Is the DaVinci Code True?
A lot of people are wondering this right now. We’ve seen the movie. We’ve read the book (although I don’t know why anyone would read the book when there’s a movie). Makes some pretty bold claims – and provides some seemingly solid arguments to back them up. Makes us want to check out some of the details, go to the Louvre, find the Rose Line, beat up an Opus Dei member, and so on.
The big claim, of course, that the story makes – that is so controversial these days – is that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead; in fact, he was completely human, and even married Mary Magdalene and had kids. The story goes on further to suggest that the Merovingian line of kings in southern France in the early middle ages were descended from Jesus, and that some of those descendent are walking around to this day.
Hmm.
The tricky thing about this story is that it uses a number of details and facts that are actually true – that’s what makes this so interesting, and controversial. But some of the dots on this connect-the-dot picture are pretty far apart.
Truth is, the book is based on a hoax, started in the late seventies, by a French guy named Pierre Plantard and his buddies. His intention was to show that he himself was descended from those Merovingian kings and was therefore royalty. He didn’t anticipate that people would focus more on the Jesus part however, and that freaked him out, and he recanted. Still, once the ball started rolling, it was impossible to stop; Dan Brown and others believed it, even though it was proven false, and the rest is history.
There’s a really good documentary on the History Channel called, THE REAL DAVINCI CODE, hosted by Tony Robinson (Baldrick of Black Adder fame), that explains the whole thing. You can watch it on the internet by clicking HERE.
Bottom line – did the Church suppress the truth, that Jesus was married and had kids? The DaVinci Code suggests that it did because the truth was a threat to the church’s power. But why would it be?
If Jesus did have kids, the church would have had absolutely no reason to hide it. Although later centuries in the church showed a preference for celibacy over married life (that was likely more due to the infiltration of Greek philosophy into Christian teaching, around the 4th Century – oh those %$# Greeks) – in the EARLY church, for like the first THOUSAND YEARS, Bishops were often married, and even the Apostles were married. If Jesus had been married, no doubt it would not have been considered a big deal at all, and likely would have been written right into Gospels themselves.
Even the suppressed Gnostic Gospels of the second and third centuries make no mention of Jesus being married – not even the famed “Gospel of Mary Magdalene.” These books were suppressed by the church for two reasons: one, they suggested that everyone was God – this is considered a heresy (that is, error) called pantheism – I don’t know about you, but if I’m God, I’m gonna be a little disappointed – and the other reason is when they were written: at least 150 years after the events of Jesus life. Because they were written so late, it becomes clear that they weren’t written to be historical – they were written for propaganda reason – to prove their point, that being (above): everybody is God. The four Gospels we have: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were written much earlier, and are therefore regarded as at least being somewhat historical.
So there you go. What we have here in The DaVinci Code is a classic case of taking a few historical facts which are relatively uninteresting by themselves, spin them out of control, and contorting them together into a really fascinating story.
Fascinating, but fictional.
Come to think of it, the Bush administration did the same thing with WMD’s in Iraq, didn’t they… :)