St Mary Magdalene, Church of England, Ashton on Mersey with Sale West Community Church

The author of the Da Vinci Code book that has inspired the film of the same title believes that:

The Church has suppressed the true story of the human Jesus who was married to Mary Magdalene. In its place it has given us the false story of Jesus the Son of God. As one of the characters in 'The Da Vinci Code' says: 'Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.' This male-dominated story has been responsible for all the conflict and bloodshed in the world for the past two thousand years. This will only be put right when the Church's story is dismissed, and masculine and feminine are brought back into mystical balance and unity.

But the secret of Mary and Jesus bloodline has never been completely lost. It is the truth that lies behind the legends of the Holy Grail. It has been hinted at in works of art, such as Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper.' It has been preserved in secret Gospels that have recently come to light again, and through a cache of documents from the Temple in Jerusalem. These were found by a group of knights in the Middle Ages, and subsequently protected by a secret society. At the right time, this society will come forward and make the secret public. When they do, it will mean the end of Christianity as we know it – and a good thing too.

This is the back story to The Da Vinci Code. And author Dan Brown says that this back story is historically true.

For some helpful reflection the real facts behind the claims of the book visit:

MARK GREENE
© The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Q: What do Dan Brown's best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code, pluralism and my nine-year-old son Tomas have in common?

A: They all ask questions about the reliability of the New Testament documents.

And, in the last case, not surprisingly. If you're sitting in a classroom with Muslims who claim that their documents are accurate and that by implication yours aren't, the question arises naturally. So, how do we know if the New Testament is reliable? And how can I explain to my nine-year-old? The same challenge obviously applies to adults living in a pluralistic society.

The question for Christians is not merely 'Are our scriptures holy or divinely inspired?' - a claim that can be made for the writings of any religion - but rather, 'Are they historically and textually reliable?' The distinction is vital because the New Testament documents, particularly the Gospels and Acts, do not claim to be creative presentations of meaning-laden myths but, rather, accurate accounts of historical events with, in each case, particular theological interpretations.

Furthermore, as the theologian FF Bruce suggests, we are dependent on these documents for our picture of Jesus. If they are not reliable, then neither is our understanding of Jesus. Textual 'historicity' may seem like a technical question but it's an important one at a time when we're rightly suspicious about the veracity and reliability of the words and images served up by the media.

It's also important to be able to respond to the assertions in The Da Vinci Code - which is being turned into a film and may well result in people asking you questions such as: Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Did they have a son or a daughter? Are his heirs alive today? And was the Holy Grail a woman?

You might even be asked to respond to more technical questions, such as: Is it true that Jesus' divinity was decided through a vote by bishops? Is the Church so patriarchal because it deliberately suppressed its 'sacred feminine' side? Did the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi scrolls pre-date the New Testament?

Not questions, I'd venture to suggest, that many of us would be able to respond to in the blink of an eye. We might not even know where to go for the answers. Such is the pernicious brilliance of Brown's book - a confident presentation of bogus scholarship with enough truth mixed in to create a convincing alternative account of the history of the world since the birth of Christ.

The Da Vinci Code is, however, first and foremost a superb thriller. A mysterious murder in the Louvre takes us on a high-speed chase for the murderer and his motives. Along the way, there are secret societies - ecclesiastical and pagan - twists and turns and double and pre-Christian crosses, car chases and conspiracies, high-tech surveillance and medieval self-flagellation, an albino assassin and a burgundy-haired, green-eyed heroine. It's a pinball-table of a tale that grips from almost the first page to the last.

Brown cleverly and engagingly introduces us to a course in symbology, cryptology, art history, Egyptology, church history and paganism. There's a lot to learn - and we need to learn it to solve the mystery. So it is, in fact, interesting to discover that:

A 'crux gemmata' is a cross bearing 13 gems that symbolises Christ and the twelve disciples

A pentacle is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to nature worship

The mathematical progression of numbers 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21… is called the Fibonacci sequence

The Louvre has some 65,300 works of art.

Yet by the time you've taken in an assortment of uncontroversial, accurate facts, you may well find yourself trusting what Brown has to say about the life of Christ and the heart of the Gospel. His purpose is to undermine the credibility of the New Testament, the divinity of Christ and the witness of the Church.

'"What I mean," says Teabing [one of the Code's academic experts] "is that almost everything our fathers taught about Christ is false."'

Brown picks the easy targets first, gaining credibility for his argument that the Church suppressed the 'sacred feminine' by using the evidence of its historic suppression of women, the persecution and execution of witches, the paranoid presentation of 'woman as temptress' and of sex as problematic.

Although it is not a difficult case to make historically, Brown exaggerates wildly. He claims, for example, that five million witches died in Europe - while most scholars put the number at 40,000 between 1450 to 1750.

