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The Da Vinci Code DVD: Release Date November 14th

The Da Vinci Code movie is being released on DVD on November 14th. If you haven’t seen it yet, now’s your chance to finally see what everyone’s been talking about. The international best-selling novel has sold over 60 million copies in 44 languages, and now the movie has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars around the world. Why is this story so popular? What’s the big attraction?

The reason that The Da Vinci Code sold so many books, movie tickets, and soon DVDs isn’t Dan Brown’s writing ability. (It’s a fast paced, fun tale, but plenty of those are written every year.) No, it’s clearly the controversial content that has made it such a bestseller.

There has been substantial confusion among readers about whether the book is factual. While promoted as fiction, Dan Brown repeatedly claims the details of the story are historically accurate, and the “FACT” page of the book states “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”. However, nearly all scholars disagree. Many of the biggest claims of The Da Vinci Code story have been shown to be false.

So if you’re wondering which, if any, of the supposedly historical facts in the movie are accurate, you aren’t alone. Here is a sampling of some of the issues raised by the movie:

• Was Jesus considered “merely a man” before Constantine? – No. There’s no evidence the early church believed this. Even the early 2nd century heretics were suggesting that Jesus was only God and NOT a man. (See also this streaming video)
• Did the church run a “smear campaign” against Mary Magdalene? – No. Mary is spoken of positively in the Gospels and made a Saint by the church.
• Were there really “more than eighty gospels” written? – No. The few other ancient writings we possess are much later than the biblical records and thus were never considered historically accurate.
• Did Leonardo Paint Mary into the Last Supper? – No. It would make no difference even if he did; but read the article for six good reasons why we know he didn’t.
• Did Leonardo Da Vinci hate the Bible? – No. All of the quotes from Leonardo in The Da Vinci Code are misquoted. Leonardo was not referring to the Bible or Christianity in any of them!

The reason the story captivates people is that there is something about the person of Jesus Christ that just intrigues. He enchants our minds and our hearts. When we consider what really know about Him, the real Jesus outside of The Da Vinci Code fiction, author Max Lucado asks “What do we do with such a person? We applaud men for doing good things. We enshrine God for doing great things. But when a man does God things? One thing is for sure, we can’t ignore him. Why would we want to?” (Max Lucado, Next Door Savior)

The real Jesus is much more incredible than the false one portrayed in Brown’s Code. If Brown’s book has piqued your curiosity, you can explore the life of Christ for yourself with an interactive online experience called Who is Jesus?, a free, guided, 5 part course available through thelife.com, or continue reading this blog.

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The Ultimate Da Vinci Code Question: Who Is Jesus?

Dan Brown claims to be Christian. This should mean that he tries to follow Jesus. But Dan Brown believes a lot of what The Da Vinci Code discusses. He stated in a TV interview (pick the first Good Morning America interview here to see it) that he would not change a thing if he were to write a non-fiction book on the same topics The Da Vinci Code discusses. He clearly believes in a very different Jesus than most Christians. So, the question is: Who is Jesus really? Is he “merely a man” as Brown suggests, or something much, much more?

The best sources we have are found in the Bible itself. The biblical texts are the earliest texts we have, written in the first century and recorded by eyewitnesses or those who directly consulted eyewitnesses. There is no evidence that the Bible “evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions” as Brown, through Teabing, suggests. The Bible is in fact the most reliable ancient document we possess, and exists in thousands of ancient copies with no major discrepancies. Here’s what these earliest sources have to say regarding Jesus, who is called “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1,14).
“Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil 2:5-7).
“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col 2:9).
“Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”" (John 20:28)

Jesus also accepted worship, and for Jews this was seen as blasphemy because only God could be worshiped. The early church leaders agreed that Jesus was not merely a man: “God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life” – Ignatius (105AD)

It seems that since Dan Brown is contradicting the oldest and most reliable sources on who Jesus is, he is inventing his own Jesus to suit himself. That will never do for someone who “seeks the truth.” Jesus was clear regarding his claims about Himself and his work on earth. Many religious leaders have taught that we should love one another. But what made Jesus unique? Here’s what Billy Graham had to say:

Only Jesus died and then came back to life by the power of God, never to die again. … You can visit the tombs of philosophers and religious teachers of every kind across the world but you can’t visit Jesus’ tomb, because He rose from the dead and is now in heaven. Someday, He will return in glory to destroy all evil and rule in perfect justice. … Do you want to know God? Look at Jesus, for He was God in human flesh. And when you do, you also will discover that God loves you. He loves you so much that Christ was willing to die for you so you could be reconciled to God.

