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Planting Dinosaurs: Much Ado About The Da Vinci Code Nothing

Reviewed May 2006

by Obi Akwani, MGV Editor

A year ago I read The Da Vinci Code, a novel by Dan Brown. I did not know what to expect to begin with, but I was suspicious. I have learned to be suspicious when what I consider unlikely stories or ideas seem to take a grip of the popular imagination to an unusual degree. The first question that I ask myself is why? That was the kind of question I was asking at the end of 1983-beginning of '84 when a North American news commentator appeared to me to be gloating on air, "Ha! 1984 is here and we are still normal. There are no government spies peeping up our asses and no thought police were about making sure that we maintained group think." I had a similar reaction a few years back when the first of the Harry Porter series was actively being promoted in the media.

My earlier reaction to Dan Brown's novel was mild, to say the least. I did not rush out to buy it despite the strong publicity and general media approval the novel was receiving at the time of its first release in 2003. What made me pick up The Da Vinci Code a couple of years later was the interest of a close friend of mine who had bought and actually read the novel. His acquaintance with it led him to fascination with a painting, The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, a thoroughly reconstructed knockoff of which hung above the doorway in his kitchen.

Da Vinci's painting -- especially the chalice close to Jesus' left hand; an assertion that one of the figures in The Last Supper is supposed to be Mary Magdalene; and something about a holy grail -- became the topic of conversation between us. I knew I had to read Dan Brown's novel when I realized that I had only a tenuous familiarity with much of what was being discussed.

But thanks to those discussions and to other information about the holy grail which had trickled down into my consciousness and stored in an obscure corner for oddities, I was a third of the way into the novel before the broader plot became clear and one knew precisely where The Da Vinci Code was headed.

Don't get me wrong, Dan Brown has written a fine novel. a lot of the minute details of the novel contained enough surprises that made for suspenseful reading. For instance, that the grand-daughter of a French museum curator who, as it turns out, is a devil (or pagan goddess) worshipper -- the high priest no less -- should turn out to be a direct descendant of Jesus Christ is quite a twist.

Now actor-director Ron Howard has made a movie out of The Da Vinci Code and I am beyond suspicion. I have not seen the movie yet and may not see it until they release it on DVD. However, the amount of din emerging from all quarters now that that movie is out tells me that what we have here is the Christian equivalent of the Satanic Verses -- that novel written more than a decade ago by British-Indian Muslim author, Salman Rushdie, that apparently failed to adhere to accepted views about the Prophet Mohammed and thus so upset Islamic authorities that they placed a fatwa (death sentence) on the author. But it could be worse; I haven't decided yet. For one thing, I never was able to grasp what was so offensive to the Muslim clerics, but I am not a Muslim.

There is an additional twist in The Da Vinci Code. Another reviewer has noted that "When fiction is this popular, it tells us lies we desperately want to believe."

The popularity of Dan Brown's novel and Ron Howard's movie is at least partly attributable to the novel's allusions to the holy grail and its central claim that Jesus Christ was married to, and had a child through, Mary Magdalene. Both of these ideas have been part of the Western literary development and folklore for a long time.

The legend of the grail began in Medieval Europe where it was said Joseph of Arimathea (the rich Jew who gave up his tomb to be used for the Christ's burial after the crucifixion) kept the Grail (cup or chalice) after the Last Supper. Joseph was supposed to have used the grail to collect Jesus’ blood at crucifixion and had brought both the chalice and spear -- that pierced Jesus' side -- into his family's possession and migrated with them to Britain. This is all folklore -- part of those "lies we desperately want to believe." The story of the Chalice or holy grail was built into the Arthurian legend. Later European writers added the twist about Jesus' marriage and parenthood. It was the subject of Wagner's 1882 opera, Parsifal. It also came out in DH Lawrence's book The Man Who Died and in Robert Graves' King Jesus. Others along the line have written about the same subject; and now Dan Brown has joined them.

In producing such works, Brown and others before him echo the silent desires or wishes of their cultures and societies. The authors, through literature, want to give to their societies a sense of that which comes from natural possession. What the Western man lacks is the authority of faith which comes from a direct or special relationship with God. The Jews have that and have suffered for it.

Through this legend holy grailers have succeeded, in their fashion, in bringing home the chalice and the spear which gives them some claim to a special relationship with Jesus Christ. The desire for an even closer relationship has led them into heresy and worse. Brown's fictional professor Robert Langdon is not just the hero in The Da Vinci Code; his eventual marriage to Sophie Neveu at the end of the novel confirms his total complicity in the unfolding events. Through their offspring he now gains a share in the legendary Jesus heritage.

Someone once wrote that "by what men think, we create the world around us..." Those like Brown who propagate the grail legend must firmly agree with that saying. "What matters is what you believe," Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) said several times in the movie (at least two reviewers confirm this). This it seems to me is the hinge upon which the whole idea of the holy grail and Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene hangs. The Jews claim to be first before God. And it is a claim that no one of Christian persuasion can easily dispute. Hence the Jewish dilemma in much of Christendom. By planting this grail legend like a dinosaur to be dug up many centuries hence, Brown and the other grail myth makers can claim to have helped in gaining a foothold on the first family of Christ.

If modern scholarship fails and the world eventually comes to accept the imaginary myths and legends that have been and are being created today as fact, the grailers and their lot would have become direct descendants of God-the-Son through Jesus' union with Mary Magdalene.

While no one has yet threatened Dan Brown's life, Christian authorities, Roman Catholics especially, are worried enough to issue rebuttals to the claims in Brown's fiction and, in some instances, a ban on the movie. Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, in a recently produced documentary, "The Da Vinci Code: A Masterful Deception," said that Brown's novel presents a wrong impression with erroneous facts that were likely to orient people against Christianity.

In Australia the Anglican Church launched a US$40,000 media ad campaign with a website: www.challengingdavinci.com designed to enable people see Jesus Christ as the Church sees him.

"We are not afraid of the film. We are not seeking to discourage people from seeing it, but we are well aware of the power popular films have in filling the information void about Jesus," a statement from the Australia Church said.

In Catholic Philippines, the Manila City Council banned the showing of The Da Vinci Code two days after the films' May 17 release in that country. Similar condemnations have flowed from almost every nation where Christians abound, from India to China, from South Africa to Ghana, from Mexico to Brazil. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has given the movie a "morally offensive" rating.