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"Uma confusão de erros ridículos... O Código Da
Vinci " - Profa. Amy Welborn
Jesus Decoded
*Source URL:* http://www.jesusdecoded.com/truthbetold1.php
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WHAT DO YOU SAY TO A DA VINCI CODE BELIEVER?
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE DA VINCI CODE?
WHAT'S MISSING FROM THE DA VINCI CODE?
WHAT'S THE SECRET?
THE WITCH KILLING FRENZIES
THE ORIGIN OF THE "HOLY GRAIL"
Amy Welborn
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What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
By Amy Welborn
Just as in any religion, there are different
levels of *Da Vinci Code*faithful:
- Those who believe every assertion made in the
novel is true. These
people come to my talks clutching copies of *The
Woman with the
Alabaster Jar*, one of Brown's main sources for
the novel. They stand
in front of reproductions of Leonardo's *Last
Supper* and solemnly
point out the presence of Mary Magdalene.
- Those who are startled by the claims of the
novel, suspicious
because they've never heard them before, but at
the same time accepting of
the possibility. These folks usually lack any
background in history and
suspect that there's no way to know the truth
anyway.
- Finally, there are those who really don't care
about the exact *
content* of *The Da Vinci Code*, but are glad
that it subverts
Christianity, and so "believe" in the project in
general, and heartily
approve of it.
So…how to deal with them?
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
In answering the questions of those first two
groups, "evidence" is the word
to keep in mind at every point, and to stay
focused on the basics.
*The Da Vinci Code* is a mess, a riot of
laughable errors and serious
misstatements. Almost every page has at least
one of each. It would be easy
to get swamped up in the small stuff, to spend
hours debating the
relationship of Marian imagery to Isis or who's
who in Leonardo's *Virgin of
the Rocks* The good news is, however, that's not
necessary. When discussing
the factuality of *The Da Vinci Code*, all you
really need to do is stick to
a few fundamental points – and *stick to them! *
*They say…..* "But there's a page in the front
of the novel that says
"Fact." There's a bibliography in the novel and
on the website – those are
real books – I've seen them in the library. His
characters say that
historians believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene
were married, for example."
*You say…*There is enough truth in *The Da Vinci
Code* to be seriously
misleading. Yes, the sources – like *Holy Blood,
Holy Grail* and *The
Templar Revelation* exist. But they don't
reflect serious historical
scholarship. You're not going to find a
university history department on the
planet that uses the works that provide the meat
of *The Da Vinci
Code*theories as part of the syllabus.
What's also important is what Brown *doesn't*
use. There are scores and
scores of texts that have survived from the mid-1st
century through, say,
the era of Constantine in the 4th, that tell us
very clearly what early
Christians believed. *Brown uses none of these*.
It might be interesting to ask - and discuss –
why. What do these reliable
sources say that Brown would prefer to ignore?
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say**….*The case is pretty convincing –
that the Priory of Sion has
been protecting this secret about Mary Magdalene,
the real Jesus and the
real Holy Grail. It sounds like a tight case to
me.
*You say…*Well, maybe – until you consider the
following:
- The Priory of Sion, as Brown describes it, *did
not exist*. The
Priory of Sion was a small group of disaffected
right-wing anti-semitic
monarchists founded in 1956 in France. They
forged the documents Brown
describes in this book, and snuck them into
French libraries. The fraud was
widely exposed in the early 1970's in France.
Repeat: *There was no
Priory of Sion* for Leonardo to belong to or to
hide secrets.
- There's actually no evidence to support a
marriage of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene. The Gnostic writings that suggest a
special relationship between
them were written at least a century after Jesus
actually lived, and
reflect, not the events of Jesus' life, but the
Gnostic interpretation of
them. Mary functions as a symbol within those
narratives, not as a
historical person.
- There are voluminous studies done on the myth
and legend of the
Grail. Mary Magdalene factors in exactly *none *of
them. That
association is a modern invention of 20th
century pseudo-histories.
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say…*Well, there's probably no way to know
the truth anyway. Jesus
lived so long ago; we can't know for certain who
he was or what he said.
This explanation is as good as any of them.
*You say…*That is simply not true! Historians
apply the same standards of
evidence to early Christian documents as they do
to any other text, and the
general conclusion is that there is a consistent
picture of Jesus and the
early Christian movement that arises from those
texts. There are ambiguities
and differences of ultimate interpretation, but
it's generally agreed that:
- Jesus preached in a Jewish environment,
drawing on the themes and
traditions coursing through the Hebrew
Scriptures.
