By Alan Parker, Th. D.
Murder, coded messages, intrigue, suspense, and a race against time to discover the world’s best-kept secret—Dan Brown weaves all these elements together in his bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code. Judging by the 30 million books that have been sold followed by a full-budget hollywood film, many people have been influenced by this fanciful story.
Yet what is surprising is that this obviously fictional work is being taken so seriously as a real explanation for the life of Jesus and the history of the Bible. Perhaps it’s because the novel begins with a single word: "FACT." Shortly afterward, Brown writes, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
1The Last Supper, the characters in Brown’s book claim that Leonardo really intended this to be Mary Magdalene!
Nothing could be further from the truth! Not only are there gross historical errors throughout the book, but what Dan Brown calls "the greatest mystery of all time" turns out to be a sinister fiction. By couching his hypothesis in the distinguished voices of a British royal historian and a Harvard professor, Brown lends an air of undeserved authenticity to his fantastic claims.
The characters of the book discover that not only was Jesus "mortal," but also that he married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter whose descendants live among us today. The sources of this information are supposedly a secret society and the discredited Gnostic gospels, which give the "true" picture of the historical Jesus. In addition, paintings of Leonardo da Vinci are portrayed as coded messages that indicate that Mary Magdalene, not John, was the beloved disciple, and that it was she and not Peter whom Jesus intended to take over the leadership of the church. Because John is painted without a beard and sitting close to Jesus in the picture of
The book is nothing more than an open attack against the deepest beliefs Christians hold. It strips Jesus of His divinity, destroys faith in the Bible, and invents a false history of Christianity. But what is the truth?
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