It’s time to answer Jesus’ question for yourself. It was first addressed to His twelve disciples but applicable to you and me today. Don’t jump to answer based on your preconceived notions or Dan Brown’s flawed history, but instead answer by examining the information available and asking God to help you answer Jesus’ question: “Who do you say I am?“

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The Missing Disclaimer

Toronto Sun columnist Michael Coren made the following comments in his article “Da Vinci Code a ‘disgrace’“, appearing in the May 20^th 2006 issue of the newspaper:

“Surely a mild disclaimer at the beginning of the new movie might be nice. This is all that was asked of director Ron Howard, but the polite request was dismissed. Yet similar disclaimers have been inserted before movies many times in the past. For Asians before Year of the Dragon, blacks before Birth of a Nation, gays before Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jews before Merchant of Venice. No, don’t stop me. For Mormons before Big Love, Muslims before True Lies, Native Americans before Pocahontas II and the Nearsighted before Mr. Magoo. Oh, and for Wolves before White Fang. So Christians, it would appear, matter slightly less that our friends in the wolf community.”

Should The Da Vinci Code movie have included a disclaimer, considering that many of its purported historical claims (such as Jesus’ supposed marriage, the Priory of Sion, Jesus’ divinity, and many others) are extremely dubious at best?

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Dan Brown: I am a Christian.

I was reading the FAQs from Dan Brown’s Official Website and found that Brown considers himself a Christian.

ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?
Yes. Interestingly, if you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as absolute historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious–that is, that we are all trying to decipher life’s big mysteries, and we’re each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

He lists three different answers for what people consider being a Christian is:

1. being baptized
2. accepting the Bible as absolute historical fact
3. believing and accepting Christ as personal savior

Christianity is not a continuum as Brown suggests, rather it is a specific set of beliefs. Many Christians around the world hold to a set of common beliefs outlined in the Nicean Creed:

We believe in one God
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified
under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand
of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
and the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son
is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in the one holy catholic

(universal Christian) and apostolic church.
We acknowledge one baptism
for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

What about you? Do you hold to the Nicean Creed? Is there a part of it that you disagree with or do you disagree with it all? What beliefs do you hold?

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Saint Mary Magdalene

The Da Vinci Code paints a terrible picture of the church’s treatment of Mary Magdalene. According to Teabing, she was falsely called a prostitute as a result of a smear campaign launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous secret her role as the Holy Grail  (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, Chapter 58). Is it accurate to suggest a “smear campaign”? Brown goes even further, suggesting that the Church outlawed speaking of the shunned Mary Magdalene! (Chapter 61)

This supposed “smear campaign” never occurred. Pope Gregory I, in 591AD, apparently confused the story of a reformed prostitute given in the Gospel of Luke chapter 7 with Mary Magdalene, whose name is mentioned soon afterward in chapter 8. From study of the text, this interpretation is very unlikely. It’s unfortunate that this late tradition persisted for so long before being corrected, but it’s important to remember that historically Mary Magdalene was praised by the church!

Was Mary a sinner? Yes, but in the sense that we are all sinners, and the church never ‘shunned’ the ‘sinner’ Mary Magdalene. Mary is mentioned in positive terms many times throughout the Gospels. Consider that “she followed Jesus from Galilee, ministered to Him, beheld the crucifixion from afar, stood by the cross, located and watched the tomb, came early to the tomb with spices, was first to see the risen Lord, and reported the resurrection to the disciples” (Chuck Missler). She was also named as a saint by the church. That’s right, Saint Mary Magdalene. The early Christians named churches after her and prayed at her purported tombs (Amy Weber, De-Coding Da Vinci, 68). Christianity focuses more on repentance than sin, and as Weber points out, in the Medieval and early Renaissance period Mary was “held up as a model for all Christians, male and female.”

In the first century, women in society had poor status. For example, a woman’s testimony was not considered valid in court, and teachers never accepted women as their students. But Jesus honored and taught people equally, both men and women, including Mary. Although no credible evidence exists that suggests Mary was Jesus’ wife, she was certainly not ‘shunned’ by early Christians.

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Can You Prove What You Believe?

Everyone believes things they cannot prove. The question is: How much proof is enough to warrant belief? Consider this fictional conversation between Langdon and Sophie:

Langdon: Hello. You must be Sophie Neveu. My name is Robert Langdon.
Sophie: I don’t believe you.
Langdon: Err … what reason would I have for lying?
Sophie: I don’t know. Maybe you’re crazy. Maybe you always dreamed of being a famous ?symbologist.? You made the claim. Prove it.
Langdon: Well … here’s my wallet, it has my credit cards in it, along with some pictures of me with my family …
Sophie: How do I know that’s your wallet? For all I know you could’ve mugged the real Robert Langdon and stolen his wallet.
Langdon: Okay, but here’s my driver’s license. See, it has my picture, and my name is on it … ‘Robert Langdon’.
Sophie: That could easily be faked. You could’ve bought fake documents, or you could’ve created them yourself using Photoshop or something!
Langdon: Argh. Well what about this, here’s a copy of my new book Symbols of the Lost Sacred Feminine. It has my name and photo in the back cover. Surely you wouldn’t claim this was faked!
Sophie: It still could be a faked copy of the book. Also, maybe you have an identical twin brother, and maybe he is the real Robert Langdon!
Langdon: But … I have no brother!
Sophie: Why should I believe that? Prove it.
Langdon: … adieu, Ms Neveu. Vous ?tes une imb?cile.