- Central to his preaching was the "Kingdom of
God."
- He preached, did mighty deeds (miracles), told
parables, and was
finally arrested and executed by the Romans
- His disciples claimed that he rose from the
dead, and made this the
center of their earliest preaching about Jesus.
Note how radically different this is from the
*Da Vinci Code* scenario. It's
different for a reason: the *Da Vinci Code *version
is fabricated from whole
cloth and bears *no relationship to the evidence.
*
Yes, there may be different interpretations of
what Jesus meant by "Kingdom
of God" or the precise shape of the early
Christian communities. But hold
fast to this basic truth: There may be different
theories about some aspects
of early Christian history, but *Jesus wedding
Mary Magdalene, his chosen
successor…is not one of them.***
**
So, as we discuss these particular points, here's
where we need to focus. We
need to challenge the *evidence* used in *The Da
Vinci Code* and not let up.
These works aren't serious history. Why use them?
There are plenty of
interesting texts, easily available on the
Internet, that *do* give a good
sense of what early Christianity was all about.
Why *not* check them out,
indeed?
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say…*oh, but the material on Leonardo da
Vinci is very interesting.
*You say…*Perhaps, but it's all wrong. *The Da
Vinci Code* is wrong on every
single point in makes about Leonardo: from his
name, to his religious and
philosophical beliefs, to every statement about
every art work mentioned:
the *Mona Lisa*, the *Last Supper*, the *Madonna
of the Rocks*, and *The
Adoration of the Magi*.
I once gave a talk at a university. At the end
of my talk, an art historian
stood up and addressed the group. She said, "So
many people come up to me
and gush about how much art history they've
learned from *The Da Vinci Code
*…I tell them they've learned *nothing *about
art from the *Da Vinci Code!"*
Indeed, if you asserted to any art historian
that what is really going on in
*the Last Supper *is that Leonardo is revealing
that Jesus and Mary
Magdalene were married and she is the real Holy
Grail…they would laugh. They
would.
Besides, just keep repeating…*There was no
Priory of Sion. There was no
Priory of Sion. How could Leonardo be working on
behalf of a group that
didn't exist?*
There are, of course, many more questions that
you'll be asked. But if you
can stick to the basics and keep questioning the
evidence, you'll go a long
way in undercutting the assumptions that are
brought to the dialogue.
But what about that third group?
I've met them – they write to me all the time –
and perhaps you have too.
They're all over Internet discussions of *The Da
Vinci Code* as well.
These are the folks that aren't as much
interested in defending the
particulars of *The Da Vinci Code*, but are
committed to this premise: that
the Catholic Church is the enemy of truth and
has been largely engaged in a
2000-year political power play.
To be honest, there is not much that an
intellectual discussion is going to
do to change these people's minds. They are
truly True Believers, largely
immune to reason. But there are a few things you
can say.
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say…*forget the details. The fact is,
there *were* alternate visions
of Christianity, and they were brutally
suppressed by the Church so that
Mary Magdalene's presence would be erased and
women's voices would be
silenced and the males in charge would retain
power.
*You say**….*let's try some logic, before we get
to the facts.
- *If *early Christian leaders were determined
to suppress Mary
Magdalene's role in their history, they did a
lousy job of it. They forgot
to take out the part *in every Gospel* in which
Mary Magdalene is the
first witness to the Empty Tomb, the witness on
which the whole story rests.
- *If *the Church through history were
determined to silence and
demonize Mary Magdalene, again, they failed,
considering that by the 8th
century her feast day had been established, she
was, after the Blessed
Virgin, the most widely-revered saint of the
Middle Ages, and she's called,
in Eastern Christianity, "Apostle to the
Apostles," among other honorifics.
- *If *those early Christian male powers wanted
to suppress the "real
story" of Jesus' ministry and purpose, you would
frankly wonder about their
sanity.
Given the fact that a female disciple carrying
on a movement based on the
wisdom purveyed by one of many wandering
teachers of the timewould have not
caused one Roman eye to blink in surprise during
the first century, much
less prompted anyone to arrest and execute
followers of such a
movement….you'd have to wonder why these
power-hungry men decided to make up
a story that *would* get them arrested and
executed, and then stick to it
during those same arrests, tortures and
martyrdoms.
This, in my experience, is not what power-mad
people do.
