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The
Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? Brown, for his part, hasn't done much to quiet the controversy, possibly because the discussion has been hugely helpful in selling the book to readers who want to find out what all the fuss is about. But there may be more to it than just book sales. I haven't heard Brown address the controversy directly at length, but based on a few sound bites I've heard on television and read in newspapers, he isn't backing down from some of the book's claims. I know that some of you have read the book, and I've even been asked a few questions about it. But even if you haven't read it, I want to briefly address three of the book's more startling claims because you may find yourself in a conversation with someone who has read it and is wondering about what is and isn't factual. Because I don't have the space here to go into much depth, at the end of this article I'll give you a few resources for further study. CLAIM #1: Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered children. FACT: This is one of the sillier claims from the book — one which is not new, by the way. More than anything else this is probably a plot device, because the entire story is centered on this strange theory. The fact is that there is simply no credible evidence for this claim from any source, anywhere. Brown knows this, and so simply refers to "secret" documents and societies, as well as mystical symbols supposedly embedded in works of religious art, in order to bolster his claim. CLAIM #2: Jesus' divinity wasn't settled by the early church until the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. In the Book: One of Brown's characters (Leigh Teabing) explains to another (Sophie Neveu) that at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, "... many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon. ... Until that moment, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet ... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."
FACT: This claim, too, is relatively easy to dismantle. An objective reading of the New Testament itself clearly shows that Jesus' first followers came to view Him as the divine Son of God following His resurrection. The opening of John's Gospel and much of Paul's writing in particular make clear the understanding that Jesus is divine. Since it is well established historically that all of the New Testament books were written before A.D. 100, Brown's claim simply dismisses the historical record found in the New Testament itself, as well as the evidence surrounding the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the world within the first two centuries following Jesus' death and resurrection. CLAIM #3: The Bible as we know it today is incomplete, and was primarily a product of political maneuvering, not divine inspiration. In the Book: Brown makes several false claims about the biblical writings and their formation into a single book (the Bible), also called the "canon" of Scripture. Here is what Brown writes in a passage of dialogue by "expert" historian Leigh Teabing: "Because Constantine [the Roman emperor of the middle-to-late fourth century] upgraded Jesus' status [from human to divine] almost four centuries after Jesus' death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. ... 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. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned." FACT: This claim deserves a fuller answer than I can give here, but let me address each aspect of the Teabing character's speech briefly. First, as explained previously, Jesus' "status" wasn't "upgraded" to divine either by Constantine or the Council of Nicea. Second, the claim that there were "thousands" of documents chronicling Christ's life by the fourth century, and that many of these had to be "buried" or destroyed to hide the truth, is simply bad historical scholarship. There may have been a large number of copies of original documents, but there weren't vast numbers of separate, original writings on the life of Christ. Third, although Constantine did commission and finance the printing of some of the early Bibles to be published in a single-volume form, historical records clearly show that complete lists of both the Old and New Testament books were recorded much earlier; they were simply not put into a single volume yet. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the books of the Bible were accepted as divinely inspired Scripture and circulated and read by the church long before Constantine. Fourth, the claim that there were other, earlier gospel accounts that were omitted from the Bible is also untrue. While it is true that there were a handful of writings such as The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, they were not taken seriously by early Christians for two reasons: one, they were considered heresy because they diverged greatly from the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, and two, their authorship could not be traced either to an apostle or to someone who knew either Jesus or the apostles personally. Additionally, Brown's claim that these "gospels" were earlier than the New Testament Gospels is simply wrong. Even the earliest of these documents wasn't written until the middle of the second century, while the New Testament books were composed before the end of the first century. All in all, The Da Vinci Code really amounts to nothing more than a mildly entertaining mystery novel. Neither its agenda nor its claims are anything new. Virtually everything Brown has claimed about Jesus, the Bible and Christianity has been around in one form or another for a long time, and has also been dismissed, by those who take the time to look into it carefully, as either very bad scholarship or simple fabrication. The worldview of the book is also not new. It mixes elements of gnosticism (an early church heresy), goddess worship and various forms of New Age spirituality in an attempt to undermine Christian faith. If you want to read the book to see what all the fuss is about, go ahead. Just remember to take it for what it is — pure fiction.
Resources for Further Study:
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With
the huge success of The Da Vinci Code, a novel that has been on
best-seller lists for months now, author Dan Brown set off a firestorm
of controversy about Christianity and the authority of the Bible. Although
the book is clearly fiction, some of Brown's claims seem to blur the line
between fact and fiction, and have left many people, including some Christians,
feeling uncertain about what is true.