Critique of The Da Vinci Code

Por Carl E. Olson, with Sandra Miesel  

http://www.envoymagazine.com/PlanetEnvoy/Review-DaVinci-part2-Full.htm

http://www.learningthefaith.com/

Introduction

The following special Planet Envoy is the first part of a critique and examination of the best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. In this opening edition, we examine the success of The Da Vinci Code, the apparent agenda of its author, Dan Brown, the major flaws of the novel, and the Gnostic background and neo-Gnostic beliefs the book relies upon so heavily. Future editions of this critique will discuss Mary Magdalene, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, Brown’s Christology, the search for the Grail, the Knights of Templar, the Priory of Sion, witchcraft and the Middle Ages, and Leonardo da Vinci and his artwork.

The Da Vinci Code Phenomenon

In April 2003, Doubleday published The Da Vinci Code, the fourth novel of Dan Brown. A combination of murder mystery, thriller, conspiracy tale, romance novel, religious expose, and historical revisionism, the novel had instant success. Glowing reviews from leading newspapers and magazines, combined with the buzz from Brown’s previous novel, Angels & Demons, helped The Da Vinci Code debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. As of mid-October, 2003, The Da Vinci Code has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over twenty-eight weeks, and has been in the top two or three spots for most of that time. There are now nearly three million copies of the book in print and it is being translated into thirty languages.

Described by New York Times as a “riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller,” The Da Vinci Code garnered effusive, even ebullient, praise from numerous reviewers. The Library Journal raved, “This masterpiece should be mandatory reading”; the Chicago Tribune marveled that the book contained “several doctorates’ worth of fascinating history and learned speculation”; Salon magazine described the novel as “an ingenious mixture of paranoid thriller, art history lesson, chase story, religious symbology lecture and anti-clerical screed.” Numerous critics noted how “smart,” “intelligent,” and well-researched the novel appeared to be (“His research is impeccable” stated New York Daily News), a point that surely pleased the author, who insisted in interviews and on his website that his thriller is thoroughly researched and factual in all respects. In addition, the novel features an opening page titled “Fact,” which states: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

Readers who have enthusiastically embraced the book point to historical, artistic, religious, and theological details within it as central reasons for their fascination with the best-seller. A reader on amazon.com states that The Da Vinci Code is “one of the best books I have ever read-makes you see the world a little differently after reading it!” Another gushes, “You will be amazed at the revelations that come forth in this book.” Another elaborates:

“The Da Vinci Code has to be one of the most remarkable books I’ve read. It is a wonderful-and very effective-mix of history, mystery, action, puzzles and suspense. The pace is so powerful, the book just wouldn’t let go! The story line is almost to brilliant to conceive, the sheer genius and fascinating craftsmanship that Dan Brown uses in his book are breath-taking. The idea behind the story may seem controversial, but once you think about it, it really does become quite real and even natural.”

Another reader provides a more muted and relativistically-minded assessment:

“The historical events and people explored in the book are real. But no one knows the Truth…nor will we ever, probably. I think that some things are meant to be a mystery. With all the world’s diverse religions and each individual’s belief in what is Divine-the Truth would have to destroy the beliefs, hopes and lives of many of the world’s population. So, perhaps, in the divine scheme of things, there are many more Truths than one. Don’t take the book too seriously.”

Despite the skepticism of some readers, The Da Vinci Code proved to be so popular, so quickly, that within weeks of being published, Columbia Pictures bought the film rights to the book (and to Angels & Demons as well). Noted director Ron Howard is reportedly on board and Columbia plans to bring the book to cinematic life sometime in 2005.

 

Dan Brown’s Agenda and the Purpose of The Da Vinci Code

Over the summer, the Envoy office began to receive a number of e-mails and inquiries about The Da Vinci Code. They all expressed concern that the book contains a number of overt attacks on the Catholic Church, plus dubious assertions about topics including Mary Magdalene, the Council of Nicaea, the New Testament canon, church architecture, and the murder of witches during medieval times. Reading the novel confirmed that the concerns of Catholics and other Christians were warranted; Brown’s thriller is less than thrilling when it comes to providing an accurate and fair portrayal of the Catholic Church, Christian theology, and Church history.

In her glowing New York Times review of the novel, Janet Maslin writes: “As in his Angels and Demons, this author is drawn to the place where empirical evidence and religious faith collide. And he creates a bracing exploration of this realm, one that is by no means sacrilegious, though it sharply challenges Vatican policy.” (“Spinning a Thriller From the Louvre” by Janet Maslin. New York Times. March 17, 2003). Maslin apparently doesn’t know what “sacrilegious” means. The Da Vinci Code is overtly sacrilegious (that is, it profanes sacred beliefs), claiming that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children, Mary Magdalene-not Peter-was the head apostle, the Catholic Church has kept these “facts” hidden through force and terror, and that Jesus was not truly divine, but merely a good man “deified” by the Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D. In addition, the novel is obsessed with radical feminist notions of the “sacred feminine” and ancient goddess worship, all served up in a syrupy, breathless fashion reminiscent of romance novels.

The major theme of Brown’s novel is the pressing need to recover the “sacred feminine” and a revitalized worship of a goddess or goddesses. Brown states, in responding on his website to the question about his novel being “empowering to women,” that,

“Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. The novel touches on questions of how and why this shift occurred…and on what lessons we might learn from it regarding our future.”

In an interview with CNN (July 17, 2003), Brown emphasized this point more than once, stating, “In the early days . . . we lived in a world of gods and goddesses. . . . Every Mars had an Athena. The god of war had the goddess of beauty; in the Egyptian tradition, Osiris and Isis. … And now we live in a world solely of gods. The female counterpart has been erased.” He continues: “It’s interesting to note that the word ‘god’ conjures power and awe, while the word ‘goddess’ sounds imaginary.” Then, revealing his understanding of how his novel might affect “traditional” Christians, he remarks, “There are some people in the church for whom this book is a little bit shocking. But the reaction from the vast majority of clergy and Christian scholars has been positive.” He adds: “Nuns, in particular, are exceptionally excited about the strong feminist message of the book.”

It should be noted that when Brown, in interviews or in his novel, refers to “the Church,” or Christianity, he means the Catholic Church. The Da Vinci Code betrays little awareness that there are non-Catholic Christians such as the Eastern Orthodox and Protestants; there is one brief, negative mention of the Church of England (see page 346). Otherwise, all references are to the Catholic Church, often referred to as “the Vatican,” a term for which Brown seems to have a special affinity. However, he is not a Catholic, nor does he appear to be a former Catholic. Asked, on his site, if he is a Christian, he replies with confident post-modern indifferentism:

“I am, although perhaps not in the most traditional sense of the word. If you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as immutable historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious-that is, that we are all trying to decipher life’s big mysteries, and we’re each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.”

This is echoed in a remark made by The Da Vinci Code’s main character, Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon, “Every faith is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith-acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our mind process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. … Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical” (p. 341-2).

Ironically, The Da Vinci Code hinges upon Langdon having a profound-and apparently non-metaphorical-faith experience at the novel’s conclusion, an experience bound up in the “sacred feminine” and Mary Magdalene. Also interesting is how Brown continually questions any sort of authority, especially that of the Catholic Church, but has such confidence in his personal research into a large number of complex areas of study-even areas where his lack of knowledge is obvious to the discerning reader. This is ironic in light of Brown’s overt relativism and his suspicious view of history; in true deconstructionist style, he openly questions whether we can even know the truth about the past:

“Since the beginning of recorded time, history has been written by the “winners” (those societies and belief systems that conquered and survived). Despite an obvious bias in this accounting method, we still measure the ‘historical accuracy’ of a given concept by examining how well it concurs with our existing historical record. Many historians now believe (as do I) that in gauging the historical accuracy of a given concept, we should first ask ourselves a far deeper question: How historically accurate is history itself?” (Dan Brown’s personal website)

Brown undoubtedly hopes The Da Vinci Code will be more than just a best-seller; he apparently wants it to radically change perceptions of history, religion, and Western civilization. Asked if the novel might be considered controversial, Brown again asserts his desire to promote the “sacred feminine” and to challenge the commonly accepted understandings of Western culture and Christianity:

“As I mentioned earlier, the secret I reveal is one that has been whispered for centuries. It is not my own. Admittedly, this may be the first time the secret has been unveiled within the format of a popular thriller, but the information is anything but new. My sincere hope is that The Da Vinci Code, in addition to entertaining people, will serve as an open door for readers to begin their own explorations.” (Dan Brown’s personal website)

As noted, this agenda has not been lost on readers, and many of them revel in the subversive agenda that Brown undertakes in his thriller. One mesmerized reader summarizes this fascination quite well:

“With his impeccable research, Mr. Brown introduces us to aspects and interpretations of Western history and Christianity that I, for one, had never known existed . . . or even thought about. I found myself, unwillingly, leaving the novel, and time and time again, going online to research Brown’s research-only to find a new world of historic possibilities opening up for me.” (amazon.com review).

As we will see, the “possibilities” opened up to readers are both dubious and dangerous, and are rooted in ideas that are not only contrary to Catholic doctrine, but also contrary to historical evidence, sound scholarship, and common sense.

What’s the Matter With the Code?

The immense success of The Da Vinci Code and its strong language about the Catholic Church has resulted in substantial controversy over many of the “facts” within its pages. Not only is the novel influencing the views of non-Catholic readers, it is raising difficult questions in the minds of many Catholics, some of whom are being asked about Brown’s interpretation of Church history and theology. One Catholic reader wrote to Envoy, saying:

“I own a Catholic bookstore. We are getting bombarded daily by people who are buying into the garbage in this book. You cannot believe how many people have been exposed to this book. . . . We even had an elderly aunt talking about Opus Dei tonight and yelling at us that the book is true or it couldn’t be printed.”

Another reader, a convert from Lutheranism, openly admitted the doubts that The Da Vinci Code has raised in his mind:

“Honestly, [reading the book] shook my whole faith. I realize that the book is fiction, but much of what he wrote about seemed like it was based on historical facts aside from the characters. Since I am not a Christian scholar I don’t even know where to begin to refute these claims. As the Catholic Church holds much of the evidence that would refute the drivel in The Da Vinci Code, I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction to a scholarly non-Christian book that might help me make better sense of the whole historical chain of events. If Christianity is nothing more than a big accommodation, it becomes relegated to a lifestyle choice and not a religion, which I do not want to believe.”

We’ve heard many similar stories in recent months and expect to hear more, which is the main reason this critique has been written. Just as the Left Behind books have been used to promote a Fundamentalist understanding of Scripture and the end times, The Da Vinci Code has proven to be an effective tool for attacking Catholic doctrine and undermining faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the authenticity of Scripture, and the authority of the Church.

“I queried several in the audience why they were there, and what their reaction was to the book and the evenings’ discussion. One woman told of her teenage son who was reluctant to go through the sacrament of Confirmation, yet after reading the book found a more believable, understandable, even human Jesus. That actually inspired him to continue the path. Another person said that such material added to the mystery, and in doing so served to strengthen her faith. For one it called into question the credibility of the teaching of the Church, yet felt that faith needs to be challenged to be pursued. Others voiced the idea that this book reinforced a disenchantment with the Church.”

This group, and others like it, obviously emphasize opinion and “feelings” over careful and objective study. Such an ambivalent approach to the claims of the novel are summarized well in Rotert’s remark: “Fortunately the evenings participants did not come expecting Yes/No answers.” The same remark could be made about catechesis in many parishes today, again highlighting the need for a more rigorous approach to popular works such as The Da Vinci Code, especially when many people are garnering their views of Church history and beliefs from those sources.

Fiction, especially best-selling pulp fiction such as The Da Vinci Code, has become a major means of “educating” the masses about many, varied topics, but especially those issues that are controversial and can be easily sensationalized. The belief that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had children, and was not divine in any way has existed for several decades in American pop culture. Yet many, if not most, readers of Brown’s novel seem unaware of this-even though the novel provides the titles of several books written in the last two or three decades proposing such beliefs, most notably Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Dell, 1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.

Put succinctly, here are the major problems with The Da Vinci Code:

It attacks the Catholic Church and her beliefs about Jesus Christ, the Bible, and Church authority.
It claims to be completely accurate and based in fact, but it is not.
It rewrites and misrepresents Church and secular history.
It promotes a radical feminist, neo-gnostic agenda.
It propagates a relativistic, indifferent attitude towards truth and religion.
In order to critique the novel thoroughly, we will have to go to the heart of Brown’s worldview and his beliefs about Christianity. There we will find an obsession with the Gnostic, feminist notion of the “sacred feminine,” an idea that is not so much pro-woman, as it claims to be, but anti-human and anti-Christian. We will also find that Brown’s understanding of early Church history is based on sources and books that are antagonistic to the Catholic Church and filled with dubious, even disingenuous, statements about the Church, Scripture, and Gnostic writings.

The “Magdalene” and the Sacred Feminine

Most of The Da Vinci Code’s story takes place in a period of about one day, beginning with the murder of the curator of the Louvre. Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist (a word created by Brown to describe an expert in religious and esoteric symbolism), is asked by the French police to help interpret a strange cipher left on the body of the deceased. Langdon is joined in his investigation by an attractive young cryptologist, Sophie Neveu. Soon they are suspects in the case and are fleeing from authorities. In the course of trying to escape and solve the murder, they ally themselves with wealthy historian and Holy Grail fanatic Leigh Teabing, an acquaintance of Langdon’s.

Chased by authorities and an albino “monk” who is a member of Opus Dei, this small band of iconoclasts and Grail enthusiasts travel from Paris to London. Woven throughout the narrative are a series of lectures by Langdon and Teabing on the identity of the Holy Grail, the importance of Leonardo Da Vinci and The Last Supper, and the “truth” about Jesus and the Catholic Church. After some obligatory twists and turns, the novel ends with a flat and not-so-rewarding conclusion, with Langdon having a sort of epiphany at the supposed burial place of Mary Magdalene: “With a sudden upswelling of reverence, Robert Langdon fell to his knees. For a moment he thought he heard a woman’s voice . . . the wisdom of the ages . . . whispering up from the chasms of the earth” (p. 454).

The main character of The Da Vinci Code is Mary Magdalene-the Mary Magdalene of neo-Gnostic, feminist mythology. According to the novel, the “Magdalene” was the apostle of Jesus and is the Holy Grail. As Sandra Miesel points out in Crisis magazine, Brown’s “book is more than just the story of a quest for the Grail-he wholly reinterprets the Grail legend. In doing so, Brown inverts the insight that a woman’s body is symbolically a container and makes a container symbolically a woman’s body. And that container has a name every Christian will recognize, for Brown claims that the Holy Grail was actually Mary Magdalene. She was the vessel that held the blood of Jesus Christ in her womb while bearing his children.” (“Dismantling The Da Vinci Code,” Crisis, September 2003).

In a central section of The Da Vinci Code, Langdon and Teabing educate Sophie about this premise. After explaining that the chalice of the Holy Grail is not a cup, but a symbol of “a woman’s womb” that “communicates femininity, womanhood, and fertility,” Langdon states:

“The Grail is literally the ancient symbol for womanhood, and the Holy Grail represents the sacred feminine and the goddess, which of course has now been lost, virtually eliminated by the Church. The power of the female and her ability to produce life was once very sacred, but it posed a threat to the rise of the predominantly male Church, and so the sacred feminine was demonized and called unclean. It was man, not God, who created the concept of ‘original sin,’ whereby Eve tasted of the apple and caused the downfall of the human race. Woman, once the sacred giver of life, was now the enemy” (p. 238).

He goes on to claim that “the Church,” almost from the beginning, “had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned nonbelievers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine” (p. 239). And then, a few pages later, Teabing states that “the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record” (p. 245). At that point Teabing produces one of his sources, Elaine Pagels controversial book, The Gnostic Gospels (1979). He then quotes from The Gospel of Philip, which describes Christ kissing Mary Magdalene “on the mouth,” offending and upsetting the disciples.

A bit later Teabing arrives at what is, it seems evident, Brown’s main point: “Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene” (p. 248). Teabing proclaims that this, along with Jesus’ supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene, is “the greatest cover-up in human history” (p. 249). He summarizes all of these sentiments by saying, “The quest for the Holy Grail is literally the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine” (p. 257). As those who have read the novel know, that describes exactly how The Da Vinci Code ends.

None of these claims are original with Brown, as he admits in the novel and on his website (“…but the information is anything but new”). Brown’s depiction of Mary Magdalene as the embodiment of the “sacred feminine” has been a common theme of recent neo-Gnostic, feminist works seeking to rewrite early Church history based upon Gnostic writings such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, and a handful of others. In addition to Pagel’s work and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, there are other esoteric histories making similar statements: The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, the latter two both by Margaret Starbird, a former Catholic who has been long associated with Matthew Fox. There are websites devoted to promoting these ideas about Mary Magdalene. All of this activity is part of a rapidly growing interest in Gnosticism and “alternative” forms of Christianity that are making overt appearances in popular media, including novels, television, and movies. An example of the latter was the 1999 anti-Catholic dud, Stigmata, which depicted the Catholic Church as furiously attempting to cover up subversive “truths” located in Gnostics works such as the Gospel of Thomas. A much more successful effort was the hugely popular Matrix, which melded neo-Gnostic ideas with themes from Buddhism and other Eastern religions.

The Rebirth of Gnosticism

The claims made through the fictional narrative of The Da Vinci Code cannot be understood without some knowledge of Brown’s reliance on a neo-Gnostic understanding of Jesus, the early Church, and Christianity.

Gnosticism was the greatest challenge to the fledgling Christian faith of the second and third centuries. Yet, despite its influence, it is a difficult movement to define precisely because of its esoteric, decentralized, and eclectic nature. In general, Gnosticism is dualistic, focused on secret spiritual knowledge (gnosis), antagonistic towards or uninterested in time and history, and distrustful-even hateful-towards the physical realm and the human body. Gnosticism seeks to escape the limits of time and space, to transcend the physical and historical realm, and attempts to obtain salvation through secretive, individualistic means (see James A. Herrick, The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition [Intervarsity, 2003], 179-203).

In his seminal study, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Hans Jonas explains that the “radical dualism” of Gnosticism exists on many levels: “God and the world, spirit and matter, soul and body, light and darkness, good and evil, light and death” (The Gnostic Religion [Beacon Hill: Boston, 1958, 1963], p. 31). Ancient Gnostics believed that the true God is not only beyond the world and the material realm, He had nothing to do with the creation of material matter: “The world is the work of lowly powers which though they may mediately be descended from Him do know the true God and obstruct the knowledge of Him in the cosmos over which they rule” (p. 42). Put simply, the material realm is evil and man must escape it. This can only be accomplished through gnosis, or secret knowledge, of the true God.

This gnosis is rooted in the belief that humanity is not meant for this evil, material world. Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, author of Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faith We Never Knew (Oxford, 2003), writes that according to this view, “we are trapped here, imprisoned. And when we learn who we are and how we can escape, we can then return to our heavenly home.” He notes how this concept resonates with modern readers, “many of whom also feel alienated from this world, for whom this world does not make sense, readers who realize, in some very deep and significant way, that they really don’t belong here” (p. 114). It is also the case that the individualistic, relativistic, and syncretistic character of Gnosticism is also appealing to modern men and women who are distrustful of the Church, believe Christianity to be anti-woman, and who have a generally negative view of any structure of authority.

Elaine Pagels explains that some of the early Gnostics claimed “that humanity created God-and so, from its own inner potential, discovered for itself the revelation of truth” (The Gnostic Gospels, 122). Rather than being outside of-and separate from-humanity, God is a creation of mankind. Salvation is not about overcoming sin through and by God’s assistance, but is the overcoming of ignorance through self-knowledge (p. 123-4). Ignorance insures destruction, while self-knowledge provides liberation and escape from suffering. This means that the Jesus was not the God-man who came to save mankind from sin, as orthodox Christians believe, but is a “teacher, revealer, and spiritual master” who is human only. In Gnostic teaching, Jesus is not greater than the student, but he will help the student to transcend him in knowledge and “Christ consciousness.”

