The Da Vinci Code: The Makings and Breakings of a Best-Seller

 

            There is no doubt that many people, Christians and atheists alike, have read the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.  It is also no secret that Brown made many outrageous claims.  Seemingly then, a rational line of thought would be to take the book as it is; a fiction novel, a story created by Dan Brown to sell books, turn a profit.  However, we have come to realize that many people, including scholars, do not take this book simply as fiction.  In fact, Dan Brown based several claims in his book off of other theory and research in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, written by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.  Let’s take a look at some of the claims that both The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail makes, and also the disputes between these views and traditional views of Christianity.

The story line that Brown uses is a very interesting one, beginning with the murder of a prominent museum curator.  It is through this murder that we first hear of the Priory of Sion, which actually does exhist.  The characters of Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu become the “detectives” of the story.  The museum curator, it turns out, was the head of the Priory of Sion.  Before he died, he left several clues about the societies most closely guarded secrets; the “truth” about the Holy Grail, a               kdfakjsdflkasdjfklasdfj sfdalkjsought-after religious artifact.  Only after they begin they’re search, however, do the claims begin to get interesting.  They receive help from Grail expert and symbologist Leigh Teabing.  This is the primary means by which Brown presents his arguments against the traditional Christian beliefs of Christ’s divinity and the divine inspiration of the Bible, saying that “The Bible is a product of man…not God.”[1]  Furthermore, Brown goes on, saying that the Holy Grail is actually a person.  He rationalizes this thinking by tracing the word Holy Grail back to its original meaning, which is “royal blood”.  Brown uses this reasoning to say that the Holy Grail is a blood line, one that still exists today.  The reason this blood line exists is because Jesus actually took a wife, Mary Magdalene.  They had several children, which is a fact that the Catholic Church has supposedly buried.  Lastly, The Da Vinci Code makes the claim that Council of Nicaea, in conjunction with Constantinople, voted to make Jesus Christ divine in nature.

Much of the evidence that Brown and Lincoln cite comes from the Dossiers Secrets, which contains the genealogies of French Kings and the leadership of the Priory of Sion since 1099.[2]  The Dossiers Secrets list all of the heads of the Priory of Sion.  The first of these names listed also had ties to both the Knights Templar and the French Merovingian line of Kings.  This is the majority of the evidence that prove the existence of the Priory of Sion and also that tie them to the Merovingian Kings.  “The Magdalene had figured prominently throughout our inquiry.  According to certain medieval legends the Magdalene brought the Holy Grail – or ‘Blood Royal’ – into France.  The Grail is closely associated with Jesus.  And the Grail, on one level at least, relates in some way to blood – or, more specifically, to a bloodline and lineage.”[3]  This statement explicitly implies that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and had children, thus allowing for Mary to bring the “blood royal” into France. 

The Grail that people are in search of is in all actuality the “bones of Mary Magdalene”[4]  This would then lead us to the conclusion that Jesus is not the Son of God, but merely a man.  If the bloodline of Jesus could be proven, it would send a shocking blow to Christianity.  It would then be possible to trace the lineage of Christ, and countering many different Church teachings.  The Da Vinci Code made that claim, with the help and research support of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. 

A second claim that was made by The Da Vinci Code was that the Bible was a product of man, not divinely inspired.  Brown makes this claim very clearly in the book, although it is not as clearly stated in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  Lincoln tries to disprove the fact that the Gospels are divinely inspired, or more so that the Gospels are bias in the favor of the Romans.  “In order to ensure the survival of [Mark’s] message he would have been obligated to exonerate the Romans of all guilt for Jesus’ death – to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews.”[5]  This clearly makes the assumption that the Gospels could not be the complete truthful account of Jesus’ life, as Christianity claims.  Furthermore, he claims that all the other Gospels are derived from the Gospel of Mark, and that the Gospels do not see “eye to eye.”[6]  This again makes the claim that the Gospels are not a totally accurate account of the life of Christ.  This would seemingly make the argument that the Bible, then, is derived not from God, but from man.  Such a claim would take complete credibility from Christianity, since it claims that the Bible is completely accurate and divinely inspired.  Lincoln also makes several assumptions that seem logical and are extremely crucial to the conclusions that are drawn.  For instance, he claims that the Gospel of Mark must have been written in Rome and addressed to Roman audiences, and therefore sympathetic to the Romans.  He comes to this reasoning by saying that Mark was a native a Jerusalem, so therefore according to Clement of Alexandria his Gospel must have been composed in Rome.[7]  Lincoln also concludes that the author of Matthew’s Gospel was not Matthew, but a Jewish refugee from Palestine.  All of these claims together would certainly be the downfall of Christianity, but more specifically the Catholic Church.  Brown, with the help of Lincoln’s research, attempted to mainstream these beliefs and ideas.

At first glance, it would appear that there is overwhelming evidence in support of all these theories.  There is equally as much as evidence on the other side, as one might expect.  Members of the Catholic Church were outraged when this book was released, and there has been much research into the claims.  It has been concluded by most historians that the theories put forth about the early roots of Christianity have no historical relevance.  Both Brown and Lincoln make the claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were intimate.  Part of their support for this statement is the Gnostic Gospels.  These “Gospels” were written well after the time of Christ, making them removed from the actual events of Christ.  Furthermore, they were written by anti-Christian sects, making them bias besides.  Brown also claimed that the Church stole the holy days from pagan celebrations in an attempt to try and fuse the two religions together.  On the contrary, the church purposely planned their holy days to coincide with pagan holidays in an attempt to edge out paganism.[8]  Also, the Dossier Secrets, the so-called documents that detail the heads of the Priory of Sion, were not so secret after all.  All the genealogies of kings contained in the secrets were refuted by other documents detailing the same blood line.[9]  This certainly seems to diminish the credibility of the Dossier Secrets.  Even the writers of the primary source, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, making the claims do not feel they have enough evidence to stand firm.  Lincoln himself says “the provable facts are very, very few, all the rest is hearsay, evidence, guess work, and interpretation, none of the books that have been written, including my own, have any validity whatsoever”[10] 

To me, it seems like there is very little evidence for the claims being made.  The fact that these claims are so outrageous would make me think that the evidence for them would need to be that much stronger.  It is just the opposite, however, and I feel that Lincoln sums it up rather nicely when he himself refutes the credibility of his own book.  It also seems to me like there are several underlying assumptions made when reaching the conclusions that are made.  For instance, when Lincoln states the Gospel of Mark was written to appease the Romans.  First of all, that is assuming the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome, and no doubt that is a fair assumption.  It still needs to be addressed however.  Also, it seems to me the description of Jesus’ Crucifixion does not exonerate the Romans, rather labels them as ignorant and mean spirited.  In my opinion, the Da Vinci Code along with the books that inspired it and provided the research are nothing more than conspiracy novels, and however interesting they may be we can not simply accept them as fact.  Cleary there are many things that remain unanswered, and until the authors address these areas and provide actual concrete evidence that can over turn the mounds of evidence that Christianity has, there is little foundation for the claims made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Baigent, Michael, Leigh, Richard, and Lincoln Henry. Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  New York: Dell Publishers, 1983

Newman, Sharen. The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code. New York: Berkley Books, 2005.

Da Vinci Decoded. Produced and directed by Martin Lunn. The Disinformation Company, 2004. DVD.