More important, Brown ignores the radical nature of Jesus and Paul's teaching in relation to women, together with that of the rest of the Bible. The Church's interpretation of this teaching has not always been helpful, but this does not alter the Bible's radical understanding of the essential equality of status and value of both male and female: 'Male and female he created them' (Genesis 1); 'In Christ there is no male or female' (Galatians 3.27-29) - and so on.

However, Brown does not view the chauvinism that has marred Church history as a failure to respond to Christ's teaching, nor as a failure to counter the patriarchal cultures of the surrounding societies. Instead, he sees it as a way of suppressing the truth of paganism and its liberating emphasis on the divine goddess.

As such, his assault on the Church's record has two objectives. First, he wants to make the case that paganism - which embraces the sacred feminine, the goddess - is Christianity's older, truer alternative. The goddess is not a personal being, but rather an impersonal feminine principle needed to bring life into being.

God, meanwhile, is not personal and does not exist outside of the created order; rather god is in all. The universe is one and everything shares the same essential nature - people, lizards, oak trees and granite.

The second reason for Brown's assault on the Church is that it gives him the credibility to undermine the reliability of the New Testament documents and thereby Christianity itself. So, for example, one of the 'scholars' in the book states:

'"These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls… the earliest Christian records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the Gospels in the Bible…. The Gospel of Philip is always a good place to start."'

No scholar of any ideological persuasion believes that the Gospel of Philip was written before 150 AD. Similarly, the Gospel of Thomas is usually dated at around the same time (though some argue that it's based on an earlier document called 'Q', for which there is no archaeological or corollary textual evidence). By contrast, the bulk of the New Testament was committed to scrolls by AD 70 and all of it by AD 100.

In Cracking Da Vinci's Code, a very helpful riposte to Brown, authors James Garlow and Peter Jones argue against Brown's assertion that the Gospel of Thomas is the earliest Gospel. Some of its theology, they suggest, is very close to the heretic Marcion, who moved to Rome in AD 144, set up his own community, declared the Old Testament irrelevant, got rid of marriage, and only accepted the Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul's letters. If the Gospel of Thomas had been in circulation before Marcion it would have served his purposes well, but he never cited it.

Brown, however, doesn't just argue that the Gospel of Thomas is early; he claims that the whole New Testament canon was selected in order to serve Constantine's political agenda:

'Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.'

In reality, the Old Testament and most of the 27 books of the New Testament functioned as a canon long before they were settled upon in 350 AD. Other documents of the time frequently quote from the canon - such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache (both dated circa 100 AD) and the letter to the Corinthian Church written by Clement, bishop of Rome (dated circa 96AD), as do the second-century Church fathers.

Certainly, some books - 1 and 2 Peter, the letters of John, Jude, James, Hebrews and Revelation - were not accepted by the churches in all regions in the second century, but the fourth-century declaration formalised what the Church had already discerned.

Furthermore, it's important to note that the Nag Hammadi scrolls differ not only in detail from the canonical Gospels but in their overall theology. These so-called Gnostic Gospels do not recognise a divine creator, and according to Garlow and Jones, they 'despise sexual distinctions, marriage and motherhood … there is no sin, the fall of Genesis 3 is liberation, and the serpent of the garden speaks wisdom. The gnostic Jesus comes with the same message - not to free us from our sin, but to free us from our ignorance. We do not know who we really are. He brings us gnosis: knowledge. The knowledge is this - we are divine.'

As Langdon, the scholar-hero of the tale points out:

'"It was man, not God, who created the concept of … sin."'

And the real Jesus married Mary Magdalene.

All of this has, according to Brown, been suppressed by the Catholic Church, but it's a truth that many, from Da Vinci to some of Disney's animators, have known and preserved in secret codes through the ages. Now that we have entered the Age of Aquarius, the truth will out.

We can only pray that it will - and that those who don't have the time or inclination to check Brown's assertions will not be taken in by the brilliance of his story or the persuasive power of what seems like wilfully deceptive rhetoric.

Mark Greene

__________________________________________________________

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Authors claim Brown 'stole' Da Vinci Code plot
By Richard Alleyne
Daily Telegraph Website (Filed: 28/02/2006)

Some might say it is a court case worthy of its subject matter: impenetrable, verging on the farcical and wrapped up in the minutiae of Christian theology. Amid the appropriately neo-gothic setting of the High Court in London, two British-based writers yesterday claimed that The Da Vinci Code, the loosely historical murder mystery, plagiarises a book they published more than 20 years earlier. The two, who specialise in historical conjecture, claim that its author, Dan Brown, cannibalised their text, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, to give his book plausibility and to save himself "time and effort" in independent research.

Michael Baigent, 52, and Richard Leigh, 62, also said that it was not just random facts that were "lifted" but the whole "architecture" and "theme" of their book.

