Seek the Truth - Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax (Part 1)

In this post we continue to take up the challenge laid down by Dan Brown's fictional story, The Da Vinci Code: "Seek the Truth." Before reading this post, please first read the introduction to this series:

Seek the Truth - Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax (Introduction)

Let's start with the most important of Dan Brown's premises first. Without this premise, the entire factual basis for The Da Vinci Code falls apart.

The primary "authority" that Dan Brown uses to make his claim that Jesus fathered a royal bloodline which exists today is a set of scrolls/codices called:

1. The Dead Sea Scrolls


2. The Nag Hammadi Documents

In The Da Vinci Code, the Grail expert Leigh Teabing explains the supposed significance of these ancient documents to Sophie Neveu:

• "Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen...His life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land...More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them."




• "...the early Church needed to convince the world that the mortal prophet Jesus was a divine being. Therefore, any gospels that described earthly aspects of Jesus life had to be omitted from the Bible. Unfortunately, for the early editors, one particularly troubling earthly theme kept recurring in the gospels. Mary Magdalene. He paused. More specifically, her marriage to Jesus Christ."




• "Fortunately for historians," Teabing said, "some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. In addition to telling the true Grail story, these documents speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms."

It sounds convincing doesn't it? If you took these statements at face value, you might think that a strong case had been made that 1) the biblical record (particularly the four Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) is not only inaccurate but purposely disguises the real Jesus; and 2) the alternative gospels (more than 80, according to Teabing) provide not only a more accurate description of the historical Jesus, but also support the essential claim of The Da Vinci Code (Jesus fathered a royal bloodline).

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Dan Brown is using the academic equivalent of "smoke and mirrors" to prove his point. He is throwing up unsubstantiated claims (each of which can be disproven with the snap of a finger), offering far-fetched conclusions based upon what he calls "facts": statements that are not simply tenuous, but are outright misrepresentations of the real facts.

First, let's correct the most glaring errors:

1. Constantine did not try to eradicate any alternative gospels.


2. Constantine did not commission and finance a new Bible.


3. The Bible authorised at the Council of Nicea did not omit those gospels that spoke of Christs human traits.


4. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not, in fact, contain any gospels at all, as claimed in The Da Vinci Code.


5. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was in 1947, not the 1950s (a small "slip of the pen", you might say, but an example of erroneous representation of the facts that is indicative of the entire book).


6. The Coptic documents found at Nag Hammadi (which include alternative gospels) were codices (in book form), not scrolls. This is a distinction that any genuine historian would consider important.


7. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not mention anything to do with the Grail story.


8. The Nag Hammadi documents do not humanize Jesus; to the contrary, they tend to dehumanise Jesus and emphasize his divinity in weird and non-biblical ways.


9. The Nag Hammadi gospels are gnostic gospels, not Christian gospels. They capture the esoteric teaching of peripheral gnostic sects that flourished in the second and third centuries.

This last point is important. Many gnostic sects began to flourish in the second and third centuries, and a number of these produced "gospels" which supported their teachings, much in the same way that modern cults, such as Heaven's Gate, Branch Davidian or The Unification Church, produced tapes or booklets based on the cult leader's teachings. No one today would claim, for example, that the suicidal cult, Heaven's Gate, represented the beliefs of Christianity. It doesn't matter that the cult's leader, Marshall Applewhite, quoted verses from the Bible. His teachings were syncretic, drawing from a wide source of divergent belief systems, producing a "heretical" (i.e. non-orthodox) religious system with catastrophic consequences. The gnostics, though not necessarily as dangerous as Heaven's Gate, used a similar method of syncretism - fusing selective Christian and Jewish teaching with non-Christian and non-Jewish religions, such as the Egyptian mystery religions. They were hardly representative of mainstream Christianity. Instead they were "deviations" of orthodox Christian beliefs. In fact, they were very much the "New Age" cults of their day.

Contrary to Dan Brown's claims, the authority of what we today call the New Testament had already been established as early as the end of the first century, and even by the second century, no "gospels" were considered authentic or canonical unless they passed by a simple three-rule test:

1. That gospel account must be proven authoritatively to have been written by an apostle or under apostolic direction.
2. That gospel account should already be widely accepted by the Church at large as Scripture.
3. The content of that gospel account should be shown to have intrinsic value and doctrinal consistency.

By the time of the Nicean Council, the body of what we today call the New Testament had already long been established. In fact, the main contentions that had to be resolved by the council weren't so much whether there were other gospels that should have been included, but rather over some existing books that some believed should not be included. Unlike the chaotic scene in the movie, which shows members of the Nicean Council vigorously arguing with each other over which material to include in the Bible, the only points of dispute were over books which a few members felt did not pass the three-point test of canonicity, listed above. In other words, the council erred, if anything, on the side of leniency, not strictness.

