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Posted on May 13,
2006
Introduction and resources provided by
Leadership
University
The Da Vinci Code phenomenon continues
to gain steam with the release of the movie May 19,
new books on secret Christian con-spiracies and the
recent release of the Gospel of Judas. Dan
Brown's work of fiction, which has now sold 40
million copies (the new paperback has already sold
6 million), continues to fascinate some readers and
frustrate others.
And the movie, directed by Ron Howard and
starring Tom Hanks, promises to expose millions
more people to what Brown claims is the darkest
conspiracy in the history of the church. Ron
Howard, in an interview with Newsweek,
boldly proclaims the movie is faithful to the book:
"It would be ludicrous to take on this subject and
then try to take the edges off. We're doing this
movie because we like the book."
The "edges" Howard describes are what the Da
Vinci controversy is all about: a deep, dark
conspiracy about hiding the true nature of Jesus.
According to The Da Vinci Code, Jesus was
really just a human being, married to Mary
Magdalene, and he has a royal bloodline that
continues to this day. The Church, in order to hide
the true nature of Jesus, destroyed the earlier,
Gnostic Gospels that had the evidence of Jesus'
humanity, and declared them heretical in a play for
political power. Voting to make Jesus divine at the
Council of Nicea, all other points of view were
brutally suppressed. Secret societies such as Opus
Dei and the Priory of Sion had members like
Leonardo Da Vinci and are involved in CIA-type
cover-up operations over Jesus' true identity.
The story also has the familiar allegations that
the New Testament is based on pagan mythology, that
there was goddess worship (the "sacred feminine")
early on in the history of the church, and that all
this was suppressed in a play for patriarchal
power.
Critics charge that Brown's claim, in the
beginning of the book, that "all descriptions of
art, architecture, documents and secret rituals in
this novel are accurate" is really misleading: that
in fact, very little of the story is factual. One
Da Vinci scholar, interviewed in Science and
Theology News, said that Brown's book is to
"da Vinci scholarship as going to McDonald's is to
gourmet cooking...It's not something to be taken
seriously."
Nevertheless, the Da Vinci Code raises a number
of questions:
- Was Jesus Married?
- Did the Early Church suppress 80 Gospels and
keep them from inclusion in the New
Testament?
- Are the New Testament documents reliable
history?
- Did the Council of Nicea vote to make Jesus
divine?
- Was the "Sacred Feminine" part of early
Christian belief?
LeaderU has new interviews with the experts,
extensive articles on the Da Vinci Code, as well as
a number of classic articles on the nature of the
New Testament, Jesus, and the radical scholarship
attempting to redefine the historical Jesus.
Featured Resources
Interview
with Darrell Bock, author of Breaking the Da
Vinci Code: Seminary professor Dr.
Darrell L. Bock answers questions about The Da
Vinci Code such as: Did Constantine make Jesus a
divine figure? Should the Gnostic Gospels be
included in the New Testament? Is the New Testament
based on pagan mythology?
Josh
McDowell Answers Questions about the New
Testament: Apologist and author Josh
McDowell, author of The Da Vinci Code: A
Quest for Answers, talks about the New
Testament documents, how the New Testament Canon
was decided, and the reliability of the Christian
faith.
Q&A
on the Gospel of Judas with Dr. Clinton
Arnold: Professor and author Dr. Clinton
E. Arnold answers questions about the newly
released Gospel of Judas, including
questions such as: Does it contain actual
historical information about Jesus or Judas? When
is it dated and what does it contain? Will it
redefine Christianity? Arnold concludes it is not
historical, nor will it significantly affect
Christian belief.
Crash
Goes The Da Vinci Code, by Dr. Ron Rhodes:
Master apologist and recognized author Dr. Ron
Rhodes painstakingly deconstructs the major errors
of The Da Vinci Code novel in a question and answer
format. The inclusion of direct quotations and page
numbers from the hardback edition provide a real
aid for those seeking proof and answers. Very
comprehensive.
Mary,
Mary, Extraordinary, by Ben Witherington
III: The Da Vinci Code has resurrected an
old debate about whether Mary Magdalene was an
intimate disciple of Christ's, even his wife.
Biblical scholar and seminary professor
Witherington writes, "She was an important disciple
and witness for Jesus, but there is no historical
evidence for a more intimate relationship."
Was
Jesus Married?, by Darrell L. Bock, Ph.D.:
Seminary professor and writer Darrell L. Bock, Ph.D
writes that "all the available evidence points to
the answer 'no'."
