Printable version
Though
first published in 2003, Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code remains a
bestseller. In addition, even before the movie was released, Newsweek
crowned the film adaptation from Columbia Pictures 2006’s “hottest
movie.” To help you understand the fine line between fact and fiction
in this fascinating story, we summoned the help of an expert, Dr. Craig
L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver
Seminary.
Dr. Blomberg
completed his Ph.D. in New Testament at Aberdeen University in
Scotland. In addition to writing numerous articles, he has authored or
edited fifteen books, including: The Historical Reliability of the
Gospels, Interpreting the Parables, Jesus and the Gospels: An
Introduction and Survey, and Making Sense of the New Testament …
A New Testament Scholar Reviews The Da Vinci Code: A Novel by Dan Brown.
The
most important word in this entire book is the noun in the subtitle;
this is a “novel” – a work of fiction. That is important to remember,
especially after the statements on page 1, which move the work slightly
into the arena of historical fiction, but only slightly. With respect
to art, Mary Magdalene most certainly does not appear in Da Vinci’s
painting, ‘The Last Supper.’
With respect to the
secret rituals of the Priory of Sion, they are all imaginary because
that society was invented in 1956 by an ultra-right-wing Frenchman who
pretended to be heir to the French throne. It is true that the author
has worked hard to describe accurately the contemporary European
locations, including city layouts, buildings, and artwork, in which the
plot is set. The statement that “all descriptions of. . .documents. .
.in this novel are accurate” is, however, highly inaccurate!
It didn't take me
very long in reading this book to understand why it was the #1
bestseller on the New York Times list of fiction for a large portion of
2003. It is well-written, fast-paced, with surprising turns of plot and
intrigue regularly shocking readers, especially when they start to
think they have things figured out. It contains all the elements of a
good murder mystery, enough vivid portrayals that one can imagine the
events depicted on location, especially if one is familiar with France
and Britain, and bite-sized chapters that regularly end with a
“cliffhanger” begging one to read more. I could hardly put the book
down myself, wanting to know what would happen next.
I am not
presumptuous enough to claim to be an expert critic of contemporary
American fiction. And more than the barest description of the plot
would destroy the fun for prospective readers. The following will have
to suffice. The main character, Professor Robert Langdon, a supposed
expert in “symbology” from Harvard, while in Paris as a guest lecturer,
has plans to meet with the curator of the Louvre, Jacques Saunière.
Before the meeting can happen, Saunière
is murdered under bizarre
circumstances, and Langdon is seemingly about to be charged with his
killing. Strange codes scrawled at the murder scene bring on stage one
Sophie Neveu, an expert cryptographer, who turns out to have secret
messages for Langdon, leading the two to flee on a trip that begins as
an attempt to save Langdon's life and eventually enmeshes them in the
famous medieval “quest for the holy grail”-except that the grail is not
the chalice that Jesus used at the Last Supper but. . . Well, I really
can’t tell you any more than this without spoiling too much.
Much of what could
mislead the careless reader involves the history and contemporary
manifestations in Brown’s narrative of the two societies, the Priory of
Sion and Opus Dei, which prove to be antagonists to each other in his
story. Apart from their very general religious objectives and the names
of a few famous leaders in the former, almost everything crucial to the
plot-line about these two groups is made up. But what concerns me most,
as a New Testament scholar, are the number of people who think that the
occasional comments about Jesus, his associates and the literature and
events of the first three Christian centuries are at all accurate.
Put simply, they are
not, and even very liberal biblical scholars (as in, for example, the
famous Jesus Seminar) agree. Specifically, there is not a shred of
historical evidence that Jesus ever married Mary Magdalene (or anyone
else) or ever fathered children. Such information would certainly have
been included in the Bible (1 Corinthians 9) where Paul appeals to the
fact that Peter and various other apostles had wives when they received
material help from the churches. In supporting his right to receive
such help, Paul would have wanted to appeal to an even more convincing
example-Jesus-if it were available. Also, with the very early
veneration of Mary in Roman Catholicism – largely out of a desire to
have a quasi-divine female figure along with God the Father – had Jesus
ever been married, such a woman could scarcely have disappeared without
a historical trace. She would have been celebrated and venerated
instead, especially in the very strands of Catholicism that The Da
Vinci Code pit against the revelation of “the truth” of Jesus'
marriage. Brown instead stands this logic on its head when he has
Langdon allege that it was so unusual for a Jewish man not to be
married that, if he were celibate, that is what the Gospels would have
had to call attention to (p. 245). But in a sense that is precisely
what they do when Jesus counterculturally approves of a single,
celibate lifestyle in Matthew 19:10-12. And numerous other features in
the Gospels call attention to certain ascetic tendencies in Jesus’
life, making his celibacy less surprising. Moreover, it is not true
that “according to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned”-some Jewish
sects in fact promoted celibacy as a spiritual ideal.