Another key concept embraced by many Gnostic groups was that of an androgynous God, a deity who is a perfect balance of feminine and masculine. Pagels writes, “Some [Gnostic groups] insisted that the divine is to be considered masculofeminine-the ‘great male-female power.’ Others claimed that the terms were meant only as metaphors, since, in reality, the divine is neither male nor female. A third group suggested that one can describe the primal Source in either masculine or feminine terms, depending on which aspect one intends to stress.” She adds: “Proponents of these diverse views agreed that the divine is to be understood in terms of a harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites-a concept that may be akin to the Eastern view of yin and yang, but remains alien to orthodox Judaism and Christianity” (The Gnostic Gospels, 51).

The Gnostic deity is both god and goddess, and the Gnostics despised the Christians for “suppressing” the feminine nature of the godhead. In The Da Vinci Code, Langdon lectures Sophie about this, telling her that “the Priory [of Sion] believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever” (p. 124). This suppression resulted, Brown’s novel tells readers, in a warped and unbalanced humanity, overly masculine and lacking in feminine balance:

“The days of the goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become a man’s world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi-’life out of balance’-an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth” (pp. 125-6).

Many Gnostics not only believed the true God (beyond the god of this world, the demi-god falsely believed to be God by Jews and Christians) was androgynous, but that humanity was also meant to be androgynous, or “masculo-feminine.” Some Gnostics interpreted Genesis 1:27 as saying God created “male-female,” not “male and female.” This idea of an androgynous, “whole” humanity makes an appearance in The Da Vinci Code. In talking to Sophie about the Mona Lisa, Langdon states, “Whatever Da Vinci was up to . . . his Mona Lisa was neither male nor female. It carries a subtle message of androgyny. It is a fusing of both” (p. 120). This is wishful thinking on the part of Langdon (and Brown), since the majority of art historians agree the portrait has nothing to do with androgyny, but is simply a masterful painting of an Italian lady, (most likely Mona Lisa Gherardini, the wife of merchant Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo). However, the idea that Mona Lisa depicts an androgynous person does fit with the Gnostic beliefs that those who were enlightened by gnosis needed to be in pairs-male and female-forming a perfect whole, or “syzygy.” Thus, Jesus would require a female counterpart who would make him complete; in Gnostic writings that woman, of course, was Jesus’ “consort,” Mary Magdalen.

The interconnection between these ancient Gnostic notions and feminist attacks on Church teaching, especially upon the male-priesthood, should be apparent. If the male and female genders are not unique in vital, but equal, ways-as the Catholic Church teaches-but are the results of an incomplete anthropology, then there is no reason to keep women from the priesthood or episcopal authority. If there is no essential difference or distinction between men and women, then the Church’s refusal to ordain women is simply a matter of misogyny, not of theological, doctrinal truth. This connection is readily apparent in works of religious feminists intent on getting women ordained as Catholic priests (or priestesses).

Finally, one difficulty in defining Gnosticism, whether ancient or modern, is its syncretistic nature. As Jonas states, “the gnostic systems compounded everything-oriental mythologies, astrological doctrines, Iranian theology, elements of Jewish tradition, whether Biblical, rabbinical, or occult, Christian salvation-eschatology, Platonic terms and concepts” (The Gnostic Religion, 25). Today there are numerous esoteric groups and movements that utilize Gnostic concepts and writings: wiccans, New Agers, occultists, radical feminists, neo-pagans, and a host of others. This is certainly the case with The Da Vinci Code, which makes reference to a number of esoteric and occultic groups and movements, but is especially enamored with a radical feminist interpretation of Church history.

Tune into the discussion about The Da Vinci Code (and many other exciting topics) on our online discussion forums.

The Neo-Gnostic Myth of the Feminist Early Church

The beliefs about the early Church, Gnosticism, and Mary Magdalen that are set forth in Brown’s novel date back to the nineteenth century and the advent of modern feminism. Philip Jenkins points out, in Hidden Gospels: How the Search For Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford, 2001), that “late nineteenth-century activists saw Jesus and his first followers as protofeminists, whose radical ideas were swamped by a patriarchal orthodoxy.” In addition to feminists, this “idea that the Gnostics retained the core truths of a lost Christianity was commonplace among occult and esoteric writers, many of whom shared the contemporary excitement over women’s suffrage and other progressive causes” (p. 125). These writers looked to heretical, Gnostic forms of early Christianity for material to bolster their belief that Jesus was really a radical feminist, the Church was initially founded as an egalitarian and non-dogmatic body, and women were among the first apostles-or were, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, the primary apostles.

One of the first Gnostic texts used effectively by feminists was Pistis Sophia (“The Books of the Savior”), which was published in English in 1896. In it, Mary Magdalene is depicted as the foremost apostle of Jesus, while the male disciples are frustrated by the lack of attention they received from Jesus. But it was the discovery of numerous Gnostic texts in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, that provided even more ammunition for those looking to undermine Church authority and change the structures and theology of the Catholic Church. Elaine Pagels, whose popularizing work in this area has been immense, writes, “The Nag Hammadi sources, discovered at a time of contemporary social crises concerning sexual roles, challenge us to reinterpret history-and to re-evaluate the present situation” (The Gnostic Gospels, p. 69).

As Pagels’ comment indicates, the timing of the Nag Hammadi discovery was fortuitous for those wishing to reinterpret Jesus in their own image and destroy traditional, orthodox understandings of Christianity. “The hidden gospels have been used to provide scriptural warrant for sweeping new interpretations of Jesus,” Jenkins notes, “for interpreting theological statements in a purely symbolic and psychological sense, and for challenging dogmatic or legal rules on the basis of the believer’s subjective moral sense. Generally, the hidden gospels offer wonderful news for liberals, feminists, and radicals within the churches, who challenge what they view as outdated institutions and prejudices” (p. 16).

This perfectly describes the intent of The Da Vinci Code, which uses a fictional vehicle to promote the same agenda that a number of feminist and post-modern scholars have been working on since the 1960s. Those fans of Brown’s novel who think the author has somehow stumbled upon new and never seen information might be surprised to know how commonplace his views are within the realm of Gnostic and feminist studies. Jenkins’ depiction of the literature produced within that world could just as well describe The Da Vinci Code:

“Over the last century, the literature on hidden gospels, genuine and fraudulent, has been pervaded by conspiratorial speculations which suggest that some powerful body (usually the Roman Catholic Church) is cynically plotting either to conceal the true gospel, or to plant bogus documents to deceive the faithful. Such ideas run through the many novels and fictional presentations on this them: in the Hollywood film Stigmata, the Vatican is shown desperately trying to suppress a “Jesus Gospel,” which is unmistakably modeled on the Gospel of Thomas” (p. 18).

It would take an entire book to address thoroughly all of these intertwining topics and answer each of the questions they raise (Jenkins’ book is a good place to start; others are listed at the end of this article). But here, in abbreviated form, are some important points about these issues, all of them central to The Da Vinci Code.

The feminist idea that the early Church was an egalitarian body lead by both female and male bishops and priests is based on flimsy premises and lacks historical evidence. This has even been admitted, in part, by Pagels, who stated in the 1998 PBS program From Jesus to Christ, “I don’t see a picture of a golden age of egalitarianism back there. I see a new, unformed, diverse, and threatened movement which allowed a lot more fluidity for women in certain roles for a while, in some places and not in others” (quoted in Jenkins, p. 132). Feminist scholars speculating about the first few decades of the early Church usually treat the New Testament documents with suspicion, claiming that they are the work of those men who finally gained control over the Church through the suppression of women. Using a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” these scholars must ignore early evidence that the Church was founded by Christ and its leadership on earth given to twelve men (Matt. 10:1ff; 19:28; Lk. 22:25-30; Jn. 20:20-24) led by Peter (Matt. 16:15-19), and must instead insist upon using texts that were written anywhere from fifty to three hundred years after the New Testament documents.

In addition, there is the misleading notion that the Gnostic writings are consistently pro-woman, while the New Testament writings-and thereby the authors of those books-are anti-woman. This idea also arises in The Da Vinci Code. After quoting from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, where Peter complains about Mary’s closeness to Christ, Sir Leigh Teabing states: “I daresay Peter was something of a sexist.” (p. 248). He then remarks that “Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene” (p. 248).

But Brown never bothers to have his characters quote from the final verse of the Gospel of Thomas, the most famous of the Gnostic texts. That verse states: “Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven” (v. 114). This passage and others like it do not fit well with the feminist view of the Gnostics, just as the Church’s positive treatment of women throughout history does not compare well with the negative picture often depicted by feminist groups.

One such group is the “Catholic” organization FutureChurch, which states in an online article that “the Montanist and Valentinian Churches, which had both male and female leaders, were eventually suppressed. Scholars say that the Montanist and Valentinian communities were orthodox. They were suppressed not because their teachings were heretical, but because women as well as men engaged in leadership.” In fact, almost all scholars, including many feminists writers, acknowledge that the Montanists and Valentinians were outside the Church and considered heretical for numerous reasons, including attacks on the deity of Christ (Valentinians), the authority of the Church (both groups), an obsession with prophetic utterances (Montanists), and dualist views (Valentinians). Even Elaine Pagels states that “Valentinian gnosticism” was “the most influential and sophisticated form of gnostic teaching, and by far the most threatening to the church” (The Gnostic Gospels, p. 31). Unfortunately, such misguided attempts to use ancient, heretical movements for modern, heretical ends are becoming increasingly common.

The Dating Game

The dating of the New Testament writings and the Gnostic writings is essential to appreciating the serious errors found in The Da Vinci Code and in the works of neo-Gnostic enthusiasts. If Gnostic works such as the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas were written at the same time as the canonical Gospels, the Pauline corpus, and the other New Testament books (which are dated from 50 to 100 AD, even by many “liberal” scholars), then the early Church resembles the picture painted by feminist scholars-one in which various groups existed equally, at least for a while, within a democratic, theologically fluid era. According to this premise, the hierarchical and male-dominated Church came much later, in the second and third centuries, and Jesus was not deified as the God-man until the time of Constantine. This is essentially the scenario depicted in The Da Vinci Code (see p. 230ff).

However, if the Gnostic books weren’t written until several decades, or even centuries, after the New Testament books, a different picture emerges. In it, the Gnostic writings are reactionary, the result of the intense struggle of heretical sects against the established teachings of the Church and the apostles. These struggles erupted in the second century, especially noticeable around 135 to 165 A.D., and continued for quite some time. The nature of this struggle can be seen in the writings of orthodox apologists such as Irenaeus, who wrote his great polemic refuting Gnosticism (especially the Valentinians), Against Heresies, around 180 A.D.

Put another way, Gnosticism began to infiltrate the Church in full force in the mid-second century, many decades removed from the life of Christ, the apostles, and the formation of the Church-a distance in time similar to modern-day scholars looking back at the lives of Abraham Lincoln, or even George Washington. Gnosticism would have been a movement arising outside of Christianity, even though some overlapping of language and concepts may have existed, due in part to a shared culture and the Gnostic interest in the Old Testament. Some Gnostic proponents claim that a full-fledged Gnosticism is evident within the Church in the person of Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-13), but this view is speculative at best. Hans Jonas writes that Simon was “not a dissident Christian, and if the Church Fathers cast him in the role of the arch-heretic, they implicitly admitted that Gnosticism was not an inner-Christian phenomenon.” (The Gnostic Religion, p. 103).

An important characteristic of Gnostic writings is how much they vary in character from the canonical writings: they are non-historical, or even anti-historical, in style and content and they contain little narrative or sense of chronology. The Nag Hammadi documents, as highly touted as they are, have offered few, if any, new or illuminating details about the life of Christ or events in the early Church. This is due in part to the documents being written generations after the fact as well as the anti-historical bias of Gnosticism, which scorns the belief that the true God would care about the material, historical realm. In concluding his examination of the veracity of the Gospel of Mary and other Gnostic texts, Jenkins writes, “These uncanonical texts were written at a time when the episcopal hierarchy was already well established, when the early house churches were a distant memory, and when the canonical gospels were already widely known as the principle authorities for the life of Jesus. Mary and its like come from a time when the church had already fixed its gospel canon at four. Despite claims that Mary was excluded or omitted from that canon, presumably because of its subversive feminism, the work was much too late a candidate even to be considered” (p. 141).

Jenkins’ conclusions are supported by the majority of biblical scholars. For example, Dr. Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, in his book Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford, 2003), dates none of the Gnostic gospels before the “early 2nd century.” Many are dated in the third, fourth, and fifth century (pages xi-xv). The introductions to the Gnostic works contained in The Nag Hammadi Library (Harper, 1979, 1988), edited by James M. Robinson, acknowledge the same dates, even though they argue that the Gnostic writings should be considered just as authoritative as the Four Gospels. Even Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which takes extreme liberties in its “scholarship” (Teabing remarks, in The Da Vinci Code, that “the authors [of Holy Blood, Holy Grail] made some dubious leaps of faith in their analysis” [p. 254]-an amusing understatement), states, “Modern scholars have established that some if not most of the texts in the [Nag Hammadi] scrolls date from no later than A.D. 150″ (p. 380).

All of this flies in the face of Teabing’s assertion in The Da Vinci Code that “more than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relatively few were chosen for inclusion-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.” (p. 231). Far from there being “eighty gospels” considered for the canon at the time of Constantine in the early 300s, there were only five or six still being considered in the mid-second century. By the late second century the early Church recognized the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the four inspired by the Holy Spirit and meant for the canon of the New Testament. As Jenkins shows, “the process of determining the canon was well under way long before Constantine became emperor, and before the church had the slightest prospect of political power. The crucial phase occurred in the mid-second century . . .” (p. 85).

In fact, there was already a growing consensus about the entire New Testament canon by the middle of the second-century, even though it would not be defined on an official (though not universal) level until the late-300s and early-400s in a series of local synods. Justin Martyr, writing around 150 A.D. and explaining the liturgy of the Christians to his non-Christian readers, speaks of the apostles and “the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them” (“The First Apology,” 66). Tertullian, writing around the same time, defends the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Pauline epistles, the epistle to the Hebrews, and 1 John and The Apocalypse against the Gnostic ideas of Marcion (“Five Books Against Marcion,” 4.2, 4.5). A couple of decades later Irenaeus specifically refers to the four Gospels and their authors and implies that they are granted a unique status within the Church:

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Against Heresies, 3.1.1)

A bit further on, Irenaeus writes, “It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are” (3.11.8) and again prominently mentions Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, further proof that that the number of gospels recognized as authoritative within the Church was set at four at least 150 years prior to Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.

Critique of The Da Vinci Code
“Christ, the Early Church, Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea”
By Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel

Introduction

In Part 1 of “Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code” we examined the background of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic ideas that author Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at 4.5 million copies sold and still selling strong). This second part of Envoy magazine’s special Planet Envoy critique of the best-selling novel examines Brown’s depictions of early Christianity, especially his claims about Jesus Christ, the Emperor Constantine, the supposed reliance of early Christianity on pagan beliefs and rituals, and the Council of Nicaea. As we will see, Brown not only plays fast and loose with the facts, he consistently makes statements that are inaccurate, baseless, and even completely contrary to historical fact.

Constantine “Divinizes” Jesus?

Some of the most audacious and blatantly incorrect statements in The Da Vinci Code have to do with early Church history and the person of Jesus. In the course of Sophie and Langdon’s lengthy conversation with Teabing at the English historian’s home, a dialogue takes place in which the following claims are made:

The divinity of Jesus and his establishment as “the Son of God” were created, proposed, and voted into existence (by a “relatively close vote”) at the Council of Nicaea in 325.
Prior to this event, nobody-including Jesus’ followers-believed that he was anything more than “a mortal prophet.”

The Emperor Constantine established the divinity of Jesus for political reasons and used the Catholic Church as a means of solidifying his power. (The Da Vinci Code, 233)

Teabing does not personally reject the divinity of Jesus (many people do reject it), or claim that certain modern day scholars deny that Jesus was divine (many scholars do deny it), but states that the early followers of Jesus-the Christians of the first three centuries following Jesus’ time on earth-believed that he was not divine at all, but “a mortal” only. This undermines the credibility of Teabing’s character, for any decent historian, Christian or otherwise, knows that the early Christians believed that Jesus of Nazareth was somehow divine, being the “Son of God” and the resurrected Christ. In fact, the central issue at the Council of Nicaea in 325 was not whether Jesus was merely human or something more, but how exactly his divinity-which even the heretic Arius acknowledged-was to be understood: Was he fully divine? Was the Son equal to the Father? Was he a lesser god? What did it mean to say that the Son was “begotten,” as the Gospel of John states in several places (Jn 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18)?
The Testimony of the New Testament

There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted early Church scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that “the all but universal Christian conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive confession had been ‘Jesus is Lord’ [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age.” (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1960; revised edition, 1978], 138). Jesus was indeed a prophet, explains German theologian Karl Adam, but the Gospels depict him uniquely more: “There can be no doubt: the Canonical Gospels see in the person of Jesus Jahve [Yahweh=God] himself. According to them, Jesus thinks, feels, and acts in the clear consciousness that he is not simply one called like the rest of the prophets, but rather the historical manifestations and revelation of God himself” (Karl Adam, The Christ of Faith, [Pantheon Books: New York, 1957), 59).

Explicit and implicit evidence that Jesus and his followers believed he was more than a mere mortal is found throughout the New Testament. The infancy narrative in Matthew's Gospel quotes from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: " 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel' (which means, God with us)" (Matt 1:23). In that same Gospel there is an account of the baptism of Jesus; as Jesus comes up out of the water "the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.' " (Matt. 3:16-17).

John's Gospel contains some of the strongest statements about the divinity of Jesus. The densely theological prologue proclaims: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn1:1-3); the Word is Jesus, the incarnate Son: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (Jn 1:14). Later, after upsetting some of the Jewish authorities because of his activities on the Sabbath, Jesus' life is threatened, "because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God" (Jn 5:18).
The eighth chapter of John's Gospel contains another firm affirmation of Jesus' divinity. After having a debate about Abraham with some of the religious leaders, Jesus declares: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" (Jn 8:56). Indignant, the leaders respond, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" (v. 57). "Truly, truly, I say to you," Jesus replies, "before Abraham was born, I am" (v. 58). This is met with hostility; the crowd attempts to kill Jesus, recognizing that he has applied to himself the name of God-"Yahweh," or "I AM"-revealed to Moses in the burning bush (Ex 3:14). After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus appears to the disciples (Jn 20:19-23), but "Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came" (Jn 19:24). Eight days later Jesus appears to the disciples again; this time Thomas is among them. Upon seeing Jesus and touching his pierced hands and side, "Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'" (Jn 20:28). Many other examples from the four Gospels could be given, including over forty passages where Jesus is called the "Son of God" (cf., Mt 11:27; Mk 12:6; 13:32; 14:61-62; Lk 10:22; 22:70; Jn 10:30; 14:9), is ascribed the power to forgive sins (Mk 2:5-12; Lk 24:45-47), claims unity and oneness with the Father (Jn 10:30; 12:45; 14:8-10), and performs many miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead (Jn 11). Even if readers believe the disciples were mistaken or that Jesus was a charlatan, there's little doubt that they believed he was divine and was far more than a mortal prophet.

Similar affirmations of Jesus divinity are found throughout the canonical writings of Paul and the other New Testament authors. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul declares that "no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). In his letter to the Philippians, he writes that "though [the Son] was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:6). The Son’s willingness to become man will, paradoxically, lead to the universal confession “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11). Paul’s first letter to his young son in the Christian faith, Timothy, contains the emphatic declaration that the “Lord Jesus Christ . . . is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Tim 6:15-16).

The final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse) presents Jesus as the eternal, conquering, and resurrected King and Savior-another far cry from a “mortal prophet.” When John sees Jesus, he falls “as a dead man” at his feet. “And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last” (Rev. 1:17). The title of “the First and the Last” is one of titles used in the Old Testament to describe Yahweh, the one true God: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me” (Isa 44:6; see Isa 41:4; 48:12). This title is applied to Jesus two more times in the Book of Revelation, including 2:8 and 22:12-13. The latter passage, at the conclusion of the book, identifies Jesus as “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev 22:13). This is the same language used by the Lord God at the opening of the book (Rev 1:8), making an overt and purposeful connection between God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Testimony of Early Christian Writers

There is much testimony from numerous Christian writers between 100 A.D. and the fourth century to the Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity. In addition to proving what Christians really did believe about Jesus in the first three centuries of Christianity, these writings also provide invaluable context to the theological issues and battles that would eventually be addressed, at least in part, by the Council of Nicaea.