This is a somewhat frivolous example. But it demonstrates that everyone believes things we can?t prove 100% and that we are quite right to do so. Dan Brown claims Jesus was just a man. The earliest Christians claimed (and Christians today still claim) that Jesus was both God and man. No one’s beliefs are based on 100% proof, but instead on ?inference to the best explanation,? or put another way, deciding what is true based on the best available evidence. What kind of evidence do you require from other people? How much proof is enough? We should not pass the buck by claiming there is not enough evidence to decide; the stakes are too high, and we all must make a choice. What do you choose and why?

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Was Jesus considered merely a man?

“At this gathering [the Council of Nicaea],” Teabing said, “many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon – the date of Easter, the role of the bishops … and, of course, the divinity of Jesus … until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, Chapter 55)

The earliest Christian gospels are not the Gospel of Philip or the Gospel of Mary. The earliest are the four included in the New Testament, which are usually dated between 70 AD and 90 AD. It is clear from reading these writings that Jesus was not considered merely a man. Paul’s letters, which were likely written even earlier, affirm the claims of the gospels. This does not prove that Jesus is God, but does prove that this is what the earliest Christians believed. Non-Christian writings, such as those of Pliny and Tacitus, confirm Christians’ early beliefs that Jesus was not just “a great and powerful man”.

In The Da Vinci Code, Teabing seems to put great emphasis on the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary. Both of these documents are gnostic texts. Gnosticism was a Middle-Eastern religious philosophy that emphasized the idea that matter was inherently evil, therefore the physical body was to be despised in favor of the soul/spirit. Gnostics would be the least likely to believe that Jesus was “just a man” and yet it is their texts that Brown calls upon to back up his theory.

VIDEO: Michael Horner, a philosopher and frequent debater of the Christian faith pointed out that both Liberal and Conservative scholars agree that the earliest texts clearly show that the Christians at that time did not consider Jesus merely a mortal. You can see more of Horner?s argument in the “Was Jesus just a man?” video.

Something clearly convinced the early church followers, who were predominantly Jewish and held to strict monotheist beliefs, that Jesus was no mere man. You can explore the life of Christ for yourself with an interactive online experience called “Who is Jesus?“, a free, guided, 5 part course available through thelife.com. Why do you think Dan Brown pushes the idea of Jesus as just a man? What difference would it make if Jesus is God as the earliest Christians believed?

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How many gospels?

Teabing paused to sip his tea and then placed the cup back on the mantel. “More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.” Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

Was Jesus’ life really “recorded by thousands of followers across the land” as Teabing suggests? Were there really eighty gospels considered?

The answer is no. While there were other writings about Jesus, these other “gospels” were written much later than the four traditional gospels, and most were never given even a hint of consideration by early Christians.

Mark, the earliest of the four biblical gospels, is usually dated to around 60 AD (60 years after the birth of Christ, 27 years after his death). By contrast, even the most liberal scholars date the two non-biblical gospels Teabing quotes from, the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Philip to, at the earliest, at 120 AD and 180 AD respectively. Unlike the biblical gospels, of which we have literally thousands of early copies, most non-biblical gospels exist in only a few manuscripts. The Gospel of Philip, for example, exists in only one manuscript which is incomplete.

Why should we seriously consider writings that were not only written much later than the biblical gospels, but were also passed by as inaccurate by the people who lived closest to the time Jesus lived?

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What’s the big deal about The Da Vinci Code? It’s “just fiction”!

You know, I just don’t get it. Everyone is treating this book as a non-fiction, factual book. It’s not!!! … There’s more to life than getting obssessed about a fiction book. (bethann, posting a comment on this blog)

We know the novel is fiction. We know Langdon, Sophie, Teabing and the rest are not real people and that their adventure isn’t real either. The problem stems, in part, from Dan Brown’s “FACT” page, which states:

FACT: The Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization … All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.

Brown believes his research for the book is accurate. He claims that “99 percent of it is true. All of the architecture, the art, the secret rituals, the history, all of that is true, the Gnostic gospels.” In reality Brown’s treatment of ancient documents is deceptive at best, and the Priory of Sion is a known hoax, among dozens of other errors. Even though the novel is promoted as fiction, many accept the parts Brown himself claims are true, and one of the aims of this site is to discuss where the novel gets it wrong.

Those of you who remember the recent James Frey scandal regarding his book A Million Little Pieces will recall the outrage people felt when they learned that his supposedly true book (featured on, then later blasted by, Oprah) turned out to contain many lies. If people were outraged by James Frey’s lies about his own life, shouldn’t Christians be just as outraged about lies about Jesus? If people are really interested in “seeking the truth”, should we be interested in how The Da Vinci Code misrepresents the parts it says are fact?

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