Decoding The Da Vinci Code – part 2
“Was Jesus Married?” (and why does it matter?)
From U.S. News and World Report, June 7, 2005 – special edition – “Despite its patently fictional content and glaring factual inaccuracies, The Da Vinci Code has been the subject of endless cocktail party chatter and water-cooler discussions.” An interesting book – yes, but accurate in its claims about the origins of the Christian faith? – not even close.
Author Ben Witherington put it this way. “America is a Jesus-haunted culture, but at the same time, it’s a biblically illiterate culture . . . When you have that combination, almost anything can pass for the historical Jesus.” Sad but true. That is why 1 Peter 3:15 is so important.
1 Peter 3:15 – “Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. ”
Hopefully this book will serve as a good call to serious Bible study by Christians who need to be able to defend their faith in every day circumstances.
Last week we looked at the basic premise of the book. Today I want to begin to answer some of the claims made in the book and some of the questions that arise as a result. How did Dan Brown even get the idea for this book. The main source for the information in the Da Vinci Code comes from a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, first published in 1982. It is a conspiracy theory book. Before it became a book, the three men behind the book first made three very successful documentaries in the 1970’s that questioned the origin of Mary Magdalene and the life of Jesus with her. The BBC aired the documentaries. At the center of the documentaries and then later the book was a small town in France named Rennes-le-Chateau. It was the home of an obscure village priest named Berenger Sauniere, who is said to have made an earth shattering discovery in the late 1800’s in the Church of Mary Magdalene. It was alleged he found documents hidden in the church that he took to the Church of Saint Sulpice in Paris. Suddenly, on his return, he was very wealthy. This story was later revived by Pierre Plantard, in the1950’s who used it to perpetrate an elaborate hoax involving the claim of rediscovering the documents and placing them in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. They became known as the “Dossiers Secrets,” and purportedly proved that the medieval French Merovignian royal dynasty still existed and that they were the living descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. A secret society called the Priory of Scion was said to have been protecting the secret for many centuries. By the 1990’s, the elaborate hoax had been thoroughly uncovered, and the BBC had to pull a “Dan Rather.” They apologized for airing the documentaries and even aired a program that exposed the false claims of the documentaries. Trust me, the BBC would not even begin to consider that unless the hoax was in fact fully uncovered and irrefutable.
Enter Dan Brown. He imitated their technique. In fact, he admits that he drew many of his ideas, so called “facts” from the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. His book has kicked off a new frenzy of Grail enthusiasts, looking for conspiracies and open to ideas that question the accuracy of the New Testament and the legitimacy of the Christian faith. He opens the door to not only questioning the roots of the Christian faith but to replacing it with a faith of one’s own making – a search within – for truth. Dan Brown’s own faith includes a belief in the “sacred feminine,” which was part of pagan religions that pre-dated the time of Christ and were included in the heresy of the Gnostics we spoke about last week. To support his beliefs, he claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that they had a child, that the bloodline of Jesus continues to this day, and that the Church (Roman Catholic Church) suppressed these truths in the third and fourth centuries and continues to try to suppress them even today.
Book claims
“The marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record.” (p. 245)
“The royal bloodline of Jesus Christ has been chronicled in exhaustive detail by scores of historians.” (p. 253)
Why does it matter – He is trying to deny the divinity of Jesus and question the N.T. reliability.
Yet, it is a self contradictory concept for Gnosticism and for Dan Brown
For Gnosticism because – they generally believed in the evil nature of the physical. They elevated the status of the spirit of a person. The idea of Jesus marrying in the flesh would have been abhorrent to the Gnostics.
For Dan Brown because - his two main points actually contradict each other. His conclusion is that we should worship Mary Magdalene, whom he refers to as the “sacred feminine” because he claims she was married to Jesus. However, his earlier argument was that Jesus was not divine. If Jesus was not divine, then why would we worship Mary Magdalene, a mortal woman for being married to a regular mortal guy, Jesus the carpenter? It’s a dead end.
1. Was Jesus married?
Three Gnostic texts are used to try and prove that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Let’s look at two of them.
a. The Gospel of Thomas.
