Everyone likes to be in on something. To be one of chosen few inan inner circle of knowledge has a certain thrill not easilymatched. This is especially true when the subject is prominent andthe number of uninitiated dupes is large.
In writing the DaVinci Code, Dan Brown has grabbed readers notonly with a page-turning mystery novel, but with the excitingprospects of blowing up the established story and getting the realinside truth on one of the most prominent men who ever lived --Jesus of Nazareth. Though the book is billed as historical fiction,Brown is clear that he believes (and wants us to believe) that"almost everything we've been told about Christ is false".
But why, we might ask, should we believe Brown? Is he somehowmore reliable because he is the minority opinion? There are still agood number of flat-earthers and geo-centrics out there, but wedon't give more weight to their books because of mainstreamscience's rejection of them. If we are to believe Brown, that he isright and so many others are wrong, we need strong and reliableevidence.
How do we tell who is saying what is true? Brown makes a lot ofclaims in his book, too many to treat here (though some responsebooks are on the way -- see The DaVinci Hoax by Carl Olson). But agood way to start is to test for reliability. Test something youdon't know to be true against something you do know to be true.Truth never disagrees with itself. If Dan Brown disagrees withtruth we already know, we should be less sure about believing anynew truths he proposes.
Brown begins his book with the very striking line: "Alldescriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secretrituals in this novel are accurate." This is a very cleverstatement. Notice that he says the "descriptions" of the thingsthemselves are accurate, but he does not say the same of theinterpretations which he gives to them. It is as if someone were todefend the doctored photo of John Kerry with Jane Fonda by sayingthat "Kerry and Fonda are truly photographed". Yes, we'd say, thatis really them (not look-alikes), but they were never together inthat way! Brown describes the Mona Lisa, various cathedrals, andancient texts as they are, but he puts many of them in a contextthey never had.
Art historians will attest to Brown's stretching of the truth.Bruce Boucher, curator of European decorative arts and sculpture atthe Art Institute of Chicago, points out that the Mona Lisa was notan "androgynous self-portrait", but a painting of a real localwoman (most likely Mona Lisa Gherardini, the wife of merchantFrancesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo). The figure toright of Jesus in "The Last Supper" is not Mary Magdelene but John,painted effeminately because of his youth, according to theFlorentine style of the time. Less obvious but no less important,Boucher mentions that "da Vinci" is not the great painter's surname-- it is a description of the town he is from. Anyone with a greatfamiliarity with art history would call him "Leonardo".
If Brown can't be trusted in art, can he be trusted in religion?Brown's key claim is not only that Jesus was not divine, but thateven his first followers didn't believe he was. Christianity, theworship of Jesus as God, is, according to Brown, the creation ofthe Emporer Constantine in 325. He says through his characters,"Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers asa noted prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.A mortal...Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote...a relativelyclose vote at that."
One does not have to believe Jesus is God to believe that hisvery first followers thought he was. You don't even need to turn tothe Bible for proof. Ancient graffiti is one of the mostinteresting witnesses to history. On a wall near Palantine Hill inRome one can find a scribbling from before 100 A.D. It reads,"Alexamenos worships his God." Alongside it is a crude drawing of aman bowing towards another figure -- a crucified man (with adonkey's head for added insult). Roman governor Pliny the Younger,writing to the Emporer Trajan around 115 AD about the strange sectcalled Christians, notes, "they were in the habit of meeting on acertain fixed day before sunrise and reciting an antiphonal hymn toChrist as God".
Around the same time Ignatius the bishop of Antioch, on his wayto be executed by the Romans, wrote to the church at Ephesus,"There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit;both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death;both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, evenJesus Christ our Lord." Ignatius is echoing what he had been taughtdecades before, the same teaching that Paul preached to thechurches, as we see in his letters from the 50s and 60s AD.
The same teaching persisted on down to Constantine's time, whena charismatic leader named Arius, using catchy songs and slogans,tried to make a name for himself by claiming that the Son of Godwas a creature. Not that Jesus was a mortal, but that he was lessthan God, more like a super-angel. By reaffirming Jesus as eternal,The Council of Nicea did not enshrine a brand new belief, theykilled a mistaken one -- with a vote of 218 to 2 (hardlyclose).
Despite this historical record, Brown continues to believe theReal Story of Jesus is found in the "Gnostic gospels" that werewritten a hundred years or more after Jesus' death. In them we donot see a careful attention to historical detail, as in the four ofthe New Testament, but strange mystical sayings like this one fromthe Gospel of Thomas: "I myself shall lead [Mary] in order to makeher male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling youmales. For every woman who will make herself male will enter thekingdom of heaven".
Brown himself admits that everybody loves conspiracies. They'reexciting; the juicier the better. But I think the truth is alwaysmore amazing in the end -- it's never quite what you'd expect. Theproblem with conspiracies is that finding the truth becomes toohard. You don't learn anything new, because anything thatcontradicts your conspiracy is dismissed -- it's just part of theplot against you. More evidence against Brown's more spectacularclaims can be found by those willing to look. It is worth thelook.
Jack Grimes is a senior majoring in philosophy and politicalscience. He can be reached at grimes@tuftsdaily.com.
