|
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.
- Conspiracies,
Everybody Loves’em. Brown says so at least three times in his
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?”
- Reality vs. “FACT”. 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 re-invented by Pierre Plantard 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).
- Apostles and Marriage. 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?
- 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 she was the child and witness of the canon.
- 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.
- 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 which are universally
rejected by reputable historians.
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).
Conspiracies, Everybody Loves'em
Reality vs. “FACTS”
Apostles and Marriage
Canon Confusion
Know History
Scripture
Tim Nordgren,
5-21-06
Glossary
of terms and names:
PowerPoint version of CRACKS in The DaVinci Code
References:
-
The DaVinci Code: Fact
or Fiction, by Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier.
-
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.
-
The DaVinci Code, by
Dan Brown, Doubleday, NY, 2003, p.341.
Soon
the The DaVinci Code movie will be in a theater near you!
Know the facts, know the CRACKS.
Home
|
|