The Great Da Vinci "Con"

 

 

 

 

Jesus expressly predicted that “false Christs” would arise in the end times, who would “deceive many” (Matt. 24: 24, 11). In terms of portrayal, the “Christ” of The Da Vinci Code¹ perfectly fits the Lord’s description. It is immensely popular (“many”), and it is a counterfeit (“false”).

 

Several examples will demonstrate this -– recalling that even by the admission of its author Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (hereafter The DVC on occasions) is “only…a work of fiction”². How, then, does Mr Brown’s admitted “fiction” look beside the real Christ?

 

DIVINITY “UPGRADE”

The DVC: In the year 325, Jesus’ status was “upgraded” from “mortal” to “divine” (we conflate the movie and book claims).

FACT: Three centuries before this, the apostles had asserted, from their firsthand acquaintance with Jesus, that “the Word was God…[a]nd…became flesh” (Jn. 1:1, 14). Thomas called Christ “my Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28). Peter confessed to him, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16), while the ex-persecutor Paul affirmed of Jesus that “God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16).

 

“But you are only going by the New Testament”, someone may rejoin. And why shouldn’t the largely eyewitness testimony of history’s most translated book (now in over 2,300 languages, in whole or part) be admissible? Is Ramesses II’s record of Egypt’s kings rejected just because it stands in a temple, or Josephus as an historian because he was once a priest? Why then should the primary witness of the New Testament be excluded – especially when its historical accuracy, specifically in Luke and Acts, so impressed the archaeologist Sir William Ramsay that he turned from his unbelief to faith. The at least 5,400 surviving Greek manuscripts and portions of the New Testament, as against a paltry eight worthwhile manuscripts for Herodotus’ Histories or ten for Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, put it in a class of its own among ancient literary documents.³ All the more when, as textual scholar F.J.A. Hort points out, significant variations between them are “hardly…more than a thousandth part of the entire text”, or 0.1 per cent,⁴ prompting his observation that

 

“the text of the New Testament stands absolutely and unapproachably alone among ancient prose writings”⁵   (emphasis added).

 

 

CLEMENT AND POLYCARP

It is not only the New Testament which refutes The Da Vinci Code “upgrade” claim. Around 95AD Clement of Rome affirms of Jesus that “Christ is from God”, and that “through the blood of the Lord there shall be redemption unto all them that believe and hope on God”.⁶

 

Early next century Ignatius, on his journey in chains to the leopards, confessed Jesus as “God existing in flesh”.⁷ A little later bishop Polycarp, not far from the flames, glorified “the eternal and heavenly high priest, Jesus Christ”⁸ – a far cry from The DVC’s “mortal” Jesus!

 

Likewise with Justin Martyr, who declared around the mid-second century that Jesus is “deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ”.⁹

 

Thus the jurist Tertullian, around 200, worshipped “Christ as God”,¹⁰ as did the ex-magistrate and martyr Cyprian, around 250:

 

“Christ is both man and God, compounded of both natures, that He might be a Mediator between us and the Father”.¹¹

 

(Tertullian, for the record, used the expression “New Testament”,  well over a century before Mr Brown’s alleged date, just as his older contemporary Irenaeus had already spoken of the “four Gospels”; Tert., “On Prayer” 1, ANF 3:681).

 

All ten of the foregoing (including New Testament) witnesses – most of whom sealed their confession of Christ by their martyrdoms – have two things in common. They affirm in unison the deity of Jesus Christ, and they all appear long before the 325 date which The Da Vinci Code claims was when Jesus’ divinity was first recognised. Clearly something is wrong, not with the witnesses, but with The DVC’s reading of history.

 

 

NICEA’S “CLOSE VOTE”

The DVC: Jesus only scraped in by a “relatively close vote” at the Council of Nicea as “divine”.

FACT: Scurrilously portrayed in the movie as a cacophony of confusion, the Council of Nicea’s “relatively close vote” was actually “300 to 2”, as University of Western Michigan historian Paul L. Maier points out.¹² Maier, a real professor of history (and a former United States “Professor of the Year”, unlike Dan Brown’s entirely fictitious “professor Langdon”), also debunks The Da Vinci Code’s portrayal of the Emperor Constantine, who presided over the Council. Represented by Brown as a “lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest”, the real Constantine, as Maier shows, was very different:

 

“This [The DVC’s] assertion is also totally false. While Constantine was undeniably a flawed individual, historians agree that he certainly abjured paganism, became a genuine Christian convert, repaid the church for its terrible losses during the persecutions, favoured the clergy, built many churches throughout his empire, convened the first ecumenical council at Nicea – underwriting the expenses of the clergy to attend it – and desired baptism near death. As for the last, he was merely following the custom at the time (innocent though mistaken) of delaying baptism until the end of life because it wiped your slate clean of preceding sins”.¹³

 

 

FORETOLD

Nor was the Nicea vote about whether Jesus is “divine” – a proposition accepted also by the two dissenting bishops – but whether he is co-eternal with his Father. This, and not some alleged “upgrade” to divinity as Dan Brown fantasizes, was what Nicea was largely convened for, with the Council deciding in the affirmative, by its 300 to 2 “close vote” (though maintaining the Biblical distinction in its Creed that the Son was “begotten of his Father before all ages”; cf. John 3:16; 17:5).

