The Code: Truth and Fiction

[NOTE: Do not read this entry if you plan on reading The Da
Vinci Code.] 

Now that I’ve finished reading The Da Vinci Code (and done
some research), how do I feel?

The answer: pretty much the same as I felt when I was
halfway through. And actually, I finished a few weeks ago.

Dan Brown’s opus is indeed a terrific work of fiction laced
with historical accuracies. All I have
to say is, thank God I took that massive history of Christianity class. Had I not, I might have ended up a sucker –
and unable to fully articulate my own beliefs, much less be able to critically
analyze much of what Dan Brown says and determine its accuracy.

The biggest problem with “Code” is that the author presents
just about every historical interpretation as “fact”. He even dedicates a special page at the
beginning of the book telling us that. The obvious response is that history is never fact. It is merely interpretation, recorded and
accepted by enough people to turn it into something resembling fact. 

A ‘fact’ is that hydrogen and oxygen make up water. That sort of information is fact. Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife? Sorry, that’s not even close to a fact. It’s fairly certain, though, that she wasn’t
a prostitute. I’ve read most of the New
Testament, and there isn’t a single gospel of other account that describes Mary
Magdalene as a prostitute in any way, shape or form. 

Before I get into any further personal analysis, it would be
good to take a look at the firestorm of articles that have come out critiquing
the book. And boy, there are a lot of
them. Like this.  And this.
And this.  The list goes on and on. 

What robs these critiques of a certain degree of credibility
is that most of them come from overtly christian sources. But wouldn’t a christian researcher or
journalist know a great deal about christian history? Of course they would. But they would also be the most likely
sources to counterattack with an agenda. 

The most interesting, and least biased critiques I managed
to find acknowledge that while the book contains a high degree of questionable
historical accuracy and some outright false claims, that there are also many
truthful historical descriptions in the book. This critique and this one
were the most convincing (and the most objective) that I could find. 

They outline some of what I already knew, and illuminate the huge
number of things that I wasn’t sure about. Bottom line: there is some truth in the Code, but there’s much more
fiction. 

Many christian critics have pointed accusatory fingers at many of
the book’s claims, but many of them aren’t important in my view. (My acceptance of Christianity isn’t based on
church doctrine, or whether or not Jesus was married). But a few criticisms are a bit ridiculous. For instance, slamming what Brown says about
early Church writings without acknowledging that the early Church did, in fact,
suppress some of the earliest christian writings is laughable. 

Of course they suppressed certain writings in order to
solidify and unify the Church! What
organization doesn’t? We’re talking
about an institution that continues to claim that all popes are of the line of
Peter, without telling us why this should matter (after all, Peter ain’t the
son of God) and ignoring blatant historical evidence that Papal selections were
based far more on politics than on lineage. 

Also, many of these same critiques downplay and attack the
emphasis that Brown places on the Council of Nicaea. I myself learned in history class that this
was perhaps the most important meeting in early church history – and that many
key articles of faith (eucharist, etc.) were determined here. I also learned that the divinity of Christ
was indeed a debate issue, and the Council did in fact vote on whether or not
Christ should be considered divine. To
respond that early Christians “overwhelmingly” felt that Jesus Christ was the
DIRECT son of God by using the same textual twists and interpretations Brown
himself uses to pose his own flawed arguments is misleading at best – and
hypocritical at worst. 

If Brown says that the word “Jehovah” has certain roots
(even if he’s wrong), and then you come along and use the argument that a
certain Greek word is used to denote divinity because of its appearance in
earlier writings, why should I believe YOU? That’s the problem with writing that is several centuries old and
transcribed and translated by multiple sources: people are people, and they
make mistakes in both transcription and interpretation. 

What Brown does bring to the fore is exactly what I learned
in class: Christianity, far from possessing a monolithic view of the core
aspects of its faith, went through a tumultuous period of growth, change and
unification. Like science, the process
involved research, establishment of rules, shouting down naysayers, and selling
the idea to important parties to they would be nurtured and spread. The idea that one particular council went a
long way towards establishing early Christian theological doctrine was a
concept I considered shocking when I learned it, but makes a lot more logical
sense now.  

The saddest thing is that in their vociferous attempts to wholly discredit anything Brown says, these well-intentioned church supporters play into the hands of those most willing to believe everything he says. How about acknowledging that there is indeed some truth to his words as you pick them apart? It would make a lot more intellectuals take you seriously -- and ultimately serve your goals a lot better. Instead, we mostly get a lot of stuff like this:

"And that, sadly, is an accurate depiction of the predominant mindset of the Western World. It is the core belief that lies behind books like The Da Vinci Code, and it is what makes them so attractive. There is no truth. We are all gods.

Those who are actively engaged in the culture wars are alarmed by the popularity of this book, and for good reason. Not only does its popularity and widespread acceptance as an accurate view of history highlight the intensity of the struggle they are engaged in, the impact of the book is hardly helping matters. It is spreading the destructive mindset that the truth is always esoteric, never in the
hands of the accepted authorities, and rarely achievable."

We may not all be gods, but neither are the founders of any of the monotheistic religions -- except for Jesus, and that's debatable. The implicit point this quote seems to be making is that we should defer to authority instead of thinking for ourselves -- which runs completely counter to the principles of the Protestant Reformation and counter to the reason that I like this book.

The reason this has become my favorite novel is that when I put it down, it made me think more than any popular fiction I've ever read. I wanted to read all kinds of things -- the Bible, the lost Gospels, and all the critiques. Jurassic Park used to be my favorite novel for the very same reasons; it got me thinking about the progress paradox and about chaos theory for the first time. In my worldview, some well-intentioned questioning, thinking and self-interpretation can't hurt too much. It's a pity some people spend massive amounts of life energy combating that notion.

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