Ukrainian Orthodoxy		Orthodoxie ukrainienne

The Gospel of Dan Brown: A Pagan Secret of the Da Vinci Code

Dr. Alexander Roman alex.roman@unicorne.org

Does anyone know at least someone who has not read Dan Brown’s book or who is not planning on seeing the movie when it hits the big screen? Probably not! And regardless of the furor these have caused among Christian circles, Dan Brown and actor Tom Hanks aren’t likely to have their sleep too troubled by it. But what is the “code” really all about? A careful reading of the symbolism the book sets forward actually does reveal something quite astonishing . . .

At the outset, it is important to note that Dan Brown’s success with his book has less to do with his research into the varied symbolism that forms the backbone of his “novel” assertions, and more with his ingenious understanding of the psychology of his audience.

That is, after all, the key to good marketing! Brown has capitalized on the conspiracy perspective that permeates our society and culture. This perspective is a form of mass cynicism of any “institutional ideology” that we have been brought up with, be it social, political or religious.

Ever since Freud and Marx, we tend to be naturally suspicious of what comes out of the mouths of institutions as being ultimately a form of “false consciousness” specifically developed to maintain social order and keep us all in our places so that we don’t rebel or question their power over our lives. This has, in fact, become the unwritten definition of “democracy” in our times – the ability to do what we want without having anyone else judge the validity of our actions within a framework of subtle dictatorial control over us.

Dan Brown understood this very well. His book’s main theme is, simply put, that institutional Christianity has been, from the outset, one big farcical construction that has deliberately suppressed the hidden “secret” about what Jesus was really all about – that He was not God, that He was actually married to Mary Magdalene and produced human offspring whose descendants are around today (via the Merovingian royal blood-line of France).

And why would Christianity do such a thing? In short, and beginning with the apostles, to downgrade the feminine principle and repress women who would otherwise gain ascendancy once the real “facts” were known to the world – and they have been hidden in the intricate symbolism of the Templars and art and architecture handed down through time.

Dan Brown’s marketing brilliance is seen here not only in terms of going after “institutional Christianity” but also that other contemporary thorn in the side of western church life – the issue of women’s power in the Church, especially women’s ordination. Are we not all agreed that women are disenfranchised by the Church? Why else would there be no women members of the Church hierarchy? This is, in fact, what makes the Da Vinci Code so “believable” – it bases its conspiracy theory squarely on this very subject. It is the focal point on which all else in this perspective hangs.

Now there have always been those, and especially in modern times, who have maintained that the Church has deliberately falsified the “true” message of the “historical Jesus” (as opposed to the “Christ of faith”).

A number of “critical” modern biblical scholars have made such an assumption a way of life, as we know. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have even published their own translation of the New Testament that they say is the “true version.” Thus, in the first verses of the Gospel of John, rather than “and the Word was God,” the New World Translation says, “and the Word was a god” since this group denies the Divinity of Jesus. Likewise, Islam asserts that the New Testament is a corruption that falsifies the true mission of the Prophet Jesus. In actual fact, Islam insists that the “Ingil” or the New Testament must be accepted by all Muslims – but the New Testament that is purged of the errors installed in it by Christians!

In the early days of Christianity, the pagan Gnostics introduced a number of their ideas into written manuscripts that invoked Christian saints and ideas, meticulously weaving them side by side with the sayings of Jesus so as to make them appear as alternative Christian literature.

The recent public attention paid to the “Gospel of Judas” is a case in point. Much nonsense has been written about it in the press and the fault here lies more in the fact that public news media simply do not hire journalists with backgrounds in religious history or religion period to comment on such matters. Perhaps they think there is “no money” in religion. They should think again.

The Gnostics are often presented as a competing, alternative Christian movement alongside that of the “institutional” movement of Christianity. They were no such thing. One journalist, a specialist in scientific subjects, wrote, in the same breath, that the Gnostics were “Christians” and they “believed in many gods!”

Characteristic of the Gnostics was the fact of their polytheism and their views about matter and the human body. Our human body, they maintained, was actually a limiting “prison” for our spirits. Ultimately, happiness is attained by getting rid of that prison as soon as possible – a position that is compatable with classic Greco-Roman paganism and Hinduism. Almost predictably, women, the source of human reproduction, were denigrated by Gnostics as being incapable of attaining to the “mystic wisdom secrets” that men and their male minds are naturally suited for.

This is why, in the Gnostic “Gospel of Judas,” Judas is seen as a benefactor, rather than as a traitor, who cooperates with Jesus in handing him over to His enemies to be killed and so, in death, to be freed from the confines of the physical body. This is also why in the Gnostic “Gospel of Thomas” the final verse, that has proven to be such a headache for modern scholars who have written much to try and explain it away, reflects the classic Gnostic denigration of women as being incapable of acquiring mystic knowledge unless they first somehow “attain to manhood.”

The pagan secret contained in the arguments surrounding Dan Brown’s thesis in his book actually reflects that same kind of Gnostic view of women.

In the view of the four Gospels of the New Testament (the New Testament published and held as valid by Orthodox, Catholic and mainline Protestants, and also by not a few agnostic/atheist scholars of Greek), it was Mary Magdalene and the Myrrh-bearing women who were not only among the first to experience the Resurrection of Christ, but who also are shown to have tried to convince an unbelieving group of male disciples as to its veracity. The disciples seemed uninterested in what women could know etc. During at least one of His appearances to them later, Christ is also noted as berating his male followers for their lack of faith. At no time does He berate the women who came to the empty tomb!

