The Truth Beneath the Code: the Da Vinci Code

Fiction or Real?
Bayen Trademark


Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code has become the most controversial novel in our present time and has just become one of the most controversial films of this century. Many readers and movie goers dismiss this novel/movie as just a work of fiction, something to entertain us. To quote non-verbatim many outspoken appreciators of this book, this is not really a forefront assault against the Catholic Church or Christianity as a whole. It is just a fiction, an imagination and a pure work of literature which may have biblical references. it is not, as they say, anti-Christ or blasphemy. It is just a story.

Here lies the trouble that is brought about by this Code. While many readers can easily dismiss this as pure fiction, Dan Brown, the author of the book, does not entirely think so: In a controversial introductory note, Brown writes that "all descriptions of documents and secret rituals are accurate." But are they? Here's what Dan Brown based his "story", bases which he firmly believes as "accurate":

early Christianity entailed "the cult of the Great Mother"
Mary Magdalene represented the feminine cult and the Holy Grail of traditional lore

she was also Jesus' wife and the mother of his children

Magdalene's womb, carrying Jesus offspring, was the legendary Holy Grail (as seen in Da Vinci's encoded paining, The Last Supper)

Jesus was not seen as divine (God) by His followers until Emperor Constantine declared him so for his own purposes

The Nicean Council of the 3rd Century was the context for Constantine's power grab and the relationship of Magdalene as paramour of Christ was quashed there

"Mary Magdalene's remains and the secret documents that tell the real story were found on the Temple Mount when Jerusalem was conquered in the First Crusade.”

Brown sees a connection between the Nag Hammadi documents (a.k.a., Gnostic Gospels) discovered in 1945 and this storyline

The "truth" about Christ and Mary Magdalene has been kept alive by a secret society named the Priory of Sion that was lead by great minds like Da Vinci

Leadership-U, in an article about the Da Vinci Code writes that

"Dubious doctrines like Goddess worship and neo-Gnosticism, critics charge, provide the core of Brown's acclaimed novel (although Brown makes egregious errors even within those, e.g., Gnostics would be repulsed by the idea of physical relations between Mary Magdalene and Jesus). Given the book's liberal use of long-debunked heresies and flashy but baseless theories on everything from church tradition to architecture to the heads of a secret society, cataloguing Brown's scholarly infractions will exhaust the casual reader who will likelier readily embrace such fast-paced fiction uncritically. As Sandra Miesner (featured below) states, "The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream.”

Writer Sandra Meisel wrote that, "By manipulating his audience through the conventions of romance-writing, Brown invites readers to identify with his smart, glamorous characters who’ve seen through the impostures of the clerics who hide the 'truth' about Jesus and his wife. Blasphemy is delivered in a soft voice (italics mine) with a knowing chuckle: '[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrication.'"'”

One must be wary therefore about this book and film. Dan Brown based his premise on false doctrines clearly declared by the early Church as heresy and definitely against Christian teaching, a direct attack on the divinity of Christ, and yet Brown considers them as accurate and true. By having this premise in mind, an untrained and less critical reader and movie goer may be easily susceptible to subscribing to the "belief" as promoted by Brown in the guise of a work of fiction.

It is a pity that early Church fathers have been fighting heresies like these and still they prop up under the guise of entertainment.

Fiction or Real?
Bayen Trademark