Leonardo, Dan, and love for the truth

Whether you're an art professor, a parish worker, a high school student, a cleric, a literary buff, one who finds books boring, an impassioned individual, one who couldn't care less about the truth, a non-believer who keeps an open mind, a writer, a blogger, a bookshop owner, an unthinking movie buff, a thinking movie buff, a mellowed-down grandma, a cynic or an idealist, this one's for you.

The Top Ten Da Vinci Code Distortions
By Robert Knight

(Excerpts)

Dan Brown's murder mystery novel presents a problem for Christians. A 2005 Canadian survey showed that one-third of those who have read the book believe that it is factual.¹ The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 42 million copies. The film version starring Tom Hanks is opening on May 19 in the United States.

Serious Christians will see through the many lies and historical fictions that Brown plants throughout the book, but millions will believe that this profoundly dishonest book contains at least some "truth" about Jesus and the church.

The truth is that Brown is peddling one of the oldest known and easily discredited heresies - Gnosticism - and that his claims are refuted by the rich history of Christian writing, beginning with the Gospels themselves and extending to early church figures, such as Ignatius (105 A.D.) and Tertullian (200 A.D.). Brown's claims about alleged clues planted in Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings are also easily refuted by art historians.

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If the litany of historic "facts" in The Da Vinci Code were regarded as fictitious, we could ignore them. But Brown himself in several interviews, including on NBC's The Today Show,² has claimed that the book is factual, and many people without Biblical moorings are being fooled into thinking that they have been given "secret knowledge" suppressed by a corrupt church.

By including so many falsehoods, including the underlying premise, Brown breaks the first rule of historical fiction, according to Paul Maier, the Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University. Maier notes that in a historical novel, readers expect fictional characters in the foreground, but "the reader expects the background to be credible and accurate…. It isn't there."³

For example, World War II novels do not have the Allies losing and the Nazis winning. And Civil War novels do not date the Battle of Gettysburg in 1812. Brown's historical errors make these look like trifles. Here are just a few.

1) CLAIM: Jesus was merely a man, not God. Brown says that the "pagan" Roman emperor Constantine created the "myth" that Jesus was resurrected after being crucified only to help consolidate Constantine's power in his empire, and that the church previously regarded Jesus as a mere mortal (231-234).

ANSWER: Constantine, who converted to Christianity and ended Roman persecution of Christians, convened the Council of Nicea in 325, but only to sort out some differences among church leaders, all of whom believed that Jesus was divine. Constantine is also considered a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church. All early church historians referred routinely to Christ's divinity, death and resurrection, including Ignatius (105 A.D.), Clement (150 A.D.), Justin Martyr (160 A.D.), Irenaeus (180 A.D.), and Tertullian (200 A.D.).⁴ Even secular writers such as Pliny the Younger, corresponding with the Roman Emperor Trajan, described Christians worshipping Jesus as God Incarnate.⁵

Furthermore, the Apostle Paul, who wrote during the 50s A.D., provided the first Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5:

"For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve."

2) CLAIM: The Council of Nicea defined Jesus as God in "a close vote at that." Furthermore, Constantine chose all the books for inclusion in the Bible as we know it (231).

ANSWER: The Council of Nicea, which took no votes, was convened by Constantine with Christian leaders across the empire mainly to reiterate support for the extant four Gospels and the Epistles. The Council dispensed with the theories of Arius (father of Arianism), who claimed that Jesus, while divine, was a created being who then co-created the universe with God the Father. The main question was whether Jesus was begotten or made. Jesus' divinity, death and resurrection were not in question. Only two of 318 clerics at the Council did not sign the Nicene Creed.

"The Nicene Creed put in precise philosophical and theological language what had been expressed in more general terms for years," comments Dr. Darrell L. Bock, professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. "It also affirmed which texts taught such views. What is more, the four Gospels highlighted at this council had been solidly established and recognized in these communities for more than a century before Nicea."⁶

3) CLAIM: The four New Testament Gospels (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) comprise a false account that excludes numerous ancient writings that tell a different and more truthful story.

ANSWER: Brown bases his challenge of Biblical authority on a group of 52 books collectively called the Gnostic Gospels, discovered in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. All were written more than a century after the Biblical Gospels were written. None of these books has any tie to witnesses in Christ's time, unlike the Gospels themselves, which are eyewitness accounts. "There are no written Gospels from the same time frame (the first century A.D.) that are even in the picture," says Gary Habermas, professor of New Testament Studies at Liberty University. "In the Gnostic canon, we don't have 'gospels,' we don't have stories of Jesus that are even competing."⁷

4) CLAIM: The Da Vinci Code is based on fact.

Here's the actual beginning of the book:

"FACT:

The Priory of Scion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous Members of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci."⁸

ANSWER: Pierre Plantard, a French anti-Semite fraud, created the "Priory of Sion" in 1956, not 1099, and the documents were found to be counterfeits. There is no evidence that any of these famous men he cites were involved in any secret society. Sir Isaac Newton, in fact, was a devout Christian, not a member of a goddess-based cult as Brown spins it. Plantard, who did prison time for fraud, confessed to the document hoax in a French court in 1993. He also claimed that he was the rightful king of France because he was a direct descendant of Mary Magdalene. He died in disgrace in 2000.⁹

Full article at Culture and Family Institute