Most of the alternative gospels found in Nag Hammadi tried to get around the first rule by claiming authorship by one of the apostles. But even a cursory reading of most of these documents show them to be clearly of second or third century origin. Which brings us to the next important point. The "alternative gospels" are not actually Christian gospels at all, but gnostic gospels. Gnosticism, which began to compete with mainstream Christianity in the second and third centuries, had teachings very different from true Christianity. In summary, the various strands of gnosticism all believed that spirit is good, flesh is evil, and for this reason, Jesus did not really take on human flesh, but merely "appeared" to have done so. They generally taught that the god (or demiurge) who created this world was an evil god (and they identify this god with the God of the Old Testament), and that the world is inherently evil, and that human spirits must escape the evil, material bodies in which they are trapped. Furthermore, they taught that the world was created by a series of evil "archons" or prince-powers, who wish to keep the human soul trapped in the flesh. In order to gain salvation (or escape from this world), one needs to receive a secret knowledge, or "gnosis", which has been given to a select group. Usually, the different gnostic sects claimed that the original gnosis, or secret knowledge, was entrusted to a special member of Jesus' inner disciples and not given to the others.

For example, in The Gospel of Mary Magdalene we find the following exchange between Peter and Mary:

"Peter said to Mary, 'Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them.' Mary answered and said, 'What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.'"

In order to understand Gnosticism, you need to understand the difference between "exoteric" and "esoteric" teaching. Exoteric teaching refers to the teaching Jesus gave in biblical Gospels - the teaching for the masses. In contrast, esoteric teaching, according to the Gnostics, was the teaching that Jesus reserved for the few higher initiates. Only by going through special initiations, claimed the Gnostics, could the "ignorant" Christian discover the "true" teaching of Jesus, which enabled him to gain access to higher levels of salvation. Thus, the gnostic gospels cannot claim to be "original" gospels at all; they are, by their very nature, later creations, designed to provide their initiates with deeper knowledge beyond the accepted four Gospels in the New Testament.

Dan Brown claims that these gnostic gospels emphasize Jesus' humanity rather than his divinity, portraying him as a very-human prophet, rather than the divine Son of God, as taught in mainstream Christianity. This is an outright lie. The gnostic gospels, if anything, tend to exaggerate Jesus' divinity, not his humanity. If you compared the four Gospels of the New Testament with the alternative gospel accounts, you will find that, opposite to Teabing's claim, it is, in fact,the Bible that portrays Jesus in a real, down-to-earth, human sense. The gnostic gospels, on the other hand, often present a Jesus who is vindicitive, outlandishly superhuman and not touched by the frailties of human life. Their rejection as true Scripture is not the result of a supposed conspiracy by power-hungry Church leaders, as slanderously claimed by Dan Brown. Rather, they were rejected because they demonstrably failed the three-rule test.

Even a cursory reading of the gnostic gospels shows them to have a completely different "feel" from the biblical Gospels. In the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus emerge from events in real life and are grounded in what the Gospels themselves claim are "eyewitness accounts" (see Luke 1:1-4; Acts 3:15). One of the original apostles, John, wrote this is 1 John 1:1:

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life."

As you read the four Gospels of the New Testament, you quickly discover that they have an "eye-witness" feel to them. They present a Jesus that clearly fits into his historical context. His teaching, unlike that found in the vast majority of gnostic gospels, has a very Jewish rabbinic style. By contrast, the gnostic gospels presents Jesus who comes across more like a philosopher, lecturing on metaphysics, than a Jewish rabbi/prophet. For example, in the gnostic Letter of Peter to Phillip, the apostles ask the resurrected Jesus, "Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma." Such abstract philosophical questions were never on the lips of the disciples, who were mostly unschooled fishermen or earthy tax collectors (see Acts 4:13). Yet in the gnostic Letter of Peter to Phillip, Jesus proceeds to lecture on the precosmic fall of "the Mother" who acted in opposition to "the Father" and thus produced ailing "aeons". What is this teaching? It is nothing more than the teachings of a deviant gnostic sect, recorded in "gospel" form.

Even in the first century, proto-gnostic teaching had begun to vie with the message of the Gospel that was being preached by the apostolic leadership of the Church, and Paul warned his young churches against this deviant teaching. In 2 Corinthians 11:2-4, he writes:

"I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,...you put up with it easily enough."

The gnostic gospels preach "a Jesus other than the Jesus [that the original disciples] preached." The Council of Nicea did not act conspiratorially; it simply enacted on the instructions given by the first century Church leadership - to safeguard the pure message of the Gospel that had been originally preached by Jesus' disciples.

But let's not take my word on this. In order to disprove the statements made by Teabing (quoted, above, from The Da Vinci Code), let's start by looking at the evidence, not from the Bible, but from the very alternative gospels that Teabing claims show the "true" Jesus. We'll start with the Coptic Gospel of Phillip, which is the only -- let me emphasize that again, the only -- document that in any way could be read as stating that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus (and even then such a conclusion can only be inferred indirectly). Here are the two relevant quotations:

• "There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary."


• "...the companion of the [Lord], Mary Magdalene. [Jesus] loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her [mouth]. The rest of the disciples...said to him 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Savior answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her?

