinated.” Emboldened with a sense of self-importance and skeptical of or indifferent to objective truth, people today never let ignorance of any subject prevent them from forming opinions, which are seen as validated solely on the grounds of being their own.

Brown borrows many of his historical and religious ideas uncritically from Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation. These books are conspiracy genre. Conspiracy theories are popular because they simplify history and concentrate blame – usually on those already feared, loathed or mistrusted. In his examination of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, author Brian Onken asks: “Where does this approach to history lead us? If historians were to adopt the Baigne/Leigh/Lincoln theory of historical research [as Brown does], most of history could (and would) be rewritten. After all, the matter would no longer be whether something was factual and could be proved, but whether we liked the idea and whether we could create a scenario that would render our hypothesis plausible…. Conjecture, assumption, speculation, and an unbelievable gullibility characterize the authors’ approach, and nowhere is this more clearly seen than when they turn to the Grail legends” (Book Review, Holy Blood, Holy Grail). These are fashion-facts-to-the-conspiracy-theory-and-truth-be-damned books.

Researcher and atheist Joe Nickell concludes his own short critique by noting “Dan Brown – with the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation – was also duped by the Priory of Sion hoax, which he in turn foisted onto his readers. But he is apparently unrepentant, and his apologists point out that The Da Vinci Code is, after all, fiction, although at the beginning of the novel, Brown claimed it was based on fact. Meanwhile, despite the devastatingly negative evidence, The Da Vinci Code mania continues. Perhaps Brown should go on his own quest – for the truth” (“Voice of Reason: Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax”). Ironically one of the constant refrains against the Church throughout Brown’s book is that it perpetrated lies – this said in a narrative filled with false information from beginning to end.

Carl Olson and Sandra Mieself conclude that “The Da Vinci Code is custom-made fiction for our time: pretentious, posturing, self-serving, arrogant, self-congratulatory, condescending, glib, illogical, superficial, and deviant. It has managed to tap into a deep reservoir of spiritual longing, restlessness, distrust, suspicion, and credulity….The Da Vinci Code is a perfect postmodern myth, pulp-fiction style. Occasionally clever and hip, it is never wise or insightful. Often cheesy, it is never artful. Seriously contrived, it is never believable or engaging.” (The Da Vinci Hoax, p. 296).

Author Amy Welborn has given talks on the errors of in The Da Vinci Code. She noticed that there were typically three different levels of readers faithful to the book:

1. Those who believe that every assertion made in the novel is true. These people come carrying copies of The Woman with the Alabaster Jar and stand in front of reproductions of Leonardo’s Last Supper and solemnly point out the presence of Mary Magdalene.

2. Those who are startled by the claims of the novel, suspicious because they’ve never heard them before, but at the same time accepting of the possibility. These folks usually lack any background in history and suspect that there’s no way to know the truth anyway.

3. Finally, there are those who really don’t care about the exact content of The Da Vinci Code, but are glad that it seeks to discredit Christianity, and so “believe” in the project in general, and heartily approve of it.

Why would anyone take serious such a fantastic yarn? Father William Slattery (The Da Vinci Code: Truth or Hoax? CD) gives an interesting insight from, of all people, Adolph Hitler. I give a somewhat different translation of the infamous quote found in Mein Kampf: “All this was inspired by the principle— which is quite true in itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously” (Mein Kampf, chapter 10, 1925).

The success of The Da Vinci Code is an example of this insight into human nature. Under the safe venue of a fictional tale it tells a big lie: that what untold millions of Christians have believed about Jesus Christ, sacrificed and placed their hopes in these last two thousand years, what millions of Christians continue to believe, sacrifice and hope in today, is a gross deceit foisted on them by an malevolent and manipulative Church. The Catholic Church has actually suppressed the truth about Jesus Christ and His teachings, persecuted and killed millions of innocent people over the centuries to maintain the deception and its own power. “The Church has two thousand years of experience pressuring those who threaten to unveil its lies” (p. 407). Brown presents this proposition in novel format but many people seem willing to believe it in whole, in part, or in principle.

I believe columnist Michael Coren observation is correct when he says, “Truth be told, Brown seems more obsessed with being angry at Roman Catholicism than with getting his facts right, which places him firmly in the centre of secularism's current obsession. That is, the fetish of hatred against the single institution that stands firm against relativism, moral decay and self-indulgence. As an institution it represents a mirror held up to the absurdities of western liberalism and western liberalism despises the reflection. Coren continues, “Believing Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians have been perennial victims of popular culture for more than a generation and nothing seems to be changing. Certainly the hypocrisy is as strong as ever.”

