In his best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown weaves a story that calls into question some of the basic tenants of the Christian faith. People are asking questions and wondering if what Dan Brown calls “faction” is really the truth. Has the church been hiding secrets all along to remain in power? Dan Brown writes, “ALL DESCRIPTIONS OF ARTWORK, ARCHITECTURE, DOCUMENTS, AND SECRET RITUALS IN THIS NOVEL ARE ACCURATE” (FACT PAGE). This comment begs examination.

It is not the purpose of this article to challenge every point Brown makes. After reading the book and some of the responses to it, I have come to see three questions that I believe need to be addressed. 1.) Did Jesus consort with Mary Magdalene and have a baby? 2.) How much influence did Constantine have over the formulation of the Bible? And, most importantly, 3.) Did Jesus, his closest followers and the early Church really believe that He was a great man - and nothing more?

Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Brown uses two historically unreliable gnostic documents, The Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Mary, to “prove” that Magdalene was Christ’s "companion," or sexual partner. According to the DaVinci Code, this is significant because Mary and her child by Jesus (and their descendents) were all about bringing back the goddess cult of the ancient world. In Brown’s opinion it was the woman-hating Church that suppressed this goddess worship and tried to eliminate the divine feminine. Brown goes so far as to say, the Grail of medieval lore is symbolic of the lost truth of the goddess principle. “When Christianity came along,” Brown says, “the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be ‘searching for the chalice’ were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine." (The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)
Suffice it to say that the claim that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter with her is completely unfounded. Historian, Bart Ehrman makes these observations:
1. The notion that Jesus married Mary originally comes from the book, “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” by Michael Baigent, Richard, Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. This was a sensationalist book that was thoroughly discredited by historians. (180-181)
2. The word used for “companion” in the gospel of Phillip does not mean spouse, it is not even in Aramaic. (181)
3. Not a single reputable source indicates that Jesus was married, let alone to Mary Magdalene. (183)

Just because the Scriptures have been accepted by the Church is not ample ground to throw them out. It is the consensus of nearly every reputable historian that the Bible remains the most accurate historical document for finding the truth about first century Christianity.

So, how was the Bible formed?

In The Da Vinci Code the heroine, Sophie Neveu, receives a quick lesson (from Brown’s scholarly cat’s-paw, Leigh Teibing) about how the Bible was put together. During this conversation in Teabing’s study, Sophie is told that The Roman Emperor, Constantine, was the driving force behind vetting and collating the books of the Bible. In summary, it is asserted that Constantine wanted to unite the empire. Being a shrewd leader, he decided to align himself with Christianity because he saw that it was going to be more powerful than paganism.

To unite his empire, however, Constantine needed more than mortal authority; he needed Jesus to become divine. So Constantine collected a text that supported that Jesus was more than a man. He called the council of Nicea and put Jesus’ divinity up for a vote. After the council of Nicea, “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.” (234)

While it is true that Constantine did call for the council at Nicea and that he did request 50 copies of the Bible for a church he was building in Constantinople, Constantine did not tell Eusibius which books to include. The process of selecting the contents of the New Testament was a long and arduous process. Brown is correct when he says, “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven” (231). However, the assertion that Constantine formed the contents of the Bible in order to establish his power over his kingdom is not accurate.

The Bible was in the process of being compiled long before Constantine was born and it was not finalized until long after his death. About 140 AD a man named Marcion began preaching that there were two gods, the vengeful god of the Old Testament, and the gracious god of the New Testament. Marcion edited the Bible accordingly. He picked what he liked and tossed out what he did not agree with (only 2/3 of the gospel of Luke was included). This forced the early Church to answer; they compiled a core volume which included the four gospels and the letters of Paul. Later, about 200 AD, the Muratorian Canon added Acts, 1 & 2 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse of Peter. The list was not recognized as complete until 367 AD when Athanasius wrote his famous Easter letter in which he listed all of the books that make up the New Testament today.

The novel makes it appear as if Constantine compiled the Bible (which he had no part in) and that he altered the text to make Jesus divine. According to Brown, “Until that moment in history (viz The Council of Nicea), Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless” (233). Really?

The Divinity of Jesus

If Jesus is not divine, then every Christian is living his or her life for nothing. If Jesus remained in the tomb and his resurrection was faked, Christians are chasing a dream that will never be realized. 1 Corinthians 15:19 says, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied above all men.” In other words, if what Jesus told us about heaven and the afterlife is a lie, then we are without hope. Whether or not Jesus is divine makes all the difference in the world.

Brown (through Teabing) clearly states that Jesus’ followers did not consider Him to be divine. He also suggests that Jesus’ divinity was established by the Council of Nicea in a vote, “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicea” (233). Did the disciples really believe that Jesus was, merely a human being and not divine?

From a strictly historical perspective the four gospels in the Bible are the best source of information that we have about Jesus. In his book, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, Bart D. Ehrman makes this point:

“The oldest and best sources we have for knowing abut the life of Jesus – despite what Leigh Teabing intimates – are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists.” (130)

In the Gospels we see that Jesus was considered to be divine from the early stages of His ministry. Matthew records Jesus asking Peter who the crowds say he is. Then Jesus asked Peter for his opinion. It was revealed to Peter that Jesus was more than a mortal. He testified that He was the Messiah – and more. Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16) Additionally, Jesus gives us a glimpse of His relationship with God the Father, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Indeed, Paul writes, “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [i.e. Christ].” (Colossians 1:19) Moreover, the Bible teaches that, “He (the Son) is the very radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebrews 1:3) Throughout the scripture we see that both Jesus and his followers understood that he was both fully divine and fully human; he was never just another great teacher. As C.S. Lewis has observed, He was either a liar a lunatic or very God. There is no middle ground.

The debate that actually took place at the Council of Nicea was not to establish Jesus’ divinity (that was already agreed upon – in a fashion); the actual debate was how to understand the nature of Christ’s divinity: was he only “similar” to the Father or was he essentially of the very “same substance” as the Father? It was overwhelmingly agreed upon by the council that Jesus had always existed and He was and is of the same substance as the Father.

Conclusion

Unfortunately some people have read The Da Vinci Code and have believed everything they read without researching it themselves. I would encourage you to read through other sources and see if you can’t decipher the “code” from the fact.

If you would like to do more research you may find below a list of websites that may assist you. The Evergreen Church may not agree with everything written on these sites, but we are providing the links to help those who are interested to investigate the matter further. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Jesus - Matthew 7:7,8)