Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This message provides background information for our Cracking the Da Vinci Code series.

Brian's Portion

I)    STATISTICS

    a.    BOOK

        i.    Work of fiction

        ii.    Author Dan Brown

        iii.    Sold over 40,000,000 copies to date

        iv.    Only book in History with more copies sold is the Bible

        v.    40 million times $14.95 = $598,000,000.00

        vi.    Dan Brown gets 9% = $53,820,000.00

        vii.    This is just his profit from the book.

    b.    AUTHOR [1]

        i.    Born on June 22, 1964 to Richard G. & Constance (Connie) Brown

        ii.    Brown's father taught high school mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy from 1962 until his retirement in 1997 and his mother was a professional musician, playing organ at church.

        iii.    Brown grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1982.

        iv.    After graduating from Amherst College, Brown tried his hand at songwriting before becoming an English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy.

        v.    In 1996 he turned to writing fiction full-time, and in 1998 his first novel, Digital Fortress was published.

        vi.    The book was followed by Angels and Demons (2000), Deception Point (2001) and The Da Vinci Code (2003).

        vii.    Brown's novels are thrillers, combining romance, intrigue and the world of secret societies.

II)    SYNOPSIS

    a.    NOVEL BACKGROUND [1]

        i.    The Da Vinci Code (DVC) is a worldwide bestseller and has been translated into 44 languages. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy theory genres, the book is part two of a trilogy that started with Brown's 2000 novel Angels and Demons, which introduced the character Robert Langdon.

    b.    STORY [1]

        i.    The book concerns the attempts of Robert Langdon, Professor of "Religious Symbology" at Harvard University, to solve the murder of renowned curator Jacques Saunière of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The title of the novel refers, among other things, to the fact that Saunière's body is found inside the Louvre posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a Pentagram drawn on his stomach in his own blood. The interpretation of hidden messages inside Leonardo's famous works, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, figure prominently in the solution to the mystery.

        ii.    The main conflict in the novel revolves around the solution to two mysteries:

            1.    What secret was Saunière protecting that led to his murder?

            2.    Who is the mastermind behind his murder?

        iii.    The novel has several concurrent storylines that follow different characters. Eventually all the storylines are brought together and resolved at the end of the book.

        iv.    The unraveling of the mystery requires the solution to a series of brain-teasers, including anagrams and number puzzles. The solution itself is found to be intimately connected with the possible location of the Holy Grail and to a mysterious society called the Priory of Sion, as well as to the Knights Templar. The Catholic organization "Opus Dei" also figures prominently in the plot.

III)    DVC BACKGROUND

    a.    THE HOLY GRAIL  [2]

        i.    The book is mainly driven by theories.

        ii.    It is a detective story based on a conspiracy theory about the Holy Grail – the cup used during the last supper.

    b.    GRAIL LEGEND  [2]

        i.    According to legend the cup from the last supper was used to capture the blood of Jesus at the cross by Joseph of Arimathea who was a secret disciple of Jesus.

        ii.    Joseph of Arimathea ended up in Glastonbury, England after he became a missionary. He buried the grail in a place known as the “well of the chalice.”

        iii.    King Arthur went on a quest for the Holy Grail which to him represented spiritual purity. He thought that to find it would be complete union with Christ and perfection in Christian virtue.

        iv.    Traditionally the grail legend goes like this:

            1.    Jesus’ followers took the cup from the last supper

            2.    Joseph got the cup and took it to the cross

            3.    Joseph took it to England

            4.    King Arthur found it 900 years later

    c.    BERENGER SAUNIERE (JACQUES SAUNIERE) [2]

        i.     In DVC there is a character Jacques Sauniere. He is an allegory to the real life Berenger Sauinere.

        ii.    Berenger Sauniere was a priest. In 1890, he came into a lot of money and began to build up his church, “the church of the Magdalene,” and parsonage a lot.

        iii.    The conspiracy theory is that he found the secret treasures of the Knights Templar.

        iv.    The real fact was that he was a crook who was later defrocked by the Catholic Church.

    d.    KNIGHTS TEMPLAR  [2]

        i.    The Knights Templar, were one of the most famous of the Christian military orders. It existed for about two centuries in the Middle Ages, created in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096 to ensure the safety of the large numbers of European pilgrims who flowed towards Jerusalem after its conquest.

        ii.    The Templars were an unusual order in that they were both monks and soldiers, making them in effect some of the earliest "warrior monks" in the Western world. Members of the Order played a key part in many battles of the Crusades, and the Order's infrastructure innovated many financial techniques that could be considered the foundation of modern banking. The Order grew in membership and power throughout Europe, until it was charged with heresy and other crimes by the French Inquisition under the influence of the French King Philip IV and was forcibly disbanded in the early 1300s.

