The theory that
Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and together rode
off into the sunset to raise a family is an old one,
fraught with holes and devoid of any shred of historical
evidence for its support. Nonetheless, “The Da Vinci
Code,” attempts to make the case and then by
embellishing upon it, goes a step further, claiming the
flesh and blood descendents of Christ continue to this
day, being involved in one massive religious cover-up.
The ensuing adventure to unlock a series of clues
leading to “The Holy Grail” makes for exciting
reading—so long as the reader understands it is a work
of pure fiction.
And that’s the main rub
with Dan Brown’s book. Readers ignorant of the history
of the Christian church and the authorship of the Bible
will have a hard time separating fact from fiction.
At one point in the
book, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom
Hanks in the movie) attempts to explain to French
cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Taotau) the existence
of “an alternate history of Christ” based on “scientific
evidence that the New Testament is false testimony.”
He bases this on his
own—and very false—understanding of what faith is:
“Sophie, every faith in the world is based on
fabrication. That is the definition of faith—acceptance
of that which we imagine to be true, that which we
cannot prove. Every religion describes God through
metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from the early
Egyptians through modern Sunday school…The problems
arise when we believe literally in our own metaphors.”
While this may be true
about almost every faith in the world, what sets
Christianity apart from all other religions are two
things: The risen Christ, seen by over 500 eye
witnesses—many of whom are named—and the documentary
evidence supporting the written record of the New
Testament.
The Bible is not a book
of fables compiled by men centuries after the actual
events took place. The apostle Peter wrote, “We did not
follow cunningly devised fables… but were eyewitnesses…”
The Bible is an eye-witness account written by the men
who witnessed the events themselves, first-hand.
Two baseless claims
made in The Da Vinci Code are that the Roman emperor
Constantine gave us the New Testament and the divinity
of Jesus is an invention of fourth-century church
leaders at the Council of Nicea.
Both claims are
rubbish.
Christ himself claimed
to be divine in no unmistakable terms on several
occasions. He referred to himself as “I AM” when asked
by the Pharisees for his credentials. Their response was
to attempt to stone him for the sin of
blasphemy—claiming to be the same God who had appeared
to Moses in the form of a burning bush.
And the charges for
which Jesus was crucified?—blasphemy. Here’s the
exchange that took place between Caiaphas and Jesus: “
‘Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus
said, ‘I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds
of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his clothes and
said, ‘What further need do we have of witnesses? You
have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?’ And they
all condemned Him to be worthy of death.”
The New Testament is
the most well-documented record of antiquity. There are
over 5,500 manuscript copies in the Greek language
written within 70 years of the actual events. Taking
into account other manuscripts in Latin, Aramaic, Coptic
and Syriac, the total is almost 25,000. In comparison to
other works which are rarely questioned by scholars; the
Iliad (650 copies, the earliest extant copy 500 years
after the events portrayed) Sophocles (193 copies, 1400
years) and Aristotle (49 copies, 1400 years) the
evidence for the accuracy of the Bible is overwhelming.
Accepting the
authorship and the veracity of the Bible on an
intellectual level is not what presents a stumbling
block to true belief in Christ. When the Psalmist wrote,
“The fool has said in his heart ‘there is no God’,” the
emphasis was not on the fool rejecting that for which
there is insufficient evidence but on a willful decision
made in the heart of man to reject that which he knows
to be true.
An open-minded and fair
evaluation of the scriptures will lead the truth-seeker
to genuine faith. Men deny God because they make a
conscious decision to do so. It is an act of the will,
not of the mind.
True faith is not
something based on fabrication. Bible scholar Lee
Strobel writes, “People will die for their religious
beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but
people won't die for their religious beliefs if they
know their beliefs are false. While most people can only
have faith that their beliefs are true, the disciples
were in a position to know without a doubt whether or
not Jesus had risen from the dead. They claimed that
they saw him, talked with him, and ate with him. If they
weren't absolutely certain, they wouldn't have allowed
themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that
the resurrection had happened.”
It’s not enough to
believe in something. The object of that belief
must be truth or it’s not faith but foolishness.
The writer of the New
Testament book of Hebrews describes true faith as “the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen.”
Substance and
evidence—the Bible abounds with both—but that’s because
it is a factual account. There’s not a shred of truth to
be found in “The Da Vinci Code”—and neither should we
expect there to be. It is, after all, a work of fiction.
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