Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code

Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code¹

	Several statements made by Langdon and Teabing—key characters in The Da Vinci Code—are not supported by any actual historical evidence and can easily be shown to be false. Others present as established fact opinions that are based on very odd readings of real historical data. In a broader sense, though, at least three significant issues raised by Dan Brown's book do deserve serious consideration and should be discussed honestly both by today's churches and historians.

I.	Several of the claims made by characters in The Da Vinci Code are patently false.			Page number
	The following list is representative of the kinds of misstatements made by Dan Brown's characters. (This is not a complete list.) Keep in mind that the book is a novel. Despite Brown's assertion inside the front cover, you should *not* expect the comments of characters to be historically accurate.			Standard Edition	Illustrated Edition

	A.	Teabing states to Sophie: "More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament."		231	238
		While there were several early Christian gospels besides the ones included in the New Testament, the number 80 is pure fiction. The actual number of documents that can accurately be described as gospels is far smaller.

	B.	"Rome's official religion was sun worship."		232	238
		There was no "official religion" of Rome. There was a Roman tradition of mutual toleration: any religion with ancient roots would be tolerated as long as its adherents also tolerated all others. While sun worship was practiced in Rome, it was one element in the broad range of religions allowed by this policy.

	C.	Constantine made Christianity "the official religion" of the Roman Empire.		232	239
		While Constantine did stop the persecution of Christians, he did not declare Christianity the official religion of the Empire. In the Edict of Milan (313 CE), Constantine declared that Christian worship was to be tolerated.

	D.	Was the divinity of Jesus invented at the Council of Nicea under Constantine's direction as the discussion between Teabing, Langdon, and Sophie suggests?		232	240-241
		The issue of Jesus' divinity had been debated for many years before Constantine's army declared him Caesar in 306 CE. The debate at the Council of Nicea was carried out not so much to answer the question of whether Jesus was divine, but the question of whether his divinity implied that he had always existed; did Jesus' divinity necesitate viewing him as eternal. The Council declared that the Son is "one in being with the Father." Like the Father, he has always existed. [Click here to see the proclamation prepared by the Council of Nicea.]

	E.	Teabing tells Sophie, "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. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned."		232	242
		1.	By the time of Constantine the issue of which gospels should be used was already settled. Very little debate remained. Though a few Bibles from this period have the four canonical gospels in an order other than the one now used, none of them have any other gospels beyond these four.
		2.	Constantine did finance the manufacture of new copies of the Greek Bible as well as a new Latin translation, but he left the decision of what to include up to church leaders.
		3.	There is no evidence to suggest that Constantine gathered up and burned any Christian literature. In fact, he put a stop to this practice that earlier emperors had used in their effort to defeat Christianity.

	F.	Constantine gave the term "heretic" its present meaning.		234	242
		The term "heretic" comes ultimately from the Greek word ai(re/seij which was in use at least as early as the mid second century CE, long before the time of Constantine. It appears in Second Peter 2:1, for example, with the sense of "faction," not "choice."

	G.	Langdon tells Sophie, "The Latin word haereticus means 'choice.' Those who 'chose' the original history of Christ were the world's first heretics."		234	242
		The Latin adjective haereticus (which could also be used as a noun) means "late" or "lesser," not "choice." It is related to the verbs haereo and haeresco which mean "adhere," "cling to." It is also related to the noun haeresis, which means "sect," "faction," or "separatist group" (like Greek ai(re/seij). It is from this noun that we get the meaning of the English word heretic.

	H.	"... the earliest Christian records" (including gospels) were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts.		234, 245	242-243
		1.	The Dead Sea Scrolls date from well before the time of Jesus. No Christian documents can possibly be that early.
		2.	While the Nag Hammadi texts did include Gnostic Christian texts, they are not among "the earliest Christian records."