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c.107) was the bishop of Antioch; it has been speculated that he, just like the apostle Paul, may have been a persecutor of the Christians prior to his conversion (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [Oxford: New York, 1997. Third edition], 817). Captured by the Roman army and en route to Rome to be executed, he wrote a series of seven letters to churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and one to Polycarp (c. 69-c. 155), the bishop of Smyrna. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes:

“There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Letter to the Ephesians, ch. 7).

Later, in the same letter, he tells his readers that they must “do everything as if he [Jesus] were dwelling in us. Thus we shall be his temples and he will be within us as our God-as he actually is” (Letter to the Ephesians, 15). He then states, “For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water” (par. 18). Further, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius refers to Jesus as “the Christ God” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 10).

Justin Martyr (c. 100-c.165) was born into a pagan family and became a Christian around the age of thirty. He was a Christian philosopher who taught in Ephesus, then later in Rome, where he had a school. Justin was one of the leading apologists for the Christian faith in the second century; he defended Christian teachings-including the belief that Jesus was divine-against pagan philosophers. He and several of his disciples were arrested, beaten, and then beheaded by the Romans for their refusal to worship pagan gods. In his First Apology, he writes, “Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man according to His will, He taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race . . .” (First Apology of Justin Martyr, par. 23). In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin provides a lengthier defense of his belief that Jesus is God:

“But if you knew, Trypho,” continued I, “who He is that is called at one time the Angel of great counsel, and a Man by Ezekiel, and like the Son of man by Daniel, and a Child by Isaiah, and Christ and God to be worshipped by David, and Christ and a Stone by many, and Wisdom by Solomon, and Joseph and Judah and a Star by Moses, and the East by Zechariah, and the Suffering One and Jacob and Israel by Isaiah again, and a Rod, and Flower, and Corner-Stone, and Son of God, you would not have blasphemer Him who has now come, and been born, and suffered, and ascended to heaven; who shall also come again, and then your twelve tribes shall mourn. For if you had understood what has been written by the prophets, you would not have denied that He was God, Son of the only, unbegotten, unutterable God.” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 126).

One of the most important of the pre-Nicaean Christian writers was Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 200), the bishop of Lyons and an ardent opponent of the Gnostic theologian Valentinus (d. c. 165). His major work was Adversus omnes Haereses, commonly known as “Against Heresies.” In arguing against the Gnostic dualism of the Valentinians, Irenaeus explain and defends the Christian belief that Jesus is God. This includes lengthy statements such as this one, which condemns those who believe that Jesus was a mortal only:

“But again, those who assert that He [Jesus] was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son . . . Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man. But that He had, beyond all others, in Himself that pre-eminent birth which is from the Most High Father, and also experienced that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin, the divine Scriptures do in both respects testify of Him: also, that He was a man without comeliness, and liable to suffering; that He sat upon the foal of an ass; that He received for drink, vinegar and gall; that He was despised among the people, and humbled Himself even to death and that He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men;-all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of Him.” (Against Heresies, book 3, ch. 29:1, 2)

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) was a Greek theologian and the author of several works, including “Exhortation to the Greeks.” In that work he teaches that “He [Jesus] alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things” (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]); he also states: “Despised as to appearance but in reality adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine Word, he that is quite evidently true God, he that is put on a level with the Lord of the universe because he was his Son” (ibid., 10:110:1). Similar remarks were made by the great African Church father, Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225). He wrote that “God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God” (The Soul 41:3 [A.D. 210]). In another work he discusses the relationship of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ: “The origins of both his substances display him as man and as God: from the one, born, and from the other, not born” (The Flesh of Christ 5:6-7 [A.D. 210]). The Alexandrian scholar and theologian Origen (c.185-c.254), who authored hundreds of books, stated around 225 that “although [the Son] was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God” (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4). Writing at nearly the same time, the theologian Hippolytus (c.170-c.236) stated, “Only [God's] Word is from himself and is therefore also God, becoming the substance of God” (Refutation of All Heresies 10:33 [A.D. 228]).

The Gnostic Jesus

A serious question ignored by The Da Vinci Code is this: “Why should the writings of the Gnostics be considered be more dependable than the canonical writings, especially when they were written some fifty to three hundred years later than the New Testament writings?” It’s easy for writers such as Brown, who are sympathetic to the Gnostics (or at least to some of their ideas), to criticize the canonical Gospels and call many of the stories and sayings contained in them into question. But without the canonical Gospels there would be no historical Jesus at all, no meaningful narrative of his life, and no decent sense of what he did, how he acted, and how he related to others.

As we pointed out in Part 1 of this critique, the “gnostic gospels” aren’t gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical Gospels, which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life. Contrary to the assertion that “the early Church literally stole Jesus” and shrouded his “human message . . . in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power,” the Church was intent, from the very beginning, of holding on to the humanity and divinity of Christ and of telling the story of his life on earth without washing away the sorrow, pain, joy, and blood that so often accompanied it. “It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . . insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical realities,” writes Philip Jenkins, “rather than the random mythologies reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless never-never land” (Hidden Gospels [Oxford University Press, 2001], 211).

The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a Jewish carpenter, teacher, and prophet dwelling in first century Palestine; instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about the “deficiency of aeons,” “the mother,” “the Arrogant One,” and “the archons”-all terms that only the Gnostic elite would comprehend, hence their gnostic (gnosis = secret knowledge) character. One strain of Gnosticism, known as Docetism, held that Jesus only seemed, or appeared, to be a man (Gr., doceo = “I seem”); adherents believed this because of their dislike for the physical body and the material realm, a common trait among Gnostics. The tendency towards a docetist understanding of Jesus-if not a fully formed docetist Christology-existed in the first century and was addressed in some of the writings of Paul (Colossians and the pastoral Epistles) and John (cf. 1 Jn 4:2; 5:6; 2 Jn 7). In the second century, docetism became a formed theology and made appearance in various Gnostic writings, including the Acts of John, written in the late second century:

“Sometimes when I would lay hold on him, I met with a material and solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial and as if it existed not at all. And if at any time he were bidden by some one of the Pharisees and went to the bidding, we went with him, and there was set before each one of us a loaf by them that had bidden us, and with us he also received one; and his own he would bless and part it among us: and of that little every one was filled, and our own loaves were saved whole, so that they which bade him were amazed. And oftentimes when I walked with him, I desired to see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it” (Acts of John, 93.)

If the material realm was evil, as so many Gnostic groups and movements believed, why would a being such as Christ have anything to with it? And why should we be concerned at all with history and the common life of ordinary people? The Gnostic Jesus is not interested in earthly, historical events. “In the second-century Gnosticism described by the Father,” writes Ronald Nash, “Christ was one of the higher aeons, or intermediary beings, who descended to earth for the purpose of redeeming man. Christ came into the world, not in order to suffer and die, but in order to release the divine spark of light imprisoned in matter. The Gnostic Jesus was not a savior; he was a revealer” (The Gospels and the Greeks [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003. 2nd edition], 209).

Gnosticism was exclusive, elitist, and esoteric, open only to a few. Christianity, on the other hand, is inclusive, open to all, and exoteric, open to all those who acknowledge the beliefs of the Faith handed down by Jesus and enter into a life-giving relationship with him. The Jesus of the canonical Gospels is a breathing, flesh-and-blood person; he gets hungry, weeps, eats and drinks with common people, and dies. The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is a phantom, a spirit who sometimes inhabits a body and sometimes doesn’t, and who talks in ways that very few could understand. Once again, The Da Vinci Code has it backwards.

The novel’s assertions about Jesus and his followers fail to make sense of some daunting questions. If the first followers of Jesus never believed he was divine (and thus never rose again from the dead), why did so many of them willingly die as martyrs? Is it reasonable to believe that thousands of people would face death by lions, the sword, and fire for the sake of a “mortal prophet” who himself remained dead? And why would these followers, who are so clearly confused and distraught when Jesus is taken away to be executed, reemerge a few weeks later and begin proclaiming boldly a belief in their fallen leader? If Jesus had remained in the tomb where he was placed after his death, couldn’t the authorities have shown his body and stopped once and for all the audacious teachings of the suddenly confident Christians?

Put simply, if Jesus were merely mortal and was not considered anything more until the fourth century, then it is impossible to make any sense of Christianity and how it came into existence. Historian Paul Johnson writes that “in order to explain Christianity we have to postulate an extraordinary Christ who did extraordinary things. We have to think back from a collective phenomenon to its agent. Men and women began frantically and frenetically to preach Jesus’ gospel because they believed he had come back to them from the dead and given them the authority and the power to do so.” (Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity [New York: Atheneum, 1976], 27).

An implicit assumption behind the remarks of Teabing and Langdon is that Christians-whether of the first, fourth, or twenty-first centuries-are mindless drones who simply believe what they are told by their leaders. Thus, Constantine deified a man who no one ever thought of as divine and none of the Christians were bothered by it. And so the same people who often suffered and died for their beliefs are now willing to accept a radical, wholesale change in doctrine without so much as a peep? This is not only impossible to accept as logical, it is contrary to history and fact.

Constantine’s Childhood and Conversion

Included in the lengthy lecture given to Sophie by Teabing and Langdon are several remarks about the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (d. 337). Most, if not all, of these statements are taken directly from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Dell Books, 1983. See pages 365-9); in some cases the phrases and order of ideas used are identical.

Many of the claims made about Constantine are either falsehoods or half-truths based on conjecture and material taken out of context. Debate continues today in scholarly circles about Constantine, his exact beliefs, his relationship with the Catholic Church, and his influence upon Christianity. Most historians acknowledge that he was a complex man, a powerful and sometimes cruel emperor (he executed a wife and a son under mysterious circumstances) whose apparent passion for Christianity was not always guided by theological knowledge or godly wisdom. There is also no doubt that the course of Christianity was influenced by Constantine.

Constantine’s passion for religion was based, in part, “on his political intuition that the unity of the empire restored by him could be maintained only with the help of a Church united in belief and government and subordinated to the state” (Hugo Rahner, Church and State in Early Christianity [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992], 41). But it would be incorrect to portray Constantine as simply a calculating leader who merely used the Church for his political ends. Historian Hugo Rahner writes that “the real religious motives behind Constantine’s efforts to achieve effective control of the Church ran much deeper. These can be reduced to one theme. Even before he became involved with the Church, Constantine was obsessed with a superstitious religious conviction that revealed itself in his strange personal cult of the invincible sun, in the worship, influenced by Stoicism and Platonism, of the supreme Divinity, in a misty feeling that ‘Providence’ had bestowed on him a mission as its herald and miraculous instrument” (Rahner, 41-2).

In 313, Constantine and his fellow-emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which recognized Christianity as a legal religion. It stated that “Christians and all others should have the freedom to follow the kind of religion they favored; so that the God who dwells in heaven might be propitious to us and to all under our rule. . . . Moreover, concerning the Christians, we before gave orders with respect to the places set apart for their worship. It is now our pleasure that all who have bought such places should restore them to the Christians, without any demand for payment.” (Edict of Milan, March 313. Par. 3, 7). The Edict, Paul Johnson writes, “was one of the decisive events in world history. Yet the story behind it is complicated and in some ways mysterious” (A History of Christianity, 67).

Historians will likely never know for certain what happened at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, where “a most incredible sign appeared to [Constantine] from heaven” (Eusebius, quoted by Johnson, 67). Having seen the Cross of Christ in the sky, Constantine underwent a conversion. But, as Johnson notes, “there is a conflict of evidence about the exact time, place and details of this vision, and there is some doubt about the magnitude of Constantine’s change of ideas. His father had been pro-Christian. He himself appears to have been a sun-worshipper, one of a number of late-pagan cults which had observances in common with the Christians.” (p. 67). Here Johnson refers in part to the fact that the Christians had been celebrating their weekly liturgy on Sunday, the first day of the week, since the time of Paul and the other apostles. Sunday was also the feast day of the Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) cult, whose worship of the pagan sun god had appeared in the Roman world around the middle of the second century and had been strongly supported by the Emperor Aurelian (270-5 A.D) (Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992], 121). It should also be noted that Rome’s official religion was not sun worship. “Rome’s official religion” states Dr. Margaret Mitchell, Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, “was the cult of Roma-the goddess-and of her deified emperors, and the Capitoline trio Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.”

In The Da Vinci Code, the historian Teabing states that Constantine “was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest.” He claims the official religion of Constantine’s time was “sun worship-the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun-and Constantine was its head priest.” He adds that in 325, Constantine “decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity.” (p. 232)

This is a mixture of truth and error, most of it again drawn from Holy Blood Holy Grail (see pages 365-8), although that book’s account is more accurate than what is found in Brown’s novel. The existing evidence indicates that Constantine did become a sincere and believing Christian and sought to renounce his former worship of pagan gods. Yet it is also evident that he did struggle with reconciling his attachment to the Sol Invictus cult and his belief in the God of the Christians. Part of this was due to his position as emperor, the fact that the majority of the population was pagan, and likely his own inner decision to be a ruler before being a Christian.

It would be a gross oversimplification to think that Constantine could only benefit from becoming a Christian and publicly supporting the Church. “The Christians were a tiny minority of the population,” states A.H.M. Jones in Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, “and they belonged for the most part to the classes of the population who were politically and socially of the least importance, the middle and lower classes of the towns. The senatorial aristocracy of Rome were pagan almost to a man; the higher grades of the civil service were mainly pagan; and above all the army officers and men, were predominantly pagan. The goodwill of the Christians was hardly worth gaining, and for what it was worth it could be gained by merely granting them toleration” (Jones, 73).

From Paganism to Christianity

Constantine’s move from paganism to Christianity was not immediate or always consistent. But over the course of several years he increased his support of the Church and implemented laws against certain pagan practices and activities. Some scholars argue that the chasm between the monotheism of Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus was not as wide as it might initially appear. The cult of Sol Invictus was not polytheistic or even pantheistic, but monotheistic; it was “the worship of the divine spirit by whom the whole universe was ruled, the spirit whose symbol is the sun; a symbol in which this spirit in some way specially manifests itself. . . . The whole cult is penetrated with the idea of an overruling divine monarchy. Moreover, the cult was in harmony with a philosophical religion steadily growing, in the high places of the administration, throughout this same [fourth] century, the cult of Summus Deus-the God who is supreme” (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [New York: Image, 1964], 29-30).

For Constantine-a man without much concern for theological precision-there was probably little, if any, distinction between the pagan and Christian notions of God (even though he surely recognized the differences in worship and morality). “The transition from solar monotheism (the most popular form of contemporary paganism) to Christianity was not difficult,” writes historian Henry Chadwick. “In Old Testament prophecy Christ was entitled ‘the sun of righteousness’[Mal. 4:2]. Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 2000) speaks of Christ driving his chariot across the sky like a Sun-god. . . . Tertullian says that many pagans imagined the Christians worshiped the sun because they met on Sundays and prayed towards the East” (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church [Penguin Books, 1967, 1973], 126).

The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his wishes. Actually, the Emperor had desired to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River, where Jesus had been baptized, but it was not to be. Not long after the Easter of 337 he called together some bishops, removed his purple robe, and put on the white garments of a catechumen, then was baptized by Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia (Jones, 195-200). He died a few days later. It was common for Christians at the time to put off baptism until their deathbed. Serious sins committed after baptism would require severe penance, so some considered it safer to wait until the end of life to be baptized. (This practice was mentioned by Augustine in Confessions (Book 1, ch. 10.17 ). This approach to baptism would have fit Constantine’s case since he undoubtedly understood that many of his actions were considered grave sins by the Church: “It was common at this time (and continued so until about A.D. 400) to postpone baptism to the end of one’s life, especially if one’s duty as an official included torture and execution of criminals. Part of the reason for postponement lay in the seriousness with which the responsibilities were taken” (Chadwick, The Early Church, 127).

Constantine did see Christianity as a unifying force-and he was correct in his assessment that Christianity, not paganism, had the moral core and theological vision to change society for the better. He was not a saint, but he didn’t make choices without any concern for moral goodness, as The Da Vinci Code portrays him. William Durant, hardly friendly to the Church, writes, “His Christianity, beginning as policy, appears to have graduated into sincere conviction. He became the most persistent preacher in his realm, persecuted heretics faithfully, and took God into partnership at every step. Wiser than Diocletian, he gave new life to an aging Empire by associating it with a young religion, a vigorous organization, a fresh morality” (Durant, Christ and Caesar: The Story of Civilization, Part III [New York: Simon and Schuster], 664). Nor was Constantine was not a life long pagan or a cynical manipulator. “[Dan] Brown has turned him into a cartoonish villain,” states Dr. Mitchell. “That Constantine the emperor had “political” motives (The Da Vinci Code, p. 234) is hardly news to anyone! The question is how religion and politics (which cannot be separated in the ancient world) were interrelated in him.”

Pagan Roots or Modern Myths?

According to Teabing, the Church allowed Constantine to take pagan symbols and create a “hybrid religion.” But according to Langdon, the Church never considered such a concession, but sought to eliminate by force all vestiges of pagan worship and belief. So which was it? Brown’s confusion is possibly due to the sloppiness of his research, or to a desire to have the best of both worlds: accuse the Church of damning compromise and of equally damning intolerance.

Neither account does justice to the complex and difficult relationship that Christianity had with the many varieties of paganism that existed in the third and fourth centuries. One thing is clear: the early Christians had proven that they were not willing to compromise with paganism, which is why so many of them were persecuted and killed by the Romans at various times in the first three centuries of the Church’s history. Why would Christians who had suffered just a few years earlier under Diocletian for refusing to renounce their unique beliefs about God, Jesus, and salvation, willingly compromise those same beliefs without so much as a whimper?

Brown is following the popular, but long discredited, argument developed in the late nineteenth-century by skeptics attempting to undermine the historical claims of Christianity. As Ronald Nash explains, “During a period of time running roughly from about 1890 to 1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan mystery religions, or other movements in the Hellenistic world.” A number of scholarly books and papers were written rebutting those claims and today, Nash notes, “most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue” (Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003. 2nd edition], 1).

Secondly, the depiction of a “hybrid religion” that mixed together Christian and pagan elements is a gross misrepresentation of how Christians took certain symbols and feast days and Christianized them-cleansing them of those elements not compatible with their doctrines and practices, but keeping what could be used for good ends. It misrepresents the actual sources for Christian beliefs such as the Virgin Birth, the deity of Christ, and the Passion and Resurrection. These beliefs are rooted in historical claims, not mythological stories, and most-if not all-predate those pagan ideas that appear, at least superficially, to have similar features.

The Da Vinci Code drags out several of the standard lines-many taken nearly verbatim from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (see pages 367-8)-about how everything in Christianity was taken from pagan sources. Langdon makes mention of “transmogrification” and insists that “the vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable.” He states:

Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual-the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of ‘God-eating’-were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.” (p. 232)

Teabing adds, “Nothing in Christianity is original” and claims that the ancient pre-Christian god Mithras was the inspiration for many of the details surrounding Jesus’ person and life: the titles “Son of God” and “the Light of the World,” his birth on December 25, his death, his burial in a rocky tomb, and his resurrection three days later. “By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus,” the historian remarks, “The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans.” (p. 232).

There are a number of problems with these statements. Not only did the Christians not borrow ideology or theology, there is little or no evidence that most pagan mystery religions such as Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris or the cult of Mithras existed in the forms described by The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail prior to the mid-first century. This is a significant point, for much of the existing evidence indicates that the third and fourth-century beliefs and practices of certain pagan mystery religions are read back into the first-century beliefs of Christians-without support for such a presumptive act. Ronald Nash, whose book The Gospel and the Greeks refutes these claims in detail, explains that the methods used to arrive at the pagan-Christian connection are sloppy at best and severely biased at worst:

“It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers use this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship and should not be allowed to stand without challenge. Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century.” (Ronald Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994).

The answer to that latter question is simply, “None.” In fact, there is strong evidence that many of the pagan mystery religions may have taken elements of Christian belief in the second and third centuries to use as their own, especially as the strength and appeal of Christianity continued to grow. “It must not be uncritically assumed,” writes early Church historian Bruce Metzger, “that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction” (Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11). The fact that many authors won't even consider that there existed a two-way street indicates that they are less interested in truth than they are in attacking Christianity by any means possible.