At the heart of the case is their theory that Christ did not die on the cross but married Mary Magdalene and had a child, starting a bloodline that was protected by the Knights Templar and hushed up by the Catholic Church. Brown's thriller is also based on the notion that Jesus married Mary, starting a family in France where their descendants continue to live.

While the arguments in the case will hardly trouble historians, millions of pounds of publishing profits are at stake, as is the proposed release of the film version of The Da Vinci Code. With sales of 40 million and counting since it was published in 2003, the book has become an international phenomenon, generating millions of pounds of publishing and tourism spin-offs. The film, starring Tom Hanks, Sir Ian McKellen and Audrey Tautou, is due to be released in May.

Brown, a devout Christian who attended the case, emphatically denies stealing from Baigent and Leigh's work and is particularly adamant that he would never suggest that Jesus was not crucified on the cross. In a statement Brown, 40, a reclusive figure from New Hampshire, said: "This is not an idea that I would have ever found appealing.

"Being raised a Christian and having sung in my church choir for 15 years, I am well aware of Christ's crucifixion and ultimate resurrection as the very core of the Christian faith. The resurrection is perhaps the sole controversial Christian topic about which I would not desire to write. Suggesting that they marry Jesus is one thing but questioning the resurrection undermines the very heart of Christian belief."

Baigent, a New Zealander who moved to Britain 30 years ago, and Leigh, an American who also lives in this country, wrote their book in 1982 along with another author, Henry Lincoln, who has no part in the action. Their book is a best-seller in its own right. They claim that when The Da Vinci Code was first printed, many people in their field noticed the similarities between the books and they began legal action almost immediately.

In a hearing last year, Leigh said: "I don't begrudge Brown his success. I have no particular grievance against him except for the fact that he wrote a pretty bad novel."

Leigh and Baigent are suing Random House, the British publisher of The Da Vinci Code, which also published their work, for breach of copyright. Brown's book, although roundly criticised - Salman Rushdie described it as a "book so bad it makes bad books look good" - has sold four million copies in this country. They are suing for damages for past royalties and future earnings.

Jonathan Rayner James, QC, for the claimants, listed 15 points at which he claims that the "central theme" of the earlier book is copied in Brown's novel. He also pointed out a number of pieces of texts that he claims are directly taken from one book to another. He claims that Brown worked from notes researched by his wife Blythe to give "plausibility" to his work.

Mr Rayner James added: "It is not as though Brown has simply lifted a discrete series of raw facts from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

"He has lifted the connections that join the points up. He and/or Blythe has intentionally used Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in order to save time and effort that independent research would have required."

The claimants also point out that one of the characters in the book, a museum curator, has the same surname as Berenger Sauniere, a real person who was extensively mentioned in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

While Brown denies copyright infringement, he has already acknowledged a debt to the writers in the pages of his book. One of the characters, Sir Leigh Teabing (an anagram of Baigent) picks the book off a shelf and gives his opinion of it. "To my taste, the authors made some dubious leaps of faith in their analysis," he tells another character. "But their fundamental premise is sound, and to their credit, they finally brought the idea of Christ's bloodline into the mainstream."

Judge backs Dan Brown as ruling leaves writers of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail facing a legal bill of £2 million

TWO authors who claimed that Dan Brown had stolen their ideas for his blockbusting novel were facing a £2 million legal bill last night after failing to crack The Da Vinci Code.

Neither Michael Baigent nor Richard Leigh were in court yesterday to hear Mr Justice Peter Smith hand down a 71-page reserved judgment comprehensively dismissing their claim for infringement of copyright of their 1982 book, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, by Random House.

After sitting through every day of the three-week trial at the High Court Brown was back home in New Hampshire, having had 24 hours’ notice that the assault on his spectacularly successful money-spinner had failed. He issued a statement that the claim had been “utterly without merit”.

But Brown, who has earned an estimated £250 million since his novel of preposterous intrigue based on the theory that the descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene are still alive, did not escape censure. The judge rejected his claim, made during three days of increasingly uncomfortable cross-examination, that he had not consulted HBHG until a late stage in the writing of DVC, as the book titles became known during the hearing.

The claimants were refused leave to appeal after the judge, who has coloured the proceedings with dry northern humour, commented that it was “a great pity” they were not in court and suggested to their counsel, Jonathan Rayner James, QC, that he did not even know where they were.

On the contrary, counsel said; Baigent, who was also given advance notice of the judgment, was touring the US and Canada.

To a courtroom overflowing with reporters and conspiracy theory groupies, the judge read out a summary of his conclusions in six minutes. He then spent another hour listening to counsel for both sides pleading for their money. The claimants’ own legal costs are around £800,000, but the judge ruled that they need, in addition, pay only 85 per cent of the defence’s £1.2 million costs, as at least 40 of the 3,000 documents they had been obliged to read had proved irrelevant.

The even worse news for the claimants is that they are required to make a £350,000 interim payment by May 5.

