These are some of the most frequently mentioned issues raised by The Da Vinci Code, with a brief summary of related information. The footnotes refer to sources for further reading. The sources are historians[1],[2] and do not include conservative Evangelical or Catholic sources.
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DVC “Facts” ”All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” (The Da Vinci Code, “Facts” page) |
History “But there is more fiction than fact, not just in the plot of The Da Vinci Code but also in its discussion of the early documentary record about Jesus.” (Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, p. 100) |
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Emperor Constantine influenced or even directed what books should go into the Bible (p. 231, pb 251). He financed a new Bible to support his political agenda (p. 234, pb 254).
[“pb” refers to page numbers in the 2004 paperback edition] |
The New Testament was agreed upon over a period of several centuries.[3] Church leaders did not “authorize” a list of acceptable documents. They accepted the ones that were written by eye-witnesses (or their close associates) and which were in common use among many churches. They rejected those that didn’t fit those criteria.[4] In 331 Constantine asked Eusebius for fifty copies to give to churches. Since by then the list was pretty well established, there was no issue of choosing which books to include.[5] |
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The man Jesus was only considered divine after a close vote at the Council of Nicea, run by Constantine (p. 233, pb 252) |
The council was not about if Jesus was divine, but how? Was He always divine, or did God make Him divine? The “close vote” consisted of only two who supported the “God made Him divine” position out of over 200 leaders.[6] |
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Leonardo included clues, like Mary Magdalene in The Last Supper (p.243, pb 263) |
Comparison with other Renaissance art shows young men were typically portrayed as effeminate.[7] But, even if the painting shows Mary, that demonstrates that Leonardo had an unorthodox idea 1400+ years after the actual events. It says nothing about the validity of his idea related to the actual facts of Jesus’ time.[8] |
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Constantine and the Church suppressed many documents (such as more than eighty other Gospels; p. 231, pb 251) that showed the human, non-divine Jesus (p. 234, pb 254) and his marriage to Mary Magdalene (p. 245, pb 264). |
There are about two dozen known Gnostic gospels.[9] They portray a more mystical, supernatural Jesus (at age 5 creating clay birds and making them fly away, or striking playmates dead and then raising them again).[10] The NT Gospels show both the divine and human Jesus, who was angry, got hungry, and couldn’t do miracles in the face of unbelief.[11] No text (NT or Gnostic) mentions Jesus marriage. The word alleged to mean “spouse” is commonly used as “friend” or “companion”, from the same root word as “fellowship” (koinonia). |
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Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire for political unity, since “Christianity was on the rise” (p 232, pb 251). |
Constantine did not mandate Christianity, he just made it legal. Rome’s political unity was enhanced by the “anything goes” view of all the different religions. Christians did not pose a threat to that unity.[12] Christians (like Jews) did not fit this pattern and were therefore persecuted (on the charge of atheism since they didn’t accept all the gods). Constantine made Christianity legal, and ordered the return of property that had been confiscated during the persecutions. Other religions were still permitted.[13] |
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The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts show the views of Jesus that the state/church conspiracy suppressed, including the true grail story (p. 234, pb 254). |
The DSS are Jewish with no mention of Jesus.[14] The Nag Hammadi texts are much later than the NT documents and include a more fantastic, legendary depiction of Jesus, like a giant Jesus emerging from the tomb, followed by a walking, talking cross.[15] None of the documents mention the Holy Grail.[16] |
Copyright 2006 by Michael Wiebe
[1] Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, by Bart D. Ehrman, Oxford University Press, 2004. The author is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
[2] The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code, by Sharan Newman, Berkley Publishing Group, 2005. The author is a member of the Medieval Academy and a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Barbara.
