Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Emmaus Journal
Volume: EMJ 13:1 (Summer 2004)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Editor
Mark R. Stevenson

The Da Vinci Code, By Dan Brown. New York: Doubleday, 2003, 454 pp. $24.95 (cloth).

While enduring a recent layover, I was intrigued when I noticed that several of my fellow travelers were deeply engrossed in The Da Vinci Code. I must admit that, at the time (Winter 2003), I had never heard of the book, but upon arriving home it did not take me long to realize that it was a national sensation. As of mid-August, 2004 it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for seventy-two weeks, boasts over eight million copies in print in over forty different languages, and is soon to be made into a major motion picture under the direction of Ron Howard.

The plot of the book concerns a secret society, the Priory of Sion, which for centuries has guarded a volatile truth hidden in cryptic symbols and codes buried in famous artwork and architecture throughout Europe concerning the location of an important religious artifact, namely, the Holy Grail. Another group important to the story, a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned, Catholic sect known as Opus Dei, desires to keep the truth of the Grail hidden from the world, as widespread knowledge of the facts concerning it would deliver a crippling blow to Christianity. Brown, no novice to the world of fictional literature, mixes murder and intrigue with a sprinkling of true historical facts to build the story to its climax—the time of the crucifixion. Jesus is married to Mary Magdalene, and she is pregnant with his child. She is the famed Holy Grail, for she is the bearer of the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ.

In November 2003, ABC devoted an hour-long program to The Da Vinci Code and its claim that Mary Magdalene was the mother of Jesus’ child. In the program, Brown, as well as several Bible scholars from various academic institutions spanning the theological spectrum, commented on the theory of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus and mother of his child. While the program concluded that the evidence for a relationship between Mary and Jesus was not compelling, it failed to focus on the most troublesome of The Da Vinci Code’s so-called researched “facts”—that Jesus was not deity, the Bible is not the inspired Word of God, and the concept of imputed sin is of human origin, rendering the

Atonement superfluous. One of Brown’s characters in the story offers this summation: “Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false” (235).

After reading the book, it is this reviewer’s conclusion that The Da Vinci Code blends tenets of almost every major heresy that the church has been fac...

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