	I.	"In addition to telling the true Grail story, these texts [The Nag Hammadi texts] speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms."		234	243
		1.	The Nag Hammadi texts do not "tell the Grail story" at all. The term "grail" does not appear in them, and they contain no trace of the "family history" proposal The Da Vinci Code puts forward. The most we could say is that they provide a few vague hints that allowed Dan Brown to invent a new Grail story (and a very entertaining one at that!).
		2.	While the Nag Hammadi texts do include a few references to Jesus "in very human terms," they do so much less often than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three of the canonical Gospels. The canonical Gospels speak of Jesus getting tired, eating, sleeping, getting angry. The gnostic gospels, on the other hand, tend to speak of Jesus as the supernatural giver of divine knowledge, and do not portray him in particularly human terms.

	J.	The marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is "a matter of historical record."		244
		Not a single early Christian document, not even the Gnostic Gospels, makes the explicit claim that Jesus was married. The gospel of Philip is the only document that claims Jesus kissed Mary, and even this document does not claim they were married.

	K.	Langdon presents *hieros gamos* (sacred union) as a ritual that was practiced by the earliest followers of Jesus.
		1.	Except for his views on purity laws, Jesus' own teaching and practice were very close to those of Pharisaic Judaism. He had a strong knowledge of Torah (instruction in Jewish scriptural tradition). He made statements such as Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Indeed I say, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter, not even a pen stroke will pass away from the Law until everything has been completed (Matthew 5:17-18, Palmer). Given the tight restrictions on sexual activity stated in Torah, it is extremely unlikely that Jesus could have participated in hieros gamos, a thoroughly pagan ritual carried out in the presence of witnesses.
		2.	While it is conceivable that some fringe groups of the later Christian movement may have incorporated pagan sex rites into their version of the growing faith, it is not reasonable to assume that these groups represent the authentic intention of Jesus along the lines argued by Langdon and Teabing.


II.	In several other instances, the book advances views that are questionable interpretations of real historical evidence.

	A.	Langdon: "The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable." Teabing: "Nothing in Christianity is original."		232	239 240
		1.	While in very general terms Langdon's claim is true, it does not follow that "Nothing in Christianity is original."
		2.	The relationship between early Christianity and the the Greco-Roman world is extremely complex. Christianity was born into that world and integrated with the culture around it in many ways. Sometimes this integration was conscious and intentional. Sometimes it was unconscious. When it was deliberate, it was sometimes a compromise with the cultures and sometimes a co-opingcoopting of language and rituals in order to give them new (Christian) meaning.
			Dan Brown's proposal that the accommodation of Christianity to Greco-Roman culture was a plot instigated by Constantine is far to simplistic.

	B.	Sophie: "I thought Constantine was a Christian." Teabing: "Hardly. . . He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest. Sophie: "Why would a pagan emperor choose Christianity as the official religion?" Teabing: "Constantine was a very good businessman... he simply backed the wining horse."		233, 234	238, 239
		1.	Actually, Constantine's religious life is greatly debated. The literary sources, inscriptions, and coins are all inconsistent. That Constantine had "political" motives is well established, but religion and politics were mixed for everyone in the Greco-Roman world. We should not expect it to be otherwise.
		2.	The real question is not whether Constantine had political motives, but how his politics and religion related. This is a complicated question for any political leader with religious convictions. While Dan Brown's view that Constantine's motives were solely political is one possible interpretation of the facts, it is a weak one, difficult to support with empirical evidence.

	C.	Dan Brown's view of the religious context of the Roman Empire is extremely oversimplified.
		1.	Repeatedly Brown treats "Paganism" as though it were a single religion. The English word "Pagan" is derived from the Latin word paganus, which referred to a rural person. Christianity first became dominant in the cities, so it could usually be assumed that a rural person (a paganus, resident of a pagus or rural district) was non Christians. With time rural came to mean not Christian. Paganism, then, is an umbrella term for all of the non Christian religions.
		2.	The religions of the Greco-Roman world were amazingly diverse. No single belief applied equally to all of them. No ritual had the same meaning for all of them. And no single ritual was practiced by all religions. It is not the case, for example, that all pagans participate in hieros gamos (sacred marriage involving ritual sex).	308	316
		3.	The characters in the book use the phrase "The Church" as though it referred to a single, clearly defined, uniform entity. In fact, in its earliest centuries Christianity was a very complex, diverse, and localized movement. Even later, in the time of Constantine, there was no single Church controlled entirely by Rome. Brown's assumption that "the Church" is "the Holy Roman Catholic Church" is simply incorrect.