 

Isaiah the prophet had already foretold what Nicea affirmed when, seven centuries before the Messiah’s advent, he wrote: “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given…And His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). While The Da Vinci Code’s revisionism may seek to hide this glorious truth, it is the believer’s privilege to proclaim it, rejoicing with Charles Wesley’s famed Christmas carol:

 

“Hark! The herald angels sing,

Glory to the new-born King…

Christ, by highest heaven adored,

Christ, the everlasting Lord…

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail, the incarnate Deity”.¹⁴

 

JESUS’ ALLEGED “WIFE”

The DVC: The “Gnostic gospels” show that Mary Magdalene was the “wife” of Jesus, and was carrying his baby “Sarah” at the cross.

FACT: The extremist Gnostic “gospels” have been called “the rubbish of the second century”, and citing them against the New Testament is like quoting the Mafia against the Italian government. It is not for nothing that the Holy Spirit, by universal concurrence of the Church, effectively consigned them to the sin-bin of history. Irenaeus, the venerable bishop of Lyons around 185, said that what the Gnostics did with Christ was like redrawing an impressive picture of a king to look like a fox. In short, they caricatured Jesus (much as The Da Vinci Code does today – hence its natural affinity with Gnostic writings!). Besides, not even any Gnostic “gospel” – distorted and extreme though their portrayal of Jesus was – made him out to be “married”.  As Richard Abanes writes, “This fantasy has no support even from the ‘Gnostic gospels’ mentioned in the book, let alone from the historical data”¹⁵ (emphasis added).

 

Thus, when Jesus was on the cross, he made clear provision for his mother Mary, yet said not a word to Mary Magdalene – an extraordinary omission if she had been his “wife”, and carrying his “baby” to boot! Likewise on the Sunday morning of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, Mary Magdalene calls him “my Lord”, “Teacher”, and “the Lord”, but no hint of any spousal or romantic term.

 

 

THE LAST SUPPER

“But isn’t Mary Magdalene in Leonardo’s painting The Last Supper?”, someone may rejoin. Not at all. There is no “hint”, as Mr Brown alleges, of any female anatomy in John – whom it actually depicts – and the almost “sissy” face is less a reflection of historical reality than of Da Vinci’s artistic style.¹⁶ In any event, some fifteen centuries separate Leonardo’s painting from the occasion it depicts! How could any artist’s imagination, so long after, be pitted against the eyewitness record of one who was there – in this case John, who says that it was he who was at Jesus’ side (John 13:23; cf. 19:26). To claim otherwise, as The Da Vinci Code does, is like preferring a shadow to the substance. Thus Pietro Marani, whose Leonardo Da Vinci: the Complete Paintings is a recognised authority on the subject, declares that the painting depicts “the Apostles…[12] men”.¹⁷

 

Indeed, as Paul Maier pointedly observes, Da Vinci

“could not possibly have had Mary Magdalene in mind or there would have been fourteen figures in his fresco, rather than Jesus and the Twelve. If the figure at Jesus’ right hand is the Magdalene, where is the missing John?”.¹⁸

 

And as for The DVC’s claim that Jesus, as a Jewish man, could never have remained unmarried, this too is at odds with historical fact. A number of Israel’s greatest prophets, among them Elijah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, lived celibate – or chastely unmarried – lives. Significantly, Jesus was expressly likened to all three of them (Matt. 16:13-14). Paul, too, while in no way forbidding marriage to others, speaks of himself as having the “gift” of celibacy (1 Cor. 7:7). Are we to believe that Jesus lacked what his servant Paul had? Once again, The DVC’s “facts” are exposed as twisted history.

 

 

WHICH CHRIST?

One after another, the claims of The Da Vinci Code are thus shown to be false. But why, in any case, would Mr Brown prefer this sham “Christ” to the true? To which part of the real Jesus does he object? Is it to his teaching? Yet even Gandhi marvelled at the Sermon on the Mount! Or his spotless character? Yet even the Judas who betrayed him called him “innocent”, while the Pilate who sentenced him declared “I find no fault in him”. Or could it be his miracles? Why should it seem strange that the very Son of God should have power over sickness, and demons, and nature itself!