A host of scholars, including Nash, E.O. James, Bruce Metzger, Günter Wagner (Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries), and Hugo Rahner (Greek Myths and Christian Mystery), point out in detail that the pagan mystery religions were quite different from Christianity in significant ways. Those religions were based on an annual vegetation cycle, they stressed esoteric (hidden) knowledge, they emphasized emotional ecstasy over doctrine and dogma, and their central goal was mystical experience. They were also very syncretistic, taking elements from other pagan movements and shedding beliefs with little regard for any established teaching or belief system-completely contrary to the apostolic tradition so intensely guarded by Christians (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 105-20). Perhaps most importantly, there is a sharp contrast between the mythological character of pagan mystery religions and the historical character of the Gospels and the New Testament writings. "In the nature of the case a most profound difference between Christianity and the Mysteries was involved in the historical basis of the former and the mythological character of the latter," writes Metzger in his classic study Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. "Unlike the deities of the Mysteries, who were nebulous figures of an imaginary past, the Divine Being whom the Christian worshipped as Lord was known as a real Person on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New Testament were written. From the earliest times the Christian creed included the affirmation that Jesus 'was crucified under Pontius Pilate.' On the other hand, Plutarch thinks it necessary to warn the priestess Clea against believing that 'any of these tales [concerning Isis and Osiris] actually happened in the manner in which they are related.’” (Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 13).

With this mind, here is a brief examination of some of the pagan religions that The Da Vinci Code claims Constantine and the Church borrowed or stole key beliefs from in the fourth century.

Walking The Mithraic Maze

The pagan religion of Mithraism was one of the most important of the ancient mystery religions. Although there has been much scholarly dispute over the exact origins of the Mithraic religion, it is generally agreed that Mithra was originally a Persian god who was depicted as a bucolic deity who watched over cattle. Mithraism was not introduced to the West and the Mediterranean world until the first century at the earliest, where it “emerged as one of the most striking religious syntheses in antiquity: in the first four centuries of the Christian era it swept across the Roman world, becoming the favoured religion of the Roman legions and several Roman emperors” (Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy [Yale University Press, 2000], 75). This second form, contemporaneous with Christianity, was for males only-it has “often been described as a type of Roman Freemasonry” (Stoyanov, 75). In the early third century, this form would result in Mithras being elevated to the status Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun). While scholars distinguish between the earlier Iranian Mithraism and the later Roman Mithraism, those straining to connect Mithras to Jesus usually do not.

This failure (purposeful or not) to distinguish between the two often results in later beliefs being read back into the earlier, pre-Christian form of Mithraism. But the Mithraic beliefs and practices that Christianity is accused of “stealing” did not come into vogue until the end of the first century at the earliest, far too late to shape the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus. Although there are numerous theories about how Mithraism moved from Persia to Rome and how it changed along the way, the physical evidence indicates that “the flowering of [Roman] Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions.” (Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?”). David Ulansey, author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University Press, 1991), substantiates Nash’s assessment: “The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century” (“The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras”).

Mithraism was highly syncretistic, absorbing and borrowing an eclectic range of beliefs and religious ideas. By the time it became popular in the Roman Empire it had changed from a public religion for the many to a mystery religion meant for a few elite. “Ultimately,” Stoyanov writes, “the novel and composite form of Mithra-worship that developed and became widely diffused in the Roman world was virtually a new mystery religion, in which the old Irano-Babylonian core seems to have been refashioned and recast into a Graeco-Roman mould tinged with astrological lore and Platonic speculation” (Stoyanov, 77-8).

Many serious differences exist between the myth of Mithras and the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. In some accounts, Mithras is “born” by “being forced out of a rock as if by some hidden magic power. He is shown naked save for the Phrygian cap, holding dagger and torch in his uplifted hands” (Abstracted from Mithras, the Secret God, M.J. Vermaseren [London, 1963]). In the Persian legends, he was born of a virgin mother, Anahita (once worshipped as a fertility goddess), who swam in Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan where Zoroaster/ Zarathustra had left sperm four hundred years earlier. Christians believe Jesus is born of a virgin Jewish girl, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The central feat of Mithras’ life on earth was the capturing and killing of a stolen bull at the command of the god Apollo, symbolizing the annual spring renewal of life. While Mithras was subduing the bull, other animals joined in the fray. After Mithras finished his appointed task, he and Apollo quarreled, but eventually reconciled and feasted together (Peter Clark, Zoroastrianism, An Introduction to an Ancient Faith, 157-158). The central accomplishments of Jesus’ life were his death and resurrection, which Christians believe were historical events that took place in first century Palestine-not in a nebulous mythic netherworld. Other key differences include the Gnostic-like dualism of the Mithraic belief system and a belief that the human soul has fallen from its heavenly home and must now ascend, after a time of testing here on earth, back to heaven.

Mithraism did not originally have a concept of a god who died and was then resurrected (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 136-7; E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 246-9). Despite the claims made in The Da Vinci Code, there is no ancient account of Mithras dying, being buried “in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days” (The Da Vinci Code, 232). That assertion apparently is taken (either directly or from a second-generation source) from Kersey Graves’ The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), a work of pseudo-scholarship and anti-Christian polemics that is so shoddy that even atheists and agnostics disavow it. Graves writes that several pagan deities, including ” ‘Mithra the Mediator’ of Persia did, according to their respective histories, rise from the dead after three days’ burial” (chapter 19). However, Graves provides no documentation (his common practice). E.O. James, who was professor of history and philosophy of religion at the University of London, references an ancient work by Pseudo-Dionysus when he notes that “in contrast to the other Graeco-Oriental Mystery divinities, the Persian saviour-god [Mithras] did not himself pass through death to life, though by his sacrificial act [killing a bull] he was a life-giver” (E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 247). James later observes that Mithraism-which was a strong adversary of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries-was overcome by Christianity, not by being absorbed, “but because the Church was able to meet its adversary on the sure ground of historical fact.” Christianity went far beyond “the ancient seasonal drama with its polytheistic background” and offered initiates a “renewal of spiritual life and regeneration of outlook . . . to a degree unknown and unattainable in any rival system. Therefore, Christianity ultimately prevailed because it provided a different gift of life from that bestowed in the pagan cults.” (248-9).

The story of the Hindu deity Krishna’s birth and the presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh also apparently comes from Graves and The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors. In the seventh chapter of that work, Graves writes:

“Other Saviors at birth, we are told, were visited by both angels and shepherds, also ‘wise men,’ at least great men. Chrishna, the eighth avatar of India (1200 B.C.) (so it is related by the ‘inspired penman’ of their pagan theocracy) was visited by angels, shepherds and prophets (avatars). ‘Immediately after his birth he was visited by a chorus of devatas (angels), and surrounded by shepherds, all of whom were impressed with the conviction of his future greatness.’ We are informed further that ‘gold, frankincense and myrrh’ were presented to him as offerings.” (chapter 7)

Graves conveniently provides no sources or citations, which is one of many reasons his book has been long discredited by scholars working in the field of comparative religion. But that doesn’t keep this popular idea from appearing on numerous websites-none providing sources or citations (and rarely mentioning Graves’ book). There’s good reason for this absence of evidence. The Bhagavad-Gita (first century A.D.) doesn’t mention Krishna’s childhood, and the stories of Krishna’s childhood recorded in the Harivamsa Purana (c. 300 A.D.) and the Bhagavata Purana (c. 800-900 A.D.) don’t mention the gifts at all. Even if they did, those works were written well after the birth of Christ, making such a claim absurd.

The halo, or nimbus, used in Christian art was used by a number of pre-Christian cultures, including Greek and Roman, to distinguish figures who were gods or demigods (see Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [Oxford University Press, Third edition, 1997], 732]. Roman emperors, for example, were depicted on coins with radiant heads. This is a good example of Christians gradually appropriating a cultural element and using it in a way totally in keeping with their theology and practice. For Christians to take over this attribute is about as scandalous as later artists depicting Jesus in philosopher’s robes or in the clothing of a later historical age. The use of a halo would have been a natural choice for Christian art since both Moses and Jesus are described in the Bible as having shining faces after significant events. Moses face radiated light after he came down from Mount Sinai and the presence of God (Ex 34:29-35) and at the Transfiguration, Jesus’ “face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light” (Matt 17:2). The use of halos in Christian iconography is simply a case of Christians recognizing the usefulness of an artistic motif and appropriating it for their specific needs.

Langdon claims, “Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus.” It’s a curious statement since any sensible person recognizes that the image of a nursing mother is hardly unique to one religion or culture. Christian artists undoubtedly copied the poses of figure depicted in pagan art, including mothers (or goddesses) nursing children. One of the earliest renderings of Mary is a late second-century/early third-century fresco found on a wall of the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome (Andre Grabar, La Premier Art Chretien [Gallimard Editions, 1996], p. 99. Figure 95.], mentioned by Pope John Paul II in a general audience on May 23, 1990. The Madonna and Child have been depicted in numerous ways throughout history, often reflecting the culture of the respective painters and sculptors (see Herbert Haag, Caroline Ebertshauser, Joe H. Kirchberger, Dorothee Solle, Peter Heinegg, Mary: Art, Culture, and Religion Through the Ages [Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 1998]).

As Nash and others point out, the real issue is not of similarity, but of dissimilarity. The Egyptian goddess Isis was part of a polytheistic fertility cult. After her husband Osiris was assassinated and dismembered, Isis searches and finds all the parts of his body and then restores him-not to life on earth, but to life in the underworld, as a “dead god” (E.O. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994], 241ff). Originally, Isis was one of several goddesses (e.g., Nut, Neith, etc.) and Horus, her son, was one of the eight gods “of the Ennead” (James, Cult of the Mother-Goddess,, 57). Worship of Isis was established in Greece around the fourth century B.C., where she remained a goddess of fertility, and became a popular deity whose temples were established in numerous cities. In this Hellenistic form, the Isis cult was a pagan mystery religion in which adherents underwent esoteric, occult rites [Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 126-8. For more on Isis, see "Isis as Saviour Goddess" by C.J. Bleeker, S.G.F. Brandon, ed., The Savior God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation [Manchester University Press, 1963], 1-16).

Langdon claims that “the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of ‘God-eating’-were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.” First, it should again be noted that “mystery religions,” strictly speaking, did not come into existence until the end of the first century at the earliest, making it impossible for the first Christians to take, borrow, or steal much of anything from them. The word “miter,” or “mitre,” is derived from mitra, a Greek word meaning “turban” or “headband.” It is the liturgical head-dress and part of the insignia of the bishop (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1096). It didn’t appear in the West until the middle of the tenth century and was not used by bishops in the East until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In the East it seems to have been derived the crowns worn by Byzantine Emperors; in the West is appears to have been a variation of unofficial hat, the camelaucum, worn by the Pope in processions. In both cases, the mitre has no connections with pagan mystery religions.

Altars are a common element in most religions and there are over three hundred references to altars in the Old Testament. Thus, the first Christians, who were all Jewish, would hardly be new to the concept of an altar, especially when the altar in the Temple was a focal point of the Jewish religion. Not surprisingly, there are several references to altars in the New Testament, including references in the Gospels to the altar in the Temple (Matt 5:23-24; 23:18-20; Lk 1:11) and references in The Apocalypse to the heavenly altar in the throne room of God (Rev. 6:9; 8:3-5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:8; 16:7). There is also this passage in the epistle to the Hebrews: “We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (Heb 13:10). It is likely a reference to the Eucharistic table of the Christians and a similar use of language was common among the early Church Fathers. For example, Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 110), writing to the church at Philadelphia, states, “Take care, then, to partake of one Eucharist; for, one is the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup to unite us with His Blood, and one altar, just as there is one bishop assisted by the presbytery and the deacons, my fellow servants. Thus you will conform in all your actions to the will of God” (Letter to the Philadelphians, par. 4). Other references to a Christian altar appear in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian.

A doxology is simply a hymn or ascription of praise and glory (doxa = “glory”; logos = “word”). Almost all religions have statements about the glory and power of a deity, reflecting the natural human desire to recognize what is sacred and Other. Traditionally, in historic Christianity, there are three types of doxology: the Great Doxology, the Less Doxology, and the Metrical Forms. Langdon is probably referring to the Great Doxology, which begins with these statements of praise:

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
We praise You; we bless You; we worship You; we glorify You; we thank You, for Your great glory.
O Lord King, God in Heaven, the Father Almighty. O Lord, Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, Who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us; You, Who takes away the sins of the world;
Receive our prayers, You, Who sits at the right hand of the Father, and have mercy on us .
For You alone are Holy; You alone are the Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God, the Father. Amen.

All of this language is taken directly from passages in the New Testament; all of it reflects the unique beliefs of the Christians. Such language did not, of course, come from pagans, who were mostly polytheistic and did not believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Langdon’s reference to “God-eating” is likely an appeal to Mithraism, for it was the only mystery religion that celebrated anything resembling Holy Communion (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 148-9); many of the mystery religions, such as the Orphic cult, had no sacred meal at all. In his work on comparative religion, E.O. James writes that the Christian’s “sacramental outlook differed from that of the pagan Mysteries in several important respects. So far as we know, initiates in those cults were neither baptized into the name of the saviour-god or goddess, nor were they the recipients of a pneumatic gift as a result of lustration.” Jones goes on to note that the Christian Eucharist was strongly connected to a life of holiness and purity, while “normally in a Mystery cult initiation was an end itself irrespective of any ethical considerations.” (Jones, Comparative Religion, 239. See Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 14).

In the myth of Mithras, the god does not even die, but is a savior-god by virtue of killing a bull. Initiates into the Mithraic cult would dramatize this mythical event and the blood of a slain bull would be ceremoniously poured over initiates. At the higher stages of the cult members participated in a sacred meal of bread and water (or wine, but that detail is still a matter of debate); there is no indication that those participating believed they were engaging in “God-eating.” Little is known of that meal, so a fuller comparison with Christian communion is difficult to make.

Regardless, the Jewish character and context of the Passover Meal, the Last Supper, and the Christian Eucharist are the essential elements that shape the Christian sacrament and ritual-not pagan rites. “[O]n almost any view of this matter,” Metzger writes, “the Jewishness of the setting, character, and piety expressed in the rite is overwhelmingly pervasive in all the accounts of the origin of the Supper” (p. 16). The Jewish character is explored by Jean Danielou in his important study, The Bible and the Liturgy (University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), where he writes:

“[T]he Eucharist is the fulfillment of the meal of Jewish worship; It signifies, then, as did these [Jewish communal] meals, participation in the blessings of the Covenant. . . . In fact, the meal in the course of which Christ instituted the Eucharist seems to have been a ritual meal, a chaboura, such as was customarily celebrated by the Jewish communities. . . It was, then, in this framework of a sacred Jewish meal that Christ instituted the meal of the New Covenant, as it as in the framework of the Jewish commemoration of the Pasch that He died on the Cross.” (p. 160; see 142-190).

Teabing states, “Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans.” (The Da Vinci Code, 232). This is false. Equally false is Langdon’s declaration that originally Christians worshipped on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but changed to Sunday under Constantine’s influence so that it would “coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun” (p. 232-3).

The implication here is that for nearly three hundred years, until the time of Constantine, the Christians worshipped on Saturday. But the Christians of the New Testament era were already worshipping on Sunday, or the “day of the Lord,” as it is described in Revelation 1:10. This was to honor the day that Jesus rose from the dead; having been crucified on a Friday, his resurrection occurred on the third day (cf. Mk 16:2)-the day after Sabbath, or Sunday (Sabbath was the only day of the week named by Jews; the other day were simply numbered: “first day,” “second day,” etc.). This practice is referred to in Acts 20:7: “And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to depart the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.” The Apostle Paul mentions in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 16:2) that tithes and offering should be set aside on the first day of the week, another indication that the early Christians viewed the day after the Jewish Sabbath as the most important day of the week.

There are numerous references by the early Church Fathers to Christians worshipping on “the day of the Lord” (or Dies Dominica, as it came to be known in the West). Ignatius of Antioch writes around 110 , “How, then, shall we be able to live apart from Him, seeing that the prophets were His disciples in the Spirit and expected Him as their Master, and that many who were brought up in the old order have come to the newness of hope? They no longer observe the Jewish Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord’s day, on which, through Him and through His death, our life arose” (Epistle to the Magnesians, ch. 9). The Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably written before the end of the first century, states, “This is why we also observe the eighth day with rejoicing, on which Jesus also rose from the dead, and having shown himself ascended to heaven” (Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15). There are many references to the “eighth day” in the writings of the Church Fathers, as Danielou details in The Bible and the Liturgy (see chapter 15, “The Lord’s Day,” [242-261] and chapter 16, “The Eighth Day” [262-286]). Danielou also flatly states that “the Lord’s Day is a purely Christian institution; its origin is to be found solely in the fact of the Resurrection of Christ on the day after the Sabbath” (p. 242). Another early, non-canonical reference to the Lord’s Day is found in The Didache: “And on the Lord’s Day, after you have come together, break bread and offer the Eucharist, having first confessed your offences, so that your sacrifice may be pure” (14.1). Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the second century, makes the first known reference by a Christian author to “Sunday”; all prior references had been to the day of the Lord.

Brown apparently thinks that since the observance of Sunday as a day of rest wasn’t sanctioned by civil authorities until the fourth century than it must not been observed prior to that time. But over one hundred years earlier, around 200, Tertullian writes about Sunday as a day of rest: “We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil” (De orat., xxiii; cf. Ad nation., I, xiii; Apolog., xvi). The Council of Elvira, a local Spanish council that convened around 303, decreed that Sunday was to be a special day of worship and rest, stating, “If anyone in the city neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him be excommunicated for a short time so that he may be corrected” (Canon xxi). Two decades later, in 321., Constantine officially declared Sunday a day of rest in the Roman Empire, “commanding abstention from work, including legal business, for townspeople, though permitting farm labour” (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1558). Since Christians considered Jesus to be the “Sun of Righteousness” (Mal 4:2) spoken of in the Old Testament and “the light of the world” (Jn 812; 9:5) in the New Testament, they thought it fitting that the true God would supercede the old Roman Sun-god. St Jerome (c. 345-420) wrote, “The Lord’s day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called the Lord’s day because on it the Lord rose victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the ‘day of the sun,’ we willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays” [St. Jerome, Pasch.: CCL 78, 550. Quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1166].

Did Christians take December 25, the “birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus,” a use it for their celebration of the birth of Jesus? Many Christians have essentially agreed with this statement and have argued that the Christians appropriated this important pagan holy day as a way of showing the superiority of the true God-man, Jesus. Recently, however, some scholars have argued that December 25 was not taken from pagans by Christians, but vice-versa.

In an article in Touchstone magazine titled “Calculating Christmas” (Touchstone, December 2003), William J. Tighe, the Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, explains, “The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many ‘pagan-izations’ of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many ‘degenerations’ that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.”

Tighe points out that none of the Roman cults had major celebrations on December 25. It was the Emperor Aurelian (270-5 A.D.) who “appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual ‘rebirth’ of the sun. . . . . In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for ‘rebirth,’ or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule.”

Once Christianity had separated from Judaism (especially after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D.) and emerged as a unique religion, it sought to calculate the exact day of Jesus’ death. There was much confusion due to different calendars; after much debate and difficulty, the Eastern Christians chose April 6 and the Western Christians chose March 25 as the date of Jesus’ crucifixion. At this point the ancient and obscure notion of an “integral age” comes into play; this was the belief that the Old Testament prophets died either on the same date of their birth or conception. Most Christians accepted April 6 or March 25 as the date of Jesus’ conception, thus arriving at January 6 (in the East) and December 25 (in the West) as the date of his birth. Although these dates would not be made “official” until the late fourth century, they were held long before both Aurelian and Constantine. Thus, Tighe states, “the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the ‘Sun of Salvation’ or the ‘Sun of Justice.’”

