Last week most Christians commemorated the events foundational to their faith, culminating in the remembrance of the torturous public execution of Jesus and his victorious resurrection from the dead. The early Church recognized in the various apostolic writings that became the New Testament, especially the original gospels, the reliable and normative presentation of the faith that they received in a chain of witness that extends down the ages to us. However, even from ancient times, this widely accepted witness was impugned by writings claiming that the “real” story was concealed. “The Da Vinci Code,” soon to be released as a movie, is merely the latest example of such literature. Reports of conspiracies and cover-ups have legs in contemporary society. If the accusations are directed against the institutional Church, more than a few are inclined to grant them plausibility.
On the eve of Holy Week, timed for maximal media bounce, the National Geographic Society announced the rediscovery of the “gospel” of Judas, one of many gnostic writings composed decades after the canonical N.T. writings. Teaching a way of salvation utterly alien to mainstream Christianity, the gnostic Jesus rejected the goodness of creation, the work of a malign deity, in favor of special “knowledge” that Jesus allegedly taught in private to a chosen few. The second century bishop and martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, mentioned the writing that rehabilitates Judas in his detailed rebuttal of gnostic literature that he showed was a falsification of the authentic Christian tradition. Conspiracy lovers will have to reckon with the fact that the gnostic Judas manuscript was not found in a Vatican vault, but moldering in an Egyptian cave.
Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” continues to be a bestseller. As escapist reading, it is an engrossing mix of “religion, conspiracy, sex, murder and mystery.” The problem is that the novel abounds with historical misinformation, though the author explicitly claims that its background details are factual. The story alleges a centuries-old Church cover-up of a secret marital relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that produced a line of descendants.
A 1982 non-fiction book made a similar claim, based on what proved to be forged documents, about a secretive organization called the Priory of Sion. The Priory of Sion was actually founded in 1956 in France by a small group of disaffected, anti-Semitic monarchists. The British authors acknowledged they had been duped; Brown decided to keep the nonsense alive.
According to Brown, the Church suppressed the truth about Mary’s relationship with Jesus and sought to discredit her. But in every canonical gospel Mary is the first Easter witness and she was celebrated by early Christian writers as, “the apostle to the apostles.” Some smear campaign. Another of the novel’s gratuitous claims is that Leonardo’s “Last Supper” painting actually depicts Mary Magdalene sitting next to Jesus. Art historian Bruce Boucher has thoroughly debunked Brown’s interpretation of the painting (New York Times, Aug. 3, 2003).
Perhaps the novel’s historical inventions are simply laughable and should not be dignified by serious treatment. Nevertheless, given the confused state of knowledge of Christian history, I would like to focus on two particular inaccuracies.
Brown falsely asserts that the Emperor Constantine changed the Christian day of worship to Sunday. However, this change is already evident in the N.T., for it was the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Constantine did decree Sunday to be a day of rest from work. More seriously, since it bears upon the fundamental dogma of Christian faith, Brown alleges that prior to the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), orthodox Christian belief held that Jesus was “a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.”
According to Brown, Constantine pressured the bishops to declare the divinity of Christ. The bishops did indeed promulgate a creed that stated that the Son of God is “consubstantial” with God the Father. But belief in the divinity of Christ was not invented at Nicaea. In John’s gospel, the “doubting” Thomas exclaimed “my Lord and my God” when he encountered the risen Christ. And the letters of St. Paul, the earliest N.T. writings, repeatedly affirm faith in the divinity of Christ. The Nicaean Creed was issued to safeguard this belief.
A special documentary, “Jesus Decoded,” will air the weekend of May 20 to answer questions people are asking about Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church on account of “The Da Vinci Code.”
The Rev. Peter Bernardi, S.J., is an associate profesor of religious studies.
