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Da Vinci Code Debate

What are the most blatant errors in the Da Vinci Code? (4:21)

By Lee Strobel
5.18.06

To prepare for the movie’s premiere, here are handy answers to Frequently Asked Questions about The Da Vinci Code. They’re provided by Dr. Mark L. Strauss, a professor of New Testament at Bethel Theological Seminary in San Diego, whose latest book is Truth and Error in The Da Vinci Code. I interviewed Dr. Strauss on the deity of Jesus for Exploring the Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code claims:
• Almost everything the Church teaches about Jesus is false.
• Jesus was only human. No one claimed he was divine until a church council in the fourth century declared him to be a god.
• Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
• Mary was pregnant when Jesus was crucified.
• Their offspring are alive today, a secret kept by the Priory of Sion.
• Mary herself is the “Holy Grail.”
• Mary appears in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper.
• Earliest Christianity worshipped the divine feminine. The later church suppressed this.
• The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are just four among eighty or so other gospels. These other Gospels, which described Jesus’ relationship to Mary, were suppressed by the church. History, says author Dan Brown, is written by the winners.

1. Was Jesus’ deity created by the church in the fourth century?
• The Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 debated important issues, and confirmed Jesus’ deity.
• But it did not create it! Christians had been worshipping Jesus and proclaiming his deity for centuries.
• The New Testament already explicitly claims Jesus’ deity.
• See John 1:1; Hebrew 1:3; Colossians 1:15, etc.

2. Was Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene?
• Though Jewish men of Jesus’ day were usually married, there were many exceptions. For example:
- The Essenes of the Dead Sea community at Qumran remained single.
- The apostle Paul the Apostle was single (1 Corinthians 7:7).
- In both Judaism and Christianity, singleness and celibacy were esteemed as a means to complete devotion to the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 7:32-33).
- While most rabbis were married, Jesus more closely fulfilled the role of a prophet. Prophets often remained single to be wholly devoted to the Lord.
- John the Baptist, the prophet and forerunner of the Messiah, was unmarried.

• All of the evidence indicates Jesus was single.
- Jesus said the Son of Man had no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20; Luke 9:58).
- From the cross, Jesus commends his mother to John’s care, but does not mention a wife.
- There is no hint of any sexual or marital relationship between Jesus and the women who supported him.

• There is not a shred of early or reliable historical evidence that Jesus was married.

Who was Mary Magdalene? There are many legends, only a few certainties:
• One of the women who supported Jesus (Luke 8:1-3).
• A recipient of Jesus’ exorcism (Luke 8:2).
• The first witness to the resurrection.
• Not a prostitute and unlikely the woman caught in adultery (John 8).
• Certainly not Jesus’ wife!

3. Does Mary Magdalene appear in Da Vinci’s Last Supper?
• Art historians recognize this as John the Apostle, not Mary Magdalene.
• John the Apostle is not seen elsewhere in the painting.
• John is often depicted in art as a young, feminine-looking man.
• In early sketches, Da Vinci himself identified this as John, not Mary.

4. Were the four Gospels of the Bible arbitrarily chosen from among more than eighty contenders?
• The New Testament Gospels are by far the oldest and most reliable records we have of the historical Jesus.
• The so-called “apocryphal gospels” were written decades (most, centuries) after the New Testament Gospels.
• The vast majority of “apocryphal gospels” are very late, fanciful, and dependent on the four Gospels.
• The few outside sources we have confirm the picture of Jesus found in the Gospels. (see Josephus, Antiquities 18.3.3 §§63-64)

5. Is the Bible is a merely human book?
• It is true that the Bible did not drop from heaven. No scholar claims it did.
• The Bible claims to be inspired by God, with human authors communicating God’s message.
• Translations today come from very early Greek and Hebrew manuscripts (not “countless” versions).
• We have extraordinarily reliable manuscripts, very close to the originals.
• The divine origin of the Bible is confirmed by fulfilled prophecy and its transforming power.

6. Did the pagan Roman emperor Constantine choose which books to put in the Bible?
• Constantine converted to Christianity, so he was not a “pagan” emperor.
• Constantine had nothing to do with which books were included in the Bible.
• The Nicean Council which Constantine called (A.D. 325) merely recognized those books already accepted by the Church.
• The New Testament books were considered inspired Scripture long before Constantine was born.

7. Are the Dead Sea Scrolls “lost gospels?”
• The Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish, not Christian writings, written 100+ years before Jesus was born. They have nothing to do with him.
• Jesus is (of course) never mentioned in the scrolls.

8. Are the Gnostic Gospels the earliest Christian records?
• Almost all scholars date the Gnostic Gospels to the second century or later, and consider them to be dependent on the four New Testament Gospels. They are certainly not the earliest Christian records.
• The suggestion that Jesus was originally a Gnostic does not fit his historical context. Jesus was a first century Palestinian Jew (everyone agrees on this), and his earliest followers were Palestinian Jews. The New Testament Gospels place Jesus accurately in this first century Jewish context.
• The Gnostic literature does fit this historical background, suggesting that it was a later development that arose under the influence of Greek philosophical thought.

9. Does the Gnostic Gospel of Philip reveals Jesus’ marital relationship with Mary Magdalene?
• The Gospel of Philip is dated to the third century A.D. and has no legitimate claim to authenticity.
• The identification of Mary as Jesus’ companion is part of a Gnostic worldview that spirit beings exist in male and female forms.

10. Was the early Church misogynist and did it suppressed women?
• Jesus highly valued women, raising them to the position of disciples (see Luke 10:38-42). A group of women supported his ministry.
• Women receive a higher place in the Church than in the pagan world or in Judaism (see Lydia, Priscilla, Phoebe, Junia).
• Pagan Goddess worship generally “used” women. It did not exalt them.
• The Gnostic documents themselves are misogynist.
In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says of Mary, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male.... For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

11. Has Jesus’ royal bloodline (through Mary Magdalene) been documented by many reputable historians?
• This “historical fact” has no validity and is not supported by any real historians.
• It has been promoted in the book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, none of whom are historians or scholars.

12. Do Christian symbols have pagan origins?
• It is certainly true that Christians took over pagan symbols and “baptized” them with Christian meaning.
• The real question is: Is the new meaning Christian or pagan?

13. Was Sunday worship started by Constantine as part of the worship of the Sun?
• This is false. The New Testament shows Christians worshiping on the first day of the week (Sunday) during the first century (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:12; Revelation 1:10).
• Christians worshipped on Sunday because it was the day of the resurrection.

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