The Myth of the DaVinci Code

by Steve Bastin

Minucius Felix, writing about 200 AD, describes a popular view of the Christian religion.  Christians were accused of incest because they referred to each other as brother and sister.  They were accused of adoring the head of a donkey.  They were accused of initiating new members with a feast on the body of an infant.

Other writers accuse Christians of absurd and ridiculous practices because they met in secret on account of persecution.  Belief in such wild charges was widespread in the Roman world.  Unbelievers were willing to believe the worst about Christians.

On the other hand, thousands of such unbelievers became Christians.  Many were put to death for their faith in Christ and the Christian religion spread throughout the Roman empire and beyond.  False charges made against the Christians did not prevent the spread of the Christian religion.  The truth is powerful.

This is being written just prior to the opening of the movie based on Dan Brown’s book, The DaVinci Code.  Books have been written to refute the material contained in the book.  Churches are rallying to oppose the book and the movie.  Everybody seems to be taking sides in the debate over the issues being raised.

There is the assumption that somehow Dan Brown’s fiction will be taken for fact and people will abandon their faith in the real Jesus for the figment of Brown’s imagination.

Even though hundreds of millions of Bibles have been purchased and read without making any substantial difference in the lives of many of those who read it, it is assumed that people reading The DaVinci Code one time will have their faith shaken leading to a desertion of the Christian faith.

What Brown’s book does do is provide an excuse for those who never wanted to become Christians.  It furnishes them with the same sort of weird charges that were made against Christians in the second century.

At the heart of the book is the idea that the “church” has conspired to hide the truth from people.  The book thus joins with a horde of other such books claiming a conspiracy to hide some historical fact or another.  For example, there are the various conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John Kennedy over 40 years ago.  All sorts of leading government figures have been accused of being involved in some conspiracy to hide the true perpetrators of the crime, even up to Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy as president.

According to Brown’s book, DaVinci’s painting of the last supper shows Mary Magdalene seated next to Jesus.  It is incredible that a fifteenth century painting of two people seated at the same dinner table (along with 10 others) could prove that two of those people were married and that one of them was pregnant!!

The truth is that the disciples did not even sit at a table to eat the Passover meal.  According to the Greek copies of the scriptures, they “reclined” at the table.  They did not use tables and chairs as we do, but lay on pallets on the floor to consume their meal.  If DaVinci could not get that right how would he ever have known that one of the disciples was not at the meal and his place was taken by Mary Magdalene!

Another supposed proof that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and she was pregnant at the time of his death is supposed to be provided by a late second century writing called “The Gospel of Thomas.”  In that writing there is a statement, parts of which are missing, that refers to Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene.  It is a far stretch (as many can testify) to get from kissing to marriage and pregnancy.  The child and the descendants of that child, according to Brown, are the “Holy Grail.”  The church is claimed to have covered this up by deleting any references to such a marriage from the gospels contained in our Bibles.

But when you are dealing with “conspiracy theories” evidence is not so much needed as the excitement of those who think that they have found a conspiracy!  The willingness of people to believe an idea that goes against the “establishment” is incredible.  Whether it be in government or religion, people seem to have a sense that what they are being told is not the truth.  If someone comes along with any little scrap of “evidence” people run over each other to go with the new idea.

Thus it is with the DaVinci Code.  Without substantiating the wild claims, or the myths that are proposed as truth, positions are staked out and people scramble to “get on board.”  “It’s in the book so it must be true!”  Let me beg to differ!

With painstaking attention to detail, scholars have carefully documented the evidence that the four gospels in our Bible represent the beliefs and writings of first century Christians.  From thousands of manuscripts and meticulous study of the paper, the style of writing and various other details, conclusions have been reached that the four gospels found in our Bibles are the true accounts of the eyewitnesses chosen by Jesus.

Salvation is dependent upon accepting, believing and acting upon the information provided by the documents contained in our New Testament.  Is salvation dependent upon believing theories of the generators of new myths?  What promises do they have to offer?  If I believe that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene will God forgive my sins?  If I believe that a descendant of Jesus lives in France, will God promise me heaven if I fall at the feet of such a person and worship them?

