- This essay is officially a "work in progress." When I feel it is complete (or so close to it I don't want to work on it anymore) these bullet points will disappear.
- Version 1.0 finished on 13 Jun 2006
- Please do not copy this - I claim all applicable copyrights. If you want to reprint this or link to it from another website, I humbly ask that you do me the favor of dropping me a line first to let me know: "smdk66" at yahoo.
The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction.
Apparently, however, this is a surprise to a large number of people. They say, don't read it for entertainment! It's a textbook account of what really happened! Oh sure it's a fictionalized history lesson, but still! Either read it or don't, but if you do, you have to know the truth first!
Of course, it's their truth they mean, according to them or their organization. In short, the naysayers and the trumpeters put their particular spin on the story. At the time I read the book, I was tired of the arguments and decided to read it and figure out the truth myself. This short essay describes my reaction to both the book itself and my later research.
Every reaction, worldwide, to Dan Brown's book falls into one of two camps. Broadly defined by their extremes, one could say people thought either "That book is evil and defiles holy Mother Church!" or "It's the Gospel truth and I knew the Church was corrupt!" Not every opinion was so extreme. However, it is a book that engenders powerful feelings, one way or the other, in nearly every reader.
I must say starting out that when I first read the book, I was a proud member of the 2nd camp. Upon finishing it, it was abundantly clear to me that the Catholic Church had made, since it's beginnings immediately after the Passion two thousand years ago, a coordinated effort to make women powerless. I was convinced the Church's sole purpose was to stamp out all references to the 'Sacred Feminine' in the divine, because it threatened the male-only leadership of the Church. It accomplished this nefarious program of anti-feminism in many ways. One was, I was utterly convinced, a centuries-long campaign that overtly encouraged male chauvinism.
I arrived at complete certainty as I later pondered what I had read. 'Dear God,' I thought to myself. 'The Catholic Church truly has, over the course of two millenia, and in all its devilish arrogance, stamped out all references to the fact that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.'
Jesus was married, I was certain of it. And his wife, as Dan Brown claimed, was Mary Magdelene.
But not only that: Jesus had fathered children with her (at least one, but the exact number is unknown). Mary Magdelene fled to France at some point and died there, but not before establishing herself to the extent that their descendants would later marry into royalty: the Merovingian line of French Kings.
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Ahem. I say this so you know what my mindset was based solely on the book itself. I wanted to firmly believe it all, and I hoped that further research would prove the point beyond any doubt.
Anyway ... that was before, though. Before I really researched everything.
My research was two-fold: I read two books* that purported to separate the facts from the fiction in The Da Vinci Code. I put great effort into selecting these two books. I wanted books written by neutral parties. I wanted books that at least sourced from a thoroughly interested, but uncommitted, perspective. I dismissed any books with an obvious agenda, positive or negative. I dismissed anything written by a religious authority as excessively negative. I dismissed any book that appeared to have a purposely positive viewpoint. The books I chose proved to be exactly what I was hoping to find. They deal only in facts, hostorical perspectives, and proven philosophy, being careful to delineate opinion as such. Neither book proves any point by selective choice of supporting evidence; both books carefully consider all available evidence and lay it out for the reader to make his or her own decision.
Without going into detail, the research taught me a whole lot I did not know about my faith, a lot about the Catholic Church, and more than I previously thought I'd ever want to know about the Middle Ages. Specifically, the Middle Ages and the actions of some of the flawed, imperfect, and all-too-human men that held the Papacy while chaos reigned around them.
As a result of that research, I feel that I was wrong. There was no concerted conspiracy, and in fact it is most unlikely there even could have been a conspiracy, to stifle female power. The history of the Church, though long and filled with corruption, was also full of so much uncertainty and concern with earthly matters of the day that the Church could never have orchestrated such a pervasive campaign of suppression. Much less done so for 2,000 years and more.
At any rate, the power of women through history (or lack thereof) is a topic for another time and is far beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that I now firmly believe that the Church has not been even tangentially responsible for anti-female prejudice and chauvinism. Further, a campaign to suppress the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene would have fallen apart completely during the early centuries.
But I can go even further than that. My research also disproved the theory that Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene. That theory says the Church conspired to hide the fact of their marriage in order to maintain male supremacy within the faith. To keep women in a subservient position. In short, to degrade women.
I believe that it would have been far easier to accomplish that if Magdelene had, in fact, slept with or married Jesus. Wouldn't it be easier, then, to degrade her legacy and influence further? Yes! It would be easier to believe she was a prostitute if it were also accepted that she had a physically intimate relationship with Jesus. In fact, I heard it phrased best this way: the concept of a "Mary Magdelene/Jesus Christ" marriage reinforces rather than contradicts current Church tradition. Because the Church dismisses the marriage, I believe now that it is far more likely that there was neither a marriage nor a sexual relationship.
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But these conclusions I've stated in this essay do not mean that I'm now in the first camp I mentioned above. TDVC is a wonderful, exciting, and educational book. The greatest education any author could give readers of a book is the burning desire to learn more about the subject matter. The explosion of "Fact vs. Fiction" books written about the Code shows Mr. Brown did that in spades. Further, I believe it reinforced something which Mr. Brown may not have intended: events long in the past still influence us in our world today. Things don't happen in a vaccuum, but rather have their genesis in events that happened thousands of years ago.
Fortunately for Dan Brown, everything is OK, because the book is a work of fiction. In a very timely proof of the point, the lawsuit which was filed against him recently by the writers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail was resolved. They claimed he stole his plot from their book. Guess what? The verdict was for Mr. Brown. You see, at the time of its writing in the 70s, the writers of HBHG contended that their book was fact ... that everything in it really happened. Fortunately for Dan Brown, it's not possible to copyright facts. Even when they're proven to be untrue, which is what has finally been revealed due to the explosive popularity of The Da Vinci Code.
* The two books I read were these:
1. Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Davinci Code, edited by Dan Burstein. Original material copyright 2004 by Squibnocket Partners LLC. Hardback, cover price $21.95.
2. The Real History Behind The Da Vinci Code, by Sharan Newman. Copyright January 2005 by Sharan Newman. Published by the Penguin Group. Berkeley trade paperback edition, cover price $15.00.