Since its publication 21 months ago Dan Brown’s 450-page thriller with its mix of fiction, fact, and legend has become one of the biggest-selling adult fiction books of all time – 10 million copies in 42 languages. Of course Brown’s not the first to brew a mix out of Marian conspiracies, the Opus Dei, secret societies like the Templars and the Priory of Sion and a supposed ‘royal bloodline’ originating in the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. (He acknowledges Baigent and Leigh’s 1982 book ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ among others: note the anagram Sir ‘Leigh Teabing’?). But he is the first to publish a racy whodunit on these themes which outsold the Bible for more than a year. And of course there’s a blockbuster movie on its way, directed by Ron Howard.

‘Grail’ ideas have been around for 1,000 years. (Serving dish? Chalice? A stone? Royal bloodline? Even Shroud of Turin? Take your pick). In modern usage the phrase refers to an ultimate goal or idea (‘the holy grail of low inflation, low unemployment’).

There’s now a whole genre of Christian counter-code books, like Amy Welborn’s ‘De-Coding Da Vinci’, Steve Kellmeyer’s ‘Fact and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code’, and the book we’ll look at here: Ben Witherington III’s ‘The Gospel Code.’

Ben Witherington III – (can I call you Ben? You’re younger than I am!) is in what I might call the ‘enlightened evangelical’ theological camp. I heard him complain in a lecture recently that whilst he reads the Jesus Seminar to his left and Fundamentalists to his right they rarely read or quote people like him!

If you want a point-by-point demolition of the Da Vinci Code’s approach to ‘historical fiction’, that’s not quite how The Gospel Code works. Rather Ben takes a broad brush in ten chapters to seven key ‘errors’ in The Da Vinci Code, and in the final chapter deals with the more important question: why the modern fascination with conspiracy theories about the Church?

Briefly:

1.. Were the earliest ‘Gospels’ suppressed by the Church in favor of the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)? No. ‘Of those Brown’s book depends on, the “Gospel of Philip” and the “Gospel of Mary”, there is no credible evidence that they existed before or during the time that the New Testament Gospels were written. The Gnostic Gospels were written late in the second century or even the third century A.D.’ (pp. 21-22).

2.. Was Jesus simply a great man or prophet in the earliest historical sources, but was later proclaimed divine at the Council of Nicaea? No. ‘Jesus is called “God” (theos) some seven times in the New Testament. and he is called “Lord” (kyrios) in the divine sense numerous times as well. No historian I know of argues that these New Testament texts postdate the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, and the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century merely formalized these beliefs in creeds’ (pp. 22-23).

3.. Did Constantine ‘suppress’ the ‘earlier’ Gnostic Gospels and impose the canonical Gospels and doctrine of the divinity of Christ on the Church? No. ‘The Gnostic Gospels were never recognized in either the Eastern or Western Church. Lack of recognition is not the same as suppression. The four biblical Gospels, as well as Paul’s letters, were recognized as sacred and authoritative tradition by AD 130, long before Constantine was born. Irenaeus reports that these four Gospels were circulating together as authoritative sources in the Church as early as the first half of the second century A.D.’ (p.23).

4.. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? ‘The New Testament is silent on this matter.’ The term ‘companion’ and the ‘kiss’ Jesus gave her in “The Gospel of Philip” (written probably late 3rd century A.D.) – if true – do not necessarily indicate marriage.

5.. Was Jesus probably married because he was a Jew? Not necessarily: there were celibate Jews around in Jesus’ day and he could have been one of them. ‘Many scholars, probably rightly, see Matthew 19:10-12 as Jesus’ own justification for remaining single’ (p. 24).

6.. Did the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi documents comprise the earliest Christian records? No. This, says Ben, is what the British call a ‘howler’. ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls are purely Jewish documents; there is nothing Christian about them. There is also no evidence any of the Nag Hammadi documents existed before the late second century A.D. with the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas’ (pp. 24-25).

7.. If Jesus was married, would that – theologically – be a problem? No. ‘There is no reason why Jesus could not have been married. Since Jesus did not teach that sex was defiling, there is no reason why a married Jesus could not have had sexual relationships and even offspring’ (p. 25).

He goes on to deal with the fact of Christianity being rooted primarily in history (rather than myth or fable). And there was no repression of the ‘sacred feminine’ (God is neither male nor female in the Bible, but primarily Spirit).

Chapters 2-9 unpack these ideas, without much direct reference to The Da Vinci Code. They provide an excellent introduction to important themes like the meaning of the Christian Gospel, the formation of the New Testament canon, Mary Magdalene, and Gnosticism. There’s a magnificent chapter [Nine]

contra the ideas and presuppositions of Marcus Borg (perhaps the next-best-known popular liberal theologian in the English-speaking world after Bishop Spong). This chapter whetted my appetite to revisit N. T. Wright’s modern classic ‘The Resurrection of the Son of God’. The Postscript is an evangelical summons to faith, quoting the famous text John 3:16!

Overall, The Da Vinci Code – with its notion of a murderous Catholic monk taking orders from a corrupt bishop – actually tells a larger story. A deep scepticism of authority is of course part of the postmodern (and post Vietnam /post Watergate / Fahrenheit 9/11) landscape. But this fascination with wild religious conspiracies is also about our modern willingness to believe the worst about the Church in an era where sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the antics of televangelists have sent public esteem for the Church plummeting. There’s an astonishing credulity at work when even Christians confess that the book has challenged their beliefs! So it’s no accident that the Jesus Seminar, Bishop Spong and Marcus Borg are fuelling these fires, offering ‘more enlightened alternatives’ to basic orthodox Christian beliefs, which they want us to toss out with the bathwater of the Church-as-institution.

Ben agrees: he suggests that modern scholars enamoured with Gnosticism ‘have been burned in one way or another by orthodox Christianity’ (p. 94). There’s a contemporary ‘desire not to be told what to believe. This isn’t an uncommon reaction in a culture of individualism that resents institutions and prides itself on bucking authority figures’ (p. 129).

(A minor matter: twice in one line (!) we meet the word ‘tenents’ for ‘tenets’ (p. 81). Fortunately on p. 139 they become tenets!)

Would I give this book to a thoughtful open-minded friend who feels they’ve been burned by the Church and theological orthodoxy? Yes. I’m encouraging people to read The Da Vinci Code simply as a fast-paced ‘whodunit’ then study Ben’s book for a reasoned and scholarly Christian response. Intelligent people are asking questions about Christian origins – and they’re good questions.

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, Bantam Press, 2003

Ben Witherington III, The Gospel Code, IVP, 2004

Rowland Croucher December 2004

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* Shalom! Rowland Croucher * * http://jmm.org.au/ * (14000 articles, 3000 clean jokes/stories, 1m. hits/month)

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