I suppose, at the worst, someone reading the DaVinci Code might conclude that the Bible is unreliable.  If that is true then the way of salvation that the Bible proposes must also be unreliable.  The conclusion then is that we do not know the way to peace with God unless it is found in some other document.  But the other documents are filled with many more difficulties than the Bible.  For starters, the evidence that the writings of the Qu’ran or the Eastern religions came directly from men writing the words of God is non- existent.

In contrast, the Bible sets forth a plan of salvation that is consistent from Genesis to Revelation.  This is a period of about 1500 years and represents the writings of over 40 different individuals.  That they have a common conception of God and His plan for saving the world is remarkable to say the least.  We will have more to say about this later.

Church Cover Ups

A problem exists with the idea that the church covered up the relationship of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  If the church was involved in a cover up with respect to this relationship, then the church must have been involved in further cover ups as well.

Let me mention some things that are taught in the Bible that contradict church doctrine of the later ages.  If the church were going to eliminate passages in the Bible then those passages that speak against church practices ought to have been eliminated.  If such passages have not been systematically removed, then why was not the matter of Jesus relationship with Mary Magdalene also  removed.  Mary Magdalene is in the Bible as a prominent disciple of Jesus.  It was Mary who was in the first group to visit the tomb of Jesus and discover that it was empty.

Another example of a passage that should have been deleted if the church were involved in a cover up is found in a letter that Paul wrote to Timothy.  He wrote that a bishop “must be the husband of one wife.”  In the same passage Paul also wrote, “He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?)”  When church practice had changed and bishops were no longer allowed to have any wives, why were those passages not changed or deleted?

When the doctrine was adopted that said Mary, the mother of Jesus, was always a virgin, then why were not the passages that speak of Jesus’ brothers and sisters not removed?  Matthew tells us that the people in Jesus’ hometown remarked, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?  Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?  And his sisters, are they not all with us?  Where then did this man get all these things?  And they took offense at him.”  In like manner, Mark in his gospel also records the same information; Jesus had four brothers, who are named, and some sisters.

When the decision was made to accept sprinkling and pouring as acceptable forms of baptism, why were not the passages in Paul’s letters that refer to baptism as a burial not removed?  Even the footnote in the Confraternity edition of the New Testament admits that immersion is implied in these passages.  And the passage about Jesus being baptized in the Jordan River and the Ethiopian going down into the water for baptism, why were they not also changed to reflect the new views on baptism?

When the rule was made that certain categories of “Christians” could not have wives, why was the passage from Paul’s letter to Timothy that addresses this issue not taken out of the Bible?  Paul wrote that it was a doctrine of demons to “forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.”

Even more to the point, as long as the church was editing the Bible to make it consistent with their practices, why was not something put in to tell us plainly that Peter was the first pope, the head of the church?  Instead the Bible says nothing about a pope.  When the New Testament speaks of the head of the church it always names Jesus as that head.  These references are in passages written after Jesus went to heaven.  Jesus was not the head while here  and Peter the head after he left.  Jesus is the head, period.  There is no other head of the church in the New Testament.  Why was the passage where Jesus called Peter the rock not changed to make Peter the founder of the church instead of Jesus?  And why does it not say, “I make you the head of my church?”  Strange that the cover up does not include things of true importance to the church as it existed in the middle ages.

In fact, it was precisely because there was no cover up that there was a Protestant Reformation.  When Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and others read their Bibles they realized that the beliefs of the church in their times were not the beliefs of first century Christians.  They reformed the church based on the Bible.  The Bible continues to be the standard by which the church needs to be reformed.

The idea that someone has changed the Bible has been around a long time.  In contrast, Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  If God can create the world then the creation of a book is quite a small matter.  If God can sustain the world until the end that He has determined, then it must be a small matter for God to preserve a book.  It all comes down to the matter of the God in whom you choose to believe!

