Decoding The Da Vinci Code

1
What is the plot of the book?
2
Introducing The Da Vinci Code

• Approximately 7 million copies sold.
• Ron Howard will direct the movie version.
• But why has this novel caused such a stir?

3
Introducing The Da Vinci Code

• Story begins with a murder in the Louvre.
• The Priory of Sion guards an ancient secret that
  could discredit biblical Christianity.
• The location and identity of the Holy Grail.

4
Why be concerned with a novel?

• FACT All descriptions of artwork, architecture,
  documents, and secret rituals in this novel are
  accurate (Dan Brown).

5
Themes of the book

• Bible collated by pagan emperor Constantine
  (Canon)
• Jesus was not divine
• Sacred Feminine
• Sexuality

6
Bible collated by Constantine?
7
Where did we get the Bible?
Jesus Christ was a historical figure of
staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic
and inspirational leader the world has ever
seen.Understandably, His life was recorded by
thousands of followers across the land.More than
eighty gospels were considered for the New
Testament, and yet only a relative few were
chosen for inclusion Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John among themThe Bible, as we know it today,
was collated by the pagan Roman emperor
Constantine the Great. (231)
8
Where did we get the Bible?
"The twist is this," Teabing said, talking faster
now. "Because Constantine upgraded Jesus' status
almost four centuries after Jesus' death,
thousands of documents already existed
chronicling his life as a mortal man. To rewrite
the history books, Constantine knew he would need
a bold stroke. "Constantine commissioned and
financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels
that spoke of Jesus' human traits and embellished
those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier
gospels were outlawed, gathered together and
burned." (234)
9
Where did we get the Bible?
Fortunately for historians, some of the gospels
that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed
to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in
the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the
Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls
in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. (234) Teabing . . .
any gospels that described the earthly aspects of
Jesus life had to be omitted from the Bible.
(244)
10
Whats the Evidence?

• The Nag Hammadi scrolls . . . tell . . . an
  alternative history of the time of Jesus and Mary
  Magdalene (Dan Brown)
• Teabing calls these texts the earliest Christian
  records (245) and the unaltered gospels (248).

11
Did Constantine upgrade Jesus status almost
four centuries after Jesus death.?

• Gospels were all written before 100 AD.
• Marcion (90-160) excommunicated, cleansed the
  Bible of all Old Testament references and
  marriage references. Church of Jesus responded.
• Existing canons Muratorian Fragment (170),
  Clement of Alexandria (200), Origin (beginning of
  third century).
• The gospels are filled with the humanity of
  Jesus.

12
How did we get the canon?

• Eye witnesses or Apostle
• Know an eye witness
• Orthodox
• Did it carry authority

13
What are the Nag Hammadi Documents?

• Accidentally discovered in 1945 near the Egyptian
  village of Nag Hammadi.
• Six bedouin camel drivers were digging for
  fertilizer when one of them uncovered a human
  skeleton buried next to an earthenware jar.

14
What are the Nag Hammadi Documents?

• Inside the jar, they found thirteen leather-bound
  volumes containing fifty-two treatises.

15
What are the Nag Hammadi Documents?

• The books included Gospels (e.g. Thomas, Philip),
  Acts (e.g. Peter and the Twelve Apostles),
  letters (e.g. Peter to Philip) and Apocalypses
  (e.g. Paul, Peter).
• Why arent these books in the Bible?

16
When were the Nag Hammadi texts written?

• Teabing claims that the Nag Hammadi texts are
  the earliest Christian records (245).
• But every book in the NT is earlier.

17
When were the Nag Hammadi texts written?

• All the books in the NT were written in the first
  century A.D.
• The Nag Hammadi texts were written in the second
  and third centuries A.D.

18
The Gnostic Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene

• Leigh Teabing says that these gospels either
  teach or imply the following
• Mary was the wife of Jesus.
• The mother of His child.
• She was to lead the church after Jesus death
  (244-48).

19
The Gospel of Mary

• After an appearance of Christ to his disciples,
  Peter asks Mary to tell them the words of the
  Savior that she knows, but that they do not.
• She describes a vision of the ascent of the soul
  past four ruling powers to its rest.

20
The Gospel of Mary

• Andrew rejects the revelation, not believing it
  came from Christ.
• And Peter said, Did the Saviour really speak
  with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to
  turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer
  her to us?

21
The Gospel of Mary

• And Levi answered, Peter, you have always been
  hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against
  the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made
  her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her?
  Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is
  why he loved her more than us (247).

