Copyright Ian Ellis-Jones 2006 - All Rights Reserved.

1. The Da Vinci Code
by Ian Ellis-Jones
PRECIS OF AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE SYDNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH ON SUNDAY, 2 JULY
2006
Spoiler Warning: Plot and/or other details of the book and the film follow.
It is not hard to debunk Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code as well as the film
purportedly based on it. Although the book makes a good read - and I intend to focus
primarily on the book as opposed to the film - the plain truth is that the book is not all that
well-written. Of greater concern is the fact that although the book has the appearance of
having been well-researched - something that fools most readers - it is, in fact, full to the
brim of half-truths, faulty logic, errors of fact and gross distortions of history.
Predictably, but entirely justifiably, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then the Vatican’s head of
doctrinal orthodoxy, and now its recently appointed secretary of state, issued an official
statement on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he described the novel as “a sack full of
lies” and urged Christians not to read it. That was all that was needed to get Catholics, both
practising and lapsed, as well as non-Catholics, rushing to their nearest bookstore to purchase
a copy of the book.
Now, while it can be fun, and even illuminative, to attack orthodoxy, and to show that what
purports to be orthodox Christianity is indeed a horrible corruption of the simple teachings
and message of Jesus, Brown’s iconoclastic novel is pseudo-history totally lacking in
credibility. His depiction of the Catholic Church, and particularly Opus Dei, is grossly
inaccurate and even quite unfair to both. Although I don’t have a brief for Opus Dei, it would
be irresponsible to form any opinion of the order based on The Da Vinci Code, especially the
film version.
For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the story, the protagonist is world-renowned
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks in the film). Langdon learns
that Jacques Saunière, the elderly curator of the Louvre, has been murdered inside the
museum. A baffling cipher is found near Saunière’s body. Langdon teams up with French
cryptologist Sophie Neveu (played by Audrey Tautou in the film) to solve the mystery.
Together, they enter a world of secret societies, secret codes, conspiracies, cover-ups and
general mayhem and mystery.
Now, Dan Brown writes in his book: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents,
and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” However, that is not the case. Brown would
have us believe that the beliefs and practices of the early Christians were entirely different to
what we have been taught, and that a huge patriarchal conspiracy has hidden the real truth
from us for centuries. He would also have us believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
married and even sired a royal bloodline that continues to this day. That is not the end of it.
Brown also asserts that a veritable secret society of scientists and artists has seen it as their
bounden duty to preserve these ancient secrets for almost 1,000 years.
Brown has a character in the novel, Sir Leigh Teabing (wonderfully played by Sir Ian
McKellen in the film), assert that the Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls are “the
earliest Christian records”. This is totally false, and laughably so. The Dead Sea Scrolls,
which consist of copies and fragments of Old Testament books and various religious and
secular writings, say nothing about the events recorded in the Gospels or for that matter
anything in the New Testament. They don’t contain any gospels or anything even mentioning
Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls are antecedent to them. The Scrolls ended very close in time to

2. when the first Gospels or New Testament works began to appear. Brown even asserts that the
Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1950s. He can’t even get that right. They were
discovered in 1947. As for the 52 Nag Hammadi texts (which were discovered in 1945), the
general preponderance of academic authority is that they were written during the 4th century
CE, obviously not by eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus. In short, Brown has got
all of this hopelessly wrong.
Now, do you want to know what really are the earliest surviving Christian texts? They’re in
the New Testament. St Paul’s epistle, 1 Thessalonians, was written about the year 51 CE.
That would almost certainly make it the oldest of all surviving Christian documents. (Some
say the book of James is the oldest.) Galatians was probably written around 54-58 CE. The
Book of Acts appears to have been completed by 61 CE, although some portions of it may
have been written even earlier. The Gospel of Mark is unquestionably the oldest surviving
gospel. It is usually dated around 70 CE. Despite what Brown has written, the Third Council
of Carthage ratified the New Testament in 397 CE, there being no compulsion or coercion in
that regard, and almost no credible competition from so-called “alternative gospels” (despite
Brown’s erroneous assertion, through the character Leigh Teabing, that more than 80 [sic]
gospels were considered for the New Testament canon).