God’s Plan of Salvation

There are two elements in God’s plan of salvation.  Several times the Bible refers to God’s plan as existing eternally.  Jesus’ death was always God’s part of the plan.  Faith, by people, in what God has done was always a part of that plan.

The idea of a sacrifice for sin was always known.  The first children of Adam and Eve brought sacrifices to God.  Noah offered a sacrifice after he survived the flood.  Abraham built several altars as he traveled about in order to offer up sacrifices to God.  When God gave the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, He also instructed the Israelites in the sacrifices that they were to offer.

The sacrifices are referred to as an atonement.  They were a means by which people could approach God for forgiveness.  The sacrifices never paid for sins.  There is no payment arrangement in God’s plan for salvation.  God’s plan is to offer forgiveness, but a key element in that plan was always a sacrifice of atonement.  If the plan is unacceptable, God has provided that payment for sin be made in eternity in a place that He has prepared for unbelievers.

Guilt affects everyone to some extent.  There is guilt for the things that we ought not to have done.  And there is guilt for the things that we have neglected.

I can remember going to school without having done my homework.  Class was terrifying for fear the teacher would discover that I had not done my work.  Of course, if one does that often enough the guilt “goes away.”  That is the nature of sin.  If we continue doing the same wrong over and over again, we can get over feeling guilty about it, at least to some extent.

God offers a forgiveness that is real and a forgiveness that has no regrets.  It is based on sacrifice.  Always has been; always will be.  We cannot pay for sin by trying to make up for it with something else.  That is not God’s plan.  Most religions teach a payment plan for sin.  Do something wrong.  Doing something right to make up for it.  Giving someone a free meal does not make up for cheating on my income taxes.

In God’s plan in eternity, He decided that He would send His son as a sacrifice for our sins.  He decided on the plan.  He decided on the time when that would happen.  Jesus knew on his last trip to Jerusalem that the time had arrived for him to die.  He went up to Jerusalem to die at the Jewish Passover.  He gave up his life on the cross.  He finished God’s part in the plan for our salvation.

The second element in God’s plan is faith.  Faith is our responsibility.  God does not make some people believers and other people unbelievers.  Each decides for themselves whether they will believe what God has done.

Faith is a conviction that something is true.  It is trust in another for help.  It is the substance upon which hope rests.

Faith comes by considering the evidence that God has given.  The world in all its complex forms teaches us that there must be a Creator who brought it into existence.  The prophecies in the Bible that give details about the future of cities and nations are evidence that the Bible has come from God.  The witnesses who saw Jesus die and who saw him buried give testimony that the tomb was empty on the third day.  The apostles give their testimony that the same Jesus who had died on the cross was alive on the third day.  This is “evidence that demands a verdict.”

It is not faith to believe that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that she bore his child.  There are no witnesses to the marriage.  There are no documents that have been discovered that record the event.  There is no birth certificate for the child certifying that Jesus was her father.  There are no witnesses of the birth that can give us their testimony.  Accepting such assertions as truth is equivalent to believing that the earth is flat and that there are real men on the moon that we discovered through our space program.

When God calls on us to believe He furnishes the evidence that demands a believing response.  And when God demands that we believe, He expects that faith to respond in action.  There is no such thing in the Bible as a faith alone that saves.

When Noah believed, he built the ark in obedience to the command of God.  His salvation depended upon his obedience.

When Abraham believed, he left his country, his father’s house and his family to go where God led him.  His salvation depended upon his obedience.

When the Israelites believed God’s promise that He would give them the land of Canaan, they left Egypt under the leadership of Moses.  By faith they crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, not fearing the water standing on each side.  By faith they reached the other side and saw the army of Pharaoh drowned in that same sea.  Faith alone did not bring them to the promised land.

God’s plan of salvation has always included an obedient faith.  Faith without obedience is just an empty promise.  God does not accept empty promises.

There are two particular things that God demands of believers.  One is to repent.  The second is to be baptized.  He further requires that such baptized believers be active participants in a church that includes like-minded believers.

If one rejects Jesus, God offers no alternative.  God has no other plan.