There’s no doubt that early Christians, who lived in a pagan culture, were influenced by paganism and sometimes used the same terms and motifs as their pagan neighbors in describing their beliefs. But the success of the Christian faith was impossible for pagans to ignore, and some of them sought to borrow Christian ideas, or at least terminology, in their rituals and practices. Dr. Margaret Mitchell writes:

“It is absolutely true that “The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable” (p.232). But the conclusion drawn from that -”Nothing in Christianity is original”- is not, and, from the point of view of the history of religions, an old, long-disqualified claim. Even new arrangements of existing materials are “original”! (and the Christian movements represent more than just that). Current scholarship recognizes that the relationship between the Christian cult and the world around it, and the ways in which it was culturally embedded in that world – sometimes unreflectively, sometimes reflexively, sometimes in deliberate accommodation, sometimes in deliberate cooptation – are far more complicated than noted here. Conspiracy theories sell books, but they do not explain complex human phenomena which are both local and more wide-spread – and hardly could have been instituted as a wide-spread, Stalinesque program of cultural totalitarianism as Brown has conjured up for Constantine.” (Dr. Mitchell, LakeMagazine.com)

What Really Happened at the Council of Nicaea?

Brown makes several misleading statements about the Council of Nicaea, including the assertion (made by the historian Teabing, who apparently never studied ancient or Church history) that it was where Jesus was first declared divine. A full history and background to the Council of Nicaea, which convened in 325, is impossible here; there are a number of popular and scholarly works that provide that information (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [Image, 1964]; A.H.M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe [University of Toronto Press, 1978]). But a brief overview of the basic facts will show how egregious are the claims made in The Da Vinci Code.

The Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical of the Church, made possible by the patronage of Constantine and his desire to end the disunity and controversy being caused by the Arian heresy. Arius (b. c. 260-80; d. 336) was a priest from Alexandria who was noted for his preaching and ascetic lifestyle. Around 319 or so he began to gain attention for his teaching that Jesus was not fully divine, but was lesser than the Father. Arius held that the Son had not existed for all of eternity past, but was a created being begotten by the Father as an instrument of, first, creation and the, later, salvation. Put another way, Arius believed that Jesus, the Son of God, was not God by nature, but instead was a lesser god.

This belief was condemned by the bishop Alexander at a local synod held in Alexandria around 320, with ninety-eight of a hundred bishops voting against Arius’s views. But the priest’s teachings attracted interest and spread quickly, partially due to Arius’s clever use of catchy songs proclaiming his doctrinal beliefs and also due to the patronage of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea and one of the greatest scholars of his time. Arius’s beliefs were proving so popular and disruptive that Constantine decided to bring together the bishops and put an end to the controversy; his interest was most likely in unity over theological clarity, but he realized the former would defend in large part upon the latter.

On May 20, 325, a number of bishops, the vast majority of them from the East, convened at Nicaea (modern day Iznik, north of Constantinople); the council lasted until July 25 of the same year. The number of bishops in attendance has traditionally been listed as 318, likely a symbolic number (cf., Gen. 14:14); the actual number was probably around 220 to 250 (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1144). Due to poor health, the Pope did not attend, but sent two deacons to represent him. “The great bulk of the Council came from the Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire,” writes A.H.M. Jones, “The bulk of the gathering were simple pastors, who would naturally resent any innovation on the faith which they had learned and would have little sympathy with the intellectual paradoxes of Arius. Many could boast of the proud title of confessor, having endured imprisonment, torture, and penal servitude for the sake of their faith” ( Jones, 131).

This rugged and tried character of most of the bishops is completely contrary to The Da Vinci Code’s implication that the bishops meekly accepted whatever the Emperor told them. Many of the bishops at Nicaea were veterans of the persecution of Diocletian. Is it reasonable to think that they would quietly allow Constantine to change the faith for which they had already suffered and were willing to die? Constantine, while actively involved in the Council, knew that his place was not to be a theologian or scholar, but to help facilitate as structured and productive gathering as possible. After all, one of the strengths of Roman culture was organization; the Greeks, on the other hand, were more attuned to theological nuance and detail.

In The Da Vinci Code, Teabing states that at the Council of Nicaea Jesus was established as “the Son of God” (p. 233). This is false; it is also taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which states, “Most important of all, the Council of Nicaea decided, by vote, that Jesus was a god, not a mortal prophet” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail,, 368. The irony is that Arius believed that Jesus was a god, but not fully God). As already noted, the Gospels alone refer to Jesus as the “Son of God” over forty times and this description is used often by the early Church fathers. Thus, the Council of Nicaea actually ratified, even more clearly and definitively, the consistent belief of the Church. As we have already seen, the belief in Jesus’ divinity and Godhead goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. The Council of Nicaea focused on clarifying the unique relationship between the Father and the Son and condemning those ideas of Arius that would imply, or assert outright, that the Son was lesser than the Father, was a created being, and was a lesser god. The Catechism of the Catholic Church ably summarizes the basic issue: “The first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is ‘begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father’, and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God ‘came to be from things that were not’ and that he was ‘from another substance’ than that of the Father” (CCC 465).

As for the “relatively close vote,” it is a figment of Teabing and Brown’s imaginations. Only two bishops out of some 250 voted in favor of Arius’s position-over 99% of the bishops upheld the belief that the Son was equal with the Father and of the same substance. Even Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which apparently provided much of Brown’s material for his comments on this topic, gets it right, acknowledging in a terse footnote: “218 for, 2 against” (Holy Blood, Holy Grail,, 473. It also adds, “The Son was then pronounced identical with the Father.” Not quite. He was pronounced “one in substance”; he is a separate Person). Once again, Brown’s embellished version of the facts is not only incorrect, it is completely contrary to the truth.

Teabing also states that at the Council there were “many aspects of Christianity” that were “debated and voted” upon. The wording implies that these “aspects” were somehow new and unique; they are listed as “the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus.” [p. 233; see Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 368]. The twenty canons-or laws-of the Council were actually rather mundane and were, “in great part, a repetition of measures enacted eleven years earlier in the Latin council held at Arles, in Gaul” (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [New York: Image Books, 1964], 36]. Five of the canons addressed the sensitive subject of those Christians who had fallen away from the Church during the recent persecutions, providing guidelines for penance, readmission to Holy Communion, and other directives. Two other canons dealt with the readmission of heretical schismatics: the Novatians and the followers of Pal of Samosata, the former bishop of Anitoch who had been deposed in 268 for criminal actions and teaching heresy. Some ten canons addressed issues having to do with the clergy: “No one is to be ordained who has had himself castrated, nor anyone only recently admitted to the faith. . . . No clerics-bishops, priests, or deacons-are to move from one diocese to another. Clerics are forbidden to take interest for money loans, and for this offence they must be deposed” (Hughes, The Church in Crisis, 38). Other canons involved matters of jurisdiction pertaining to the three most famous sees of the ancient Church: Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

The issue of Easter and its dating was quite complicated-it was addressed at the Council because of the Emperor’s desire for unity in matters of religious observance. At the time, churches in different regions celebrated Easter on different days; the confusion was partially the result of the lunar calendar of Jews and of the antagonism of some Christians towards the Jews-they refused to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover [for more detailed history, see the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the topic). The Council sought to enforce a uniform date, but the results were mixed and the controversy would continue on for many centuries. In this instance, and in the instances of the canons, there were no issues of dogma addressed; all were matters of discipline, made necessary by the real life issues and concrete pastoral problems faced by the Church in the midst of confusion, rapidly changing conditions, and cultural shifts.

Conclusion:

As we have researched and written these critiques, we are continually amazed by the audacity of Brown's incorrect and often completely false claims about nearly every historical event and figure he writes about. It is not an exaggeration to say that finding a correct remark about any of these topics is surprising-and quite rare. Although some might wonder why anybody would be concerned by a work of fiction, Brown's insistence that his novel is based on meticulous research and historical fact, coupled with the overwhelming praise and positive response The Da Vinci Code has received, makes such a rebuttal necessary. This is especially the case since so many people, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, are confused by the novel's representation of Church history and many admit that their faith has been shaken by reading the best-seller.

The next edition of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" will examine The Da Vinci Code's claims about Mary Magdalen, the Templar Knights, the Priory of Sion, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Comments or questions about this critique can be sent to Envoy magazine editor, Carl Olson.

Dismantling The Da Vinci Code
By Sandra Miesel

"The Grail," Langdon said, "is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be "searching for the chalice" were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine." (The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)

The Holy Grail is a favorite metaphor for a desirable but difficult-to-attain goal, from the map of the human genome to Lord Stanley's Cup. While the original Grail-the cup Jesus allegedly used at the Last Supper-normally inhabits the pages of Arthurian romance, Dan Brown's recent mega-best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, rips it away to the realm of esoteric history.

But his book is more than just the story of a quest for the Grail-he wholly reinterprets the Grail legend. In doing so, Brown inverts the insight that a woman's body is symbolically a container and makes a container symbolically a woman's body. And that container has a name every Christian will recognize, for Brown claims that the Holy Grail was actually Mary Magdalene. She was the vessel that held the blood of Jesus Christ in her womb while bearing his children.

Over the centuries, the Grail-keepers have been guarding the true (and continuing) bloodline of Christ and the relics of the Magdalen, not a material vessel. Therefore Brown claims that "the quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene," a conclusion that would surely have surprised Sir Galahad and the other Grail knights who thought they were searching for the Chalice of the Last Supper.

The Da Vinci Code opens with the grisly murder of the Louvre's curator inside the museum. The crime enmeshes hero Robert Langdon, a tweedy professor of symbolism from Harvard, and the victim's granddaughter, burgundy-haired cryptologist Sophie Nevue. Together with crippled millionaire historian Leigh Teabing, they flee Paris for London one step ahead of the police and a mad albino Opus Dei "monk" named Silas who will stop at nothing to prevent them from finding the "Grail."

But despite the frenetic pacing, at no point is action allowed to interfere with a good lecture. Before the story comes full circle back to the Louvre, readers face a barrage of codes, puzzles, mysteries, and conspiracies.

With his twice-stated principle, "Everybody loves a conspiracy," Brown is reminiscent of the famous author who crafted her product by studying the features of ten earlier best-sellers. It would be too easy to criticize him for characters thin as plastic wrap, undistinguished prose, and improbable action. But Brown isn't so much writing badly as writing in a particular way best calculated to attract a female audience. (Women, after all, buy most of the nation's books.) He has married a thriller plot to a romance-novel technique. Notice how each character is an extreme type…effortlessly brilliant, smarmy, sinister, or psychotic as needed, moving against luxurious but curiously flat backdrops. Avoiding gore and bedroom gymnastics, he shows only one brief kiss and a sexual ritual performed by a married couple. The risqué allusions are fleeting although the text lingers over some bloody Opus Dei mortifications. In short, Brown has fabricated a novel perfect for a ladies' book club.

Brown's lack of seriousness shows in the games he plays with his character names-Robert Langdon, "bright fame long don" (distinguished and virile); Sophie Nevue, "wisdom New Eve"; the irascible taurine detective Bezu Fache, "zebu anger." The servant who leads the police to them is Legaludec, "legal duce." The murdered curator takes his surname, Saunière, from a real Catholic priest whose occult antics sparked interest in the Grail secret. As an inside joke, Brown even writes in his real-life editor (Faukman is Kaufman).

While his extensive use of fictional formulas may be the secret to Brown's stardom, his anti-Christian message can't have hurt him in publishing circles: The Da Vinci Code debuted atop the New York Times best-seller list. By manipulating his audience through the conventions of romance-writing, Brown invites readers to identify with his smart, glamorous characters who've seen through the impostures of the clerics who hide the "truth" about Jesus and his wife. Blasphemy is delivered in a soft voice with a knowing chuckle: "[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrication.”

But even Brown has his limits. To dodge charges of outright bigotry, he includes a climactic twist in the story that absolves the Church of assassination. And although he presents Christianity as a false root and branch, he’s willing to tolerate it for its charitable works.

(Of course, Catholic Christianity will become even more tolerable once the new liberal pope elected in Brown’s previous Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, abandons outmoded teachings. “Third-century laws cannot be applied to the modern followers of Christ,” says one of the book’s progressive cardinals.)

Where Is He Getting All of This?

Brown actually cites his principal sources within the text of his novel. One is a specimen of academic feminist scholarship: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. The others are popular esoteric histories: The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, both by Margaret Starbird. (Starbird, a self-identified Catholic, has her books published by Matthew Fox’s outfit, Bear & Co.) Another influence, at least at second remove, is The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.

The use of such unreliable sources belies Brown’s pretensions to intellectuality. But the act has apparently fooled at least some of his readers-the New York Daily News book reviewer trumpeted, “His research is impeccable.”

But despite Brown’s scholarly airs, a writer who thinks the Merovingians founded Paris and forgets that the popes once lived in Avignon is hardly a model researcher. And for him to state that the Church burned five million women as witches shows a willful-and malicious-ignorance of the historical record. The latest figures for deaths during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women, and not all were burned. Brown’s claim that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were singled out by witch-hunters is not only false, it betrays his goddess-friendly sources.

A Multitude of Errors

So error-laden is The Da Vinci Code that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth. A few examples of his “impeccable” research: He claims that the motions of the planet Venus trace a pentacle (the so-called Ishtar pentagram) symbolizing the goddess. But it isn’t a perfect figure and has nothing to do with the length of the Olympiad. The ancient Olympic games were celebrated in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Aphrodite, and occurred every four years.

Brown’s contention that the five linked rings of the modern Olympic Games are a secret tribute to the goddess is also wrong-each set of games was supposed to add a ring to the design but the organizers stopped at five. And his efforts to read goddess propaganda into art, literature, and even Disney cartoons are simply ridiculous.

No datum is too dubious for inclusion, and reality falls quickly by the wayside. For instance, the Opus Dei bishop encourages his albino assassin by telling him that Noah was also an albino (a notion drawn from the non-canonical 1 Enoch 106:2). Yet albinism somehow fails to interfere with the man’s eyesight as it physiologically would.

But a far more important example is Brown’s treatment of Gothic architecture as a style full of goddess-worshipping symbols and coded messages to confound the uninitiated. Building on Barbara Walker’s claim that “like a pagan temple, the Gothic cathedral represented the body of the Goddess,” The Templar Revelation asserts: “Sexual symbolism is found in the great Gothic cathedrals which were masterminded by the Knights Templar…both of which represent intimate female anatomy: the arch, which draws the worshipper into the body of Mother Church, evokes the vulva.” In The Da Vinci Code, these sentiments are transformed into a character’s description of “a cathedral’s long hollow nave as a secret tribute to a woman’s womb…complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway.”

These remarks cannot be brushed aside as opinions of the villain; Langdon, the book’s hero, refers to his own lectures about goddess-symbolism at Chartres.

These bizarre interpretations betray no acquaintance with the actual development or construction of Gothic architecture, and correcting the countless errors becomes a tiresome exercise: The Templars had nothing to do with the cathedrals of their time, which were commissioned by bishops and their canons throughout Europe. They were unlettered men with no arcane knowledge of “sacred geometry” passed down from the pyramid builders. They did not wield tools themselves on their own projects, nor did they found masons’ guilds to build for others. Not all their churches were round, nor was roundness a defiant insult to the Church. Rather than being a tribute to the divine feminine, their round churches honored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Actually looking at Gothic churches and their predecessors deflates the idea of female symbolism. Large medieval churches typically had three front doors on the west plus triple entrances to their transepts on the north and south. (What part of a woman’s anatomy does a transept represent? Or the kink in Chartres’s main aisle?) Romanesque churches-including ones that predate the founding of the Templars-have similar bands of decoration arching over their entrances. Both Gothic and Romanesque churches have the long, rectangular nave inherited from Late Antique basilicas, ultimately derived from Roman public buildings. Neither Brown nor his sources consider what symbolism medieval churchmen such as Suger of St.-Denis or William Durandus read in church design. It certainly wasn’t goddess-worship.

False Claims

If the above seems like a pile driver applied to a gnat, the blows are necessary to demonstrate the utter falseness of Brown’s material. His willful distortions of documented history are more than matched by his outlandish claims about controversial subjects. But to a postmodernist, one construct of reality is as good as any other.

Brown’s approach seems to consist of grabbing large chunks of his stated sources and tossing them together in a salad of a story. From Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Brown lifts the concept of the Grail as a metaphor for a sacred lineage by arbitrarily breaking a medieval French term, Sangraal (Holy Grail), into sang (blood) and raal (royal). This holy blood, according to Brown, descended from Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, to the Merovingian dynasty in Dark Ages France, surviving its fall to persist in several modern French families, including that of Pierre Plantard, a leader of the mysterious Priory of Sion. The Priory-an actual organization officially registered with the French government in 1956-makes extraordinary claims of antiquity as the “real” power behind the Knights Templar. It most likely originated after World War II and was first brought to public notice in 1962. With the exception of filmmaker Jean Cocteau, its illustrious list of Grand Masters-which include Leonardo da Vinci, Issac Newton, and Victor Hugo-is not credible, although it’s presented as true by Brown.

Brown doesn’t accept a political motivation for the Priory’s activities. Instead he picks up The Templar Revelation’s view of the organization as a cult of secret goddess-worshippers who have preserved ancient Gnostic wisdom and records of Christ’s true mission, which would completely overturn Christianity if released. Significantly, Brown omits the rest of the book’s thesis that makes Christ and Mary Magdalene unmarried sex partners performing the erotic mysteries of Isis. Perhaps even a gullible mass-market audience has its limits.

From both Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation, Brown takes a negative view of the Bible and a grossly distorted image of Jesus. He’s neither the Messiah nor a humble carpenter but a wealthy, trained religious teacher bent on regaining the throne of David. His credentials are amplified by his relationship with the rich Magdalen who carries the royal blood of Benjamin: “Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false,” laments one of Brown’s characters.

Yet it’s Brown’s Christology that’s false-and blindingly so. He requires the present New Testament to be a post-Constantinian fabrication that displaced true accounts now represented only by surviving Gnostic texts. He claims that Christ wasn’t considered divine until the Council of Nicea voted him so in 325 at the behest of the emperor. Then Constantine-a lifelong sun worshipper-ordered all older scriptural texts destroyed, which is why no complete set of Gospels predates the fourth century. Christians somehow failed to notice the sudden and drastic change in their doctrine.

But by Brown’s specious reasoning, the Old Testament can’t be authentic either because complete Hebrew Scriptures are no more than a thousand years old. And yet the texts were transmitted so accurately that they do match well with the Dead Sea Scrolls from a thousand years earlier. Analysis of textual families, comparison with fragments and quotations, plus historical correlations securely date the orthodox Gospels to the first century and indicate that they’re earlier than the Gnostic forgeries. (The Epistles of St. Paul are, of course, even earlier than the Gospels.)

Primitive Church documents and the testimony of the ante-Nicean Fathers confirm that Christians have always believed Jesus to be Lord, God, and Savior-even when that faith meant death. The earliest partial canon of Scripture dates from the late second century and already rejected Gnostic writings. For Brown, it isn’t enough to credit Constantine with the divinization of Jesus. The emperor’s old adherence to the cult of the Invincible Sun also meant repackaging sun worship as the new faith. Brown drags out old (and long-discredited) charges by virulent anti-Catholics like Alexander Hislop who accused the Church of perpetuating Babylonian mysteries, as well as 19th-century rationalists who regarded Christ as just another dying savior-god.

Unsurprisingly, Brown misses no opportunity to criticize Christianity and its pitiable adherents. (The church in question is always the Catholic Church, though his villain does sneer once at Anglicans-for their grimness, of all things.) He routinely and anachronistically refers to the Church as “the Vatican,” even when popes weren’t in residence there. He systematically portrays it throughout history as deceitful, power-crazed, crafty, and murderous: “The Church may no longer employ crusades to slaughter, but their influence is no less persuasive. No less insidious.”

Goddess Worship and the Magdalen

Worst of all, in Brown’s eyes, is the fact that the pleasure-hating, sex-hating, woman-hating Church suppressed goddess worship and eliminated the divine feminine. He claims that goddess worship universally dominated pre-Christian paganism with the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) as its central rite. His enthusiasm for fertility rites is enthusiasm for sexuality, not procreation. What else would one expect of a Cathar sympathizer?

Astonishingly, Brown claims that Jews in Solomon’s Temple adored Yahweh and his feminine counterpart, the Shekinah, via the services of sacred prostitutes-possibly a twisted version of the Temple’s corruption after Solomon (1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:4-15). Moreover, he says that the tetragrammaton YHWH derives from “Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.”