(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
Not only does this say nothing about a special relationship between Mary and Jesus, but it is not a text that Gloria Steinhem would hail as feminine empowering! She must become male before she can enter heaven!
B. The Gospel of Philip
Let’s see how well Brown does at describing an early Gnostic text entitled the Gospel of Philip. On pages 245-46 of The Da Vinci Code we read:
“Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound edition was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. Sophie could see it contained photographs of what appeared to be magnified passages of ancient documents—tattered papyrus with handwritten text. She did not recognize the ancient language, but the facing pages bore typed translations.
“These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,” Teabing said. “The earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible.” Flipping to the middle of the book, Teabing pointed to a passage. “The Gospel of Philip is always a good place to start.” Sophie read the passage:
“And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us.”
The words surprised Sophie, and yet they hardly seemed conclusive. “It says nothing of marriage.”
“Au contraire.” Teabing smiled, pointing to the first line. “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse.” Langdon concurred with a nod.
Despite all Brown’s lofty claims about accuracy, he makes a number of serious mistakes here. Here are four.
(1) A book containing the texts from Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea scrolls, would not have a cover stamped, The Gnostic Gospels, unless the people who did the stamping were ignorant of the contents. Although the Nag Hammadi texts do include some Gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not. They do not contain any gospels, nor were any of them written by Gnostics. The Dead Sea scrolls are made up exclusively of pre-Christian Jewish texts.
(2) The Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, do not represent the “earliest Christian records.” The Dead Sea scrolls do not represent Christian records at all, nor do they so much as mention Christianity or the names of anyone associated with its beginnings. As to the Nag Hammadi texts, they date from about 390 A.D. So the entire New Testament manuscript material predates them by at least 300 years!
(3) As to whether the Gospel of Philip teaches that Mary Magdalene was the spouse of Jesus, Teabing tells Sophie: “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse.” This is interesting since the Gospel of Philip was most likely written in Greek but now survives only in one Coptic manuscript found with the Nag Hammadi texts. This nicely illustrates just how bad his scholarship really is. Even the Greek word that it might have translated from is koinonos. Koinônos in this specific form occurs ten different times in the New Testament (Matt. 23:30; Luke 5:10; 1 Cor. 10:18 and 20; 2 Cor. 1:7 and 8:23; Phlm. 17; Heb. 10:33, 1 Pet. 5:1; 2 Pet. 1:4). Not once, however, does it have anything to do with either a sexual or a marital bond. What Dan Brown and other authors with the same agenda should have done to begin establishing the possible range of meaning for koinônos is to consult the most recent edition of the Bauer, Arndt & Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, the standard scholarly lexicon of Early Christian Greek. Perhaps the reason they did not mention these standard works is that neither of them provides them with the least shred of support for their assertion that koinônos refers especially to sexual or marital relationships.
Here is a quote from the “Jots and Tittles” section of a recent issue of the Bible Review: “None of the Gospels, canonical or non-canonical, ever refer to Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife, or say that Jesus was married” (Feb 2004, p. 10). The comment was made, by the way, in the context of a discussion of the accuracy of claims made in The Da Vinci Code.
(4) The original text does not say that Jesus used to kiss her often on the mouth. In fact, all translations put the word “mouth” in brackets, because that part of the only surviving manuscript is damaged, missing. You have to guess what the word is.