The person of Mary Magdalene has likewise tended to be much-maligned, not by the New Testament and the early Church (which appointed her as a missionary and which gave her the title “Equal to the Apostles!”), but by later sentiment.

Yes, the religious culture of Judaism from which the Christian Church sprung was male-oriented. At the same time, however, women (i.e. the Virgin Mary, of course!) are given a spiritual significance in the New Testament that goes beyond that given to men (and the Hebrew Scriptures likewise present the biographies of very strong, spiritual women throughout the history of Israel as well).

It was Mary Magdalene who, according to ancient tradition, was invited to Rome by the Emperor. That she would have been invited shows her special social standing in her community. Women who were wealthy in those days tended to be looked upon with suspicion (and not a little jealousy) by men. Women who were sellers of purple and who were engaged in other lucrative crafts could and did acquire great wealth that outstripped that of males engaged in common labour. It was at Rome that Mary of Magdala was said to have tried to convert the Emperor himself.

The idea that Jesus would have married Mary Magdalene is a radical break with Christianity and also other religions that acclaim Jesus as a Prophet (as was also the case with the pagan Roman Emperor Alexander Severus who added a statue of Jesus to his pantheon of deities) and even, as in Hinduism, a divine avatar etc. The question is – why would He have married her?

IF we affirm, as Christianity always has, that Jesus is a Divine Person sent to earth with the specific mission to save humanity, the very idea is preposterous – and also offensively blasphemous. When His disciples found Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob, they were actually surprised to see Him doing so. When He called His disciples to follow Him, those among the disciples who were married actually left their wives to go with Jesus (as did Peter whose mother-in-law was healed by Christ).

And Christ Himself preached the standard of a celibate commitment to the Kingdom of God (as did St Paul as well, echoing His words) on more than one occasion. Jesus also contradicted entirely the arguments of the Judaic sect of the Sadducees on the issue of marriage and affirmed that people will not be “given in marriage” in the coming Kingdom of God, but they will be “like the angels in heaven.” Jesus as God Incarnate did not experience the concupiscence of the flesh that inclines us to the perfectly legitimate sexual fulfillment of marriage. Indeed, He blesses marriage at Cana in Galilee.

As Man, Jesus became dependent on a woman, His mother, Maryam, and He obeyed her in all things – including her request for help for the marriage party at Cana that had run out of wine. God is seen changing His schedule in response to a request from the Woman clothed with the sun. Moreover, at Cana and at the foot of the Cross, Jesus Christ, the Saviour Who gives us all, especially His life, does not withhold from us His own Mother so that we, as the Body of Christ that is the Church, may be nourished spiritually by her.

As St Theophane the Recluse said, just as human mothers nourish their children, so too does our Mother the Theotokos nourish us in Holy Communion since it is from her flesh and blood that God the Word took His.

If the goal of the Church was to denigrate women, then someone should have told it before now that the many celebrations and icons of the Mother of Jesus and of female saints and miracle-workers are actually “attacks” on the status of women!

The issue of women’s ordination is a western one that came to be associated with the later political power wielded by the western Church and its hierarchs. The majority of church-goers in the Eastern Churches are women (85% in the Church of Russia prior to 1991). It was women, professional, educated women, who also defended the Church under communism and who, as in one case, were not afraid to even spit on the shoes of a bishop who had signed an agreement with the Soviet government concerning control of the Church! It was women who raised generations of Christians during times of persecutions – and without whom there would be no Churches in those countries that are now free of such.

But how does Dan Brown and those who came before him to perpetuate his perspective see the equality of women as being achieved in the life of Christ? Why, by having Mary Magdalene married to Jesus, of course! The idea that Mary Magdalene could have been an independently wealthy and powerful woman and follower of Christ is lost here. And if marriage is the way by which women achieve or have achieved equality with men in history – well, then there is something seriously wrong with Dan Brown’s social science perspectives here!

The pagan secret of the Da Vinci Code is simply a rehash of the ancient Gnostic theological disparagement of women as being incapable of achieving the same inner knowledge and enlightenment as men – unless, of course, they “become men” i.e. get married to them. It reflects, then, a male ideology of all those (and Dan Brown hasn’t “discovered America” with his book) who share that view, going back to the Gnostics.

And the New Testament, with all of Paul’s admonitions about women “keeping silence” in Church etc., is never so bold to make anything resembling such assertions.

As for the symbolism and their interpretation noted in the book, one may read anything, of course, into symbols. And symbols do change their meaning over time. And both Opus Dei and the Templar Knights had and have nothing to do with the insidious overtures asserted as well. The Templars were put down because they were wealthy. And any Catholic may become a member of the Opus Dei. In fact, the writings of their founder, St Josemaria Escriva, are to be commended to one and all. I once read his statement that “to a student, an hour of study is an hour of prayer.” Yes, real conspiratorial stuff . . .

In any event, all those who are walking around the places noted in Dan Brown’s book trying to find the symbolism mentioned there could and really should spend equal time reading up on the New Testament, church history and other similar topics.

In fact, what Brown’s lucrative writing and film project has shown is just how badly in need of religious education many Christians today are. People who have never read the New Testament, much less studied commentaries etc., are taking the Da Vinci Code as gospel . . . They are also susceptible to conversion to a number of sects and cults. This is why it is often said that the two largest religious groups in North America today are Catholics and . . . former Catholics.

After issuing a complaint etc. about the Da Vinci Code, Christians and the Church in general need to do something about getting a better spiritual formation out to its members.

If the male hierarchy is somehow unable to do that, perhaps it would consider handing over this all-important project to Christian women? As we know from the Gospel and the history of the Church, women know how to get the job done right!

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