Transcript Introduction: Major Questions about The DaVinci Code

The Da Vinci
Code: Truth?
Fiction? Both?
By Doug Krueger
5/27/06
A Novel, A Movie, A Controversy
• The Da Vinci Code is a
mystery novel and now a
movie.
• The author is Dan Brown.
The book was published
in April 2003 and has
remained a best-seller.
• The movie based on the
book had the second most
successful worldwide
opening on 19 May 2006.
• Why are so many
Christian believers upset
about a work of fiction?
Look:
Now a video game too!
The Plot
• Jacques Saunière,
curator of the
Louvre, is murdered
by a Catholic albino
in his own museum.
• Side note: Albino
advocates are not
happy about this.
Actor Paul Bettany as Silas
• The murder victim was
a DaVinci aficionado,
and leaves clues
about his murderer’s
identity and motives in
DaVinci-related,
puzzling ways as he
expires. Sort of like a
Batman villain in
reverse.
• It was probably the
most protracted death
since Leonard Nimoy
in The Search for
Spock.
The Clues Blues
The Hero & Heroine
• Robert Langdon,
Professor of Religious
Symbology at Harvard,
becomes a suspect.
• Sophie Neveu, a
French cryptographer
for the Judicial Police,
helps Langdon work to
prove his innocence.
Clockwise from left: Tom Hanks as
Robert Langdon, Mona Lisa, and
Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu
Gandalf Helps
• Sir Leigh Teabing,
an expert on Holy
Grail related
matters, joins in
the hunt for the
solution.
• Together, they
reveal many
startling bits of
information.
Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing
(He was
Gandalf in
Lord of the
Rings)
The DaVinci Code purports to
base its plot on specific facts
that are at odds with
mainstream Christian beliefs.
“All descriptions of artwork,
architecture, documents,
and secret rituals in this
novel are accurate.”
The novel also portrays the
Catholic organization Opus
Dei as a secretive,
manipulative, aggressive, CIAlike arm of the Vatican.
A page from The
DaVinci Code
The Source
• Frenchman Pierre Plantard
wrote a book about the
descendants of Jesus that
was never published.
• In 1967, Gérard de Sède’s
rewrite of that work was
published as L'Or de Rennes
(later Le Trésor Maudit).
• In 1982 Henry Lincoln,
Michael Baigent, and Richard
Leigh wrote The Holy Blood
and the Holy Grail was based
on the BBC documentary of
their work.
“It is typical of my unregenerable
soul that I can only see this as a
marvellous theme for a novel.” —
Anthony Burgess, in The
Observer.
Lawsuit
• Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh of The Holy
Blood and the Holy Grail sued Dan Brown
claiming he plagiarized from their work in
creating The DaVinci Code.
• They lost on appeal.
The Code Thesis
Here are five claims from The DaVinci Code that many
Christians dispute. Let us call these and supporting claims
the “Code Thesis”:
1. Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children. Mary
Magdalene and the bloodline are the real Holy Grail.
2. The Roman Catholic Church worked to suppress this
information because it wanted to subvert divine feminine
aspects and emphasize divine masculine characteristics.
3. The descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene exist today
as the French Merovingian royal family.
4. Evidence of the real Holy Grail was discovered in 1099 and a
group called The Priory of Sion was formed to guard the
secret and protect the bloodline.
5. Leaders of the Priory of Sion such as Leonardo DaVinci
sometimes left clues about this secret in works of art and
architecture.
Let’s survey the evidence.
The Priory of Sion
• Much of the evidence for the Code
Thesis depends on the existence of
the secret Priory of Sion.
• This organization allegedly guards
the evidence for Jesus’ marriage and
bloodline and allegedly created the
famous Knights Templar as their
military wing.
• Father Bérenger
Saunière, who ran a
French church in
Rennes-le-Château
renovated the church
well beyond his means.
• It was discovered that he
was taking money for
more prayer services
than he could perform.
• He was sued for
“trafficking in masses,”
resigned his priesthood,
and died penniless.
The Rich
Priest
Fr. Bérenger
Saunière
(1852–1917)
Pierre
Plantard
(1920-2000)
• Pierre Plantard was a
professional con man with a
history of creating fictional
organizations.