But as any first-year Scripture student could tell you, Jehovah is actually a 16th-century rendering of Yahweh using the vowels of Adonai (“Lord”). In fact, goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world-not in the religions of Rome, her barbarian subjects, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice. Nor did the Hellenized cult of Isis appear to have included sex in its secret rites.

Contrary to yet another of Brown’s claims, Tarot cards do not teach goddess doctrine. They were invented for innocent gaming purposes in the 15th century and didn’t acquire occult associations until the late 18th. Playing-card suites carry no Grail symbolism. The notion of diamonds symbolizing pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation by British occultist A. E. Waite. And the number five-so crucial to Brown’s puzzles-has some connections with the protective goddess but myriad others besides, including human life, the five senses, and the Five Wounds of Christ.

Brown’s treatment of Mary Magdalene is sheer delusion. In The Da Vinci Code, she’s no penitent whore but Christ’s royal consort and the intended head of His Church, supplanted by Peter and defamed by churchmen. She fled west with her offspring to Provence, where medieval Cathars would keep the original teachings of Jesus alive. The Priory of Sion still guards her relics and records, excavated by the Templars from the subterranean Holy of Holies. It also protects her descendants-including Brown’s heroine.

Although many people still picture the Magdalen as a sinful woman who anointed Jesus and equate her with Mary of Bethany, that conflation is actually the later work of Pope St. Gregory the Great. The East has always kept them separate and said that the Magdalen, “apostle to the apostles,” died in Ephesus. The legend of her voyage to Provence is no earlier than the ninth century, and her relics weren’t reported there until the 13th. Catholic critics, including the Bollandists, have been debunking the legend and distinguishing the three ladies since the 17th century.

Brown uses two Gnostic documents, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary, to prove that the Magdalen was Christ’s “companion,” meaning sexual partner. The apostles were jealous that Jesus used to “kiss her on the mouth” and favored her over them. He cites exactly the same passages quoted in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation and even picks up the latter’s reference to The Last Temptation of Christ. What these books neglect to mention is the infamous final verse of the Gospel of Thomas. When Peter sneers that “women are not worthy of Life,” Jesus responds, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male…. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

That’s certainly an odd way to “honor” one’s spouse or exalt the status of women.

The Knights Templar

Brown likewise misrepresents the history of the Knights Templar. The oldest of the military-religious orders, the Knights were founded in 1118 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. Their rule, attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was approved in 1128 and generous donors granted them numerous properties in Europe for support. Rendered redundant after the last Crusader stronghold fell in 1291, the Templars’ pride and wealth-they were also bankers-earned them keen hostility.

Brown maliciously ascribes the suppression of the Templars to “Machiavellian” Pope Clement V, whom they were blackmailing with the Grail secret. His “ingeniously planned sting operation” had his soldiers suddenly arrest all Templars. Charged with Satanism, sodomy, and blasphemy, they were tortured into confessing and burned as heretics, their ashes “tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber.”

But in reality, the initiative for crushing the Templars came from King Philip the Fair of France, whose royal officials did the arresting in 1307. About 120 Templars were burned by local Inquisitorial courts in France for not confessing or retracting a confession, as happened with Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Few Templars suffered death elsewhere although their order was abolished in 1312. Clement, a weak, sickly Frenchman manipulated by his king, burned no one in Rome inasmuch as he was the first pope to reign from Avignon (so much for the ashes in the Tiber).

Moreover, the mysterious stone idol that the Templars were accused of worshiping is associated with fertility in only one of more than a hundred confessions. Sodomy was the scandalous-and possibly true-charge against the order, not ritual fornication. The Templars have been darlings of occultism since their myth as masters of secret wisdom and fabulous treasure began to coalesce in the late 18th century. Freemasons and even Nazis have hailed them as brothers. Now it’s the turn of neo-Gnostics.

Twisting da Vinci
Brown’s revisionist interpretations of da Vinci are as distorted as the rest of his information. He claims to have first run across these views “while I was studying art history in Seville,” but they correspond point for point to material in The Templar Revelation. A writer who sees a pointed finger as a throat-cutting gesture, who says the Madonna of the Rocks was painted for nuns instead of a lay confraternity of men, who claims that da Vinci received “hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions” (actually, it was just one…and it was never executed) is simply unreliable.

Brown’s analysis of da Vinci’s work is just as ridiculous. He presents the Mona Lisa as an androgynous self-portrait when it’s widely known to portray a real woman, Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo. The name is certainly not-as Brown claims-a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities Amon and L’Isa (Italian for Isis). How did he miss the theory, propounded by the authors of The Templar Revelation, that the Shroud of Turin is a photographed self-portrait of da Vinci?

Much of Brown’s argument centers around da Vinci’s Last Supper, a painting the author considers a coded message that reveals the truth about Jesus and the Grail. Brown points to the lack of a central chalice on the table as proof that the Grail isn’t a material vessel. But da Vinci’s painting specifically dramatizes the moment when Jesus warns, “One of you will betray me” (John 13:21). There is no Institution Narrative in St. John’s Gospel. The Eucharist is not shown there. And the person sitting next to Jesus is not Mary Magdalene (as Brown claims) but St. John, portrayed as the usual effeminate da Vinci youth, comparable to his St. John the Baptist. Jesus is in the exact center of the painting, with two pyramidal groups of three apostles on each side. Although da Vinci was a spiritually troubled homosexual, Brown’s contention that he coded his paintings with anti-Christian messages simply can’t be sustained.

Brown’s Mess

In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism-gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths?

What’s more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown’s book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake. And booksellers’ shelves now bulge with falsehoods few would be buying without The Da Vinci Code connection. While Brown’s assault on the Catholic Church may be a backhanded compliment, it’s one we would have happily done without.

Sandra Miesel is a veteran Catholic journalist.

CARL E. OLSON
Register Correspondent

http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm

Prior to its Nov. 3 airing, the ABC news special “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci” was described in The New York Times as “amusingly audacious and profoundly irritating.” In retrospect, the description was dead-on.

Trading in on the success of The Da Vinci Code, a novel that has sold more than 3.5 million copies since April, the network had promoted its show as a “respectful” and exhaustive examination of whether or not Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. This premise is central to the plot of the novel, written by Dan Brown, which is a pretentious mixture of romance novel, murder mystery, conspiracy theory and “religious exposé.”

Between and during travels to Italy, Scotland, France and parts of the Holy Land, reporter Elizabeth Vargas interviewed Brown along with feminist writers Elaine Pagels (author of The Gnostic Gospels), Karen King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala), Margaret Starbird (The Goddess in the Gospels) and Henry Lincoln (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, from which Brown draws heavily). She also spoke with novelist Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose), Anglican rector Robin Griffith-Jones – and, as if to throw a bone to any “conservative Christians” tuning in, evangelical Protestants Daryl Bock and Jeff Bingham.

Oh, and Vargas interviewed one Catholic, too: Father Richard McBrien, a Notre Dame theology professor who appeared unwilling to uphold the Church’s belief that Jesus was celibate and never married. He did, however, insist that Jesus was “a great religious leader … who broke through the barriers of cultural bias.”

For his part, Da Vinci Code author Brown was treated as though he were both historian and scholar. Never mind that he is neither. He offered clichés (“Our history books have been written by the winners”) and falsehoods (Leonardo Da Vinci lived in “an age when science was synonymous with heresy”) without eliciting so much as a blink from Vargas. In over her head, the reporter attempted to appear studiously intent while entertaining theories that no reputable scholar would take seriously. In a Beliefnet.com interview, Vargas defended the fairness and balance of her investigation, stating: “We spoke with a lot of scholars. [But] we couldn’t have 10 people saying the same thing; we had to pick one voice for each point of view.”

So why did the show feature at least six feminist scholars but no Catholic scholars who know, understand and uphold orthodox Catholic teaching?

Unquestioned Audacity

This glaring lack was doubly irritating in light of The Da Vinci Code’s unrelenting polemics against the Catholic faith, including ridiculous accusations that “the Church burned at the stake an astounding 5 million women” in the medieval era and that no one believed Jesus was divine until “Constantine turned [him] into a deity” in 325 A.D.

The novel never acknowledges the existence of Protestants or the Eastern Orthodox – only of the Catholic Church, often referred to as “the Vatican.” These issues were never raised in the ABC program, even though Brown repeatedly made comments that begged for strong follow-up about why there is no chalice in The Last Supper, even though the masterpiece depicts the moment of Judas’s betrayal of Christ as described in John’s Gospel (John 13:21).

As if to cover her professional integrity, Vargas regularly intoned that “there is no evidence” for all of these claims and admitted there is no proof that Jesus and Mary were married, that Mary fled to France, that her child by Jesus married into the Merovingian dynasty or that these “secrets” have been protected for centuries by an underground society, the Priory of Sion.

A Novel Approach

Part of the special’s bent was revealed when the reporter suggested that the topic is important for what it says about the possibility of a female priesthood. Reinforcing that remark, King and Starbird longed for the day when women will be truly liberated, while Father McBrien and Griffith-Jones praised the goodness of sex and condemned the Church’s “unhealthy attitude” about sexuality.

Not surprisingly, there was no explanation of Church teachings on Jesus as divine bridegroom, the meaning of celibacy or the high regard the Catholic faith has for Mary Magdalene, whom it considers “the apostle to the apostles.” Evangelicals Bock and Bingham offered intelligent, solid comments and Eco provided a moment of levity when he compared the legend of the Holy Grail to stories of Pinocchio and Little Red Riding Hood. Beyond that, enlightening points were hard to come by.

Wrapping up the assignment, Vargas commented that “we did learn a lot more about a man who changed history and a woman who was very important to him.” On the contrary, viewers learned only about the unsubstantiated opinions and sensationalistic beliefs of a novelist and his literary mentors. In the final analysis, “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci” was a shallow and tendentious exercise, a pseudo- intellectual shot in the dark that offered no insight into the person of Jesus, his life or the Gospels. In short, the show proved audacious and irritating – but there was nothing amusing or profound about it.

The Good News on the Network News

In an interview on Fox radio, ABC reporter Elizabeth Vargas – host of the Nov. 3 news special “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci” – remarked, “I think it is rare for network television to be discussing Jesus and the Bible in depth, and I think it’s great to provide this kind of discussion and debate. I don’t think that could ever be a bad thing.
It’s debatable that Vargas’ special was “in depth,” but she is correct: Major networks rarely examine the roots and history of Christianity.

Then again, maybe we’re better off that way: When they do turn their attention to Christ and Christianity, the big broadcast-news organizations almost always slant their coverage toward studied skepticism. Usually they tip their hand by lining up a familiar cast of “experts” as their primary sources.

In June 2000, ABC anchorman Peter Jennings presented “The Search for Jesus” . The show was heavily criticized by many Catholics and evangelical Protestants for its heavy reliance on members of the Jesus Seminar, the group of scholars who famously set out to determine the historical accuracy of Christ’s words in the Gospels by taking a vote. The seminar’s conclusion: The Gospel accounts are fine works of fiction.

Nor is the Public Broadcasting Service above the proclivity for promoting the doubters’ side of the story. In 1998, PBS aired a four-hour series titled “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians”; it was augmented by an extensive Web site, complete with study guides. The radical ideas of Jesus Seminar participant John Dominic Crossan – a former Catholic priest best known for dismissing the Resurrection with the claim that Jesus’ body was eaten by wild dogs – and Elaine Pagels, feminist author of The Gnostic Gospels, were on full display, alongside the observations of other “progressive” scholars.

The Arts & Entertainment channel aired a four-part documentary series, “Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years,” in 1998; this was followed in 2000 by the second part, “Christianity: The Second Two Thousand Years.” Like the Jennings and PBS programs, A&E relied disproportionately on members of the Jesus Seminar as well as media darling Pagels.

There have been some signs of hope. In April, the History Channel aired a four-part series, “In the Footsteps of Jesus,” which examined the “lost youth” of Jesus, his ministry and his passion. This series was praised for being far more balanced than the ABC and PBS programs. Whether this ends up being the start of a trend in the right direction or an anomaly remains to be seen. Unlike the Gospel, the history of the network news organizations is a work in progress.

- Carl E. Olson

Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions
by Ronald Nash

from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, page 8. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.

Summary

Many Christian college students have encountered criticisms of Christianity based on claims that early Christianity and the New Testament borrowed important beliefs and practices from a number of pagan mystery religions. Since these claims undermine such central Christian doctrines as Christ’s death and resurrection, the charges are serious. But the evidence for such claims, when it even exists, often lies in sources several centuries older than the New Testament. Moreover, the alleged parallels often result from liberal scholars uncritically describing pagan beliefs and practices in Christian language and then marveling at the striking parallels they think they’ve discovered.

During the first half of the twentieth century, a number of liberal authors and professors claimed that the New Testament teaching about Jesus’ death and resurrection, the New Birth, and the Christian practices of baptism and the Lord’s Supper were derived from the pagan mystery religions. Of major concern in all this is the charge that the New Testament doctrine of salvation parallels themes commonly found in the mystery religions: a savior-god dies violently for those he will eventually deliver, after which that god is restored to life.

Was the New Testament influenced by the pagan religions of the first century A.D.? Even though I surveyed this matter in a 1992 book,[1] the issues are so important — especially for Christian college students who often do not know where to look for answers — that there is considerable merit in addressing this question in a popular, nontechnical format.

WHAT WERE THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS?

Other than Judaism and Christianity, the mystery religions were the most influential religions in the early centuries after Christ. The reason these cults were called “mystery religions” is that they involved secret ceremonies known only to those initiated into the cult. The major benefit of these practices was thought to be some kind of salvation.

The mystery religions were not, of course, the only manifestations of the religious spirit in the eastern Roman Empire. One could also find public cults not requiring an initiation ceremony into secret beliefs and practices. The Greek Olympian religion and its Roman counterpart are examples of this type of religion.

Each Mediterranean region produced its own mystery religion. Out of Greece came the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, as well as the Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions, which developed later.[2] Asia Minor gave birth to the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and her beloved, a shepherd named Attis. The cult of Isis and Osiris (later changed to Serapis) originated in Egypt, while Syria and Palestine saw the rise of the cult of Adonis. Finally, Persia (Iran) was a leading early locale for the cult of Mithras, which — due to its frequent use of the imagery of war — held a special appeal to Roman soldiers. The earlier Greek mystery religions were state religions in the sense that they attained the status of a public or civil cult and served a national or public function. The later non-Greek mysteries were personal, private, and individualistic.

Basic Traits

One must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery religion. While a tendency toward eclecticism or synthesis developed after A.D. 300, each of the mystery cults was a separate and distinct religion during the century that saw the birth of the Christian church. Moreover, each mystery cult assumed different forms in different cultural settings and underwent significant changes, especially after A.D. 100. Nevertheless, the mystery religions exhibited five common traits.

(1) Central to each mystery was its use of an annual vegetation cycle in which life is renewed each spring and dies each fall. Followers of the mystery cults found deep symbolic significance in the natural processes of growth, death, decay, and rebirth.

(2) As noted above, each cult made important use of secret ceremonies or mysteries, often in connection with an initiation rite. Each mystery religion also passed on a “secret” to the initiate that included information about the life of the cult’s god or goddess and how humans might achieve unity with that deity. This “knowledge” was always a secret or esoteric knowledge, unattainable by any outside the circle of the cult.

(3) Each mystery also centered around a myth in which the deity either returned to life after death or else triumphed over his enemies. Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult and its accompanying myth was expressed in a “sacramental drama” that appealed largely to the feelings and emotions of the initiates. This religious ecstasy was supposed to lead them to think they were experiencing the beginning of a new life.

(4) The mysteries had little or no use for doctrine and correct belief. They were primarily concerned with the emotional life of their followers. The cults used many different means to affect the emotions and imaginations of initiates and hence bring about “union with the god”: processions, fasting, a play, acts of purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies. This lack of any emphasis on correct belief marked an important difference between the mysteries and Christianity. The Christian faith was exclusivistic in the sense that it recognized only one legitimate path to God and salvation, Jesus Christ. The mysteries were inclusivistic in the sense that nothing prevented a believer in one cult from following other mysteries.

(5) The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience that led them to feel they had achieved union with their god. Beyond this quest for mystical union were two more ultimate goals: some kind of redemption or salvation, and immortality.

Evolution

Before A.D. 100, the mystery religions were still largely confined to specific localities and were still a relatively novel phenomenon. After A.D. 100, they gradually began to attain a widespread popular influence throughout the Roman Empire. But they also underwent significant changes that often resulted from the various cults absorbing elements from each other. As devotees of the mysteries became increasingly eclectic in their beliefs and practices, new and odd combinations of the older mysteries began to emerge. And as the cults continued to tone down the more objectionable features of their older practices, they began to attract greater numbers of followers.

RECONSTRUCTING THE MYSTERIES

It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers use this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship and should not be allowed to stand without challenge. Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century.

The Cult of Isis and Osiris

The cult of Isis originated in Egypt and went through two major stages. In its older Egyptian version, which was not a mystery religion, Isis was regarded as the goddess of heaven, earth, the sea, and the unseen world below. In this earlier stage, Isis had a husband named Osiris. The cult of Isis became a mystery religion only after Ptolemy the First introduced major changes, sometime after 300 B.C. In the later stage, a new god named Serapis became Isis’s consort. Ptolemy introduced these changes in order to synthesize Egyptian and Greek concerns in his kingdom, thus hastening the Hellenization of Egypt.

From Egypt, the cult of Isis gradually made its way to Rome. While Rome was at first repelled by the cult, the religion finally entered the city during the reign of Caligula (A.D. 37-41). Its influence spread gradually during the next two centuries, and in some locales it became a major rival of Christianity. The cult’s success in the Roman Empire seems to have resulted from its impressive ritual and the hope of immortality offered to its followers.

The basic myth of the Isis cult concerned Osiris, her husband during the earlier Egyptian and nonmystery stage of the religion. According to the most common version of the myth, Osiris was murdered by his brother who then sank the coffin containing Osiris’s body into the Nile river. Isis discovered the body and returned it to Egypt. But her brother-in-law once again gained access to the body, this time dismembering it into fourteen pieces which he scattered widely. Following a long search, Isis recovered each part of the body. It is at this point that the language used to describe what followed is crucial. Sometimes those telling the story are satisfied to say that Osiris came back to life, even though such language claims far more than the myth allows. Some writers go even further and refer to the alleged “resurrection” of Osiris. One liberal scholar illustrates how biased some writers are when they describe the pagan myth in Christian language: “The dead body of Osiris floated in the Nile and he returned to life, this being accomplished by a baptism in the waters of the Nile.”[3]

This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading analogies between Osiris and Christ: (1) a savior god dies and (2) then experiences a resurrection accompanied by (3) water baptism. But the alleged similarities, as well as the language used to describe them, turn out to be fabrications of the modern scholar and are not part of the original myth. Comparisons between the resurrection of Jesus and the resuscitation of Osiris are greatly exaggerated.[4] Not every version of the myth has Osiris returning to life; in some he simply becomes king of the underworld. Equally far-fetched are attempts to find an analogue of Christian baptism in the Osiris myth.[5] The fate of Osiris’s coffin in the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis.

As previously noted, during its later mystery stage, the male deity of the Isis cult is no longer the dying Osiris but Serapis. Serapis is often portrayed as a sun god, and it is clear that he was not a dying god. Obviously then, neither could he be a rising god. Thus, it is worth remembering that the post-Ptolemaic mystery version of the Isis cult that was in circulation from about 300 B.C. through the early centuries of the Christian era had absolutely nothing that could resemble a dying and rising savior-god.

The Cult of Cybele and Attis

Cybele, also known as the Great Mother, was worshiped through much of the Hellenistic world. She undoubtedly began as a goddess of nature. Her early worship included orgiastic ceremonies in which her frenzied male worshipers were led to castrate themselves, following which they became “Galli” or eunuch-priests of the goddess. Cybele eventually came to be viewed as the Mother of all gods and the mistress of all life.

Most of our information about the cult describes its practices during its later Roman period. But the details are slim and almost all the source material is relatively late, certainly datable long after the close of the New Testament canon.