Dismantling
The Da Vinci Code, by Sandra Miesel:
Miesel, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax,
dismantles the shoddy history and willfully
irresponsible writing of Dan Brown. She delves into
the sources Brown cited, scrutinizing his
pick-and-choose methodology. She critiques his
tortured Christology, built upon Gnostic texts and
the wild claim of a Constantinian edict that first
divinized Christ. She briefly deals with Brown's
erroneous treatment of Mary Magdalene and misuse of
Gnostic extra-canonical gospels, as well as his
misrepresentation of The Knights Templar and
Leonardo Da Vinci.
Deciphering
the Da Vinci Code: A Symposium (audio, slide
shows), by Dr. Darrell Bock, various
others: Dr. Darrell Bock and a supporting
cast of speakers from a three-night symposium on
all aspects of The Da Vinci Code: Mary Magdalene's
relationship to Jesus, the biblical canon, sex,
goddess worship, The Jesus Seminar, oppression,
"The Church, the Academy and the Culture,"
spiritual trends in America and more. A full array
of lectures and Q&A sessions via streaming
audio and PowerPoint slide shows.
Related Resources on How We Got Our Bible
and Its Trustworthiness
Core to understanding and believing the Bible is
assessing its reliability. But how does one know
that it or any other work of antiquity is
trustworthy? And how did we get our Bible (canon)?
Why and how were certain texts chosen and others
rejected? Also, how does the Catholic Church,
accused of hiding the true Gospel accounts,
interpret the Bible?
The
Christian Canon, by Don Closson: This essay
gives the reader an introduction to how the Bible
came to include the books currently recognized as
canonical.
Truth
Journal: The Gospels as Historical Sources for
Jesus, The Founder of Christianity, by R. T.
France: Various writings outside of the New
Testament are considered for their historical merit
regarding the life of Christ. After sorting through
them, we are left with the Gospel accounts. How
accurate are they? Should they be trusted?
The
New Testament: Can I Trust It?, by Rusty and Linda
Wright: "How can any well-educated person
believe the New Testament? It was written so long
after the events it records that we can't possibly
trust it as historically reliable." This is a
common question and deserves an honest answer. The
Wrights provide three tests: internal, external and
bibliographic. A very accessible article for the
nontechnical.
Are
the Biblical Documents Reliable? by Jimmy
Williams: We can trust that the Bible we
hold in our hands today is the same as when the
various documents were written. This essay provides
evidence for the trustworthiness of the biblical
documents. Includes a particularly helpful chart on
extant New Testament manuscripts as compared with
other works of antiquity.
Are
the Gospels Mythical?, by Rene Girard: Are
the Gospels mythical? More specifically, is the
story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus more
than a story? Since ancient times, it has been
compared to Greek myths in order to undermine the
uniqueness, and thus the validity, of Christianity.
The Da Vinci Code's storyline rests upon this kind
of mythological foundation, inverting the accepted
gospel accounts as fabrication and replacing
Goddess mythology as the repressed truth. If the
accepted gospel message is not mythological in
origin, the novel's basis is less believable.
Catholicism
and the Bible: An Interview with Albert Vanhoye,
interviewed by Peter Williamson: Father
Albert Vanhoye recently began his second five-year
term as Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission. In this interview with Catholic writer
and lay theologian Peter Williamson, given in Rome
on January 14, 1997, Vanhoye reflects upon key
issues in Catholic interpretation of Scripture.
Related Resources On The Jesus Seminar,
Historical Creeds and Non-Canonical
Literature
The Da Vinci Code retreads for popular
consumption several historically contentious
theological issues, including the divinity of
Christ and when it was first acknowledged. Brown's
novel sets forth the claim of Christ's divinity as
a power grab by the Christian Emperor Constantine
in a vote at the Nicene Council. The so-called
search for the historical Jesus has its roots in
liberal 19th-century theology and was made
popularly known in the mid-1990s by the Jesus
Seminar, whose scholarly members' "findings" were
detailed in the book The Five Gospels.
The
Jesus Seminar, bu Jimmy Williams: An
analysis of the Jesus Seminar findings in light of
five critical areas: purpose of the Jesus Seminar
fellows, philosophical presuppositions, Canonical
Gospels, chronology and Christological
differences.
Chapter
6: Christ: The Man Who is God, by Dr. Alan K.
Scholes: From his book (online in its
entirety here) What Christianity is All About.
Scholes' breadth and clarity make this a valuable
resource, especially the section on the "historical
Jesus" and the Jesus Seminar. This provides
background for assessing the presumptions of The Da
Vinci Code regarding the early Church's claim to
Christ's divinity.