Dan Brown besmirches the reputation of the Catholic Church and the Bible and denigrates the divine majesty of Jesus Christ all under the guise of fiction. Many internet sites, talk shows, documentaries, magazine articles, and myriad’s of ordinary people discuss the premises of Brown's novel as if credible, yet when Christians try to refute them with known facts or defend the integrity of their beliefs they are told to lighten up, after all it’s just a novel! This is a hypocritical approach. And while characters in Brown’s book throw out the odd mildly indulgent, if not condescending, token remark about believing Christians the reader is still left with the overwhelming impression of the Church as an evil institution and believing Christians as dupes. Further the book blasphemously denigrates the very essence of Christian belief – the teachings and divinity of Jesus Christ. One wonders if much of its popularity is not simply a chance to publicly thumb one’s nose (once again) at Christianity? Even Jewish columnist Don Feder can see that “to turn the life of a man almost a billion people on this planet worship into a soap opera beggars the term insensitive” (“The Da Vinci Code: Blasphemy Hits the Big Screen,” Human Events, May 19, 2006).

David Klinghoffer, author of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History takes it further. He observes that Brown’s conspiratorial view that the Catholic Church has perpetuated “the ‘biggest cover up in human history’ bears a remarkable resemblance to another phony conspiracy, the famous hoax called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (“The Da Vinci Protocols: Jews should worry about Dan Brown’s success,” National Review online, May 5, 2006). He notes that “in both conspiracy theories, an ancient world religion turns out to be a massive fraud perpetrated to gain or maintain power.” The two conspiracy theories “share an understanding of how to deal with ideas you disagree with. Rather than taking traditional Christian beliefs at face value and arguing with them (as I do in my current book by the way), Dan Brown portrays the religion itself as resting upon a conscious deception. That excuses him from having to make arguments at all. Anti-Semites do the same thing.” While Klinghoffer excuses Brown as not intending to foment bigotry, “Yet to the cause of conspiracy theorizing, he has done a wonderful favor, training his readers in the habits of paranoia and gullibility. For people committed to finding the truth through investigation and argumentation, that’s depressing.”

In The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice Philip Jenkins notes that “Most contemporary attacks on Catholicism or the Catholic Church draw heavily on history, or at least on a kind of mythic history that has become deeply imbedded in popular thought” (p. 178). They do this with an agenda. “Hypercritical examinations of Catholic misdeeds are intended to support contemporary political positions, commonly in debates over morality and sexuality” (p. 180-181).

The public is comfortable with anti-Catholic sentiments. Such attitudes have a long pedigree and are only heightened by the unprecedented cultural shift away from Christianity and toward a secularized and sexualized individualism. As Cardinal Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, noted: “There's a great anti-Catholic prejudice. I ask myself if a similar book was written, full of lies about Buddha, Mohammed, or, even, for example, if a novel came out which manipulated all the history of the Holocaust…what would have happened?” Well, in Canada Holocaust deniers can go to jail (ask Ernst Zundel), and anyone who insults Islam’s prophet risks his very life (ask Salmon Rushdie).

While many people in our “multicultural” society think themselves tolerant the reality is that they often speak of the Catholic Church in a manner that would be considered unconscionable if said of another group. Historian Philip Jenkins notes: “Almost as troubling as the sheer abundance of anti-Catholic rhetoric is the failure to acknowledge it as a serious social problem. In the media, Catholicism is regarded as a perfectly legitimate target…What sometimes seems to be limitless social tolerance in modern America has strict limits where the Catholic Church is concerned” (The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, 2003). The plot and popularity of The Da Vinci Code is just more proof of that reality.

Western society has benefited from a relatively long period of peace combined with unprecedented prosperity, freedom and good health. This has given contemporary man an inflated sense of self-importance and control. Combined with a consumer mentality and a relativistic intellectual environment it has led to the misperception that he can form his own “reality.” In the end this is a hopeless conceit. The Da Vinci Code is a passing fad, soon to be forgotten, but it highlights something more profound: the mass rejection by modern man of the morally demanding God of revelation to embrace lesser gods of his own making. G. K. Chesterton’s famous quip seems most apropos here: “When men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything!”

APPENDIX

Gnosticism

Much of the confusion, fascination and credibility given to Dan Brown’s claims in The Da Vinci Code comes from his allusion to Gnostic writings. (Brown’s ideas in the book are actually more feminist neo-pagan than neo-Gnostic.) The general public had been totally unfamiliar with this early heresy. Its antiquity combined with the Christian-sounding titles of its texts gives credibility in the minds of many to Brown’s assertion that “history is written by the winners.” Here it seems we have an alternative form of Christianity that simply lost out in the fight for control but is every bit as old and valid – maybe more – than the brand we have long been familiar with. Is it true?