According to myth, Cybele loved a shepherd named Attis. Because Attis was unfaithful, she drove him insane. Overcome by madness, Attis castrated himself and died. This drove Cybele into great mourning, and it introduced death into the natural world. But then Cybele restored Attis to life, an event that also brought the world of nature back to life.

The presuppositions of the interpreter tend to determine the language used to describe what followed Attis’s death. Many writers refer carelessly to the “resurrection of Attis.” But surely this is an exaggeration. There is no mention of anything resembling a resurrection in the myth, which suggests that Cybele could only preserve Attis’s dead body. Beyond this, there is mention of the body’s hair continuing to grow, along with some movement of his little finger. In some versions of the myth, Attis’s return to life took the form of his being changed into an evergreen tree. Since the basic idea underlying the myth was the annual vegetation cycle, any resemblance to the bodily resurrection of Christ is greatly exaggerated.

Eventually a public rehearsal of the Attis myth became an annual event in which worshipers shared in Attis’s “immortality.” Each spring the followers of Cybele would mourn for the dead Attis in acts of fasting and flagellation.

It was only during the later Roman celebrations (after A.D. 300) of the spring festival that anything remotely connected with a “resurrection” appears. The pine tree symbolizing Attis was cut down and then carried corpse-like into the sanctuary. Later in the prolonged festival, the tree was buried while the initiates worked themselves into a frenzy that included gashing themselves with knives. The next night, the “grave” of the tree was opened and the “resurrection of Attis” was celebrated. But the language of these late sources is highly ambiguous. In truth, no clear-cut, unambiguous reference to the supposed “resurrection” of Attis appears, even in the very late literature from the fourth century after Christ.

The Taurobolium

The best-known rite of the cult of the Great Mother was the taurobolium. It is important to note, however, that this ritual was not part of the cult in its earlier stages. It entered the religion sometime after the middle of the second century A.D.

During the ceremony, initiates stood or reclined in a pit as a bull was slaughtered on a platform above them.[6] The initiate would then be bathed in the warm blood of the dying animal. It has been alleged that the taurobolium was a source for Christian language about being washed in the blood of the lamb (Rev. 7:14) or sprinkled with the blood of Jesus (1 Pet. 1:2). It has also been cited as the source for Paul’s teaching in Romans 6:1-4, where he relates Christian baptism to the Christian’s identification with Christ’s death and resurrection.

No notion of death and resurrection was ever part of the taurobolium, however. The best available evidence requires us to date the ritual about one hundred years after Paul wrote Romans 6:1-4. Not one existing text supports the claim that the taurobolium memorialized the death and “resurrection” of Attis. The pagan rite could not possibly have been the source for Paul’s teaching in Romans 6. Only near the end of the fourth century A.D. did the ritual add the notion of rebirth. Several important scholars see a Christian influence at work in this later development.[7] It is clear, then, that the chronological development of the rite makes it impossible for it to have influenced first-century Christianity. The New Testament teaching about the shedding of blood should be viewed in the context of its Old Testament background — the Passover and the temple sacrifice.

Mithraism

Attempts to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of Mithraism face enormous challenges because of the scanty information that has survived. Proponents of the cult explained the world in terms of two ultimate and opposing principles, one good (depicted as light) and the other evil (darkness). Human beings must choose which side they will fight for; they are trapped in the conflict between light and darkness. Mithra came to be regarded as the most powerful mediator who could help humans ward off attacks from demonic forces.[8]

The major reason why no Mithraic influence on first-century Christianity is possible is the timing: it’s all wrong! The flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament.[9] Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions. Chronological difficulties, then, make the possibility of a Mithraic influence on early Christianity extremely improbable. Certainly, there remains no credible evidence for such an influence.

STRIKING PARALLELS?

Enough has been said thus far to permit comment on one of the major faults of the above-mentioned liberal scholars. I refer to the frequency with which their writings evidence a careless, even sloppy use of language. One frequently encounters scholars who first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and practices, and then marvel at the striking parallels they think they have discovered. One can go a long way toward “proving” early Christian dependence on the mysteries by describing some mystery belief or practice in Christian terminology. J. Godwin does this in his book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, which describes the criobolium (see footnote 6) as a “blood baptism” in which the initiate is “washed in the blood of the lamb.”[10] While uninformed readers might be stunned by this remarkable similarity to Christianity (see Rev. 7:14), knowledgeable readers will see such a claim as the reflection of a strong, negative bias against Christianity.

Exaggerations and oversimplifications abound in this kind of literature. One encounters overblown claims about alleged likenesses between baptism and the Lord’s Supper and similar “sacraments” in certain mystery cults. Attempts to find analogies between the resurrection of Christ and the alleged “resurrections” of the mystery deities involve massive amounts of oversimplification and inattention to detail.

Pagan Rituals and the Christian Sacraments

The mere fact that Christianity has a sacred meal and a washing of the body is supposed to prove that it borrowed these ceremonies from similar meals and washings in the pagan cults. By themselves, of course, such outward similarities prove nothing. After all, religious ceremonies can assume only a limited number of forms, and they will naturally relate to important or common aspects of human life. The more important question is the meaning of the pagan practices. Ceremonial washings that antedate the New Testament have a different meaning from New Testament baptism, while pagan washings after A.D. 100 come too late to influence the New Testament and, indeed, might themselves have been influenced by Christianity.[11] Sacred meals in the pre-Christian Greek mysteries fail to prove anything since the chronology is all wrong. The Greek ceremonies that are supposed to have influenced first-century Christians had long since disappeared by the time we get to Jesus and Paul. Sacred meals in such post-Christian mysteries as Mithraism come too late.

Unlike the initiation rites of the mystery cults, Christian baptism looks back to what a real, historical person — Jesus Christ — did in history. Advocates of the mystery cults believed their “sacraments” had the power to give the individual the benefits of immortality in a mechanical or magical way, without his or her undergoing any moral or spiritual transformation. This certainly was not Paul’s view, either of salvation or of the operation of the Christian sacraments. In contrast with pagan initiation ceremonies, Christian baptism is not a mechanical or magical ceremony. It is clear that the sources of Christian baptism are not to be found either in the taurobolium (which is post first-century anyway) or in the washings of the pagan mysteries. Its sources lie rather in the washings of purification found in the Old Testament and in the Jewish practice of baptizing proselytes, the latter being the most likely source for the baptistic practices of John the Baptist.

Of all the mystery cults, only Mithraism had anything that resembled the Lord’s Supper. A piece of bread and a cup of water were placed before initiates while the priest of Mithra spoke some ceremonial words. But the late introduction of this ritual precludes its having any influence upon first-century Christianity.

Claims that the Lord’s Supper was derived from pagan sacred meals are grounded in exaggerations and oversimplifications. The supposed parallels and analogies break down completely.[12] Any quest for the historical antecedents of the Lord’s Supper is more likely to succeed if it stays closer to the Jewish foundations of the Christian faith than if it wanders off into the practices of the pagan cults. The Lord’s Supper looked back to a real, historical person and to something He did in history. The occasion for Jesus’ introduction of the Christian Lord’s Supper was the Jewish Passover feast. Attempts to find pagan sources for baptism and the Lord’s Supper must be judged to fail.

The Death of the Mystery Gods and the Death of Jesus

The best way to evaluate the alleged dependence of early Christian beliefs about Christ’s death and resurrection on the pagan myths of a dying and rising savior-god is to examine carefully the supposed parallels. The death of Jesus differs from the deaths of the pagan gods in at least six ways:

(1) None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to Christianity.[13]

(2) Only Jesus died for sin. As Gunter Wagner observes, to none of the pagan gods “has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort of death that they died is quite different (hunting accident, self-emasculation, etc.).”[14]

(3) Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated deaths and resuscitations depict the annual cycle of nature.

(4) Jesus’ death was an actual event in history. The death of the mystery god appears in a mythical drama with no historical ties; its continued rehearsal celebrates the recurring death and rebirth of nature. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection was grounded in an actual historical event makes absurd any attempt to derive this belief from the mythical, nonhistorical stories of the pagan cults.[15]

(5) Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like this appears even implicitly in the mysteries.

(6) And finally, Jesus’ death was not a defeat but a triumph. Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its report of Jesus’ death is a message of triumph. Even as Jesus was experiencing the pain and humiliation of the cross, He was the victor. The New Testament’s mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of the mystery religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the terrible fate that overtook their gods.[16]

The Risen Christ and the “Rising Savior-Gods”

Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. One can speak of a “resurrection” in the stories of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis only in the most extended of senses.[17] For example, after Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris’s dismembered body, Osiris became “Lord of the Underworld.” This is a poor substitute for a resurrection like that of Jesus Christ. And, no claim can be made that Mithras was a dying and rising god. The tide of scholarly opinion has turned dramatically against attempts to make early Christianity dependent on the so-called dying and rising gods of Hellenistic paganism.[18] Any unbiased examination of the evidence shows that such claims must be rejected.

Christian Rebirth and Cultic Initiation Rites

Liberal writings on the subject are full of sweeping generalizations to the effect that early Christianity borrowed its notion of rebirth from the pagan mysteries.[19] But the evidence makes it clear that there was no pre-Christian doctrine of rebirth for the Christians to borrow. There are actually very few references to the notion of rebirth in the evidence that has survived, and even these are either very late or very ambiguous. They provide no help in settling the question of the source of the New Testament use of the concept. The claim that pre-Christian mysteries regarded their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in much later texts is read back into earlier rites, which are then interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate’s “new birth.” The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used “rebirth” as a technical term lacks support from even one single text.

Most contemporary scholars maintain that the mystery use of the concept of rebirth (testified to only in evidence dated after A.D. 300) differs so significantly from its New Testament usage that any possibility of a close link is ruled out. The most that such scholars are willing to concede is the possibility that some Christians borrowed the metaphor or imagery from the common speech of the time and recast it to fit their distinctive theological beliefs. So even if the metaphor of rebirth was Hellenistic, its content within Christianity was unique.[20]

SEVEN ARGUMENTS AGAINST CHRISTIAN DEPENDENCE ON THE MYSTERIES

I conclude by noting seven points that undermine liberal efforts to show that first-century Christianity borrowed essential beliefs and practices from the pagan mystery religions.

(1) Arguments offered to “prove” a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.

(2) Many alleged similarities between Christianity and the mysteries are either greatly exaggerated or fabricated. Scholars often describe pagan rituals in language they borrow from Christianity. The careless use of language could lead one to speak of a “Last Supper” in Mithraism or a “baptism” in the cult of Isis. It is inexcusable nonsense to take the word “savior” with all of its New Testament connotations and apply it to Osiris or Attis as though they were savior-gods in any similar sense.

(3) The chronology is all wrong. Almost all of our sources of information about the pagan religions alleged to have influenced early Christianity are dated very late. We frequently find writers quoting from documents written 300 years later than Paul in efforts to produce ideas that allegedly influenced Paul. We must reject the assumption that just because a cult had a certain belief or practice in the third or fourth century after Christ, it therefore had the same belief or practice in the first century.

(4) Paul would never have consciously borrowed from the pagan religions. All of our information about him makes it highly unlikely that he was in any sense influenced by pagan sources. He placed great emphasis on his early training in a strict form of Judaism (Phil. 3:5). He warned the Colossians against the very sort of influence that advocates of Christian syncretism have attributed to him, namely, letting their minds be captured by alien speculations (Col. 2:8).

(5) Early Christianity was an exclusivistic faith. As J. Machen explains, the mystery cults were nonexclusive. “A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ….Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone.”[21] This Christian exclusivism should be a starting point for all reflection about the possible relations between Christianity and its pagan competitors. Any hint of syncretism in the New Testament would have caused immediate controversy.

(6) Unlike the mysteries, the religion of Paul was grounded on events that actually happened in history. The mysticism of the mystery cults was essentially nonhistorical. Their myths were dramas, or pictures, of what the initiate went through, not real historical events, as Paul regarded Christ’s death and resurrection to be. The Christian affirmation that the death and resurrection of Christ happened to a historical person at a particular time and place has absolutely no parallel in any pagan mystery religion.

(7) What few parallels may still remain may reflect a Christian influence on the pagan systems. As Bruce Metzger has argued, “It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.”[22] It should not be surprising that leaders of cults that were being successfully challenged by Christianity should do something to counter the challenge. What better way to do this than by offering a pagan substitute? Pagan attempts to counter the growing influence of Christianity by imitating it are clearly apparent in measures instituted by Julian the Apostate, who was the Roman emperor from A.D. 361 to 363.

A FINAL WORD

Liberal efforts to undermine the uniqueness of the Christian revelation via claims of a pagan religious influence collapse quickly once a full account of the information is available. It is clear that the liberal arguments exhibit astoundingly bad scholarship. Indeed, this conclusion may be too generous. According to one writer, a more accurate account of these bad arguments would describe them as “prejudiced irresponsibility.”[23] But in order to become completely informed on these matters, wise readers will work through material cited in the brief bibliography.

NOTES

1 See Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX: Probe Books, 1992). The book was originally published in 1984 under the title, Christianity and the Hellenist World.
2 I must pass over these Greek versions of the mystery cults. See Nash, 131-36.
3 Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 104.
4 See Edwin Yamauchi, “Easter — Myth, Hallucination, or History?” Christianity Today, 29 March 1974, 660-63.
5 See Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), 260ff.
6 When the ceremony used a lamb, it was the criobolium. Since lambs cost far less than bulls, this modification was rather common.
7 See Nash, chapter 9.
8 For more detail, see Nash, 143-48.
9 See Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1903), 87ff.
10 Joscelyn Godwin, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 111.
11 See Nash, chapter 9.
12 See Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 24.
13 See Martin Hengel, The Son of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 26.
14 Wagner, 284.
15 See W. K. C. Guthrie, Ortheus and Greek Religion, 2d ed. (London: Methuen, 1952), 268.
16 See A. D. Nock, “Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background,” in Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, ed. A. E. J. Rawlinson (London: Longmans, Green, 1928), 106.
17 See J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 234-35.
18 See Nash, 161-99.
19 See Nash, 173-78.
20 See W. F. Flemington, The New Testament Doctrine of Baptism (London: SPCK, 1948), 76-81.
21 Machen, 9.
22 Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11. The possible parallels in view here would naturally be dated late, after A.D. 200 for the most part.
23 Gordon H. Clark, Thales to Dewey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 195.

Suggested Reading

- Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982).
- J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1925).
- Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX: Probe Books, 1992).
- Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967).

Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?
EDWIN M. YAMAUCHI

http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html

That the Easter faith in the Resurrection of Christ is the core of Christianity can hardly be denied. Whether that conviction is rooted in myth, in hallucination, or in history has often been debated. Some have maintained that the Resurrection of Christ is a myth patterned after the prototypes of dying and rising fertility gods. Others argue that subjective visions of the risen Christ were sufficient to convince the disciples that their leader was not dead. Even those who do not doubt the historicity of Christ’s life and death differ as to how the Resurrection may be viewed historically. Let us examine the evidences for these alternatives.

Easter as Myth
A. Dying and Rising Fertility Gods
John H. Randall, emeritus professor of philosophy at Columbia University, has asserted: “Christianity, at the hands of Paul, became a mystical system of redemption, much like the cult of Isis, and the other sacramental or mystery religions of the day” (Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis, 1970, p. 154). Hugh Schonfield in Those Incredible Christians (1968, p. xii) has declared: “The revelations of Frazer in The Golden Bough had not got through to the masses…. Christians remained related under the skin to the devotees of Adonis and Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras.”
The theory that there was a widespread worship of a dying and rising fertility god-Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor, and Osiris in Egypt-was propounded by Sir James Frazer, who gathered a mass of parallels in part IV of his monumental work The Golden Bough ( 1906, reprinted in 1961). This view has been adopted by many who little realize its fragile foundations. The explanation of the Christian Resurrection by such a comparative-religions approach has even been reflected in official Soviet propaganda (cf. Paul de Surgy, editor, The Resurrection and Modern Biblical Thought, 1966, pp. 1, 131).

In the 1930s three influential French scholars, M. Goguel, C. Guignebert, and A. Loisy, interpreted Christianity as a syncretistic religion formed under the influence of Hellenistic mystery religions. According to A. Loisy (“The Christian Mystery,” Hibbert Journal, X [1911-12], 51), Christ was “a saviour-god, after the manner of an Osiris, an Attis, a Mithra…. Like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he had died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life….”

B. Reexamination of the Evidences
A reexamination of the sources used to support the theory of a mythical origin of Christ’s resurrection reveals that the evidences are far from satisfactory and that the parallels are too superficial.

In the case of the Mesopotamian Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi), his alleged resurrection by the goddess Inanna-Ishtar had been assumed even though the end of both the Sumerian and the Akkadian texts of the myth of “The Descent of Inanna (Ishtar)” had not been preserved. Professor S. N. Kramer in 1960 published a new poem, “The Death of Dumuzi,” that proves conclusively that instead of rescuing Dumuzi from the Underworld, Inanna sent him there as her substitute (cf. my article, “Tammuz and the Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXXIV [1965], 283-90). A line in a fragmentary and obscure text is the only positive evidence that after being sent to the Underworld Dumuzi may have had his sister take his place for half the year (cf. S. N. Kramer, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 183 [1966], 31).

Tammuz was identified by later writers with the Phoenician Adonis, the beautiful youth beloved of Aphrodite. According to Jerome, Hadrian desecrated the cave in Bethlehem associated with Jesus’ birth by consecrating it with a shrine of Tammuz-Adonis. Although his cult spread from Byblos to the GrecoRoman world, the worship of Adonis was never important and was restricted to women. P. Lambrechts has shown that there is no trace of a resurrection in the early texts or pictorial representations of Adonis; the four texts that speak of his resurrection are quite late, dating from the second to the fourth centuries A.D. (“La ‘resurrection’ d’Adonis,” in Melanges Isidore Levy, 1955, pp. 207-40). Lambrechts has also shown that Attis, the consort of Cybele, does not appear as a “resurrected” god until after A.D. 1 50. ( “Les Fetes ‘phrygiennes’ de Cybele et d’ Attis,” Bulletin de l’lnstitut Historique Belge de Rome, XXVII 11952], 141-70).

This leaves us with the figure of Osiris as the only god for whom there is clear and early evidence of a “resurrection.” Our most complete version of the myth of his death and dismemberment by Seth and his twofold resuscitation by Isis is to be found in Plutarch, who wrote in the second century A.D. (cf. J. Gwyn Griffiths, Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, 1970). His account seems to accord with statements made in the early Egyptian texts. After the New Kingdom (from 1570 B.C.. on) even ordinary men aspired to identification with Osiris as one who had triumphed over death.

But it is a cardinal misconception to equate the Egyptian view of the afterlife with the “resurrection” of Hebrew-Christian traditions. In order to achieve immortality the Egyptian had to fulfill three conditions: (1) His body had to be preserved, hence mummification. (2) Nourishment had to be provided either by the actual offering of daily bread and beer, or by the magical depiction of food on the walls of the tomb. (3) Magical spells had to be interred with the dead-Pyramid Texts in the Old Kingdom, Coffin Texts in the Middle Kingdom, and the Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom. Moreover, the Egyptian did not rise from the dead; separate entities of his personality such as his Ba and his Ka continued to hover about his body.

Nor is Osiris, who is alwaysportrayed in a mummified form, an inspiration for the resurrected Christ. As Roland de Vaux has observed:

What is meant of Osiris being “raised to life”? Simply that, thanks to the ministrations of Isis, he is able to lead a life beyond the tomb which is an almost perfect replica of earthly existence. But he will never again come among the living and will reign only over the dead…. This revived god is in reality a “mummy” god [The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 1971, p. 236].
C. Inexact Parallels From Late Sources
What should be evident is that past studies of phenomenological comparisons have inexcusably disregarded the dates and the provenience of their sources when they have attempted to provide prototypes for Christianity. Let me give two examples, Mithra and the taurobolium.
Mithra was the Persian god whose worship became popular among Roman soldiers (his cult was restricted to men) and was to prove a rival to Christianity in the late Roman Empire. Early Zoroastrian texts, such as the Mithra Yasht, cannot serve as the basis of a mystery of Mithra inasmuch as they present a god who watches over cattle and the sanctity of contracts. Later Mithraic evidence in the west is primarily iconographic; there are no long coherent texts.

