PART ONE--IDENTIFYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE DA VINCI CODE

Warning parts of the plot are revealed!!!

Robert Langdon, professor of religious symbolism at the University of Harvard, is in Paris giving a conference on his latest research. He is phoned in the middle of the night and summoned to the Louvre, where he finds Jacques Sauniere, curator of the museum, dead, apparently murdered.

Before being killed, Jacques Sauniere is able to leave several clues, codes that he knows only his daughter, a cryptologist for the French police, and Langdon will be able to decipher.

As the two begin to unravel the codes, we learn that the curator, Jacques Sauniere, was the key member in a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. This brotherhood, made up of people such as Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci, is charged with the awesome responsibility of protecting and maintaining the most important secrets about Jesus and the true nature of Christianity—secrets that the Church wants access to also, but for other reasons.

What is the truth concerning Jesus and the nature of authentic Christianity? Well according to the scholars in the book, Robert Langdon, and later, Holy Grail scholar Sir Leigh Teabing, the truth is that we have all been deceived!

1. Christianity in its current form is a lie that the church has kept for almost two thousand years. The Christianity that we know today was invented by Constantine (early 4th century) as an instrument of power and social control.

2. The truth, hidden until now, is that there were many other gospels (up to 80) circulating before the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These ‘other’ documents paint an entirely different picture of Jesus. Nevertheless, Constantine chose the four canonical gospels for the official Bible because they emphasized Christ’s deity and helped him promote his political agenda.

3. The true, historical Jesus was in no way like he is imagined today. He never came to die for our sins; he never was raised from the dead; he was certainly not divine; and he was married and had a child!

4. In order to know the real Jesus and find real Christianity, we must return to the earlier and more reliable documents, the Gnostic gospels. In so doing, we will be reminded that originally, mankind practiced a much more balanced religion, one where both god and goddess were worshipped. A return to the Gnostics gospels will enable us to return to the sacred feminine, oppressed by the Church.

This is the basic message of the book (and soon the movie, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks)! Are you ready to entertain questions from your neighbors, friends, classmates, co-workers, family and fellow-Christians after they see the movie?

In the following newsletters, I plan to address the following issues that get at the foundational claims of Brown:

1. How was the Canon of the New Testament actually formed? Was Constantine the one who decided what books to include? (March)

2. What are the Gnostic Gospels? What is their message? Are they really more reliable? (April)

3. Was the deity of Christ really an invention of the 4th century? (May)

4. What are we to make of the Da Vinci Code Phenomenon? (May)

Before I leave you, I want to answer one objection I often hear among Christians—‘why should we even pay attention to this book? It’s just a novel!’ Two points:

1. Dan Brown believes that what he has written, though in the form of a novel, is historically accurate.

a. In an interview on Good Morning America, Brown asserted that if he had to write a piece of nonfiction on these things, he would change nothing about what is claimed in the novel. (Darrell Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, 3)

b. On the first page of his book, under the title “FACT”, he writes that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate”.

c. Throughout the book, Brown’s scholars cite real books to substantiate their claims (see http://www.danbrown.com/ for a bibliography of works consulted; see also http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/breakingnews.html for clips of interviews with the author).

2. People are confused. This is a reality that we must face. Many who read the book come away with lots of real questions, real doubts, and real struggles. I would expect the same when the movie comes out. Telling them it is simply a novel doesn’t assuage their doubts. It seems to me that our loving responsibility is to help those who are wrestling with the claims of the book, and provide them with some answers.