        iii.    The Knights Templar supposedly discovered a secret treasure under the temple mount in Jerusalem.

        iv.    The conspiracy theory about Sauniere is that he found the Templar’s treasure which was the true secret of the grail and after he found it, the Catholic church paid him not to reveal it.

        v.    The true secret of the grail supposedly were secret documents that proved Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that he produced children through her as a regular Jewish Rabbi. Also, the documents supposedly said that the church had conspired together to hide the truth.

    e.    “SANGREAL” [2]

        i.    Dan Brown takes this fiction even farther by breaking down the French word for Holy Grail which is Sangreal.

        ii.    The traditional breakdown of the word is “SAN-GREAL” meaning “holy cup/dish.”

        iii.    Dan Brown breaks the word down this way: “SANG-REAL” meaning “royal blood.”

    f.    PRIORY OF SION  [2]

        i.    In a short preface, Brown lists a series of "facts" underlying the fiction of the novel. He declares that "the Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099 that protects the descendents of Jesus and Mary Magdalene—is a real organization.

        ii.    In 1975 Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci."

        iii.    If this is not a mere marketing trick, it would seem that Dan Brown takes the fantastic claims of the Secret Dossiers more or less at face value, like the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail did before him. In the body of the novel itself (chapter 48), it is said that "the Dossiers Secrets had been authenticated by many specialists and incontrovertibly confirmed" that the famous people listed were indeed former Priory leaders—something "historians had suspected for a long time." It should be understood that this fictionalized treatment completely reverses the judgment of real-world researchers, who (with the exception of dedicated conspiracy theorists) have rather dismissed the Dossiers as obvious forgeries. Nor had any "historians" ever suspected that Newton, Botticelli etc. were members of any "Priory of Sion"; this claim first appeared in the Dossiers themselves.

    g.    DA VINCI  [2]

        i.    According to Dan Brown, Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion. He supposedly hid clues to the true grail within his most famous works of art, including the Last Supper and Madonna of the Rocks.

IV)    LAST SUPPER PAINTING

References:

• Official Dan Brown website
• "Author talk", March 20, 2003, at bookreporter.com
• BBC News, August 10, 2004. "Dan Brown: Decoding the Da Vinci Code author"
• "Veni vidi da Vinci", December 12, 2004, author profile at The Guardian
• "Da Vinci Code Dad Named in Multimillion-Dollar Gift", November 1, 2004, The Exeter Initiatives
• Rogak, Lisa. The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code - an Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown, 2005, Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 0740756427
• MP3 excerpts of Brown's CDs, at Rogak's website
• "Harry Potter still magic for book sales", January 9, 2006, CBC Arts - lists comparative sales figures between a few bestselling books in North America, including two of Brown's books, the latest Harry Potter book, and A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey
• The Observer, March 12, 2006, "How Dan Brown's wife unlocked the code to bestseller success"
• The Standard, March 15, 2006, "Brown duels in court"
• The Age (Australia), March 16, 2006, "Da Vinci author finds his marriage on trial"
• Dan Brown witness statement in Da Vinci Code case, March 14, 2006

[1] Wikipedia – The online Dictionary, Dan Brown / Da Vinci Code,  URLs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Brown, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code

[2] Thatcher, Tom, Professor: Cincinnati Christian University, “Cracking the Da Vinci Code”, March 2006

Mike's Portion

Last Supper Painting

1. According to Dan Brown, Leonardo Da Vinci was a member of the Priory of Sion.
2. He painted The Last Supper, but notice that there is no cup or chalice in the picture.  This is a clue of Da Vinci’s awareness of the “truth.” The Holy Grail, in the traditional meaning, is not there.
3. But according to The Da Vinci Code, the Holy Grail is in the picture.
   
   Look at the figure to Jesus’ right, which Dan Brown reminds us is “the place of honor” in his book.  This person looks rather feminine compared to all the other masculine looking disciples.  That’s because, according to this theory, it is actually Mary Magdalene.  She is the Holy Grail because she was Jesus’ lover and the mother of his children.
   
   
4. But what The Da Vinci Code doesn’t mention is that Leonardo Da Vinci’s original layer of paint is so damaged, no one can tell if the figure is male or female.  And even if it was recognizable, Da Vinci often painted young men as having very feminine features, such as his last masterpiece entitled St. John the Baptist located at the Louvre in Paris.
5. Also, look at the body that is supposedly Mary Magdalene in relation to the body of Jesus.  Together, they form a “V.”  “V” is the sacred symbol for the feminine in pagan religions.  (You’ll notice a “V” in the video during our morning worship service.)