Gnosticism is an umbrella term first used by Epiphanius (AD 310-403) but accepted by modern scholars to describe a number of religious movements in the ancient Roman world that shared several common themes. Marvin Meyer noted that, “Some gnostics were Jewish, others Greco-Roman and many were Christians. There were Mandaean gnostics from Iraq and Iran; Manichaeans from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and all the way to China; Islamic gnostics in the Muslim world, and Cathars in Western Europe.”

The members of the various Gnostic sects believed they had a secret mystical knowledge not available to others. They had a dualistic outlook that saw an antithesis between matter and spirit, body and soul. The existence of the physical world was explained not as the work of the higher spiritual God (the Monad) or the lesser mediating divinities called Aeons or Archons, but as formed and governed by malevolent forces – the lesser and evil Demiurge – to imprison the souls of human beings. The physical world was the place of struggle between these competing forces of light and dark. Such strange ideas started to insinuate themselves under a Christian guise probably near the middle of the second century AD.

In 1945 a collection of forty-seven ancient documents, predominantly Gnostic in character, were discovered near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Although much excitement has been generated by the Nag Hammadi discoveries, not a little misunderstanding has been mixed with the enthusiasm. The overriding popular assumption is that the treatises unearthed in Upper Egypt contained "lost books of the Bible" – of historical stature equal to or greater than the New Testament books. Much of this has been fueled by the titles of some of the documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary and the Apocalypse of Peter. Many of these documents, however, were actually known to scholars from citations in the writings of early Christian writers like Justin Martyr (AD 100-165), Irenaeus (AD 130-202) and Clement of Alexandria (died approx. AD 215). And a few Gnostic writings were already partially available in fragments discovered in the 19th century. But other than citations and a few fragments these documents had been thought lost.

Enthusiasts claim these are the most ancient Christian records. They are not. The discovered scrolls are dated by archeologists and historians to about the 4-5th centuries (AD 350). Dating when the autograph (i.e. original) versions of these Gnostic texts were composed, however, has become a thorny issue. The advocates of a Neo-Gnosticism of course want to date them as early as possible. However the majority consensus of historians and textual critics is that most of the works found at Nag Hammadi originally belong to the late 2nd and 3rd centuries.

Philip Jenkins says, “In most cases, all that can be known for certain about a given Nag Hammadi document is that the particular manuscript was written before the late fourth century, when it was concealed: the date of composition remains highly uncertain. Conceivably, even at this very late date, the ink might not have been too dry on some of these writings. While the canonical gospels were completed by 100 or so, it is unlikely that any of the Nag Hammadi materials date from much before 150, and most probably were written between about 150 and 250, or later. Indeed, the fact that we find so many efforts in the late second and early third century to specify the orthodox canon may indicate that it was in exactly these years that spurious and heterodox works were pouring forth from their creators in unprecedented numbers” (Hidden Gospels, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 92-93).

This is much later than the canonical Gospels upon which the Gnostic works can often be shown to depend. Chronologically they were composed at a time further removed from the earthly life of Christ (c. 4 BC – AD 30) than we are from the life of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister. As for our canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) traditionally the earliest was dated to around AD 45 (Matthew) but this is a minority opinion today. The general consensus among Scripture scholars dates the Gospels as follows: Mark AD 65-70; Matthew and Luke in the 70s to 80s: John after AD 90. This is still within the lifetime of actual eyewitnesses to events. The undisputed epistles belonging to Paul in our New Testament date earlier, from about AD 50 – 61.

An important feature of Gnostic writings is how much they vary in character from the canonical writings. They are non-historical, even anti-historical, in style and content. They contain little narrative or sense of chronology. There is almost a complete lack of detail as to time and place. They are mainly sayings and dialogues. As for their themes, Simon Gathercole of the University of Aberdeen addresses a common problem when he refers to the Gnostic Gospel of Judas as containing “a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord Of The Rings and her CD collection” (cited by Mark Steyn, “The Da Vinci Code: bad writing for Biblical illiterates,” Macleans.ca, May 10, 2005).

So while the Gnostic texts are ancient, their value as independent sources of information is exceedingly questionable. They are less the alternative voice of the first followers of Christ than writings of later dissenters, who broke away from the established teachings and authority of the Church, and imposters, who were simply inventing a new Christianity. This is not an unsupported statement. The actual struggle is noticeable in Christian writings dating from around AD 135-165 and for some time afterward.

Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) argued that Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as orthodox Christianity because the "heresy" was simply a competing strain of early Christianity. Although Pagels, Brown and others have provoked sympathy, if not enthusiasm, for the Gnostics as the underdogs who just happened to lose out to orthodoxy, the Gnostics' historical credentials concerning Jesus are less than compelling. It may be romantic to "root for the underdog," but the Gnostic underdogs show every sign of being heretical hangers-on who tried to harness Christian language for conceptions radically different to early Christian teaching.

Even if treated as a competing strain of Christianity it does not necessarily provide support for the truth or falsity of Gnostic doctrine. If truth is not a matter of majority vote, neither is it a matter of minority dissent. It may be true, as Brown says, that “the winners write history” but that does not of itself make them bad or dishonest historians. If so, we should search for Nazi historians to give us the real picture of Hitler and his Germany and relegate all opposing views to that of dogmatic apologists who just happened to be on the winning side.

The Gnostic “Christian” movement is difficult to define, coming as it did in such diverse forms as Basilidianism, Docetism, Valentinianism and Manichaism. But like Gnosticism in general it was typically dualistic, focused on secret spiritual knowledge (gnosis), is elitist, antagonistic towards or uninterested in history, and distrustful – even hateful – towards the physical universe and the human body. Put simply, the material realm is evil and the goal of man is to escape it. This can only be accomplished through gnosis, or secret knowledge given to the elect few, of the true God. (See James A. Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, 2003). This gnosis is rooted in the belief that humanity is not meant for this evil, material world. Man’s spirit is imprisoned in it and must escape back to its heavenly abode. Ignorance insures destruction, while self-knowledge provides liberation and escape from suffering (i.e. salvation). Gnostic writings therefore place almost no value on the death and resurrection of Christ. Neither can the Gnostic Jesus be the Incarnation of God since flesh was evil and not befitting of God. In the Docetic form of Gnosticism Jesus Christ was an Aeon, part of the divine pleroma. He was pure spirit, a being without a body who pretended to take flesh and walk among us in order to give us the secret knowledge, the “gnosis,” necessary to be freed of the prison that is our bodies.

For example, in the Gnostic Acts of John (late 2nd century) we read: “Sometimes when I would lay hold on him, I met with a material and solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial and as if it existed not at all…. And oftentimes when I walked with him, I desired to see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it” (Acts of John, 93)

As Philip Jenkins writes: “It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . . insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical realities, rather than the random mythologies reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless never-never land” (Hidden Gospels, p. 211).

The ethereal Jesus of the Gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a first century Palestinian Jew. Instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about esoteric matters. For example, in The Letter of Peter to Philip, the apostles ask the resurrected Jesus: “Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma.” These are terms that only the enlightened elite would comprehend, hence their gnostic (gnosis = secret knowledge) character.

Carl Raschke, in The Interruption of Eternity: Modern Gnosticism and the Origins of the New Religious Consciousness (1980), interpreted Gnosticism as a religion of revolt against a perceived oppressive and increasingly irrelevant conventional religion and an intolerable social and political system. “This relationship between Gnostic heterodoxy and social disenfranchisement may be confirmed not only by the fact that his religion finds its greatest appeal during periods of political corruption and the loss of coherent authority, as in the anarchy of Hellenistic times and the later phases of Rome’s decline, but also by the tendency of Gnostic morality to be deviant and frequently antinomian” (p. 34).

There is the misleading notion that the Gnostic writings are pro-woman while New Testament authors anti-woman. In the Da Vinci Code Sir Leigh Teabing states that "Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene" (p. 248). This may explain why Brown never mentions the most famous of all the Gnostic texts, The Gospel of Thomas, nor does he have any of his characters quote its final and probably best known verse. It reads: “Simon Peter said to them: ‘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” (v. 114). This passage and others like it do not fit well with the feminist view of Gnosticism, just as the Church’s positive treatment of women does not compare well with the negative picture often depicted by feminist groups. But the passage does logically follow from true Gnostic beliefs. As Steve Kellmeyer explains: “Since created matter is an evil prison, the act of procreative sex is evil: it traps immortal souls in this torture chamber we call the universe. Marriage is evil because it leads to procreative sex. Women are spiritually lower forms of life because they actually incubate the prisoners; they cooperate with the demi-urge by the very nature of who they are. This is why the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas says women cannot be saved unless they become like men” (The Fifth Column blog, April 18, 2006).