22
The Gospel of Mary What does this text teach?

• Mary received a special revelation from Jesus
  that the male disciples did not.
• Levi implies that Jesus (who knows her very
  well) considered her worthy.
• Jesus loved Mary more than his male disciples.

23
The Gospel of Mary What does this text NOT
teach?

• That Mary was Jesus wife.
• That Mary was the mother of Jesus child.
• That Mary was to lead the church.

24
The Gospel of Mary What does this text mean?

• Its possibly symbolic. Peter may represent
  Orthodoxy Mary Gnosticism.
• If this is so, then Mary (Gnostics) are
  claiming special revelation even if Peter
  (Orthodox) cant believe it.

25
The Gospel of Mary

• Composed in the late second century - one hundred
  years after NT gospels.
• Its almost certainly not historically reliable.
• But doesnt The Gospel of Philip indicate that
  Mary and Jesus were married?

26
The Gospel of Philip

• And the companion of the Saviour is Mary
  Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the
  disciples and used to kiss her often on her
  mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by
  it and expressed disapproval. They said to him,
  Why do you love her more than all of us? (246).

27
The Gospel of Philip

• As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word
  companion, in those days, literally meant spouse
  (246).
• This gospel was originally written in Greek.

28
The Gospel of Philip

• Even the Coptic translation, found at Nag
  Hammadi, uses a Greek loan word for companion -
  koinonos.
• This term can mean wife in a spiritual sense,
  but its not the common Greek term for wife.

29
The Gospel of Philip

• Koinonos is most often used in the NT of a
  partner.
• Luke uses this term to describe James and John as
  Peters business partners (510).
• Contrary to Teabings claim, the statement that
  Mary was Jesus companion does not at all prove
  that she was His wife.

30
The Gospel of Philip

• But what about the statement Christ loved
  her more than all the disciples and used to kiss
  her often on the mouth.
• This portion of the manuscript is damaged. We
  dont actually know where Christ kissed Mary.

31
The Gospel of Thomas

• Simon Peter said to them Let Mary go out
  from among us, because women are not worthy of
  the Life Jesus said See, I shall lead her, so
  that I will make her male, that she too may
  become a living spirit, resembling you males.
  For every woman who makes herself male will enter
  the Kingdom of Heaven

32
Jesus was not really divine?
33
Jesus divinity

• Teabing, regarding Nicea At this gathering,
  many aspects of Christianity were debated and
  voted uponthe date of Easter, the role of the
  bishops, the administration of sacraments, and,
  of course, the divinity of Jesus . . . . until
  that mom-ent in history, Jesus was viewed by His
  followers as a mortal prophet . . .a great and
  powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal . .
  . .

34
The facts about Nicae

• Didnt vote about Jesus divinity.
• Arian controversy.
• Is Jesus lesser than God?
• 300 to 2 vote.
• Nicaen Creed.
• Colossians 29 Romans 95 John 1114

35
The Sacred Feminine and Sexuality
36
"Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to
God was mind-boggling at first. Langdon's Jewish
students always looked flabbergasted when he
first told them that the early Jewish tradition
involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less.
Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in
Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His
powerful female equal, Shekinah. . . . The Jewish
tetragrammaton YHWHthe sacred name of Godis in
fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous
physical union between the masculine Jah and the
pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah" (p.309, DVC).
37
YHWH does not derive from Jehovah Jehovah is
derived from Yahweh. Originally the Hebrew form
of the sacred name had no vowel points. These
were added later by Jewish scribes from the word
Adonai (translated Lord), and in the sixteenth
century this hybrid form was transliterated into
English, resulting in the word Jehovah, as
found in the King James Version. Rick Howe
38
First of all, the word Shekinah (as in Shekinah
glory), is not found anywhere in the Jewish
Scriptures. It was used later in rabbinic
literature and by early Christians to refer to
the luminous presence of Yahweh among his people,
for instance, on Mount Sinai, in the wilderness
wanderings, in the tabernacle, and later in the
temple. It comes from the Hebrew verb, shakan, to
dwell, and refers to the manifestation of Gods
presence or dwelling among his people (which is
why the early Christians saw Christ as the
ultimate expression of the Shekinah glory, as in
John 114). Because of its absence in the Old
Testament itself, to make this a claim about
early Jews is anachronistic in the extreme. Not
only that, it is a supreme irony that the
description of men seeking spiritual wholeness
through physical union with priestesses was the
very practice of Canaanite religion uniformly
condemned by the Hebrew prophets (See, for
instance, Ezek. 1616 Hosea 414, and the many
references to high places during the prophetic
period, which refer to Israels adoption of
Canaanite worship). Rick Howe