Brown also asserts that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and sired a royal bloodline
(Sang Réal) that survives in secret to this day. He also asserts that the early church enjoyed
sexual ceremonies in celebration of Mary Magdalene, and that Jesus wanted his supposed
wife to lead the Church after his death, but Peter (who supposedly became the first Pope) had
other plans and took over instead. Brown also claims that the “real” Holy Grail is the earthly
remains of Mary Magdalene. In Brown's novel, it is hinted that those remains were long
buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh but in recent decades were relocated to a
secret chamber embedded in the floor beneath the Inverted Pyramid near the Louvre Museum.
This supposed “secret” is supposedly the “real” Holy Grail. Not the cup supposedly used by
Jesus at the Last Supper. Not the cup supposedly used to catch Jesus’ blood whilst he was
dying on the Cross. Brown goes further and asserts that the Jesus-Mary royal bloodline has
been protected by such esoteric societies as the Knights Templar and the so-called Priory of
Sion, one of whose “Grand Masters” was supposedly none other than Leonardo da Vinci
himself.
These assertions are nothing new: see, for example, the 1982 best-seller, The Holy Blood and
the Holy Grail (by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln). Those writers
unsuccessfully sued Brown for plagiarism. Such is the law. The Holy Blood authors pointed
out, among other things, that the name of Brown’s character Leigh Teabing is made up from
the name of one of the three authors, plus an anagram of another.
Now, there is absolutely no historical evidence to support any of this. Indeed, the facts are
altogether to the contrary. As for Jesus having been married (whether to Mary Magdalene or
otherwise), the New Testament makes no mention of a wife and there is no extra-Biblical text
- not even the "Gnostic gospels" that Brown makes much of in his novel - that suggests that
Jesus was ever married. Brown cites the Gnostic gospel of Philip to support this claim. We
only have fragments of the text he uses as his flimsy support. “And the companion of
the…Mary Magdalene…her more than…the disciples…kiss her…on her…” (Philip 63:33-
36). Verses 58 and 59 tend to suggest that the kiss would have been on the lips. In 1 Cor
16:20 St Paul makes mention of this kind of chaste kiss of fellowship (“Greet one another
with a holy kiss” [RSV]), and this is likely what is meant here. However, the protagonist in
The Da Vinci Code claims that the word “companion” in this verse actually means spouse
because, supposedly, that’s what the Aramaic word really means. Brown stuffs up again.
The Gospel of Philip was written in Coptic, not Aramaic. The word used for companion is
koinonos (meaning companion, not spouse).

3. Brown even makes the incredible claim that the individual seated at the right hand of Jesus in
da Vinci's painting "The Last Supper" is not, as commonly understood, the Apostle John (the
"disciple Jesus loved") but rather Mary Magdalene, Jesus' supposed wife. Art experts have
done their utmost to lay that one to rest. As for the Priory of Sion, Brown asserts that it is a
European secret society founded in 1099, and a “real organization”. However, the so-called
“order” was in fact founded in 1956 by Frenchman Pierre Plantard (1920-2000) – an anti-
Semitic and anti-Masonic con artist who had been convicted of crimes involving
embezzlement and fraud - and has nothing whatsoever to do with a medieval crusaders’
organization. During his lifetime Plantard formed many “phantom associations”, trying,
among other things, to demonstrate that he was the uncrowned king of France. Anyway, not
long before his death Plantard was compelled to admit under oath that he had fabricated
everything; the alternative was further time in prison. That still didn’t stop Dan Brown in the
preface to his book from asserting that the Priory of Sion is an actual secret society that really
was founded many centuries ago.
