THE
DA VINCI CODE (PART 3)
One might wonder what else could possibly
be said about a book that denies the Deity of Christ and portrays Jesus as
wedded to Mary Magdalene? Dan Brown has already exalted the “goddess”
theory—that there was a time when the earth was a place of peace and harmony,
when human beings were content to “make love, not war.” Those are not his words, but he rather sounds
like a 60’s Hippie who never quite got over Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With” (1970).
At any rate, no evidence can be cited for
“goddess” theology. Some cultures may
have enjoyed temporary peace, but such hardly ever prevails for long. In fact, prior to the Flood, the earth was
filled with violence (Gen. 6:11). We
read of wars again not long after the
What more can there possibly be to
discuss? There remains the need to
consider Brown’s attacks on the Bible, his numerous inaccuracies, and his
complete misunderstanding of what faith
is.
Faith
Professor Teabing
alleges that the Sangreal documents (which are never
uncovered in the novel for obvious reasons—they do not exist) “tell the other side of the Christ story” (256),
by which Brown means that the apostles rewrote history, all but expunging Mary
Magdalene from it and making Christ Divine.
“In the end, which side of the story you believe
becomes a matter of faith and personal exploration” (256). Does this sound as though he is saying a
person can believe what he wants? More
will be said about these alleged documents in the “errors” section, but page
341 also deals with “faith.” Langdon
says he is not certain that these documents, if they were to be discovered,
should be revealed to the world.
Sophie is stupefied (along with the
reader) at such an attitude and protests: “But you told me the New Testament is
based on fabrications” (341). So why
would Langdon not want the truth about the “greatest cover-up in history” to be
known?
Langdon smiled. “Sophie, every
faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith—acceptance
of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove (341).
Brown does not define faith here—but rather fantasy
(based on fabrication). Faith is believing
what cannot be proved—but we choose to believe anyway? When people depart from reality, are they not
usually put in special facilities for treatment? The apostle John did not operate on the basis
of any such foolishness. He provided a
reason for writing about the life of Jesus:
And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His
disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you
may have life in His name (John 20:30-31).
John wrote so that people would have a
written copy of the evidence that
others observed firsthand. Nowhere does
John or any other New Testament writer encourage people to accept what they
imagine to be true. The reason people believed
in the Deity of Christ in the first century was that the miracles of Jesus and
the apostles could not be refuted. Even
the enemies of Christianity could not deny that notable miracles were done
(Acts
The “hero” of the tale then argues that Jesus
walking on water and the virgin birth are allegories. Really? Of what? An allegory is a representation of a deeper
truth. Exactly what does walking on
water correspond to? What is a deeper
truth than being born of a virgin?
Langdon opines: “Religious allegory has become part of the fabric of
reality. And living in that reality
helps millions of people cope and be better people.” Again Sophie protests: “But it appears their
reality is false” (342). Such a
contradiction is no problem for Langdon.
These comments are nothing but New Age
tripe—a version of “create your own reality.”
Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or He was not. If He was, He is clearly the Son of God. If not, then He was just a man like all other
religious figures. The idea that people
should be allowed to believe whatever they want in religion is ludicrous—even
within the context of the novel. The
albino killer is deeply devout. Should
he be allowed to believe whatever he wants, though he murders innocent people? Are Muslims making the world a better place
as they seek to kill Christians and Buddhists and anyone else who disagrees
with them? Truth is the only thing that
will help mankind. Satan knows this
fact. For that reason he continually
spreads lies, such as that believing whatever a person wants is all right or
that faith is built only upon wishful thinking.
Another insult to Christianity can be
found in the author’s apparent belief in astrology and its implications. Professor Teabing
points out that the age of Pisces, the fish, which many have associated with
Jesus, recently ended (267). According to him, “the Piscean ideal believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because
man is incapable of thinking for himself” (268). Marvelous!
Those who are Christians do not know how to think, according to BAD
WRONG.
Apparently, Moses was misplaced in
history, living 1500 years before the Age of Pisces. Since he delivered God’s law to the people,
he evidently thought that men needed to be told
what to do by higher powers. All mankind
needs to know God’s laws: we think, reason, and apply within their
context. Eve’s thinking on her own
(against the commandment) is what brought sin into the world. She believed Satan’s lies.
So, under Pisces the world has been
dominated by intense religious fervor (as though it did not exist prior to
Christ), but now we have entered the Age of Aquarius (as heralded by the Fifth
Dimension back in 1969). In this age man
will “learn the truth and be able to
think for himself” (268). Actually, if
one abides in Jesus’ Word, he shall know the truth (John
But since Dan Brown and his characters are
convinced that they know the truth, as part of this new Age of Aquarius, he
should be willing to pit his theories and assumptions in public debate against
those of us who have never learned to think for ourselves and remain lost in
the Age of Pisces. Brown has constructed
nothing more than a house of cards, which is easily collapsible. He presents no new truth for mankind.
Errors, Blunders, and Misrepresentations
Several have put together lists of
inaccuracies. Alex McFarland wrote “The
Top Ten Errors found in The Da Vinci Code, and Stanley E. Porter wrote “The Da Vinci Code,
Conspiracy Theory and Biblical Canon.”
These will be cited in the brief list furnished below. Each quotation will be referred to by the
author’s last name.
1. Brown
alleges that the early Christian Church “needed to convince the world that the
mortal prophet Jesus was a Divine
being” (244). Why? If they knew He was Divine, then alleged
“gospels” to the contrary were false and had to be rejected. If they knew that Jesus was not Divine, then all of these individuals conspired to defraud
the world; thus they were evil men. Do
evil men teach the lofty principles found in the New Testament?
