Crunching The Da Vinci Code
Crunching The Da Vinci Code
In preparation for this week’s series of talks about the interaction of Christianity and “The Da Vinci Code”, I spent three nights last week reading the best-selling novel.
My initial positive impressions of the novel as a whole were that it was fast-moving and it kept me interested as I read it. While it was no literary masterpiece, it was easy to read and was fun.
On the negative side, I found the characters quite flat and one-dimensional, and the ending was quite disappointing considering the intense build-up of the rest of the novel.
And then there’s the Jesus stuff.
The central controversy of “The Da Vinci Code” is the series of claims that it makes about Christianity – about the divinity of Jesus, his relationship with Mary Magdalene, the historical reliability of the New Testament and the deliberate destruction of the truth by the early church fathers.
I’m not going to go into detail here about how we can combat the claims that are being made – partly because I don’t know enough about the history and partly because that’s what some of the talks will be addressing this week.
However, one obvious flaw stood out even on a first browse through the book.
A big part of the argument of the book is that the early church deliberately removed from the histories of Jesus any concept of “the divine feminine” – and that as a result all cultures that have been influenced by Christian thinking have subjugated women.
Part of this argument was that in Genesis, it was the woman who ate the fruit of the tree, and this was the church’s attempt to blame women for “original sin”.
The obvious difficultly with this is that the book of Genesis is a Hebrew book, written well before the time of Christ (no matter which opinion you hold on its authorship) and that it was a well-established religious text among the Jews at the time of Christ.
Whatever you make of the establishment of the New Testament Scripture (whether the Council of Nicaea actually determined which books would be in the Canon of Scripture or whether they just confirmed what had already been accepted as Scripture), it’s a logical flaw to suggest that Genesis’ account of original sin is in some way a product of the early church.
There are many more obvious flaws in the novel, at least in the subjects that I have some understanding of, such that I am almost tempted to dismiss it as rubbish and wonder why we would bother to interact with it at all.
Yet, many people do believe it!
A survey conducted here at the University of Wollongong on Market Day regarding “The Da Vinci Code” revealed the following:
Q: Do you think it (The Da Vinci Code) presents an accurate perception of Jesus and The Bible?
| Yes, it’s practically a history text. | 0 |
| It’s mostly true but exaggerated a bit. | 16 |
| Don’t really know | 3 |
| No, The Da Vinci Code’s picture of Jesus and the Bible is as fictional as Spongebob Squarepants. | 14 |
| Total who read it | 33 |
So why is “The Da Vinci Code” so popular? I can think of three reasons.
1. Popularity breeds popularity
Part of the reason behind the popularity of the novel is actually quite unrelated to its content. It’s the global form of peer pressure. This is THE book to read, THE book that is being talked about in the office, on the train, in the media, and at family gatherings. Last year, when “The Passion of the Christ” came out, everyone talked about that. This year, I expect that something else will come along.
2. The search for truth and meaning in the world
Some, like me, may have found it quite enjoyable because of the way it linked history together. A lot of science-fiction is popular for the same reason. In this postmodern world that has been stripped of meaning, many people seen to instinctively be searching for an overarching structure and understanding of the world that has power to explain what is going on “behind the scenes”. For Christians, we know that our gospel message, “Jesus is Lord”, rightly understood, actually has this power and so this may be a way of engaging such people.
3. A deliberate rejection of the Christian message
Others, however, will have at some stage made a conscious decision to reject the Christian gospel. This may be because they haven’t actually understood it, or may be that they have rejected it because of their love for the world. Either way, what might appeal to them about “The Da Vinci Code” is that they are seeking for justification for their own decision. And so statements along the lines of “Any one who truly understands their faith understands that its based on myth” that appear through the novel might give them comfort and affirmation for their decision. If someone has truly understood the gospel and rejected it, perhaps the only way to help them is through patience and prayer.
For a "useful overview of The Da Vinci Code and what is wrong with it” see: http://www.radixmagazine.com/page1Davincicode.html
[Stephen Bell]
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