A Christian Aspect
Review of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code
By Ron Corson
“Everyone
loves a conspiracy theory.” These are fitting words of the
The Da
Vinci Code is the story of Robert Langdon,
a symbologist as he is called into a police investigation of a
murder at the Louvre museum in
One of the villains in this book by some strange fiction writers credo is a large albino man named Silas. Now I have never met an Albino human being in person but it is likely according to many writers that if I do he will be criminally inclined. The traditionalists of the Roman Catholic Church are in a fight to the death for the Holy Grail, the Priory have it secreted away and others want it. This well written book has plenty of puzzles and surprises in store, with only a few of those flaws which make the reader question the plot. That in a book such as this is no small task. Though the book contains a few murders and a bit of blood shed it has little in the way of foul language or sexual content save a brief episode in the memory of the heroine Sophie Neveu. But of course none of this rate a review in a Christian magazine, its impact on Christians and non-Christians is found in the books conception of Christian history.
By attention to detail the author has placed in his book many facts that lead the reader, if they have little knowledge of history to conclude that most of his facts are true. Most of us know nothing of the Priory of Scion or the Knights Templar the inquisition or even the reasons behind the Crusades. As such these areas as well as the more general history of early Christianity can easily be manipulated to create the desired effect. An amazing fact imparted in the book and used to great effect is the inclusion of “Phi” the “divine proportions” which is a mysterious natural number like e or pi, that seem to arise out of the basic structure of our cosmos. Appearing regularly in the realm of things that grow and unfold in steps, Phi = 1.618…
With these and other credible assertions the book tells the story through the lens of Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper”. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that through Mary; Jesus’ Royal line of kings has been preserved. However the mean folks of the Christian church through the agency of Constantine changed the Matriarchal Paganism to Patriarchal Christianity by demonizing the Goddess worship. In The Da Vinci Code Jesus is just a man who many years later was raised to Divinity by the Church. Interestingly he uses a quote from the Gospel of Mary found in the Gnostic writings from the Nag Hammadi to show us that Mary was married or sexually “knowing” of Jesus (“the Savior knows her very well”). Aside from the fact that the book is dated to the 3rd century the book begins at an appearing of the Savior after the resurrection which is contrary to the plots thesis.
Unlike the pseudo
scientific Bible Code (Drosnin
1997)
technique, known as Equidistance Letter
Sequences (Eliyahu Rips) The Da Vinci Code does not
offer a method to see the hidden secret messages in the Bible. The Da Vinci Code of the book
is simply the hidden symbolic messages found in certain works of the Italian
genius. One of the figures in the Last Supper painting looks remarkably like a
woman in the face and symbolically there are shapes that the author analyzes as
symbols for the masculine and feminine, with hands in the painting making
gestures that symbolize the removal of Mary Magdalene from her rightful place
of the “sacred feminine”. The author uses “sacred feminine” several times but
never once uses “sacred masculine”. As with any good puzzler the book makes use
of anagrams, mirror images, and interesting word puzzles that take the intrepid
protagonists further toward their goal.
It is this emphasis upon pseudepigrapha and other early Christian texts which were discarded
by consensus of the Christian Church during the first 400-500 years of
Christianity that have sparked so much interest. Recently Time Magazine included references to The Da Vinci Code in a recent article (
Docetism; Which taught that Jesus only appeared to have a human body but did not really. Appollinarianism; held that Christ had a human body and human soul but no human rational mind, only the Divine mind. Alogi; because of their rejection of the writings of John and citing John’s use of Logos as against the rest of the New Testament, regarded Jesus as mere man. Though miraculously born of a virgin and taught that Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism giving Jesus supernatural power. Some of the Ebionites who in the interest of representing monotheism denied the deity of Christ and regarded him as the son of Joseph and Mary, a mere man who was qualified at his baptism to be the Messiah. As well as Gnosticism and Jewish Cabalism which cover a lot of territory and maybe summed up imprecisely as emancipation by acquiring hidden knowledge. While many of the other views have completely died out, Gnosticism and Jewish Cabala as well as Christian Cabala have made resurgence in adherents.
Determining which
writings to include as genuine and which were spurious became a long studied
task of the early church. One can often find early church fathers making reference
to books which a few hundred years later no Christians respected. It would be
an oversimplification to say, as the book does, that
What The Da Vinci Code provides is an opportunity to re-examine our
Bible. The time has come in