Furthermore,
Brown claims that the
Christian Scriptures "evolved through countless translations, additions,
and revisions” (231). This is simply a
misrepresentation calculated to undermine the validity of the Word. The Bible was translated into various
languages and sent out into other nations; is there something wrong with
that? The Bible has always been
available in various versions, but we have accurate translations today from the
original Greek rather than centuries of renderings. God possesses the power to preserve His
saving gospel.
Brown charges that Constantine and others tampered
with and changed the Scriptures to promote patriarchal concepts and to demonize
the sacred feminine (200-201). This
whole construct assumes that God never had anything to do with the message in
the Bible—that men wrote it down and men changed it. Whatever happened to “All Scripture is given
by inspiration of God” (2 Tim.
Brown, however, outfoxed himself. If Constantine and others fiddled with the
New Testament, that would be one thing, but the author goes so far as to allege
that they rewrote Genesis as well.
Sadly, Christian philosophy decided to embezzle the female’s creative
power by ignoring biological truth and making man the Creator. Genesis tells us that Eve was created from Adam’s
rib. Woman became an offshoot of man. And a sinful one at
that. Genesis was the beginning of the end for the Goddess (238).
For Christians to rewrite Genesis is a
logical impossibility. All of the Old
Testament was translated into the Greek no later than 250 B.C. If Christians had in any way tried to revise
Genesis, there would have been a battle royal—and rightly so. For 300 years the world could read Genesis
1:26-28 in the Greek. No one could
possibly have tampered with all the extant manuscripts. Such a charge against early Christians stems
from massive ignorance.
2.
3. The
Council of Nicea did not confer Deity on Jesus.
Porter writes that the issue was “not whether or not Jesus was divine, but…what
it meant that he was divine” (6). As
this series of articles showed earlier, the New Testament writers all
considered Jesus the Son of God.
4. Brown
claims: “Fortunately for historians…some of the gospels that
5. Brown
again asserts: “The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman
emperor Constantine the Great" (232) McFarland replies that
6. Brown also referred to the Nag Hammadi Documents, which contained some of the Gnostic Gospels,
such as the Gospel of Thomas. These were
supposed to have been repressed by
Perhaps most problematic however is
saying 114, which is not referred to in The
Da Vinci Code. This is no surprise, since this
saying seems to undermine the very hypothesis that Brown wishes to assert….
Simon Peter says to his fellow disciples that Mary should go out from among
them, because women are not worthy of the life. Jesus responds by saying that
he will lead Mary, “so that I will make her male, that
she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For
every woman who makes herself a male will enter the
Apparently, Jesus was not contemplating
marriage to Mary Magdalene after all.
The Final Blasphemy
Probably, one
thinks he has heard everything by now, but this last charge by BAD WRONG is
utterly incomprehensible and vicious.
Langdon’s Jewish students always
looked flabbergasted when he first told that the early Jewish tradition
involved ritualistic sex. In
the
These words
constitute blasphemy and are an offense and outrage to both Jews and
Christians. Anyone ought to seriously
wonder what drugs Brown imbibes, for surely he could not have written such vile
heresy while sober. What “early Jews”
are those who allegedly believe this corruption of holiness? Porter writes that “the term Shekinah or its
equivalent is not used in the Old Testament or the New Testament,” but was used
later in an attempt to disprove what Brown claims. Rabbis affirmed that “what dwells in the
temple is not God’s mate but God himself” (3).
Brown must have
confused the Jewish Temple with the
The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact
derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the
pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah (309).
Porter
demonstrates that Brown’s etymology is bogus.
The reader should ask, “How does Brown know the “pre-Hebrew name of Eve”? What language was that? But besides all that, YHWH did not have vowels
in it in the Hebrew. It was decided to
infuse these four consonants with the vowels from another word translated
“lord”—adonai. Thus, the pronunciation became Jehovah
(3). Therefore, the word could not come
from the union of two other words as Brown describes.
The Title of the Book
Brown also makes many claims concerning Leonardo
Da Vinci, which the reader cannot know to be
true. In fact, considering his track
record on other bits of “history,” they are doubtful. He claims that Da
Vinci was “a flamboyant homosexual and worshipper of Na-ture-s ture’s
divine order…” (45). Da Vinci, theoretically, incorporated tributes to
his own beliefs in his paintings to thumb his nose at the Church (46). In The
Last Supper, he supposedly painted Mary Magdalene next to Christ (242-43). Close scrutiny does indicate a somewhat feminine
face. McFarland writes: “John's appearance
reflects the way Florentine artists traditionally depicted John. (See The Truth Behind the Da
Vinci Code, Richard Abanes, pp. 71-72.)
Considering all
the false
information contained in The Da Vinci Code, the reader should be asking himself, “Is
there anything of a historical nature that I can believe in this book?” It would be best to remember the words at the
top of the copyright page of the large print edition: “This is a work of
fiction.” This caveat applies not only
to the characters but to the background information and alleged historical
insights as well. Brown is especially
not to be trusted with anything that relates to the Bible.
Kevin V.
Rutherford’s statement near the opening of his excellent chapter on The Da Vinci Code
from last year’s Power lectures, Why Should I
Believe the Bible? serves as a fitting summary
here: “Dan Brown’s book elevates paganism, attacks Christianity, perverts history,
distorts the facts, and promotes sexual immorality” (458). Now, that assessment is accurate.
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