Fiction and Fact in the Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown: “The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci.” (p. 1)

Fact: The Priory of Sion is an esoteric order legally established in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard. According to an article by Laura Miller in the New York Times (February 22, 2004).

…the legitimacy of the Priory of Sion history rests on a cache of clippings and pseudonymous documents that…were planted in the Bibliothèque Nationale by a man named Pierre Plantard. As early as the 1970’s, one of Plantard's confederates had admitted to helping him fabricate the materials, including genealogical tables portraying Plantard as a descendant of the Merovingians (and, presumably, of Jesus Christ) and a list of the Priory’s past “grand masters.'” This patently silly catalog of intellectual celebrities stars Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Jean Cocteau and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci -- and it’s the same list Dan Brown trumpets, along with the alleged nine-century pedigree of the Priory, in the front matter for The Da Vinci Code, under the heading of “Fact.” Plantard, it eventually came out, was an inveterate rascal with a criminal record for fraud and affiliations with wartime anti-Semitic and right- wing groups. The actual Priory of Sion was a tiny, harmless group of like-minded friends formed in 1956. Plantard’s hoax was debunked by a series of (as yet untranslated) French books and a 1996 BBC documentary.

Dan Brown: “More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament.” (p. 231)

Fact: We only know of a few dozen non-canonical Gospels, most of which were not in circulation until after the second century.

Dan Brown: “The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.” (p. 231)

Fact: Constantine had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament Canon. The canonical process began in the mid-second century as the Church’s response to Marcion’s rejection of both the Old Testament and Christian writings tarnished by “Judaism.” Texts such as the “canon” as writing by Irenaeus, Justin and other Church Father indicate that by the late second century there was already a significant consensus about the basic outline of the New Testament canon. Final form of the New Testament established by the church councils of Laodicea (363), Hippo (393), and Carthage (397).

Dan Brown: “The early Church literally stole Jesus from his original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity and using it to expand their power.” (p. 233)

Fact: Jesus is portrayed as fully human and yet fully divine from the start, beginning with the earliest New Testament texts. We have numerous writings from early Christian writers that affirm the divinity of Christ, yet equally recognize his humanity. There is no evidence that the church used the doctrine of Christ’s divinity to expand its power. In actual fact, the early church was a persecuted and politically powerless sect for centuries, even while it continued to affirm the Lordship of Christ. The early church was equally committed to both the humanity and divinity of Christ. It was after Constantine that the church declared the teaching of Apollonarus to be heretical because of its denial of the humanity of Christ, just as the teaching of Arius was rejected for denying his divinity.

Dan Brown: “The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in the caves near Qumran in the Judean desert….The scrolls highlight glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications, clearly confirming that the modern Bible was complied and edited by men who possessed a political agenda.” (p. 234)

Fact: The Dead Sea Scrolls were actually found in 1947. They consist entirely of Jewish texts and say absolutely nothing about Jesus or the Christian movement.

Dan Brown: “Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that make Him godlike.” (p. 234)

Fact: Constantine did no such thing. All the texts contained in the New Testament were written in the first century (some scholars identify a place a few texts in the early 2nd century) and the canon itself was almost entirely in place by the time of Constantine. At its core were the four canonical Gospels, which all serious scholars, liberal and conservative, date far earlier than any of the other non-canonical gospels.

Actually the non-canonical gospels portray Jesus in much less human terms—and far more as a divine wonderworker.

Dan Brown: “Anyone who chose the forbidden gospels of Constantine’s version was deemed a heretic. The word heretic derives from that moment in History.” (p.234)

Fact: As early as the New Testament the Christianity community was forced to deal with the problem of distorted and misleading teaching. St. Paul warns about “another gospel,” and uses the term hairesis in his letters (Gal 5:20, 1 Cor 11:18) to speak of divisions within the church. The Pastoral Epistles and especially the Johannine Epistles show an urgent concern for false teaching. This concern is prevalent in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, writing just after the New Testament period, especially in the letters of Ignatius, who uses the term hairesis when speaking of the problem of Docetism. In the late 2nd century, Irenaeus’ five volume response to the challenge of Gnosticism was actually entitled “Against Heresies.”

Dan Brown: “Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death.” (p. 234)

Fact: The Council of Nicea addressed the perceived distortion in Christian teaching by the Alexandrian priest, Arius, that Jesus was not fully divine but an intermediary between divinity and humanity. Arius had caused such controversy that Constantine called the council to resolve the dispute, and restore unity to the empire. The council sought to safeguard the traditional teaching with the new language that the Son was of “one being” (homoousios) with the Father.

Dan Brown: “The marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is ‘a matter of historical record’” (p.244)

Fact: Dan Brown fails to produce any such “historical record,” nor is any known. He speaks only of Pierre Plantard’s “Les Dossiers Secrets,” which have been shown to be a blatant 20th century forgery, and of a passage in the Gnostic Gospel of Phillip, written no earlier than the mid 2nd century, that speaks of Mary Magdalene in ambiguous terms as Jesus’ “companion.” Brown infers that Jesus “kisses” Mary in this text, but in fact, the text is fragmentary and a number of key words are missing.

Dan Brown: “The Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls [are] the earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible.” (p. 245)

Fact: The non-canonical Gospels, some of which were found at Nag Hammadi, date from the mid-second century to—in some cases—centuries later. Almost all scholars believe the earliest non-canonical gospel to be the Gospel of Thomas, which is usually dated between 120 and 140 A.D. By contrast, the letters of Paul were written between 50 and 60 A.D., Mark between about 65 or 70, Matthew & Luke, around 85 and John, 90-95 A.D. Brown is correct about one thing: the non-canonical gospels definitely do not “match up” with the Biblical gospels.

When people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

--C.K. Chesterton.