Historical
Creeds of the Christian Faith: Actual texts
of the Apostles' Creed ((c. 700, earlier forms from
c. 200 A.D.) and Nicene Creed ((325, 381 A.D.).
Rediscovering
the Historical Jesus: Presuppositions and
Pretensions of the Jesus Seminar, by Dr. William
Lane Craig: In this first part of a
two-part article, the presuppositions and
pretensions of the Jesus Seminar are exposited and
assessed. It is found that the principal
presuppositions of (i) scientific naturalism, (ii)
the primacy of the apocryphal gospels, and (iii)
the necessity of a politically correct Jesus are
unjustified and issue in a distorted portrait of
the historical Jesus. Although the Jesus Seminar
makes a pretention of speaking for scholarship on
the quest of the historical Jesus, it is shown that
in fact it is a small body of critics in pursuit of
a cultural agenda.
The
Evidence For Jesus, by Dr. William Lane
Craig: Five reasons are presented for
thinking that critics who accept the historical
credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus do not
bear a special burden of proof relative to more
skeptical critics. Then the historicity of a few
specific aspects of Jesus' life are addressed,
including his radical self-concept as the divine
Son of God, his role as a miracle-worker, his trial
and crucifixion, and his resurrection from the
dead. The former is most pertinent to a discussion
of The Da Vinci Code.
The
Historical Christ, by Rick Wade: Rick Wade
examines the PBS special "From Jesus to Christ" by
focusing on the theological presuppositions of
those who deny the supernatural and instead search
for the "historical Jesus." He examines the
development of these views from Davis Strauss, to
Rudolf Bultmann, to the Jesus Seminar and the work
of Dominic Crosson. Drawing from the work of Craig
Blomberg of Denver Seminar, the author ably
presents arguments for the early dating of the
Synoptic Gospels and the historical accuracy and
authenticity of their authors. Finally, he
demonstrates that the differences in the synoptic
accounts can be reconciled without resorting to
questioning their historicity. The conclusion is
that the Christ of faith is indeed the Jesus of
history.
The
Corrected Jesus: First Things Review by Richard B.
Hays: Hays dissects the volume written by
the much-discussed (and maligned) Jesus Seminar,
"The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic
Words of Jesus." The "fifth Gospel" refers to the
Gospel of Thomas, "a text known to us through a
fourth-century Coptic text discovered at Nag
Hammadi in Egypt" in 1945 and the "Quelle" or "Q
Source."
Non-Canonical
Literature, by Wesley Center Online (Wesley Center
for Applied Theology, Northwest Nazarene
University: "Documents to Aid Students and
Scholars in Biblical Interpretation." Links to both
Old Testament and New Testament Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha and other non-canonical early
Christian literature.
First
Things Books in Review: The Jesus Quest & The
Real Jesus, Reviewed by Richard B. Hays: In
this review essay, Richard B. Hays considers two
books on the historicity of Jesus: "The Jesus
Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth" by
Ben Witherington III and "The Real Jesus: The
Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the
Truth of the Traditional Gospels."
Related Article: Women's Roles
The Da Vinci Code's plot portrays Mary Magdalene
as the chief apostle (as well as the wife of
Christ), a mainstay of feminist theologians. We
offer one view of Christ's perspective on women
from a book with a contrary perspective on women's
roles in general (complementarian view, as opposed
to feminist). We are open to suggestions for
resources from the egalitarian viewpoint as well,
as long as it is Christian in nature.
Women
in the Life and Teachings of Jesus, by James A.
Borland: Borland offers a brief study.
Related Resources: The Bible
Code
The official Da Vinci Code Web site and a
related site put up by publisher Random House
(Doubleday) both feature mysterious music and a
secret-code game format. (Even the book's cover art
supposedly is full of clues to the encoded messages
central to the plot.) Since secret codes seem to be
such a draw, we thought another kind of code-based
issue related to the Bible that made a big splash
in the 90's would be of interest.
The
Bible Code, by Rich Milne: How can thinking
Christians respond to purported information
embedded in the Bible's original language? There is
more to "The Bible Code" than meets the eye.
First
Things Books in Review: Cracking the Bible Code,
Reviewed by William A. Dembski: Intelligent
Design spokesman known for his own work in
probabilities reviews "Cracking the Bible Code" by
Jeffrey Satinover. An accessible, intelligent
review that helps put the issue in perspective
while analyzing the book.
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