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say**….*it's the bigger truth that matters.
It doesn't matter what
particular version of the Jesus story you pick.
You need to pick the one
that's right for you, that fits your spiritual
needs. That's why *The Da
Vinci Code* is important. It encourages people
to do that.
*You say…*the crucial issue in *The Da Vinci
Code* isn't "spiritual truth."
It's history. And the fact is the story of early
Christianity is not a total
mash of conflicting, yet perhaps all equally
true, accounts.
More over, most people are interested in basing
their views and opinions, as
much as possible, on reality. When we're in a
relationship or friendship,
just "believing in the truth" of the
relationship doesn't work. It's based
on the reality of the lives we live together –
what we really say, what we
really do – our real histories.
It's the same with religion. Faith is, indeed, a
step forward in trust. But
it's not blind, and Christians have never
described it this way. Our faith
is built on what the apostles said about Jesus.
We believe what they said
was true, we move forward in faith, and, we
believe, we encounter the real
Jesus along the way, just as they did, through
the Scriptures, through
prayer and through sacrament.
No, not everything can be true all at the same
time. Either Jesus was Lord
or he wasn't. We know what the early Christians
believed – there's no
question about that. It's not up to us, if we
have any intellectual
integrity at all, to just make up another story
that pleases us. If we don't
like what the early apostolic witnesses said, we
don't have to listen. But
if we *do* have that intellectual integrity at
work, and if we
*are*interested in Jesus and his movement….we
do. The decision we make
at the end
is ours to make. But at the beginning, we do
have to listen to the witnesses
who were there and what they passed on about
what they saw.
What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
Continued
*They say…*The Jesus of *The Da Vinci Code* is
so much more human. I can
relate to him so much more easily than I can the
Jesus of the Gospels and
the Church.
*You say…* The Jesus of the Gnostic writings
*more* human than the Jesus of
the Gospels and the Church?
Really?
If you believe that, you've never read a Gospel.
If you believe that, you've never set foot in a
Catholic Church.
Because, when you read the Gnostic writings, you
meet the most unearthly,
abstract, and frankly, boring and yes, barely
human figure you can imagine.
He walks around talking, talking and talking. He
doesn't suffer, and for
sure he doesn't die.
But when you actually sit down and read a
Gospel, what do you see? Or
rather…who?
You meet a man who was born of a woman, who, it
is said in the Gospel of
Luke "grew in wisdom." He eats with his friends,
goes visiting, gets into
arguments, has to get away from people at times,
weeps, and is even afraid.
He dies. On a cross, in agony, he dies.
You're going to tell me *that's *not human?
Think about Christian iconography, as well. What
are the two most frequent
ways of depicting Jesus that you see in 2000
years of devotional art from
this church intent on suppressing the humanity
of Jesus?
An infant on his mother's lap…and a man
suffering his death throes.
You're going to tell me *that's* not human?
So yes, those who are enraptured and obsessed
with *The Da Vinci Code*, who
believe its lies, are being misled. For the
truth is exactly the reverse of
what this work would have you believe: it's the
*Christian Church *that has
preserved, in that mysterious but necessary
tension, the full humanity of
the One it also proclaims as Lord.
I sometimes wonder why people are so fascinated
with the Jesus of *The Da
Vinci Code* and why they so resolutely ignore
the Jesus we meet in the
Gospels and through the Church, why people don't
want to take that Jesus
seriously. Why they just want to brush him off
and focus on esoteric,
abstract windy speeches on inner light offered
by a stick figure.
But then I go back to the Gospels, and I
read…*Sell everything you have and
give the money to the poor…love your
enemies….Feed the hungry…clothe the
naked…visit the imprisoned…Blessed are the
poor…those who mourn…the
peacemakers…what you do to the least of these,
you do unto me…the last shall
be first… *
Of course. No surprise. No wonder we don't want
*him* to be the real Jesus.
No surprise at all.
Amy Welborn is the author of 13 books, including
"De-Coding Da Vinci: The
Facts Behind the Fiction of the Da Vinci Code,"
"De-Coding Mary Magdalene:
Truth, Legend and Lies" and "The Da Vinci Code
Mysteries: What the Movie
Doesn't Tell You" all from Our Sunday Visitor
Publications. She was also
the founding General Editor of the Loyola
Classics series of reprint
editions of great religious-themed fiction of
the 20th century.
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Copyright (c) 2006, United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Washington, DC. All rights reserved.
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