What is attractive in Gnosticism to the modern mind is Elaine Pagels interpretation that some of the early Gnostics believed “that humanity created God – and so, from its own inner potential, discovered for itself the revelation off truth” (The Gnostic Gospels, p. 122). In other words God is not outside or separate from us but a part of us (a popular idea with New Agers). “For gnostics, exploring the psyche became explicitly what it is for many people today implicitly – a religious quest. Some who seek their own interior direction, like the radical gnostics, reject religious institutions as a hindrance to their progress. Others, like the Valentinians, willingly participate in them, although they regard the church more as an instrument of their own self-discovery than as the necessary ‘ark of salvation’” (p. 123). Salvation is not about overcoming sin through Christ but about overcoming ignorance through self-knowledge. In her more recent book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), Pagels says Gnosticism is about being a seeker not a believer (p. 29). She finds orthodox Christianity too rigid, keeping people from making their own choices about good and evil, truth and falsehood.

Pagels and the few promoters of Neo-Gnosticism imbibe the gnosis but not before straining out anything that might offend their modern tastes. The harsh Gnostic dualism of dark matter versus pure spirit is ignored or redefined in psychological terms. The fantastic hierarchic cosmologies of innumerable spiritual being is likewise ignored or reinterpreted in Jungian or psychological terms. In the end it is as Steve Kellmeyer observers: “What all the ‘modern gnostics’ teach – has essentially nothing to do with real Gnosticism. The whole charade is just a verbal shell game played by historians looking for collegial respect and feminist theologians searching for authenticity” (“Verbal Shell Games,” The Fifth Column blog, April 18, 2006)

While it is unlikely that this pseudo-Neo-Gnosticism will ever become very popular its reinterpretation of Christ and ancient Christianity is attractive to that large constituency interested in spirituality without religious dogma, divine communion without moral conversion, self-fulfillment without self-denial. The Gnostic Gospels appear more malleable to personal adaptation, psychologizing, and syncretism with Eastern ideas. Jesus the Teacher of Wisdom is much more appealing to them than Jesus the Lord, Suffering Saviour, and Judge. Their spiritual journey does not so much involve a recognition of the transcendent majesty of God and submitting in obedience and humility to His will as a quest to discover the god within – recognizing and celebrating the divine aspect of oneself.

In the mid-second century Saint Irenaeus, the second bishop of Lyons, had to respond to a growing Gnostic element in his region. His answer was a five-volume treatise entitled On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis (often referred to by the Latin title Adversus Haereses – “Against Heresies”) which he wrote around AD 180. The Gnostics tried to establish the credibility of their esoteric teachings by producing their own gospels and epistles, which claimed as authors New Testament personages (e.g. Philip, Thomas, Judas, and Mary Magdalene). So in refuting their teachings Bishop Irenaeus also had to refute their credentials. For how was the average person to judge the veracity of teachings that came wrapped in texts claiming to be written by disciples and apostles of the Lord? Irenaeus made a common-sense appeal that is as valid today as it was back then. He appealed to history. Irenaeus told his audience to look to those churches commonly known to have been founded by apostles. While Gnostic teachings and writings had obscure origins these churches did not. Being knowingly founded by apostles one can turn to them as trustworthy sources of Christ’s authentic teachings. What they teach (and the texts they esteem) carry the weight of that apostolic authority. Let us end by quoting at length from Irenaeus’ Against Heresies on this matter:

“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (3:3:1).

“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul – that church which has the tradition and the faith with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (3:3:2).

Irenaeus then enumerates the apostolic succession of the bishops of Rome: “The blessed apostles [Peter and Paul], then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate….To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric….” Irenaeus ends with the Bishop of Rome of his own day: “Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate. In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth” (3:3:3).

This tangible historic link to apostolic teaching is re-enforced when Irenaeus mentions having himself met a disciple of one of the apostles. “Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time” (3:3:4).

“Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth, so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life….For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant conversation, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?” (3:4:1).

“The true knowledge is the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient organization of the Church throughout the whole world, and the manifestation of the body of Christ according to the succession of bishops, by which succession the bishops have handed down the Church which is found everywhere” (4:33:8).

RECOMMENDED READING

Steve Kellmeyer, Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, Bridegroom Press, 2004.

Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel, The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code, Ignatius Press, 2004.

Mark Shea and Edward Sri, The Da Vinci Deception: 100 Questions About the Facts and Fiction of The Da Vinci Code, Ascension Press, 2006.

Amy Welborn, de-coding Da Vinci: The facts behind the fiction of The Da Vinci Code, Our Sunday Visitor, 2004.

United States Catholic Bishops:

http://jesusdecoded.com/index.php

Catholic & Protestant Links:

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/DaVinciCode.htm

http://www.geocities.com/frcoulter/davincicode.html

Carl Olson articles:

http://www.carl-olson.com/abouttdvc.html