• Plantard held that Saunière
got rich by discovering the
Priory’s documentation of the
real Holy Grail and
blackmailing the Church.
• Plantard’s past included jail
time for fraud and
embezzlement.
The
Grandmaster?
• In 1975 parchments
known as Les Dossiers
Secrets were discovered
in Paris’s Bibliothèque
Nationale identifying
“Grandmasters” (leaders)
of the Priory of Sion,
including Sir Isaac
Newton, Botticelli, Victor
Hugo, and Leonardo da
Vinci.
• Pierre Plantard is identified
in the secret papers as the
most recent Grandmaster
of the Priory of Sion by
virtue of his ties to the
Merovingian royal family.
Priory of Sion--Founded in 1956!
• The Priory was really founded in 1956 by Pierre
Plantard and Andre Bonhomme. The Priory’s
purpose was to promote the “Defense and Liberty
of Low-Cost Housing.”
• The Priory of Sion had nothing to do with the Holy
Grail, or related matters, according to co-founder
Bonhomme.
• There is no evidence linking Plantard’s Priory
organization with any ancient group.
Plantard retracted his extravagant
Priory claims after critiques by
legitimate scholars.
In the 1980s he revised the list of
Grandmasters and insisted that the
earlier list was written while he was on
acid. On the new list, Plantard’s son
Thomas was the latest grandmaster.
In 1993, Plantard claimed that a
prominent politician’s dead son was a
grandmaster. Legal action ensued.
Papers were found in Plantard’s
possession declaring him the true King
of France.
In court, Plantard confessed that all of
it was a hoax.
Priory of
Sion Deux
LSD Molecule
• But what of the “clues” in
works of art, such as
DaVinci’s The Last Supper?
• If there is no ancient Priory of
Sion, there is no known
evidence that Leonardo
DaVinci or any other alleged
“Grandmaster” was in a
position to determine whether
or not Jesus was married.
• According to the Code
Thesis, the person usually
identified as the apostle John
in “The Last Supper” is really
Mary Magdalene.
The Clues?
Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
Da Vinci’s The Last Supper
(1495-1498)
On the wall of the refectory of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria
delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.
Detail from The Last Supper
• This is the
character
portrayed as Mary
Magdalene in The
DaVinci Code.
• Mary Magdalene,
or John, “the
apostle Jesus
loved” (Jn. 13:23)?
Detail before restoration
DaVinci’s John the Baptist
Depicting
men as less
than macho
was not
uncommon.
1513-16. Musée du Louvre, Paris
Del Castagno, 1447
Andrea del
Castano,
1390-1457,
Florentine
painter
The Apostle John
Da Ponte, 1542
Giacomo
da Ponte,
1510-1592,
Venetian
painter
The Apostle John
Domenico Ghirlandaio,1449-1494,
Florentine painter
If John the
Apostle was
typically
represented
as effeminate,
perhaps The
Last Supper
does not
depict a
woman at all.
Ghirlandaio’s Last
Supper,1486
The “Divine Feminine”
• The Code Thesis
also asserts that
the “V” shape
between the figures
is the sign of the
“divine feminine.”
• The opposite, a “∧”
represents the
masculine.
The “M” Word
• The Code Thesis
also suggests that
an “M” can be found
in the figures.
• The “M” can be for
Mary, Magdalene,
or Marriage.
• This is called “data
mining” and is
useless as
evidence, since
many shapes could
be found in the
bodies.
I’m Famous!
“Doug” is in The Last Supper too!
DaVinci’s Mona Lisa
Painted between
1503 and 1506.
Louvre, Paris.
“…Mona Lisa is
neither male nor
female. It carries a
subtle message of
androgyny…that
…is DaVinci’s
little secret, and
the reason for
Mona Lisa’s
knowing smile.”—
The DaVinci Code
This is mere
speculation.
A Cover-up?
Flavius Valerius
Constantinus
(285? – 337 CE)
•Did the Roman Catholic
Church work to subvert divine
feminine aspects and
emphasize divine masculine
characteristics?
