W. Ward Gasque
THE
DA VINCI CODE
Harmless Thriller or Dangerous Hoax?
(page 2 of 7)
I confess I enjoyed staying up late two nights to read the book. For me it was certainly a page-turner. Pure entertainment all the way. As a historian, I found it hard to imagine that anyone would take seriously some bogus history lessons offered by two male enthusiasts for the “sacred feminine.” And I couldn’t help noticing that there were only two women characters in the book, both of them quite subservient to men: Sophie Neveu (“Wisdom” + “New Eve”), wide-eyed as she is constantly lectured to by the two professors; and her nameless grandmother, a passive participant in the neo-pagan ritual of heiros gamos (“sacred marriage”) which is supposed to celebrate the divine balance between male and female.
Besides being more fun to read than watching TV, what explains DVC’s huge readership? The answer lies, I believe, in its historical insinuations about the history of Christianity. The book has been promoted as “THE GREATEST CONSPIRACY OF THE PAST 2000 YEARS.”
To quote the author:
Rumors of this conspiracy have been whispered for centuries in countless languages, including the languages of art, music, and literature. Some of the most dramatic evidence can be found in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci, which seem to overflow with mystifying symbols, anomalies, and codes. Art historians agree that Da Vinci’s paintings contain hidden levels of meaning . . . . Many scholars believe his work intentionally provides clues to a powerful secret . . . a secret that remains protected to this day by a clandestine brotherhood of which Da Vinci was a member.
Purportedly the conspiracy started with Peter and the other male disciples of Jesus, who were jealous of the role given by Jesus to his disciple-consort, Mary Magdalene. They attempted to do away with her following the crucifixion. Providentially for her and the child she was carrying, Jesus’ rich uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, was able to whisk them out of Palestine and drop them off in southern France on his way to become the first bishop of England. In due course, church leaders developed the legend that Mary M. was a converted prostitute in order to marginalize her historic witness.
According to DVC, besides protecting the reputation of Jesus, the earliest Christian leaders wanted to reverse his teachings concerning sexuality, the sacred feminine, goddess worship, and the essence of the gospel he proclaimed. In any event, nobody in the first couple of centuries believed that Jesus was anything but an extraordinary human being. Then along came a politically astute emperor, Constantine I (273/275-337), who saw the potential of uniting the empire by making Christianity the official religion. First he had to establish one form of Christianity as the “official” or “orthodox” brand and get rid of all the theological diversity that was characteristic of the early centuries. So he called the leaders of the church together for a discussion in 325 (Council of Nicaea) and presented them with a new creed.
Constantine, Brown asserts, also had to get rid of all documents that did not fit in with the new orthodoxy he had created. So he had the four gospels that we find in our Bibles today preserved, along with the other 23 documents contained in the New Testament; “thousands” of documents portraying Jesus as “a mortal man” were destroyed. Not only did Constantine upgrade the status of Jesus, he changed the day on which Christians worshiped from the seventh (the Sabbath) to the first (Sun-day, in honor of the God he worshiped).
Since that time the leaders of the church, to whom Brown keeps referring as “the Vatican,” have kept the knowledge of the true story a secret. Brown seems to know nothing of Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Protestantism, the Radical Reformation, Pentecostals, Independents or any of the multitude of denominational groupings who might be interested in knowing about the true origins of Christianity.