In his ruling the judge said that HBHG did not have a “central theme”, which was the principal plank in the claimants’ case, in which they tried to identify 15 specific points that had been lifted by Brown. That, said the judge, was an artificial creation for the purposes of the litigation.

“HBHG has much more to it than the central themes so expressed, so that the claimants’ contention that HBHG has very little apart from the central themes is not correct. Even if the central themes were copied they are too general or of too low a level of abstraction to be capable of protection by copyright law.”

He said these central themes were “merely a selective number of facts and ideas artificially taken out of HBHG for the purpose of litigation”.

There was no “architecture” or “structure” to be found in HBHG as had been contended by Baigent and Leigh, and Dan Brown had not infringed any such architecture or structure, or substantially copied HBHG when writing DVC, although it was clear that the former book had been used to write limited passages of DVC.

But the judge did uphold the claims that there had been some copying of HBHG’s language by Brown. However, this was not claimed to be textual infringement of the copyright in HBHG.

The most notable absentee during the hearing was Brown’s wife Blythe who, the author said in cross-examination, did most of his research. He also disclosed that, even when they were in the same house, they communicated largely by e-mail.

The judge said yesterday that no good reason had been given for not calling Blythe Brown to give evidence. Her evidence, he said, could have assisted significantly, although what she might have had to say would not have been crucial to the primary decision on infringement of copyright.

Blythe Brown entered the picture — from a distance — when cross-examination turned to when Dan Brown had acquired his copy of HBHG, which became a star exhibit in court with its heavy annotations in a variety of coloured inks. The judge was satisfied that Brown had not used it to write his synopsis of DVC, but had relied on other sources provided by his wife.

“However, his contention that neither he nor his wife acquired or read HBHG until very late in the writing process is rejected. Blythe Brown probably acquired it no later than November 2000 and was using it for research, although Dan Brown either did not know that or did not use the material when writing the synopsis.”

In his evidence, the judge said, Brown had tried to marginalise the importance of when he or his wife acquired their copy of HBHG.

The judge had his view on Brown as witness and researcher, at neither of which he shone. “In reality Mr Brown knew very little about how the historical background was researched. He in my view simply accepted Blythe Brown’s research material when incorporating it into the writing of part two of DVC.”

In the witness box, Dan Brown displayed a remarkable inability to remember dates, and the pressure of cross-examination from Mr Rayner James, causing the witness’s face to colour perceptibly, is likely to remain in his memory for some time.

Admitting that it was probably an understatement, the judge noted that the hearing had generated considerable interest in the wider world outside Court 61 on the tenth floor of the Royal Courts of Justice building. “This case has not been about Mr Brown’s skill and reputation as a thriller writer and should have no impact on it whatsoever,” the judge said.

On the contrary, your lordship. There is an unworthy view circulating that the whole thing was engineered to boost sales of DVC and HBHG, both of which happen to bear the same publisher’s imprint, Random House.

“I am not in a position to comment on whether this cynical view is correct, but I would say that if it was such a collaborative exercise Mr Baigent and Mr Brown both went through an extensive ordeal in cross-examination which they are likely to remember for some time,” the judge noted in the full version of his decision.

But he conceded that DVC had led to a revival in sales of HBHG, culminating in an increase arising from the trial. “The claimants are apparently upset at the way in which they have been treated in DVC. I find that surprising.”

He did not see Brown’s use of an anagram of Baigent and Leigh’s names to create the character of Sir Leigh Teabing in DVC, as being anything other than a compliment. And he went on, with evident relief: “As usual with books that attract a lot of publicity they have attracted the wrath of the literary experts of the world. Fortunately it is not part of my judgement to assess the literary worth of the books, or even the truth behind them.”

He concluded: “I suppose in the world of publication 40 million buyers cannot be wrong.”

· The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail explores the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that they had children who grew up in France and that their descendants married into the early Merovingian kings of France. They speculate that the bloodline continues today, that a secret society, the Priory of Sion, passes on the secret to a select few each generation while the Roman Catholic Church suppresses the truth. HBHG suggests also that the Crucifixion was faked with Pontius Pilate’s connivance and that Jesus escaped with his family to the South of France. They suggest that the Holy Grail is Christ’s bloodline. The writers say that the book, a bestseller in 1982, is “historical conjecture”.

· The Da Vinci Code bases its plot on the same theory that Christ’s bloodline still survives, but Dan Brown does not go so far as to suggest that Christ escaped the Crucifixion. The author, a Christian, has said that such conjecture undermines the whole foundation of the Christian religion.

Brown has claimed throughout the case that, although he consulted HBHG at a late stage of writing DVC, his plot ideas came mainly from other sources such as The Templar Revelation and The Woman With The Alabaster Jar.

Brown has maintained throughout that DVC is a novel and nothing more, pure fiction and not even historical conjecture.