The Da Vinci Code,
Or, neo-pagans rule while Christians drool

Just finished The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

First rate thriller. A blast to read. The writing is clunky at times, but you get past it. Page turner of the first order. Put it on your list.

But, oy, the "theology". Essentially the book is one big screed against Christians, and specifically against the Catholic church, because Christianity doesn't worship the goddess, and therefore is against women, and is therefore sexist and icky, and so you should go join a neo-pagan fertility cult right now, get skyclad and boff while encircled by other goddess-worshipers who are chanting the latest, greatest pagan hits, available at a new-age store near you. Oh, and get some crystals and a tarot deck whilst you're at it.

The reviews on amazon.com have done a reasonable takedown of the staggering re-imagining of religious history in this novel. (I make it a habit to read the negative reviews of books I'm interested in on amazon. Usually, in the rest of the critical world, negative reviews are almost always about taste or sour grapes on the part of the reviewer, but on amazon.com, the negative reviews of books are telling.) But I really hope everyone who reads The Da Vinci Code realizes it's FICTION. Though many will be thrown by the note in the front of the book: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Well, they're not. For instance, here's just one example of the BS littering the pages of this book: "Also rumored to be part of the treasure is the legendary 'Q' Document -- a manuscript that even the Vatican admits they believe exists. Allegedly, it is a book of Jesus' teachings, possibly written in His own hand." This particular chunk of horsepoop will stand out to anyone who knows even just a little bit about the "Q" document.

The "Q" document is an invention of the Jesus Seminar, a group of secular, uh, scholars and some token sympathetic theologians, lead by a fundamentalist atheist whose admitted goal is to dismantle Christianity. When they did their famous/infamous analysis of the Gospels to guess what Jesus may have said and what the authors of the Gospels made up to bolster the story (note that the premise of the project itself assumes lies and deceit), they invented the concept of the "Q" document, which according to them was a collection (a bullet list, say) of the sayings of Christ, that the authors used when writing the Gospels. The assumption is "how could they all agree so closely unless they were all using a common source document of Jesus' sayings." (Let me interject that the authors were reporting real live events, and they had either witnessed them themselves or knew someone who had witnessed it, so they were getting the story firsthand. In addition, due to the low rate of literacy in those days, people were pretty good at remembering what someone said as they couldn't write it down for later reference. That's how come there is the near perfect corroboration between the Gospels.)

The Vatican didn't say "yes, the 'Q' document exists", they merely agreed that there may have been short collections of the sayings of Christ floating around at the time. Finally, Jesus was not known, through the Gospels or through external histories and sources, to have ever written anything down Himself (save for his writing something in the sand when the folks wanted to stone the adulteress).

And even if you should actually choose to believe in anything, the author has a character say this: "Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. [edit] Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors." So, if you don't think it's all bullshit, then you are the problem.


From here on, I will be giving away many plot points, so be warned.

*** Mondo spoiler alert ***

The hero and heroine are looking for the Holy Grail, which we discover is NOT the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper, but is in fact the bones of Mary Magdalene, the wife of Jesus who also bore his child(!). With Mary are many huge boxes of documents that explain the true history and intent of Jesus Christ, in that he wanted Christianity to really be a goddess-centered and -worshipping religion, but the evil male Apostles didn't like chicks, and so with the help of Emperor Constantine three hundred years after their deaths, they suppressed the true meaning and path of Christianity and made it a boys club, totally hid the fact that Jesus was married, and sullied Mary Magdalene by changing her into a whore. Thus, we are on a chase to find the hiding place of these bones, which you are supposed to kneel before and honor, and then read the piles of documents that tell you the truth, including the bloodline of Christ and Mary. Of course, the heroine of the story is revealed to be a direct descendant of Jesus and Mary.


One of the biggest gaffs in the book is the author has Leonardo Da Vinci as the grand poobah (in his day) of this secret society which protects the secrets of the grail/goddess/Mary, and this society honors the goddess by having a sacred ritual in which the poobah has sex with someone of the opposite sex (a woman has to be involved at the very least) in the middle a circle of fellow ritual-goers who stand around in robes and chant whilst holding little golden globes. Well, it's revealed that Leonardo was homosexual (which I think was actually true), so I can't imagine ol' Leo being able to perform the central rite of his office.


*** Mondo spoiler alert over ***


I have a theory as to why this guy wrote this book. Way back in the day, in the early days of the web when it first began to be used by the general public, there were only two religious presences: Wiccans and Fundamentalist Christians. Dan Brown's early work centered on technology, so I bet he encountered that weird web synergy between the two religions way back then. As a Christian I have to admit that given the choice of the Christian Fundies and Wiccans, the Wiccans certainly presented a much more fun face. The Fundies said you were going to hell if you didn't become one of them, and then when you did, you had to stop drinking, go to church all the time, not have sex with anyone but your spouse, and even then you were supposed to feel bad about it, and to top it off, you had to tell others they were going to hell unless they joined the no-fun club. Wiccans, on the other hand, promised big parties with nekkid people, spells, whatever pantheon of gods and goddesses you cared to make up, and the cache of being in a cool little minority club that wore black a lot. If I were young and impressionable, I know who I'd have wanted to party with.

Anyway, I think the author is trying to cash in on that particular phenomenon. Catch a wave, as it were. There's certainly enough anti-Christian sentiment these days to help things along. (Make sure to read the comments, particularly.)

I sure wish the fundies knew how much damage they're causing. They are near the top of the list that makes the faith look bad, right up there with pedophile priests, and government officials who cover up the breasts of classic statutes while abusing government powers to pursue the sicker, punitive sides of their misguided backwater of what is really, when viewed honestly in the context of the real tenets and goals, a beautiful faith.