 

Or perhaps it is his social justice? Yet George Cadbury, living out Jesus’ principles from his beloved New Testament, provided pensions for his chocolate factory employees well before the British government ever thought of them. Or his fulfilling of prophecy? Yet the Old Testament predictions of the Messiah being born in “Bethlehem”, being “pierced” in “hands and feet”, and pouring out his life as an “offering for sin”, in perfect submission to his Father’s will, were fulfilled in him to the letter!

 

 

C.S. LEWIS

What, too, of the resurrection itself, which The Da Vinci Code, though professing to speak of Christ, refuses to even mention? C.S. Lewis said it was the historical case  for Jesus’ bodily resurrection, and for the New Testament in general, that persuaded him as a then-atheist Oxford professor, to become a Christian. Let us briefly review it. That Jesus truly died is a given (as the soldier’s spear testifies, every Lord’s Supper proclaims, and even The DVC accepts). Yet that he truly rose again from the grave is just as certain, as a roll-call of the evidence confirms. We know that the stone was moved. We know that the seal was broken. We know that the tomb was empty. We know that the shroud had collapsed. We know that the napkin was folded. We know that the guard was gone. We know that the disciples were changed. We know that the church was founded. We know that the day was altered. We know that the apostles were empowered. We know that Paul was converted. We know that the New Testament was written. And all this on the central affirmation – confirmed by miracles and signs, and sealed by martyrs’ blood – that “Christ is risen”.

 

 

UNEQUIVOCAL

No wonder Dr J.N.D. Anderson, former director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London, declared that “men and women disbelieve the Easter story not because of the evidence, but in spite of it”.¹⁹ Or that Sir Lionel Luckhoo – called by The Guinness Book of Records the world’s “most successful lawyer”²⁰ – turned from his unbelief to Christ precisely because of it, declaring that

“I say unequivocally the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming, that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt”.²¹

 

Jesus’ question, “What think ye of Christ?” thus challenges every heart. Is he the phantom “Christ” of The Da Vinci Code who burst no tomb, receives no worship, and cannot save a single soul? Or is he the real Christ of Scripture and history who died for our sins and rose again, and now is “able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him” (Heb. 7:25). There is no third option. Jesus will not be split. It is one or the other, the true or the sham.

 

 

THE REAL “CON”

So the real “con”, in terms of its representation of history, is not the New Testament, as Mr Brown tries to make out, but The Da Vinci Code itself. As Laura Miller writes in her The New York Times book review, appropriately titled “The Last Word: The Da Vinci Con”:

“ ‘The Da Vinci Code’, like ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ [also cited as an authority in The DVC], is based on a notorious hoax…All the usual suspects and accoutrements of paranoid history get caught up in [it]…everyone but the Abominable Snowman seems to be in on the game”²² (emphasis added).

 

How fitting that by such a palpable historical lie, the “father of lies” himself, as Jesus described the Evil One, should seek to demonise the life of discipleship (represented by the crazed and murderous albino), when, for all her real-life human failings, the Church is collectively still Christ’s “bride” and “accepted in the Beloved” (Rev. 19:7-9; Eph. 1:7; cf. Rom. 7:4; Eph. 5:25).

 

Yet just as the “Piltdown Man” hoax, the “Archaeoraptor” fake, and the “Mars rock bacteria” beat-up were once the toast of multitudes, so, tragically, many are being deceived by The DVC today – even if Mr Brown himself does not intend this. “[I]t is almost beyond comprehension”, as the award-winning Richard Abanes writes, “that a tale so rooted in demonstrable falsehoods could so quickly and easily be embraced by the public”.²³ Not that people necessarily believe it outright (“we know it’s only a fiction”, many admit), but it is confusing and contaminating their perception of Christ and his followers. Nor is the reason hard to find. Because our nature is fallen, “men loved darkness rather than light”²⁴, as the Good Physician diagnoses our human condition. Hence our universal need for the Saviour whom God in his love has provided, but whom The Da Vinci Code so artfully distorts.

 

 

‘NEO-PAGAN REWRITE”

So there can be no illusions about Dan Brown’s book. By its paranoid conspiracy theories and exhuming of long-discredited Gnostic writings in an attempt to “authenticate” them, it represents a parody of Christ, no less than of history. Jesus – to it – is not divine, but “mortal”. Salvation – such as it is – is not through his blood, but a “bloodline”. Worship is not toward the risen Christ, but the dead Magdalene. The apostles were not his witnesses, but his falsifiers. The Gospel is not repentance toward God and faith toward Jesus Christ, but the “feminine principle” and, with it, ritual debauchery. It is as if we were peering over the rim of a hissing volcano into the bowels of hell itself, so far as its pagan agenda is concerned. As Russell Grigg observes:

 

“It is a neo-pagan rewrite of history. Under the guise of a novel, Brown openly attacks the deity of Christ.… It seems that man will believe any number of historical falsehoods, if by so doing he can escape the consequences of believing the truth about Jesus Christ”²⁵ (emphasis added).

