Checking the Facts

The much awaited movie has come and has, as expected, become a box office hit. This is an abridged version, and with footnotes omitted, of an article answering some of the controversial claims made in the movie and the book.

The Da Vinci Code Movie:
Checking the Facts
Mark Hansard

The following critique of the movie is based primarily on two books: Breaking the Da Vinci Code by Darrell Bock, and The Da Vinci Hoax by Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel.

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene?
There is no ancient evidence that he was. In the movie, Teabing quotes a passage from the Gospel of Philip, which reads: “And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often…” at which point, he is interrupted by Sophie, who says, “that doesn’t say Jesus was married.” But Teabing counters that “the word ‘companion’ here literally means ‘spouse.’” Actually, the word “companion” here is a Greek word that rarely means wife, but more often has other meanings such as sister (in a spiritual sense), or fellow-worker. There is another Greek word that could have been used, and would have been much less ambiguous, if “spouse” had been the specific meaning intended. In the novel, Teabing reads more of the passage from Philip, which has Jesus kissing Mary on her “mouth.” But the problem is that the one text of the Gospel of Philip that we have is decayed at this point and there is literally no word there; “mouth” is an educated guess, but “cheek” or “hand” would fit there as well.

The Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene
The problem with relying on the Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene for evidence of Jesus’ marriage is that they were simply written too late to have the same historical reliability as the New Testament Gospels. Jesus died in 30 or 33 A.D., and the four gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all date to the First Century A.D., within 60 years or so of Jesus’ death. But the gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene date to the late Second Century or Third Century A.D., which, at very the earliest, is 150 years after Jesus. As scholar Darrell Bock explains in his book, the view of Jesus in these Gospels is so different from the Gospels in the New Testament, that one must make a choice between the two Christs; it is hardly possible that the historical claims about Jesus in the extra-biblical Gospels came from the same historical sources as in the Biblical Gospels. Instead, it is the earliest sources about Jesus that have the most historical value.

The Divinity of Jesus
Like the book, in the movie Teabing claims that the Emperor Constantine made Jesus divine at the council of Nicea in A.D. 325, and that before the council Jesus was considered a mere human being. When Robert argues with Teabing about this, we are left with the impression that there is no way to know this for sure; it is only a matter of opinion between the two scholars. But the evidence for an early belief in a divine Jesus is very strong. For example, the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, dating between A.D. 50-68, have some of the earliest writings about Jesus recorded, and they predate the council of Nicea by over 250 years. In 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 for example, Paul writes:

For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

What is interesting here is that the term “Lord” is often used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) for God himself. Here it is used of Jesus. To use the term “Lord” of Jesus, especially in a context mentioning other “gods,” really refers to his deity. In addition, the fact that Jesus is viewed as a creator here is also attributing to him power and position that belonged to God alone in the Old Testament. Remember, the Apostle Paul was a devout Jew who converted to Christianity, and he knew the Old Testament well.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Paul uses an Old Testament passage that refers only to God, and applies it to Jesus. In Philippians 2:9-11, speaking of Jesus, he says:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Again, we have Jesus called “Lord” here, a reference to his deity. But this passage is a reference to Isaiah 45:22-23, again, a passage that Paul as a trained Jewish leader would have known well:

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.

For a devout, First Century Jew to have quoted this passage about a man, a man who would receive worship that only God himself is owed, is nothing short of extraordinary.

But we also have evidence outside of the New Testament that early on Jesus was worshipped as God. In a now famous letter from Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor, to the Emperor Trajan, Pliny explains how he arrested Christians, and in his interrogations they told him they “chant verses alternatively amongst themselves in honor of Christ, as if to a god…” This letter likely dates to A.D. 111, over 200 years before Nicea.

Constantine, Paganism and Christianity
In the movie, Teabing asserts that the Emperor Constantine, for political reasons, merged paganism with Christianity to bring peace to the Roman Empire. There was a war, Teabing says, between pagans and Christians, and so Constantine merged some elements of male and female deity together in Christianity. This appears to be a reference to the symbols Robert explains in this scene: a male phallic symbol being a triangle that points upward, and a female symbol being the reverse, a “chalice” that represents a female’s womb. 

But this is simply twisted history; something no true historian would take seriously. For example, there was no war, or even battle at the time between pagans and Christians. Instead, in the decades before the council of Nicea in A.D. 325, there was official Roman persecution of Christians by the Emperor Diocletian, where many thousands of Christians were simply executed and tortured. Hardly a war. The persecution ended when Constantine allowed the legality of Christian worship in A.D. 313. And as historians of the period know, declaring that Constantine embraced Christianity merely for political reasons is another serious case of history-twisting. It was hardly advantageous politically for Constantine to embrace Christianity, since Christians were a persecuted minority in the Roman Empire.

Further, there is no evidence that any sort of paganism was merged with Christianity in the third or fourth century as the movie suggests. Christianity, because of its roots in Judaism (all the first Christians were devout Jews, including Jesus and the disciples), was fiercely monotheistic—they believed in one God, and one God only. Many Christians had already been executed because they refused to worship the Roman emperor, and they separated themselves from pagan ritual. Why would they suddenly allow Constantine to merge pagan symbols and deities with Christianity? While the novel claims that many Christian beliefs borrowed from pagan myth, the evidence shows the opposite: pagan religions borrowed ideas from Christianity.

“The only thing that matters is what you believe”
This line from the movie may sound believable on the surface, but is really not a rational position. The implication here is that religious belief is a matter of taste or opinion, having nothing to do with facts, which is a popular notion today. But believing something cannot and will not make it true, no matter how strongly it is believed. A person may believe he can fly, but if he jumps off a building, gravity will work on him just as it will on anyone else. And while this statement may appear to be more tolerant of religious people, it is actually quite insulting to devout believers of any religion. Anyone who takes their beliefs seriously will believe them literally, and believe (as everyone does) that if something is true it is true for everyone. In fact, whenever a person makes a statement that "x is true," it doesn't matter to what x refers: the person is making a truth claim that requires a rational basis and excludes contradictory statements. A more respectful approach to a person’s religious beliefs would be to investigate them to see if they are really true. 

Likewise, the New Testament writers believed literally in the divinity of Jesus, and that he died on the cross to save them from their sins. The Apostle Peter, writing in 2 Peter 1:16, says, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Here Peter bases his belief in Christ firmly on what he saw with his own eyes. And Luke, the physician who wrote Luke and Acts, declares he “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” from those who “were from the first eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:2-3). This, at the very least, means that Luke believed literally in the historical basis for Christian faith, and believed he was writing history. Thus the notion in the movie that faith is what you make it, that believing is more important than the facts, really does not add up. What we believe in any matter, religion included, should be rational, and in historical matters should be based on historical evidence. Since the writers of the New Testament made historical claims, the truth or falsity of Christianity really lies within the realm of the historian, not simply with what one chooses to believe. As you will see in other articles on this site, the story of the Da Vinci Code contains very poor history indeed.

Mark Hansard is a researcher for LeadershipU.com. He has an M.A. in philosophy of religion and ethics from Talbot School of Theology.

For those who are interested, the whole article can be found at the web site Jesus and Da Vinci (www.jesusanddavinci.com). Other articles dealing more in depth with questions raised in this article are also available here. Another good site is Christianity Today (www.christianity today.com).