CRACKS in
The DaVinci Code
CRACKS
The fictional conspiracy theory offered in best-seller The DaVinci Code has now
captured the popular imagination. Sitting in a local coffee shop you could easily
hear the following conversation, “Wow, Jesus was married?” “I never knew that!”
and “What if it’s really true?” Intermixed with the curiosity seekers, may be
others quietly concerned about the impact of these “new revelations” on the
nature of faith, hope, and the resurrection.
In what appears to be a popular work of historical fiction, Dan Brown tells a
fantastic tale of murder, mystery, and of secret societies whose sole reason for
existence is to cover up a secret—the marriage of Jesus of Nazareth to Mary
Magdalene. As the story goes, Mary and Jesus had a “love child” named Sarah,
who was smuggled out of Palestine to become ancestress of a dynasty of
French kings.
Now, if these outrageous assertions are true—and they are not—then many of
the foundational truths of the Bible should be called into question. In what
follows, we will briefly consider how to go about cracking The DaVinci Code by
means of the acrostic: CRACKS.
CRACKS
Conspiracies, Everybody loves’em
Brown says so at least three times in his own book. But conspiracy theories are
notoriously “cracked.” You see it’s virtually impossible to keep everything and
everyone under wraps. For those who wonder if it might be possible—given
enough power—we can simply ask, “Ever heard of Watergate?”
I’m not a
crook!!
CRACKS
Reality versus “Facts”
Just the
facts Mam!
The deceit of The DaVinci Code begins with the very first word—FACT. In what
follows, Brown primes the pump for an apparently inexhaustible stream of
hoaxes, myths, and distortions. The most important claim—regarding the
existence of certain corroborating documents supposedly discovered in a
French museum—has long been exposed as a hoax in various French books
and a BBC documentary. The secret Priory of Sion, which was supposedly
founded in Jerusalem in 1099 AD, was actually registered in France in 1956.
And the so-called Sangreal documents simply don’t exist in fact or in fiction.
The reality is that all of the “facts” listed are what he acknowledges are
"fabricated" facts (2).
CRACKS
Apostles and Marriage
Where’s
John?
Now, when we look for verses that directly say that Jesus was never married,
there are none to be found. That is because this idea never entered the minds
of the Apostles. However, when addressing the subject of marriage for the
Apostles themselves, the supreme example of Jesus is not even mentioned (1
Corinthians 9:5)(1). One of the more infamous notions of the book is that
Leonardo DaVinci encoded clues to this scandalous secret in his art including
the Last Supper where Mary Magdalene supposedly occupies the place of the
Apostle John. But if this were really true, where was the Apostle John among
the twelve?
CRACKS
Canon Confusion
Another erroneous idea is that the church selected and edited certain books for
inclusion in the Bible and rejected and destroyed others for political reasons.
Thus the Roman Emperor Constantine is accused of assembling the Bible by
rejecting and suppressing the various apocryphal books. The fact is that even
the non-orthodox historian Eusebius reported that the accepted books of the
Bible, or the canon, were known and in use in all the centers of Christianity well
before this time. Today we have tens of thousands of manuscripts to give
indisputable witness to this fact. Though many imagine that the church was the
mother and judge of the canon; historically it was merely the child and witness
of the canon.
CRACKS
Know History
Though this book in written in the genre of “historical fiction,” it is actually a mix
of distorted details and phony facts. For example, Brown characterized the
affirmation of the deity of Christ by the first great Christian council of Nicea as a
“relatively close vote.” In fact, the vote was 300 to 2! Brown also promotes
some extremely perverted interpretations of art and architecture, which are
universally rejected by art critics and historians. He also distorts the lives of
many historical figures: DaVinci, Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Constantine, and the
Templar Knights. And to set the stage for his story, he claims that the
Merovingians founded Paris. Well, Paris was actually was founded seven
centuries earlier.
CRACKS
Scripture
The scriptural account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is well
supported by verifiable facts from secular history (2). The internal evidence in
the scriptures that Jesus never married is beyond dispute. In sharp contrast,
the DaVinci Code is based on long-exposed hoaxes and cultural myths.
CRACKS
Conclusion:
The success of this page-turning work of fiction has now provided Dan Brown a
platform from which to take swipes at the Church and the Bible, only to endorse
“sacred” pagan sexual rituals, Gnosticism, and the postmodern dogma that
“every faith in the world is based on fabrication" (3). In the just released movie
(5-19-06), the by-line is “seek the truth.” Hopefully in seeing these CRACKS
some will see through Dan Brown’s fabricated facts to seek The Truth in Jesus
Christ (John 14:6).
The DaVinci Code
Has Many CRACKS
Conspiracies, Everybody loves’em
Reality vs “Facts”
Apostles and Marriage
Canon Confusion
Know History
Scripture
The DaVinci Code
Coming to a Theater near you!
Know the facts,
Know the CRACKS
CRACKS
Glossary of terms and names:
•Apocrypha: a type of literature often written under a false name and about
things that may or may not be true. We might call this “literary identity theft.”
•Constantine: Constantine the Great (274-337AD), Roman emperor (306-37), the
first Roman ruler to be converted to Christianity.
•Council of Nicea: The first great council of the Christian church (324AD) held in
Nicea in with the purpose to show unity about certain key doctrines. One of the
more important results from this counsel was an agreement explaining how the
already accepted doctrine of the deity of Christ was related to the humanity of
Christ. In short, Christ was fully God and fully man. In contrast, Gnostics
claimed he was essentially spiritual and only appeared to be human.
•Gnosticism: A non-orthodox religious movement that peaked in the second
century and which claimed that the physical world was inherently evil, and taught
that one escaped the physical to the spiritual through secret knowledge, or
Gnosis.
•Holy Blood, Holy Grail: A book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry
Lincoln who brought a lawsuit against Dan Brown for “lifting the whole
architecture” for The DaVinci Code out of their book.
CRACKS
Glossary of terms and names:
•Mary Magdalene: One of the first followers of Jesus (Luke 8:2). She was never
regarded as one of the Apostles in the Bible or by any other historical source.
•Merovingians: A French royal family name used in The DaVinci Code that has
nothing whatever to do with the premise of the book.
•Priory of Sion: A supposedly ancient secret society that was actually registered
in France in 1956, for which historical claims were exposed as a hoax by French
and BBC researchers.
•Sangreal documents: Fictional documents described in The DaVinci Code that
supposedly reveal that there was a bloodline (sang) for the royal (real) family of
the Merovingians.
•Templar Knights: A military-religious order that protected pilgrims in travels to
the Holy Land and later became a banking institution.
References:
1. The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction, by Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier.
2. Video, Who Is This Jesus?: Examining the Truth about Jesus, D. James Kennedy, and Coral Ridge
Ministries. From contemporary, secular history we can learn at least twenty five different facts about the life
of Jesus that confirm the New Testament historical account of his life.
3. The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown, Doubleday, NY, 2003, p.341.