The “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown has been at the top of the best-seller lists for many months, has sold many millions of copies worldwide and has been translated into over 40 languages.
Brown's novel fictionalizes the unorthodox account of Christian history popularized in the book “Holy Blood Holy Grail” published in the 1980s. All the conspiracy theories you have heard of are mentioned here as well as several new ones. Central to the plot is the assertion that the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were part of the Royal Merovingian line of the early middle ages. The Roman church sought to expunge evidence of this hidden history and eliminate the descendants themselves for the sake of preserving church authority and orthodoxy. Mary Magdalene was a leader in the early church - a fact that the church quickly acted to suppress to preserve it patriarchal structures. Some of the arguments put into the mouths of characters in the book question Christian Trinitarian orthodoxy, for example… “ …the early church literally stole Jesus from his original followers, hijacking his human message in an impenetrable cloak of divinity and using it to expand their own power.” The divinity ascribed to Jesus was thus a patriarchal ruse to prevent the spread of the sacred feminine!
The Roman Catholic Church is presented as a devious institution marked by deception, violence and scandal - emphasising its patriarchal excesses. There is much in this book that will appeal to those hurt by, or suspicious of, the church. The religion Brown describes mixes the erotic and mysterious and pleasurable - a package that has a certain popular appeal!
Brown also reinterprets some of the classic works of Christian Art to find hidden esoteric meanings. His comments on Leonardo's famous fresco “The Last Supper” was so intriguing that I had to find a good print to see if the effeminate figure next to Jesus really could have been a woman!
The novel is a gripping adventure story. Brown however, has said he regards the work as a serious contribution to a revisionist history of early and medieval Christianity. Judging by his book sales many people take him at his word. Perhaps they see in it an appealing alternative reading of Christian history.
Fiction and fantasy elements mingle freely with the facts of history to create a picture that is misleading and most readers will not have the patience or knowledge to discern the difference. The strange mysteries that he cleverly describes have an intriguing plausibility that can cast doubts on our certainties.
The sort of Gnostic Christianity Brown describes has little hope for the world, no challenge to injustice, no bias for the poor and marginalised and no call to follow Jesus in the way of self giving love. This spirituality does have an appeal to those immersed in the values of a self-centred consumer society!
The Da Vinci code is an enjoyable read - in the genre of fiction - but it is bad history. The amazing popularity of the book made me aware again of both the deep spiritual thirst in our society for truth and the widespread distrust of the church as the guardian of that truth.