 

 

FAITHFUL THOMAS BRISBANE

While some reject the truth, however, Jesus has promised he will always have his faithful “good soil” hearers who receive it, abide, and bear fruit “a hundred, sixty, or thirty times” (Matt. 13:23). Like Sir Thomas Brisbane, the founder of Australian science, who lost all his children, but still faithfully worshipped Christ every Sunday, their lot may not always be easy. Jesus himself declared they may be sick, hungry, or even imprisoned (Matt. 25:35-36). But hereafter the risen Saviour – the real Jesus – has promised them a “crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). Of that vast and blessed number may God, by his grace and mercy in Christ Jesus, and through his sanctifying Spirit, make us both worthy, dear reader.

 

Indeed, we would entreat Mr Brown himself to think again concerning these foolish notions which he has espoused. If the truth is known, he is probably no worse, and possibly far less, of a sinner than this writer (cf. 1 Tim., 1:15). Yet while we pass no judgment on his soul, we certainly do on his doctrine, which is toxic. For him, as for us all, the Father’s table is still spread, if we, like the prodigal, will come home, and, like Manasseh, confess our sins to the Holy One whom we have grieved. If for even the Ninevites, repenting at Jonah’s preaching, there was pardon, can there not be for us. “Today” is still “the day of salvation”. But only through the Christ of history – who now lives – not the “Christ” of travesty –who never was.

 

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The Great Da Vinci "Con" by Brenton Minge published by Shepherd Publications (Brisbane, Australia, 2006).  For more information contact Shepherd Publications, or write to PO Box 41, Cannon Hill 4170, Queensland, Australia.  Download printable .pdf version of The Great Davinci "Con".

See also Jesus Spoke Hebrew by Brenton Minge.  Also Harry Potter and Tolkien's Rings: A Christian Perspective by DJ Gray. 

 

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REFERENCES

 

1. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 2003 (Corgi edition, 2004).

2. “Da Vinci film seeks blessing of church”, The Australian, August 9, 2005, p.10.

3. Paul D. Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1999), 233.

4. Cited in Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Arrowhead Springs, Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972), 44.

5. Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), 35.

6. 1 Clement (“To the Corinthians”), 42, 12; J.B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids, 1978), 31, 18.

7. Ignatius, “To the Ephesians”7, Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, Mass., Hendrickson, 2004), 1:52.

8. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14. Lightfoot op. cit., 114.

9. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 63; ANF 1:229.

10. While some may question Tertullian’s designation as a jurist, there is no doubt the ancients thought so (e.g. Eusebius, who called him “an expert on Roman law and famous on other grounds”, Church Hist. 2:5). Any reading of his work (e.g. his Apology, addressed to the Roman judiciary), soon reveals an erudite legal mind that answers to the known jurist “Tertullianus” of the same time, whose treatise on wills and inheritance was later incorporated into Justinian’s legal Digest.

11. The Treatises of Cyprian, 2:10; ANF 5:519.

12. Paul L. Maier. “The Da Vinci Deception”, in Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier, The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction (Wheaton Ill., Tyndale, 2004), 15, (emphasis added).

13. Ibid., 14.

14. Charles Wesley (1707-1788), hymn, “Hark! The herald angels sing”.

15. Richard Abanes, The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code (Eugene Oregon, Harvest House, 2004), rear cover.

16. See, too, Abanes, op. cit., 71.

17. Pietro C. Marani, Leonardo Da Vinci: the Complete Paintings (New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 229, 231.

18. Maier, op. cit., 26.

19. J.N.D. Anderson, Christianity: the Witness of History (London, Tyndale, 1969), 105.

20. The Guinness Book of Records 1997, 213.

21. Ross Clifford, The Resurrection: Fact or Fiction? (Crossover Australia, 2003), 1.

22. Laura Miller, “The Last Word: The Da Vinci Con”, book review, The New York Times, February 22, 2004.

23. Abanes, op. cit., 78.

24. John 3:19.

25. Russell Grigg, “The Da Vinci Code: Fiction masquerading as Fact”, Creation 28 (3), June-August 2006, 16-17.

 

Unless otherwise indicated, referenced quotations generally follow The New King James Version (NKJV). Copyright© 1985, Thomas Nelson Inc. 

 

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