Radical Feminism in The Da Vinci Code

1. Mary Magdalene is the sacred feminine because she was married to Jesus.  In other words, Mary Magdalene is a divine goddess because of her marriage to Jesus Christ.  And in The Da Vinci Code, the ultimate spiritual expression is to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene, which the main character does in the last scene of the book.
2. However, the church had to hide this fact because the church is all about oppression of women.  Jesus came to start a radical, feminist, goddess worshipping movement, but the church set out to rewrite history at the Council of Nicaea that we talked about last week.  Because they wanted to hide the truth of the sacred feminine, they concocted a new Bible that would show Jesus and the early church oppressing women.
3. However, this theory really falls flat when you look at how Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament.  Did Jesus plan for his church to be a matriarchal community centered in the divine feminine?  No.
4. But is he an oppressor of women? No.  He lived in a culture that did, indeed, oppress women.  But he himself showed them love and respect.  He spoke with a Samaritan woman, which no Jewish man would ever do.  He forgave the woman caught in the act of adultery.  He had female disciples.  Mary Magdalene, although not his wife, was the first to witness the resurrected Christ.  In the Old Testament, there are female judges like Deborah.  In the New Testament, we see women spreading the word, like Priscilla in the book of Acts.
5. The whole idea that Christianity is about oppression of women just doesn’t stack up with the Bible.

Sexuality in the Da Vinci Code

1. According to The Da Vinci Code, the major religions of the world have “worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act.” (DVC p. 309)
2. Also, the Da Vinci Code claims that sex is a “spiritual act” in which one may find “the spark of divinity.” (DVC p. 310)
3. There is a scene in The Da Vinci Code depicting a ritual of frenzied group sex.  However, this orgy is portrayed as pure and good.
4. According to Dan Brown, early Jewish worship included Hieros Gamos (“sacred union”).  This was acts of ritualistic sex through which “the male could find spiritual wholeness” (DVC p. 309).  Another example of radical feminism.  A man isn’t spiritually whole until he sleeps with a woman.  In fact, Brown writes that sex is how one can “find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine.” (DVD p. 310)
5. The Da Vinci Code says that these rites continued in early Christianity until the established church launched a “brutal crusade” to squash this holy sexual expression.
6. Actually, Dan Brown’s theory falls apart with some simple historical research.  The earliest Jewish texts explicitly forbids practices of “cult prostitution.”  And early Christians were accused of these orgies, but when a Roman governor thoroughly investigated these charges in 112 AD, he found no evidence whatsoever. (Pliny, “Epistle to Trajan,” Epistles 10:96)
7. But a bigger issue exists here.  Dan Brown would have us believe that Christians believe and teach that God is down on sex.  Certainly there have been some church leaders that have frowned on sex, but their teachings do not line up with the teachings of Scripture.
8. Examples: OT: The Song of Solomon.  Passionate, explicit love story.  NT: 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 where Paul says the only reason for a husband and wife not to have sex consistently was if they agreed to devote themselves to prayer for a limited time.
9. God created sex.  He designed it for the marriage relationship. Sex outside of the marriage relationship is outside of God’s plan, but within the context of marriage, it is nothing shameful.  In fact, it is something to be celebrated.  We do not demonize sex as The Da Vinci Code alleges. 

The Da Vinci Code and Our Culture

1. People in our culture are buying into the teachings of The Da Vinci Code.
2. This comes as a surprise to some of us.  But when we find ourselves surprised by what people believe, it marks us as out-of-touch with our culture.
3. The church is not designed to be out-of-touch with the culture.  We are called to impact our culture, and the only want to do that is to have church leaders and members that are students of culture.
4. The Da Vinci Code is popular because the culture has been primed to it.  Our culture is ready to give it value. 
5. The Da Vinci Code reveals what is happening at the structural level of our culture.  We live in a very spiritually curious culture.  This book taps into the fundamental, mythical elements of our culture, and this is why it is so significant.  It is not a fad or a flash-in-the-pan.  The teachings in this book have resonated with people and they will be a force in our culture for the foreseeable future.
6. The Da Vinci Code is all about freedom.  Freedom from the tyranny of Christianity and freedom from our oppression of women.  We need to be ready to respond to these charges in a gentle and compassionate way.  Our goal is simply to have a relationship with our Creator and to bring as many as possible to that same saving relationship.  We’re not about religious tyranny or oppression of women. 

As the Scripture says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28, NIV)

Much of this information is credited to Cincinnati Christian University professors Dr. James Smith and Dr. Tom Thatcher.