You can probably already see there are problems with including this statement as credible authority for Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene. Firstly, the document is in Coptic, not Aramaic (as claimed by Dan Brown), but even if you accepted the claim that the word "companion" actually means "spouse" (and this doesn't stand up to close scrutiny), it is still only one statement. Is there any other corroborating evidence? No, there isn't. Even the gnostic gospels, which Teabing uses so authoratively, are amazingly silent on this issue.

But let's not leave it there. If this were a court of law, the first thing the defendant's solicitor would do is call into question the credibility of this document as a viable source of information about Jesus. So let's look at some other quotations from exactly the same gnostic gospel -- the one Dan Brown holds up not just as an alternative version of the Gospel story, but as more credible than the New Testament account. The Coptic Gospel of Phillip goes on to say things like this:

• "A Gentile does not die, for he has never lived in order that he may die. He who has believed in the truth has found life, and this one is in danger of dying, for he is alive." - This is just one example of the teachings found in the rest of this so-called gospel.




• "Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin." - Do you understand what is being said here? In case you missed it, try reading it again. This is an example of why this gospel was rejected by the early Church, for its content simply is not consistent with the teachings of Christ.




• "Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and they do not know that it is those who wear the flesh who are naked. It is those who [are willing] to unclothe themselves who are not naked. "Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50). What is this which will not inherit? This which is on us. But what is this, too, which will inherit? It is that which belongs to Jesus and his blood. Because of this he said "He who shall not eat my flesh and drink my blood has not life in him" (John 6:53) - I've included this quotation, because it quotes directly from two other parts of the Bible. Any textual scholar will tell you that for this gospel to quote, for example, John 6:53, it would mean that it would have to be written later than the document it was quoting. Seem reasonable? Yet Dan Brown infers that this Coptic Gospel of Phillip is somehow of higher authority than the Gospel it is quoting!




• God is a man-eater. For this reason, men are sacrificed to him. Before men were sacrificed, animals were being sacrificed, since those to whom they were sacrificed were not gods" - Would even Dan Brown claim that this is of higher quality than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?




• "In this world, there is good and evil. Its good things are not good, and its evil things not evil. But there is evil after this world which is truly evil - what is called 'the middle'. It is death. While we are in this world, it is fitting for us to acquire the resurrection, so that when we strip off the flesh, we may be found in rest and not walk in the middle. For many go astray on the way. For it is good to come forth from the world before one has sinned" - Do you understand what is being said here? Probably not. Because this is classic gnostic esoteric teaching (and the Nag Hammadi documents are full of it).




• "The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire" - This totally contradicts the rest of what the New Testament, and the Bible as a whole, teaches.




• "Philip the apostle said, Joseph the carpenter planted a garden because he needed wood for his trade. It was he who made the cross from the trees which he planted. His own offspring hung on that which he planted. His offspring was Jesus, and the planting was the cross." - This is one example of what these gnostic gospels often do - elaborate on the Gospel story in some way so as to support a particular aspect of that cult's esoteric teaching. No scholar would claim that this is a genuinely early document, for it is clearly an elaboration of earlier teaching from in the Bible.

That is just a few quotes from the Coptic Gospel of Phillip. Most of this so-called gospel is more of the same (you can find the entire translated document here). It is not, in fact, even an account of the life of Jesus, on par with the four Gospels of the New Tesatment - instead, it is just assorted sayings that He supposedly spoke, but most of which can be shown to have originated from later gnostic teaching, not the true rabbinical teaching of Jesus.

I'll give you just one more example. This one is from the Gospel of Thomas, which of all the gnostic gospels is by far the highest quality. In fact, much of the content of the Gospel of Thomas (bar some glaring exceptions) are direct quotations which can be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. But take a look at this one quotation, remembering that the Gospel of Thomas is the best of the gnostic gospels:

"Simon Peter said to him, Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Can you see why the Gospel of Thomas was not included in the Bible? There was no conspiracy, no cover up. The Gospel of Thomas (the best of the gnostic gospels) simply didn't measure up to the three-point rule of authenticity.

But look at that quotation again. According to Dan Brown, these gospels are the superior gospels. Why? Because, according to him, they support the doctrine of the "divine feminine." The Gospel of Thomas does nothing of the sort. In fact, it demeans women and shows a very unbiblical misogyny - the antithesis of Dan Brown's "divine feminine."

We don't have time to explore every facet of the scholarly evidence against Dan Brown's case, however, and so if you would like to learn more, particularly about the reason why I have high confidence that the biblical Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - are accurate representations of what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus, I recommend that you read a lesson I wrote for the Online Bible College on this subject, which can be downloaded here:

Lesson ES108-03 - "Is the Bible God's Word?"

In summary, the so-called "alternative" gospels, cited by Dan Brown's character, Leigh Teabing, are poor evidence for his contention that Jesus Christ was married. In a real court of law, these documents wouldn't stand the scrutiny of cross-examination (let alone the microscope of rigorous scholarly enquiry), and would be thrown out as unsubstantiated. And so tomorrow we will move on to look at the next foundational premise of The Da Vinci Code - the symbology of Leonardo da Vinci.

Next: Seek the Truth - Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax (Part 2)