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March 13, 2006 is that the da vinci or doo-doo code? To adapt Ernest Hemingway for a family audience, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof [doo-doo] detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it." If that's the case, The Da Vinci Code author, Dan Brown, is in deep doo-doo. Brown claims, on an opening page titled "Fact," that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." And on his Web site, he claims the mega-best-seller is "thoroughly researched and factual in all respects." The basic message of the novel is a) the church has completely rewritten the Bible to make Jesus appear divine when in actuality He was simply a very wise man, b) Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and produced descendents who are hidden away somewhere in France, and c) the Catholic church has covered this up and "demonized" women and sexuality. It's a plot-twisting, page-turning piece of fiction, but all the way through the book my doo-doo detector kept going off concerning Brown's alleged historical "facts." Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea "deified" the man Jesus in 325 A.D. Brown argues that before that time, Jesus was viewed as simply as very wise, but very human, man. Doo-doo! Two and a half centuries before the Council of Nicaea, first century documents repeatedly taught the deity of Christ. For instance, in his letter to the Colossians (60-62 A.D.), the apostle Paul declared, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." The Gospel of John (85-95 A.D.) proclaims, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." There is even secular evidence. In a letter from Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan, dated around 112 A.D., the Roman senator observed that early Christians "were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day when they sang a hymn to Christ, as to a god." On page 234, Leigh Teabing, the fictional royal historian in The Da Vinci Code, argues "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." Doo-doo! Portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been found that date 175 and 225 A.D.--at least one hundred years before Constantine was even born! Any re-writing would have been exposed. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene On page 246, Teabring quotes the non-biblical Gospel of Phillip. "The companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?'" The fictitious historian claims that the Aramaic word for "companion" literally meant "spouse." Doo-doo! First, if Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, the disciple's question would make no sense. Of course He loves his wife more than His buddies! Second, the Gospel of Phillip doesn't specify where Jesus kissed her. And third, it's not written in Aramaic but Greek. (In Greek, spouse is not the connotation.) But more important, not one of the non-biblical books Brown references ever mentions Jesus being married--not even the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene. You would think she would have known. Female goddess worship was the original religion: the Sacred Feminine On page 238, Teabring claims, "The Grail is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church. The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy." Doo-doo! Brown does have it right that when Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of Rome in 325, the Church adopted the Roman practice of men alone holding institutional authority. Up until that time, history documents that women served as priests and pastors in the early Church. In 494 Pope Gelasius decreed that women could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. However, women were hardly the "enemy" of the early church. Jesus had female followers including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, the mother of Zebedee's sons, Joanna, Salome, and Susanna. The apostle Paul taught, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." This statement comes in a culture and time when the rest of the world considered women "chattel" or property. And today, many Protestant denominations ordain women. (Brown seems to think that Roman Catholicism is the only branch of Christianity.) The church has suppressed sexuality Finally, as far as the church condemning or suppressing sexually, Brown has obviously never read the Bible's book of Song of Songs, an R-rated celebration of sex. Nor has he read Jesus and the apostle Paul glorifying sexual intercourse as a symbol of spiritual intimacy or Paul instructing husbands to satisfy their wives sexual needs. Brown also fails to mention that his highly touted matriarchal religions often demanded the castration of male worshippers. Nothing sacred or feminine about that! I have no problem with the book as simply fiction. It's a fascinating read. But when Brown uses it to preach that his fiction is fact, well, all I can say is doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. I think Hemingway would agree. © 2006 James N. Watkins
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