Freemasonry, the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world, is stereotypically
depicted in the novel as a “secret society”, again unfairly so. I read this on the official
website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: “[P]ublic knowledge about the
organization [Freemasonry] is so extensive that it raises doubts about how secretive [the
Masons] really are.” Indeed. A secret society has secret meeting places and may even keep
secret its aims and objectives. Its members keep secret their membership of the society.
There is nothing “secret” about Freemasonry in any of those senses, the aims of which are
well-known (“brotherly love, relief and truth”). The only true “secrets” of modern
Freemasonry are the ceremonial means of demonstrating that one is a Mason. These signs
(which are “private” to members) are of ancient provenance - medieval stonemasons
developed secret signs and passwords as an early form of unionism - and have great
symbolical value as a symbol of the importance of fidelity and the need to preserve
confidences in human relationships. Masons use these so-called “secrets” to test and prove
the good character of those who choose to join the fraternity. It’s as simple as that.
Brown also asserts in The Da Vinci Code that the Bible, as we know it today, was collated by
the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. Brown’s character Robert Langdon states: “The
Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world
from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda
that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever”.
This wrongly implies that the Greco-Roman polytheistic religions were matriarchal until
nasty Constantine conspired to change all that. This is utter rubbish. Jupiter/Zeus was King of
the Gods and the supreme ruler of the world. Sure, other gods were worshipped as well but
there was certainly no matriarchy.
But Brown goes even further and asserts (as did the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy
Grail) that Constantine conspired for an altogether ulterior purpose to commission “new
versions” of the Christian writings documents (the original documents having been
supposedly destroyed at the direction or behest of the pagan emperor Diocletian around 303
CE), with the supposed result that the accounts and writings of early Christianity were
radically rewritten. This supposedly resulted in divinity being bestowed upon Jesus for the
first time. However, there is absolutely no evidence for any of this, and quite a bit to the
contrary. Now, whilst Constantine did indeed order that new copies of the Bible be made,
that was only for the purpose of their being used in the new churches that were planned, and
they were identical to the Bible texts already in existence. Remember, in those days there
were no printers or photocopiers. All texts had to be manually produced. Many New
Testament manuscripts and fragments pre-dating the Council of Nicaea exist to the present
day, and their text is identical to the versions we have today. So, there is absolutely no
evidence of there having been any radical rewriting of the sacred texts.

4. Brown portrays Jesus as a mere man, which may not be that shocking to Unitarians, but it
certainly has given offence to most Bible-believing Christians. He goes on to claim that
Jesus’ mission was not salvation, but, in effect, procreation. That’s not all. Then Brown
asserts that the purpose of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE (which had indeed been called by
Constantine on behalf of the Church’s leaders) was to specifically bestow divinity upon Jesus.
However, whilst the Council was convened to resolve a number of theological disputes, the
divinity of Jesus was not in dispute; Jesus had been regarded as the Son of God from earliest
times. Indeed, the main issue debated at the Nicene Council pertained to whether or not Jesus
was of “one substance” with God the Father (and, in particular, to the Arian controversy, that
is, whether Jesus as the Son of God was nevertheless “less” than the Father). Thus, the
Nicene Creed refers to “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the
Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made” [emphasis
added].
Brown also asserts that Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday until Constantine
changed the day to coincide with the pagan veneration day of the sun. However, Christians
were honoring Sunday as the Sabbath long before Constantine. But Brown really gets silly
when he has his character Leigh Teabing assert that “establishing Christ’s divinity was critical
to the further unification of the Roman Empire”. This is utter rubbish. The historical facts
make it clear that by the early 2nd century CE Christians, as a whole, were worshipping Jesus
as God. Sure, there were a variety of cults, some of which rejected the divinity of Jesus, with
some (like latter day Unitarians) asserting that Jesus himself repudiated such a belief (see, eg,
Mt 19:17), but the adoption of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus had nothing to do with the
furtherance and betterment of the Roman Empire.
There are many other errors and misstatements of fact in The Da Vinci Code - the book and
the film - but I dare say few, including the very wealthy Dan Brown, care.
-oo0oo-