	D.	The Da Vinci Code puts forward a view of the Christian suppression of feminine leadership and the divine feminine that does not match the views of prominent historians.
		1.	Scholars—including several prominent Feminist scholars—have been debating various models of the Christian suppression of women's voices for many years.
			In Memory of Her, a monumental work by Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza, appeared in 1983. Fiorenza argued that the earliest Christian leaders related to women in a positive way. The following generations of Christian leadership, however, failed to carry on their pro woman agenda. They bowed to the social values of their society, accepting an extremely negative Aristotelian vision of male/femaile roles.
			[Some Christian scholars have (erroneously) sought to blame this negative view of women on the Jews rather than the dominant values of Greco-Roman society that Aristotle represented.]
			While Fiorenza's work has stood the test of time in many ways, recent scholars have argued that Jesus and Paul were less pro woman than she thought, and that Greco-Roman society was less misogynist than she proposed. While Jesus and Paul may have been more open than many of their contemporaries toward women, they were not feminists. Paul made statements, for example, that would eventually prove more progressive than even he had imagined (see Gal 3:28), but he also endorsed the misogynist values of his society in other ways.
		2.	It is somewhat amazing that Dan Brown chooses Mary Magdalene as his example of "the divine feminine" when a much more obvious candidate is available. Veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus arose early and has proved immensely persistent. Devotion to this Mary follows many patterns of ancient "goddess" worship, including the reference to her as "Mother of God." Early artistic depictions of her portray her in the form of Isis. In the sixth century CE the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin Athena, was dedicated to her.
			For a conspiracy theory of the suppression of the divine feminine to really work, it would need to address the enduring role of Mary, the mother of Jesus more effectively than Brown has done.
			The real reason for Brown's choice of Mary Magdalene, rather than Mary the mother of Jesus may well be that picturing Jesus as married and fathering a child makes for a much more sensational story!

	E.	The novel pictures the canonization of the New Testament (the process of deciding which books would be included) as something accomplished in a relatively short time during the reign of Constantine.
			In fact, the canonization of the New Testament took several hundred years.
		1.	The letters of Paul were accepted as scripture by the overwhelming majority of Christians by the end of the first century CE.
		2.	Three of the four canonical Gospels were chosen by the middle of the second century (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), with some debate over the Gospel of John lasting slightly longer.
		3.	Debate over a few books that were eventually accepted into the canon, such as the Apocalypse of John, the "letter" to the Hebrews, and several of the General Epistles (2 Peter, James, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude) lasted well beyond the time of Constantine.
			Some books were not ruled out completely till long after the reign of Constantine. Codex Alexandrinus (5th century CE), for example, contains both 1 and 2 Clement as part of the NT. While 1 Clement is a letter written about 96 CE by a historical bishop of Rome, 2 Clement is a pseudonymous document written later. Codex Claromontanus, a sixth century copy of Paul's letters, contains a list of books accepted as scripture. That list includes four documents later rejected (the Epistle of Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Acts of Paul, and the Revelation of Peter.


III.	Dan Brown correctly identified several major problems in the history of Christianity. While his explanations of those problems are faulty, the problems themselves are real. Note the following three.

	A.	Women did hold positions of responsibility in the earliest decades of Christianity, and the later orthodox movement did suppress female leadership.
			If you are interested in this topic, you might like to read Karen Torjesen's When Women Were Priests: Women's Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity.

	B.	Many early Christian writings were later excluded from the canon of the Bible in the same way that many early Jewish documents were excluded from the Tanakh. While this was a natural process in both cases, it does leave room for questions about who made the decisions and for what reasons.

	C.	Constantine's legalization of Christianity did bring far reaching changes for the faith and did politicize its growth in ways that would forever change the religious institutions of Latin speaking Christians and their historical descendants.