[3] The historical reality is that the emperor Constantine had nothing to do with the formation of the canon of scripture: he did not choose which books to include or exclude, and he did not order the destruction of the Gospels that were left out of the canon (there were no imperial book burnings). The formation of the New Testament canon was instead a long and drawn-out process that began centuries before Constantine and did not conclude until long after he was dead. (Ehrman, p. 74) What is interesting [about Paul’s quoting of scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18] is that he quotes two passages: one from the Law of Moses and the other from the words of Jesus….[Peter] refers to the false teachers who misinterpret the “letters of Paul,” he says, “just as they do with the rest of Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16). My point is that near the end of the first century and the beginning of the second – hundreds of years before Constantine – Christians were already accepting some books as canonical authority, and choosing which books should be so accepted. (Ehrman, p. 79)
[4] Once Jesus died and was no longer available to give his apostles instructions, there needed to be collections of his teachings for posterity, and once the apostles themselves had begun to die off, their own writings needed to be collected as a repository of true teachings to be followed. This was especially the case because of the enormous diversity of Christianity…. There were Christians who believed in one God, but others said there were two Gods (the God of the Old Testament and the God of Jesus); There were Christians who said the world had been created by the one true God, but others indicated that it had been created by a secondary deity; yet others said it was created by an evil being. There were Christians who maintained that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine; another group said he was so human he could not be divine; yet others said he was so fully divine he could not be human; others said he was two beings – the human Jesus and the divine Christ…. Each of these groups had sacred books that they claimed came from Jesus’ own apostles … and insisted that these books should be accepted as scriptural authority for Christians wanting to know what to believe and how to behave. The battle for scripture really was a battle – a conflict among competing groups of Christians…. Contrary to what Leigh Teabing said, this was not a decision rendered by the emperor Constantine. It was rendered by early Christian leaders. (Ehrman, p.80-81)
[5] In his Life of Constantine Eusebius tells us that in the year 331 the emperor made a request of Eusebius personally for fifty manuscripts of the Christian Bible to be produced for churches that he was having built…. The order for Bibles did not involve any decision on Constantine’s part concerning which Gospels were to be excluded (those that stressed Jesus’ humanity) or which included (those stressing only his divinity)… Constantine needed some Bibles for his churches and he ordered them from Eusebius, whose home church was well equipped to provide them. Their contents were not a matter of concern, as both Constantine and Eusebius evidently knew which books would be appropriately included in these Bibles. (Ehrman, p. 91-92)
[6] Contrary to what Leigh Teabing asserts, it was not a particularly close “vote.” The vast majority of the 200 or 250 bishops present sided with the view of Athanasius against Arius, which was eventually to become the view of Christianity at large (although the debates continued for decades even after the council.) And more important, contrary to Teabing, it was not a vote on Jesus’ divinity. Christians for 250 years had agreed that Jesus was divine. The only question was how he was divine, and that was what the Council of Nicea was called to resolve. (Ehrman, p. 23)
[7] Looking at the restored Last Supper, the figure of John looks feminine also. However, I think that a lot of other male figures of Italian Renaissance art look very feminine or, at best, androgynous. Leonardo’s sketch for the head of Saint James seems like a Pre-Raphaelite woman. His painting of John the Baptist, which was one he took with him to France, is definitely of a young man, but with long curls and a delicate face. Raphael and other Italian painters of the time also depicted young men as androgynous. (Newman, p. 134-135)
[8] This sort of speculation is just that. None of the gospels that we have, including the apocryphal ones, say that Mary, or anyone else besides Jesus and the Apostles, was at that dinner. (Newman, p. 132)
[9] The reality is that we don’t even know how many other Gospels were written; we certainly do not have eighty available to us today, although there are at least a couple of dozen that we know about. (Ehrman, p. 49)
[10] Most of these other Gospels portray Jesus in even more divine terms that do the four in the canon, and in none of the extra-canonical Gospels is there any reference to Jesus having been married, let alone married to his follower Mary Magdalene. (Ehrman, p. 49)
[11] It is the Gospels of the New Testament that portray Jesus as human, and the other Gospels go much further in portraying him as a superhuman being. (Ehrman, p.45)
[12] This gives far too much credit to the strength of Christianity prior to Constantine’s conversion, making it seem as though Christians were nearly as numerous as pagans and were constantly on the attack and counterattack. The reality is quite different. Christians prior to Constantine in the early fourth century were a small minority with the empire and were subject to persecution by the overwhelming majority groups – the pagans and their governmental authorities. (Ehrman, p. 5)
[13] The next year [313], Constantine arranged with Licinius, his colleague who had control of the empire in the east, to proclaim and empire-wide cessation of hostilities against the Christians. This involved issuing an edict, known to history as the Edict of Milan, that provided for freedom of religion for all people in the empire, Christian, pagan, and Jew, to worship whichever god(s) they chose in ways appropriate to them. It was this – not a council called twelve years later in Nicea – that brought an end to the pagan-Christian conflicts. (Ehrman, p. 11)
[14] The Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain any Gospels, or in fact any documents that speak of Christ or Christianity at all; they are Jewish. Their initial discovery was in 1947, not in the 1950s. (Ehrman, p. 26)
[15] If anything, Jesus is portrayed as more divine in the Nag Hammadi sources than he is in the Gospels of the New Testament. (Ehrman, p. 26)
[16] Neither [the Nag Hammadi documents] nor the Dead Sea Scrolls ever speak of the Grail story. (Ehrman, p.26)