•The Code Thesis asserts that
the Emperor Constantine,
specifically, commissioned new
versions of the New Testament
books that omitted mention of
a Jesus-Mary relationship and
slanted the emphasis toward
the masculine.
“Constantine and his male
successors successfully
converted the world from a
matriarchal paganism to
patriarchal Christianity by
waging a campaign of
propaganda that demonized
the sacred feminine,
obliterating the goddess
from modern religion
forever.” The DaVinci Code,
page 124.
The Matriarchal Claim is
Unsupported
• Most religions have always
been strongly anti-woman.
• In the Greek and Roman
pantheons, the leaders of the
gods were always men.
• That religions of the world
were originally matriarchal is
a discredited thesis.
Venus of
Willendorf 2030,000 years old
Oppression of Fellow Believers
• Constantine asked bishops to convene in
Arelate (Arles) in 314 CE to resolve theological
disputes with the Donatists, who emphasized
mysticism and the separation of church and
state. He oppressed the Donatist view.
• There is no evidence that anti-feminine views
were a concern of Constantine’s actions here.
• Athanasius of Alexandria compiled the first list of
currently accepted 27 NT books in 367, after
Constantine.
• The canon of the Bible was not official until 405
CE when the Pope accepts the canon and
ratifies it.
Was Jesus God Before
Constantine?
• Did Constantine skew the view of Jesus to
make him divine?
• The Church DID alter the text of New
Testament works to oppose the adoptionist
view of Jesus.
• Adoptionist—Jesus became the son of
God at his baptism.
• These alterations did not begin or end with
Constantine, however.
Was Jesus Married?
• Rabbis were usually married.
• However, John the Baptist and Paul were
not married.
• The New Testament documents AND the
apocrypha do not state whether Jesus was
married.
Paul’s Mentions Married Leaders
1Cor 9:3-5 (NIV) This is my defense to
those who sit in judgment on me. Don't
we have the right to food and drink?
Don't we have the right to take a
believing wife along with us, as do the
other apostles and the Lord's brothers
and Cephas {That is, Peter}?
Or is it only I and Barnabas who must
work for a living?
Scriptural Clues
• In John 20:17 Jesus tells Mary M. not to
touch him (KJV) or not to hold him (RSV),
because he has not yet ascended.
• The actual word in the original Greek is
haptomai, "to attach oneself to," and is
related to hapto meaning "to fasten" and
also "to set on fire."
The Gospel of Mary
• In the Gospel of Mary, Peter says to Mary,
"Sister, we know that the Savior loved you
more than the rest of women. Tell us the
words of the Savior that you remember,
which you know [but] we do not. Nor have
we heard them."
• In this Gospel, Mary M. gets information
that the other apostles don’t get.
The Gospel of Philip
• “And the companion of the ... Mary
Magdalene [... loved] her more than [all]
the disciples [and used to] kiss her often
on her ... The rest of the ... they said, ‘Why
do you love her more than us?’”
• Jesus seems to have been more
affectionate to Mary M. than to the other
apostles, to the point of jealousy.
Dating the Gnostic Gospels
• The Nag Hammadi scrolls, from which we get
most of these apocryphal gospels, are from the
4th century.
• Since they are probably copies, they may be
even earlier.
• The Nag Hammadi Library in English states that
Philip was “probably written in Syria in the
second half of the third century C.E.”
• The Gospel of Mary is probably about the early
third century.
A Basic Problem
• The canonical (accepted) Gospels are
much earlier than those of Philip and Mary.
• If Jesus had been married, one would
expect that early traditions would have
reflected that.
• The same would be true if Jesus and Mary
M. had had children.
Another Problem
• Discussion of the Gospels all too often assumes
that they are historical. They are not.
• Even the canonical Gospels are anonymous, as
are the apocryphal ones.
• The actual details of Jesus’ life are mostly
unknown.
• Since little or nothing of Jesus’ life can be known
with certainty, Jesus could have been married,
but this hypothesis must be relegated to mere
speculation.
The Final Verdict?
• While The DaVinci Code has
many correct statements about
ancient texts, many of its basic
premises are false.
• The book is a fascinating read.
• Most people seem to oppose The
DaVinci Code for the wrong
reasons.
• It is not blasphemy, it is fiction.