C. The Bizarre Interpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci’sLast Supper in The Da Vinci Code
Picture
One of the most famous paintings in the world is Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Leonardo painted it on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, between 1495 and 1498. In this painting Leonardo attempts to capture the reactions of the twelve following Jesus’ declaration: “Truly truly I say to you, one of you shall betray me” (John 13:21). To establish compositional balance in the picture Leonardo grouped the twelve apostles into four groups of three, two on either side of Jesus. It is the threesome immediately at Jesus’ right hand — to the left of him as we view the picture — that plays the most important role in The Da Vinci Code. There we see the figures of John, Judas, and Peter. The triangular structure of this grouping is derived from Peter’s leaning forward to ask John a question and John’s leaning back to hear it. In this Leonardo is following the cue of John 13:24: “Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, and said to him: Who is it of whom he [Jesus] speaks?” In the Gospel story, John then asks the question of Jesus and is told: “He it is to whom I shall reach bread dipped. And when he had dipped the bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot” (John 13:26). And so, Judas is portrayed clutching the money bag in his right hand (see John 13:29), with his left hand hovering over a piece of bread on the table (apparently Leonardo alludes here as well to the words of Jesus in Matthew 26:23: “He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, he shall betray me” [cf. Mark 14:20]). The above interpretation is the standard one given by credible art historians since the time of Leonardo. The Da Vinci Code, however, offers another, very novel interpretation of this group of figures, one that it shares with, and probably derives from, an earlier book by conspiracy theorists Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, entitled The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ (1997). The Da Vinci Code explicitly praises this book on page 253. (the above is from “Cracks in The Da Vinci Code, by Ronald V. Huggins, B.F.A., Th.D. )
On page 243 of The Da Vinci Code we encounter the following dialogue:
Sophie made her way closer to the painting, scanning the thirteen figures—Jesus Christ in the middle, six disciples on His left, and six on His right. “They’re all men,” she confirmed.
“Oh?” Teabing said. “How about the one seated in the place of honor, at the right hand of the Lord?”
Sophie examined the figure to Jesus’ immediate right, focusing in. As she studied the person’s face and body, a wave of astonishment rose within her. The individual had flowing red hair, delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom. It was, without a doubt…female.
“That’s a woman!” Sophie exclaimed.
Teabing was laughing. “Surprise, surprise. Believe me, it’s no mistake. Leonardo was skilled at painting the difference between the sexes.” Sophie moved closer to the image. The woman to Jesus’ right was young and pious-looking, with a demure face, beautiful red hair, and hands folded quietly….
“Who is she?” Sophie asked. “That, my dear,” Teabing replied, “is Mary Magdalene.” (p. 243)
According to The Da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus, and their offspring included the Merovingian kings of France. Hence Mary Magdalene, and not the last-supper cup, was the Holy Grail, in that her womb served as the chalice or vessel from which the royal blood of Jesus flowed forth in a royal posterity. A mysterious society called the Priory of Sion (Leonardo was supposedly served as one-time Grand Master [p. 204]) was dedicated to protecting “the true history of Jesus,” which the Roman Catholic Church throughout its long history had energetically tried to suppress.
[Teabing] “Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the Hands of Mary Magdalene.”
“And Peter had a problem with that,” Langdon said, pointing to The Last Supper. “That’s Peter there. You can see that Da Vinci was well aware of how Peter felt about Mary Magdalene.”
Again, Sophie was speechless. In the painting, Peter was leaning menacingly toward Mary Magdalene and slicing his blade-like hand across her neck . . .”
“And here too,” Langdon said, pointing now to the crowd of disciples near Peter. “A bit ominous, no?”
Sophie squinted and saw a hand emerging from the crowd of disciples. “Is that hand wielding a dagger?”
“Yes. Stranger still, if you count the arms, you’ll see that this hand belongs to … no one at all. It’s disembodied. Anonymous.” (p. 248)
How do we respond to the Da Vinci Code’s assertions about The Last Supper?
(1) The dagger held in the hand of a disembodied arm.
What we see in the picture is not a dagger. It is a knife. Given their purpose, daggers usually have thin pointed blades. The blade referred to in The Last Supper is too broad and not pointed enough to be justly described as a dagger. In addition, it also appears that only one of its edges is sharp, implying that its purpose was cutting not stabbing – probably for cutting food on the table.
As to the arm, it is not disembodied. There are six disciples to Jesus’ right in The Last Supper, and twelve arms and hands. The knife is in Peter’s right hand. This is evident from the painting itself and from the Study for the Right Arm of Peter in the Windsor Castle Royal Collection (no. 12546).
(2) The menacing “blade-like hand.”
The relaxed gesture of Peter’s left hand in The Last Supper (which points vaguely toward Jesus) relates to the request its owner was making of John. The gesture implies that Peter speaks to John behind his hand in a whisper. The only people, one would think, that would describe the hand as blade-like would be those who have not seen the painting since its most recent cleaning and restoration, completed in 1999. And indeed Dan Brown seems to be unfamiliar with this most recent restoration, since the only one he refers to in the context is one that, he appears to say, was concluded in 1954. This lapse on Brown’s part may derive from his reliance on The Templar Revelation, which, as we said, was published in 1997, two years before the completion of the most recent restoration. The Templar Revelation described Peter’s gesture as follows: “a hand cuts across her gracefully bent neck in what seems a threatening gesture” (p. 22).
