JESUS CHRIST

The best selling novel, Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, has raised numerous questions about Jesus of Nazareth, the story of the making of the New Testament and of the rise of the early Christian Church. Both conservative and liberal New Testament scholars have read carefully and published extensive critiques of the books’ historical claims. They have universally observed that there is nothing new in the novel and that virtually all claims about Jesus Christ, the New Testament and the early Christian Church are based on previous theories. Where the author borrowed ideas and or adapted them, most scholars have noted that Brown more often than not, gets the facts wrong about these important stories and therefore puts forth unsubstantiated conclusions of the past as though they were “gospel truths.” In the final analysis, the novel does not help the reader reconstruct the story of Jesus Christ, the New Testament or the rise of early Christianity. In the end it must be remembered that the book is sold in the fiction section of a bookstore and that it is after all, a novel.

“Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, well-plotted murder mystery that takes the reader through the Louvre, a long night of murders and a police chase out of Paris to a wet morning in London. There the identify of the evil “Teacher: who masterminded the killings is revealed in the Chapter House of Westminster Abby. . . .
Using as his prime piece of evidence Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” Brown proposes that the figure on Christ’s right is not the beloved disciple but Mary Magdalene, who married Jesus Christ and bore him a child. She was the Holy Grail for his blood and Jesus wanted her to succeed him in lead his followers. The official church suppressed the truth about Mary’s relationship with Jesus and did its best to belittle her as a prostitute. . . . [However], The Da Vinci Code teems with historical misinformation. . . . In short, enjoy the read, but discount the history.” Gerald O’Collins is a professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Gerald O’ Collins, America (December 15, 2003): 15-16