Attempting to decode Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’

MICHELE MARR

If Dan Brown’s assertions in his runaway best-selling novel, “The Da

Vinci Code,” are true, as he claims they are, we really have no

reason to celebrate the nativity of Jesus the day after tomorrow.

I bought “The Da Vinci Code,” recently after I realized that, at

least once a week, someone asked me -- with a good deal of zeal -- if

I’d read the book. Most seemed quite willing to believe it was

chockfull of truths truer than the gospel truth and were eager to

know what I thought of it.

I began reading it just a couple of weeks ago at a time when it

appeared its continuing brouhaha was finally fading away. Then the

occasion of Christmas breathed new life into it.

I picked up Newsweek early in December, its cover story titled,

“The Birth of Jesus, Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas

Came To Be,” presenting the nature of the nativity as a controversy

both ancient and fresh. And there, two pages into the story, was “The

Da Vinci Code,” representing one side of the clash between

“literalism and a more historical view of faith.”

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” characterized the more

literal approach; “The Da Vinci Code” represented the “more

historical view.”

I didn’t find the book to be the suspenseful page-turner that

supposedly millions of readers have. Instead of “unputdownable,” as

one reviewer described it, I found it hard to pick up.

Brown’s book, considered a thriller, stayed at the top of the New

York Times hardcover bestseller list for more than a year, intriguing

readers with a story about a quest for long-hidden docu- ments, which

if found and revealed, would send a wrecking ball of unearth- ed

truths through the Christian church -- more specifically, “The Da

Vinci Code,” the Roman Catholic Church.

Its premises are unarguably controversial: Jesus was not divine

but merely “a wholly human teacher and prophet,” like all men “a

mortal;” the Holy Grail is not the cup of Christ, from which Jesus

drank at the Last Supper but, instead, it is Mary Magdalene, the

“holy vessel” who as Jesus’ wife carried his bloodline in her womb;

Jesus appointed his wife, not his disciple Peter, to be the

foundation upon which his church was to be built; Mary Magdalene was

both “Goddess” and “Divine Mother,” robbed of her powerful position

by the Roman Catholic Church.

As Brown puts it, in the words of one of his characters, its

“assertions are dire.”

Never mind how, or why, Mary Magdalene would be Goddess but Jesus

Christ (Brown allows him the moniker) not God. Never mind this is a

secret Brown asserts the Vatican has tried to conceal since the

fourth century, although the Vatican’s history begins in the fifth

century.

Never mind so much illogic and so many errors you could write

volumes about them, which during the past year, some people have.

If you type “The Da Vinci Code” into the search engine at

amazon.com, it returns the titles of 70 books in what is supposed to

be their order of relevance. Of them, nearly half are books written

to counter the historical and religious allegations Brown makes in

his novel. It’s unusual to see so much effort put into discrediting

the “facts” in a work of fiction. Fiction is, after all, expected to

be invention. Brown, however, has done much to insinuate that, though

the characters that populate “The Da Vinci Code” are fabrications,

the history and suppositions it presents are absolutely true.

In one of the few interviews he has given related to the book, he

said so. Both the book’s acknowledgments and a page headed “Fact,”

which follows, seem calculated to give the impression.

The first of the facts Brown introdu- ces is about the Priory of

Sion, which plays a key role in his yarn. Writes Brown, “The Priory

of Sion -- a European secret society founded in 1099 -- is a real

organization. In 1975, Paris’ Biblioteque Nationale discovered

parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous

members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton,

Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo Da Vinci.”

Without this, his conspiracy narrative comes apart like a strand

of broken beads.

This could, I suppose, by a bit of a stretch, be considered a

half-truth. There was a religious order in earlier times known as the

Priory, or Order, of Sion but it has not existed for centuries. The

Priory of Sion and “Les Dossiers Secret” described in Brown’s “Facts”

proved late in the last century to be an elaborate 20th century hoax,

the brain- child of a man named Pierre Plantard.

But what bothers me most about the book is how it rakes in the

credulous.

I was intrigued last week when I noticed an ad for a National

Geographic Channel documentary, “Unlocking Da Vinci’s Code: The Full

Story,” airing the Sunday before Christmas. It will include a rare

interview with Dan Brown.

Since our cable programming doesn’t, unfortunately, include the

National Geographic Channel, so I won’t get to see it, so I went to

the Web site to read and listen to any material that might be online.

There was a story there by Stefan Lovgren titled “No Gospel in ‘Da

Vinci Code,’ Scholar’s Say.” In it, Lovgren discusses Les Dossiers

Secrets hoax, which is rather rare. Then he tosses a bit of

misinformation of his own into the stew.

Brown claims that the person standing to the right of Jesus in Da

Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” is a woman, indeed, Mary Magdalene.

According to Lovgren, Brown says in the National Geographic

documentary, “If you look at that painting, it’s clearly a woman.”

Counters Lovgren, “Art historians and religious scholars, however,

scoff at the idea. Although the person to the right of Christ appears

effeminate -- with long flowing hair and no beard -- they say that’s

how John the Baptist is usually depicted in most works of art.”

John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod and executed early in

Jesus’ ministry. It is not he, but Jesus’ beloved disciple John, a

young man at the time, at Jesus’ right hand.

There are novelists and journalists and church historians. It’s

good to remember the difference.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].