(3) Leonardo was “skilled at painting the difference between the sexes,” and the “delicate folded hands, and the hint of a bosom. It was, without a doubt…female.”
The reference to delicate folded hands as a proof that the figure traditionally identified as John was really Mary Magdalene is forced. In the Study for the Hands of John in the Windsor Castle Royal Collection (no. 12543), they do not appear distinctly feminine. They may be the hands of a woman, but then again they could as easily be those of a man. In The Last Supper itself, John’s hands are no less masculine than most of the other hands in the picture.
As for the hint of a bosom, this is entirely unjustified. Even if an overly fertile imagination might find such a “hint” on the character of John where his clothes are loose, on the other side, given the absence of the loose cloak, we should be able to detect even clearer evidence of a bosom, we see instead that John’s chest is conspicuously bosomless. Are we then to suppose that Magdalene had only one breast? Here again Brown’s assertion may derive from his reliance on the conspiracy book The Templar Revelation, where we read of “the tiny, graceful hand, the pretty, elfin features, the distinctly female bosom and the gold necklace” (p. 20).
Interestingly a more recent, post-1999-Last-Supper-restoration book by The Templar Revelations author Lynn Picknett now replaces the old distinctly female bosom claim, with the equally groundless assertion that there is “a dark smudge where ‘his’ breasts should be.” Picknett apparently wants us now to believe that the female bosom was originally there, but that it was subsequently rubbed out.
In a posting from ABC News (Nov 3, 2003) we read.
“Many art historians have dismissed the theory that the figure is a woman, saying it’s just a tradition to paint John as beardless and long-haired. ‘It looks like a young male. I see no breasts,’ art historian Jack Wasserman told ABCNEWS.” Wasserman is a well-known Leonardo scholar.
Finally, John’s face is admittedly effeminate, but not more so than the faces of Jesus and Philip in the same picture. Many of the young, beardless men in Leonardo’s paintings and drawings are effeminate (see, for example, the startlingly effeminate St. John the Baptist in the Louvre). This may relate to the artist’s alleged homosexuality.
Here is an important question. Why would the thoughts of Da Vinci matter anyway? Maybe he believed in this theory and maybe he didn’t. He never wrote about it, but some claim his paintings suggest it. But ultimately, Leonardo Da Vinci’s beliefs are not an authority in any way shape or form. It is absurd to think that because he may have believed Jesus and Mary were married that it must be true.
2. What would it matter?
Let me state unequivocally, I do not think Jesus was married. The N.T. does not have a shred of evidence that He was. But let’s just say as a hypothetical argument that he was married. Would there be a problem with that? No. Jesus was a Jewish man. It was normal for Jewish men to marry. Jesus was fully human and fully God. It would not rob Him of His divinity if he had married. So why is this even a big issue for some pseudo scholars and Gnostics? They believe that if they can prove this that they will prove that the N.T. is not credible.
The real issue at stake in this book and many others written over the past twenty years is this: Is Jesus God in the flesh? Was He the perfect sacrifice? Did His death on the cross and His resurrection secure salvation to those who trust in Him? Is Jesus then the only way to be saved, to be right with God?
Jesus says in John 14:6 – “Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’”
The Bible says yes. We will examine Jesus’ own claims of deity in the weeks to come. Those claims are then validated in His death, burial and resurrection. As C.S. Lewis wrote, we have three choices, really, about Jesus. He was either a liar, a lunatic or Lord. His claims set this trilemma up, but the historical facts of His death, burial and resurrection leave us with only one real choice. He is Lord.
So what? So 1 Peter 3:15! Most Christian are woefully unprepared to defend their own faith. They are therefore susceptible to believing cleverly devised tales that are actually false and are unable to show another person why it is false. This must change.
So is the Bible we have a reliable witness of history? Are there accurate accounts that were destroyed and left out of the canon of the Bible? That’s what we will examine next week.