Another blatantly
fictitious portion of The Da Vinci Code is the claim that “more than
eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament.” Add up
everything that was ever called a gospel in the first half-millennium
of Christianity (most of which are small compilations of esoteric
sayings ascribed to Jesus and not narratives of any portion of his
life) and you come up with about two dozen documents. About half of
these are known only from quotations in early church fathers or small
scraps or fragments that have been discovered, and there is little that
is unorthodox in them. The only rejected “Gospel” that any sizable
number of scholars of any theological stripe gives serious credence to
is the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings attributed
to Jesus, of which some are orthodox, some not, and some simply
intriguing.
But Brown's characters do not appeal to the Gospel of Thomas at all!
Equally
false is Langdon's claim that “The Bible, as we know it today, was
collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great” (p. 231).
While historians do debate how serious Constantine's conversion to
Christianity was, he certainly didn’t remain a pagan. And he had
nothing to do with the canonization of the New Testament. That was a
process the roots of which can be documented as early as the mid-second
century, culminating in A.D. 367 when the 27 books of the New Testament
were agreed on by all branches of Christianity. It is true that there
was dispute from the second to the fourth centuries over seven of the
NT books, for various reasons, but there is no evidence that there was
ever any proposal not to include the Gospels of
Matthew,
Mark, Luke or John or to include any other Gospel. Brown further
confuses the truth by alluding to the Dead Sea Scrolls as if they
included Gospels (p. 234), when in fact they contain no Christian
documents whatsoever-only Jewish (and a few Greek).
In
marshalling support for Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife, Langdon avers
that “the Gospel of Philip is always a good place to start” (p. 246).
Hardly, since even very liberal scholars agree that this is a late,
third-century collection. Thus there is little if anything in it that
is likely to be historical. What is more, this “Gospel” exists only in
Coptic, not Aramaic, so that it is irrelevant when Langdon goes on to
claim that the word “companion” (which Mary is deemed to be of Jesus)
means “spouse” in Aramaic. It is also worth pointing out that no
Aramaic or Hebrew words for “companion” normally mean spouse! The very
short collection of sayings known as the Gospel of Mary (the next plank
in Langdon’s platform for marrying the Magdalene to Jesus) claims only
that Jesus loved her more than various apostles and it comes from an
even later date, casting doubt on its historicity.
At several points in
various ways Brown’s novel makes the claim that Jesus was not
considered divine until the fourth century. This, too, is patently
false – the claims emerge already in the first-century canonical
gospels, as again every biblical scholar of every stripe recognizes. Of
course, a lively debate continues as to whether those claims were
deserved, but that’s quite different from what The Da Vinci Code is
talking about.
The most sweeping of
all the fictitious claims in this book is the idea that the Priory of
Sion has preserved “thousands of ancient documents as scientific
evidence that the New Testament is false testimony” (p. 341). Such
documents simply don't exist. This is part of Brown’s fiction. The
legendary post-New Testament material that does exist has been
scrutinized intensely by biblical scholars and is available in English
translation for all to read. Nothing in them undermines the New
Testament. There is no hidden cache being suppressed from the general
public.
For readers who want
actual scholarship pointing to the reliability of the New Testament, I
invite them to consult my books on The Historical Reliability of the
Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP, 1987) and The Historical Reliability of
John's Gospel: Issues and Commentary (Downers Grove: IVP, 1991). For an
excellent study of what can truly be known about Jesus outside the New
Testament, see the book with that title by Robert E. Van Voorst (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).
Meanwhile, enjoy The
Da Vinci Code. It’s a fantastic novel. I’m so glad I read it. Just keep
reminding yourself throughout, “It’s only a novel. It’s only a novel.”
Craig L. Blomberg, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of New Testament
Denver Seminary
A full version of Dr. Blomberg’s review can be found at
http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2004/0200/0202.php.