Those who seek to adduce Mithra as a prototype of the risen Christ ignore the late date for the expansion of Mithraism to the west (cf. M. J. Vermaseren, Mithras, The Secret God, 1963, p. 76). The only dated Mithraic inscriptions from the pre-Christian period are the texts of Antiochus I of Commagene (69-34 B.C.) in eastern Asia Minor. After that there is one text possibly from the first century A.D., from Cappadocia, one from Phrygia dated to A.D. 77-78, and one from Rome dated to Trajan’s reign (A.D. 98-117). All other dated Mithraic inscriptions and monuments belong to the second century (after A.D. 140), the third, and the fourth century A.D. (M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 1956).

The taurobolium was a bloody rite associated with the worship of Mithra and of Attis in which a bull was slaughtered on ‘a grating over an initiate in a pit below, drenching him with blood. This has been suggested (e.g., by R. Reitzenstein) as the basis of the Christian’s redemption by blood and Paul’s imagery in Romans 6 of the believer’s death and resurrection. Gunter Wagner in his exhaustive study Pauline Baptism and thc Pagan Mysteries ( 1963) points out how anachronistic such comparisons are:

The taurobolium in the Attis cult is first attested in the time of Antoninus Pius for A.D. 160. As far as we can see at present it only became a personal consecration at the beginning of the third century A.D. The idea of a rebirth through the instrumentality of the taurobolium only emerges in isolated instances towards the end of the fourth century A.D.; it is not originally associated with this blood-bath [p. 266].
Indeed, there is inscriptional evidence from the fourth century A.D. that, far from influencing Christianity, those who used the taurobolium were influenced by Christianity. Bruce Metzger in his important essay “Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity” (Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish and Christian (1968), notes:
Thus, for example, one must doubtless interpret the change in the efficacy attributed to the rite of the taurobolium. In competing with Christianity, which promised eternal life to its adherents, the cult of Cybele officially or unofficially raised the efficacy of the blood bath from twenty years to eternity [p. 11].
Another aspect of comparisons between the resurrection of Christ and the mythological mysteries is that the alleged parallels are quite inexact. It is an error, for example, to believe that the initiation into the mysteries of Isis, as described in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, IS comparable to Christianity. For one thing, the hero, Lucius, had to pay a fortune to undergo his initiation. And as Wagner correctly observes: “Isis does not promise the mystes immortality, but only that henceforth he shall live under her protection, and that when at length he goes down to the realm of the dead he shall adore her . . .” (op. cit., p. 112).
On the other hand, the followers of Dionysus (Bacchus), the god of wine, did believe in immortality. But they did not hope for a resurrection of the body; nor did they base their faith on the reborn Dionysus of the Orphics, but rather on their experience of drunken ecstasy (cf. M. Nilsson, The Dionysiac Mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman Age, 1957).

In any case, the death and resurrection of these various mythological figures, however attested, always typified the annual death and rebirth of vegetation. This significance cannot be attributed to the death and resurrection of Jesus. A. D. Nock sets forth the most striking contrast between pagan and Christian notions of “resurrection” as follows:

In Christianity everything is made to turn on a dated experience of a historical Person; it can be seen from I Cor. XV. 3 that the statement of the story early assumed the form of a statement in a Creed. There is nothing in the parallel cases which points to any attempt to give such a basis of historical evidence to belief (Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background, 1964, p. 107).

Easter as Hallucination

The Latin word that is the root of “hallucination” meant “to wander in thought” or “to utter nonsense.” The modern concept defines “hallucinations” as “subjective experiences that are consequences of mental processes, sometimes fulfilling a purpose in the individual’s mental life” ( W. Keup, editors Origin and Mechanisms of Hallucinations, 1970, p. v).

David Strauss in his famous Life of Jesus (1835) suggested that the recollection of Jesus’ teachings in the clear air of Galilee produced among some of the more emotional disciples hallucinations of Jesus appearing to them. In a more positive vein, Theodor Keim in his work on Jesus (1867-72) proposed that the basis of the Easter faith resulted from God-given “telegrams from heaven.”

Hallucinations do play a major role in religious cultures, but they are induced either by drugs or by the extreme deprivation of food, drink, and sleep (cf. E. Bourguignon, “Hallucination and Trance: An Anthropologist’s Perspective,” in Keup, p. 188). These factors were not present in the various appearances of the risen Christ to his disciples.

The details of the varied epiphanies of Christ, which in several cases were to more than one individual and on one occasion to more than 500, are not typical of hallucinations. A visual hallucination is a private event; it is by definition the perception of objects or patterns of light that are not objectively present (ibid., p. ] 81 ) . The variety of conditions under which Christ appeared also militate against hallucination. The appearances to Mary Magdalene, to Cleopas, to the disciples on the shore of Galilee, to Paul on the road to Damascus, all l differ in their circumstances. C. S. Lewis suggests:

And any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of man ) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 13- 31; John xx. 15, xxi. 4) [Miracles, 1947, p. 1531.
Hugh Schonfield in The Passover Plot (1966) concedes: "We are not dealing in the Gospels with hallucinations, with psychic phenomena or survival in the Spiritualist sense" (p. 159). He further remarks: "What emerges from the records is that various disciples did see somebody, a real living person. Their experiences were not subjective" (p. 173).
Finally, what rules out the theory of hallucinations l is the fact that the disciples were thoroughly dejected | at the death of Christ and were not, despite Christ's l predictions, expecting a resurrection of their leader. l H. E. W. Turner remarks:

The disciples to whom they [the women] finally report do not believe for joy. There is here no avid clutching at any straw. Something quite unexpected had happened, rather than something longed for having failed to occur [Jesus, Master and Lord, 1960, p. 368].

Easter as History

A. An Existential Concept?
It has become common in circles that find the supernatural aspects of the Resurrection incredible to place an existential interpretation on the Easter event. According to Bultmann’s thinking, “Jesus ist auferstanden ins Kerygma”-Jesus arose in the faith and the preaching of the disciples. For Emil Brunner the Resurrection is not an event that “can be fitted into the succession of historical events”; it is a fact only if it has taken place “for us.” Karl Barth is more positive though still ambiguous in affirming that the Resurrection is a real event though inaccessible to historical investigation. Barth denies any connection between the appearances of Christ listed in First Corinthians 15 and the Resurrection, for if these should be brought within the context of history, the Resurrection “must share in its obscurity and error and essential questionableness.”
In a conference held at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Professor Samuel Sandmel of Hebrew Union College made the following suggestion to Christians:

I think, if I understand right, the issue about the resurrection which has preoccupied us this afternoon stems from the fact that what was once readily credible is in our environment not credible…. If I were a Christian, I think I would not be dismayed by the idea of resurrection. I think I would [find simple prose] that would say: Here is a message that has to do with man’s potential perfection…. I would not let this array of values suffer because one element–in view of the present environment–has to be interpreted allegorically or be divested of its pristine meaning and given a different meaning. The world too badly needs Christianity at its best [D. G. Miller and D. Y. Hadidian, editors, Jesus and Man's Hope, 1971, p. 324].
B. A Historical Question?
It is certainly not to be denied that there must be a personal decision for the Resurrection to be meaningful to us as individuals, and that the Resurrection of Christ transcends ordinary history in its significance. But what is at issue is whether the Resurrection of Christ is rooted in history as an objective event or is simply a creation of the subjective faith of the disciples.
Some demur that to make the Resurrection a question of historical research would be to assume that God’s ways are open to our observation. But is not this indeed a distinctive feature of God’s revelation as recorded in both the Old and the New Testament? Others object that since historical judgments can never achieve absolute certainty, they should not be the basis of our faith.

To this fallacious argument Peter Carnley replies:

The important thing is that it is not legitimate to argue that faith cannot be based on any historical judgments or must be totally independent of historical research and autonomous, because no historical judgment is ever justifiably claimed with certainty [S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton, editors, Christ, Faith and History, 1972, p. 189].
That is, historians deal not in certainties but in probabilities, but this does not render historical investigation without value for the question of the Resurrection. In his presidential address to the American Historical Association, Kenneth Scott Latourette concluded with these words:
The historian, be he Christian or non-Christian, may not know whether God will fully triumph within history. He cannot conclusively demonstrate the validity of the Christian understanding of history. Yet he can establish a strong probability for the dependability of its insights ["The Christian Understanding of History," The American Historical Review LIV (1949), 276].
As J. C. O’Neill has argued:
It will immediately be clear that in asserting that the resurrection is an historical question I have not been asserting that an historian as historian can establish that Jesus rose from the dead. The historian in this case can only show whether or not the evidence makes it at all plausible to assert that Jesus rose from the dead [Sykes and Clayton, op. cit., p. 217].
C. Ancient Concepts of the Afterlife
If the Resurrection of Christ can be investigated as a historical question, one may inquire about the ancient concepts of the afterlife at the time of Jesus and ask whether the Resurrection of Christ was a doctrine that arose from contemporary beliefs.
The ancient Mesopotamians had a pessimistic view of the afterlife, which they conceived as a gloomy, shadowy existence. Gilgamesh sought in vain the secret of immortality. When Ishtar tells the gatekeeper of the Underworld “I will raise up the dead,” she utters this as a threat “so that the dead will outnumber the living” -a calamity and not a hope! (cf. S. N. Kramer, “Death and Nether World according to the Sumerian Literary Texts,” Iraq, XXII [19601. 59-68; H. W. F. Saggs, "Some Ancient Semitic Conceptions of the Afterlife," Faith and Thought, XC [1958], 157-82).

The Egyptians, as noted in our discussion of Osiris above, did have a more optimistic view of their afterlife. But to call the survival of the Ba and Ka, hovering over the mummified body, a “resurrection” is to obscure. the essential differences in concepts.

The ancient Greek attitude was an essentially tragic outlook. Epitaphs reflect an almost universal pessimism about life beyond the grave. Achilles in Hades says he would rather be a landless peasant on earth than king of the Underworld. After Homer’s time a hope for a blissful existence in the Elysian Fields was held out, but only for heroes (cf. Lewis R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of ImmortalitY, 1921).

In the classical period the immortality of the soul was stressed in opposition to the body, which was described by the Orphics as soma sema, “the body a tomb.” Plato in The Phaedo taught that the body is the chief hindrance to wisdom and truth.

In the Hellenistic age the Greek philosophers varied in their views on immortality but agreed on the undesirability of reviving the body. The Stoics, who were pantheists, believed that souls left the body to ascend to the celestial regions of the moon before being absorbed in the All. A Stoic epitaph reads: “The ashes have my body; the sacred air has borne away my soul” (cf. Franz Cumont. After Life in Roman Paganism, 1922, reprinted 1959, p. 15). Seneca, the Stoic tutor of Nero and Paul’s contemporary, spoke of “the detestable habitation of the body, and vain flesh in which the soul is imprisoned.”

Epicurus, whose philosophy was based upon the atomistic cosmology of Democritus, taught that at death the atoms of the body simply disintegrated. There was no immortality but instead freedom from the terrors of the Beyond. The Epicurean indifference to the afterlife is reflected in such epitaphs as: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo, “T was not, T was, I am not, I do not care,” and Es, bibe, lude, veni, “Eat, drink, play, come hither” -(cf. I Cor. 15:32). It is therefore not surprising that the Stoics and the Epicureans at the Areopagus in Athens disdainfully dismissed Paul when he began to preach to them the Resurrection (Acts 17:31, 32). According to Robert Grant (“The Resurrection of the Body,” Journal of Religion, XXVIII [1948], 189): “In educated circles only the soul of man is valued. For those who took this standpoint as axiomatic, fulfillment of the Christian hope was impossible and in any event undesirable.”

That the concept of bodily resurrection was just as difficult to accept at the dawn of Christianity as it is for some today-for different reasons, to be sure-is shown by the reaction of pagan critics and of the Gnostics. The raising of a corpse was ridiculed as a shameful act by Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus taught a Docetic view that the “resurrection” involved only the noncorporal elements of personality (cf. Malcolm Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos: A Valentinian Letter on the Resurrection, 1969).

If the early apostles of the Gospel had altered their teaching of the resurrection to make their message more palatable to their contemporaries, as we are sometimes advised to do, there would have been no historic continuity of Christianity but only shifting patterns battered to and fro by every passing intellectual fashion.

D. Jewish Concepts of the Resurrection
As is well known, faith in the resurrection of the dead rose but intermittently and gradually in the Hebrew consciousness, culminating in the declaration of Daniel 12:2 (cf. R. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, 1960; G. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism, 1972). On the basis of Ugaritic lexicography M. Dahood claims that there are more references to the resurrection in the Psalms than we had realized (cf. Elmer B. Smick, “Ugaritic and the Theology of the Psalms,” J. B. Payne, editor, New Perspectives on the Old Testament, 1970, pp. 104-16.

Faith in the resurrection, generally for the righteous alone, is clearly expressed in some of the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical books such as Second Maccabees. Second Baruch, and Fourth Ezra, but is not mentioned in Jubilees or the Book of Enoch. Philo in his Legum Allegoria (JII, 69) holds that the body “is wicked and a plotter against the soul, and is even a corpse and a dead thing.”

According to the Pharisaic Mishnah, Sanhedrin X, 1:

All Israelites have a share in the world to come…. And these are they that have no share in the world to come: he that says there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the Law, and [he that says] that the Law is not from Heaven, and an Epicurean.
The Sadduccees, on the other hand, rejected the resurrection-a division of views that Paul exploited in his trial before the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:6).
Despite the rash claims of a few writers that the leader of the Qumran community was believed to have risen from the dead (cf. my article, “The Teacher of Righteousness From Qumran and Jesus of Nazareth,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, X [May 13, 1966], 12-14), it is not at all certain whether the Dead Sea Scrolls affirm, a faith in the resurrection. John Pryke comments: “The bliss of the elect as described in the Manual is much nearer to the ‘immortality of the soul’ than to the ‘resurrection of the flesh’ ” (“Eschatology in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in W. F. Albright et al., The Scrolls and Christianity, 1969, p. 57). Matthew Black also notes: “It is surprising that no unambiguously clear evidence has so far been produced for any belief by the Qumran sect in the resurrection or in resurrection” (“The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins,” ibid., p. 106).

Though there were scattered indications in the Old Testament of a germinating faith in the resurrection and though important segments of Judaism did maintain this conviction, neither in the Old Testament nor in contemporary Jewish tradition was there a belief in the resurrection of the Messiah (cf. P. Grelot, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” in P. de Surgy, op. cit., pp. 24, 136). As Merrill Tenney concludes:

The idea was not so essential a part of Jewish theology that it would be read into the phenomena of the life of Jesus or arbitrarily superimposed upon His teachings. His predictions of rising from the dead and His interpretation of the Old Testament were original with Him; they were not the echoes of current theology that He had absorbed and repeated unthinkingly [The Reality of the Resurrection, 1963, reprinted 1972, p. 28].
E. The Pauline Evidence
No one questions the centrality of Christ’s Resurrection in Paul’s teaching (cf. D. M. Stanley, Christ’s Resurrection in Pauline Soteriology, 1961). Nor does anyone deny the genuineness of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, written but 25 years after the crucifixion of Christ. In First Corinthians 15: 1-8 Paul gives a list of the appearances of the risen Christ to various believers including himself. Moreover, Paul says he received this tradition in a manner that indicates its great antiquity. According to M. Carrez:
Framed by these two words, gospel and kerygma, we find a text and a tradition whose Aramaic tenor, archaic character, and primitive catechetical form have been recently pointed out by B. Klappert…. The appearance to Peter, confirmed by the allusion to Lk 24,34, and the appearance to James . . . show the Jerusalamite character of this tradition. What should we derive from it? That, in any case, this formulation already existed in an established way six years after the events of the redemptive drama at the latest. and that everything concurs in underlining the great antiquity of this formulation ["The Pauline Hermeneutics of the Resurrection," in F. de Surgy, op. cit., p. 40].
Of crucial significance is the fact that Paul can claim in First Corinthians 15:6 that of the more than 500 disciples to whom Christ appeared at the same time, most (hoi pleiones, not just “the greater part” as in the King James Version) were still alive at the time Paul wrote. As William Lillie, head of the Department of Biblical Study at the University of Aberdeen, notes:
What gives a special authority to the list as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred . brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, “If you do not believe me, you can ask them.” Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago ["The Empty Tomb and the Resurrection," in D. E. Nineham et al. Historicity and Chronology in the New Testament, 1965, p. 125].
F. The Evidence of the Gospels
The canonical Gospels were all written before the end of the first century A.D. at the latest, and Mark may have been written as early as A.D. 50. Although they differ in details, they concur on the basic point: the two factors that together convinced the disciples that Christ had risen were the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Christ on at least ten occasions. As C. H. Dodd has pointed out, the gospel narratives are free from the legendary embellishments of later apocryphal accounts. They simply recount the surprise of the empty tomb and the gradual realization of its significance after encounters with the risen Christ. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter is not content with such artless narratives. It claims that the soldiers on guard beheld:
…three men come out from the sepulchre, and two of them sustaining the other, and a cross following them, and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was led of them by the hand overpassing the heavens [E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha 1, 1963, p. 186].
One feature of the Resurrection narratives that indicates they were not late inventions of the Church is the striking fact that the first appearances of the risen Christ were not to the apostles but instead to women. As C. F. D. Moule comments:
Further, it is difficult to explain how a story that grew up late and took shape merely in accord with the supposed demands of apologetic came to be framed in terms almost exclusively of women witnesses, who, as such, were notoriously invalid witnesses according to Jewish principles of evidence [C. F. D. Moule, editor, The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ 1968, p. 9].
If one rejects the traditional interpretation of the empty tomb as resulting from the Resurrection of Christ, one is obliged to supply a better alternative. Such theories have been often discussed-e.g., Frank Morrison, Who Moved the Stone? (1930, reprinted 1963); Daniel P. Fuller, Easter Faith and History (1965). We may briefly summarize these proposals and the objections to them.
Heinrich Paulus in his Life of Jesus (1828) suggested that Jesus was not dead when he was taken from the cross. The coolness of the tomb revived him. After exchanging his grave wrappings for the gardener’s clothes, Jesus spoke to his disciples for forty days and then walked into a cloud on a mountain and went off somewhere to die. The implausibility of this reconstruction was recognized by Strauss, who wrote:

It is impossible that one who had just come forth from the grave half dead, who crept about weak and ill, who stood in need of medical treatment . . ., and who at last succumbed to suffering, could ever have given to the disciples that impression that He was a conqueror over death and the grave . . . [The Life of Jesus 1879 1, 412, cited by Wilbur Smith, The Supernaturalness of Christ, 1940, p. 208].
A modern variation has been proposed by Schonfield in his celebrated work The Passover Plot. Jesus plotted with Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus, a Judaean priest, and an anonymous “young man” to arrange a feigned death on the cross by taking a drug. Schonfield seeks to maintain that neither Jesus nor his accomplices were guilty of any fraud. Yet the mysterious young man is mistaken for the risen Jesus on the four occasions of the “appearances” admitted by Schonfield without ever correcting the misapprehension of the disciples. We are asked to believe that the skeptical disciples were confused by the appearance of this young man into believing that Jesus had arisen, and that they were so transformed by this confusion that they turned Jerusalem upside down with their preaching (cf. my review in the Gordon Review, X [1967], 150-60; reprinted in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, XXI [1969], 27-32).
Kirsopp Lake in The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (1907) emended Mark 16:6 so that it read: “He is not here, behold (pointing to the right tomb) the place where they laid him.” His ingenious theory that the women saw an empty tomb but the wrong one hardly explains their amazement and fear. Nor it is plausible in view of the fact that Jesus was buried in the private garden of Joseph of Arimathea, and that the women noted where he was buried (Mark 15:47). J. Jeremias has demonstrated that about fifty tombs were venerated by the Jews before the time of Jesus. In the view of such interest in the tombs of holy men, J. Delorme asks:

In these circumstances, is it possible that the original community of Jerusalem could have been completely uninterested in the tomb where Jesus was laid after his death? . . . Can the existence of this tradition at Jerusalem, centered around a specific place, in a relatively short lapse of time after the events, be explained as a pure legendary creation? Could one show an ordinary tomb as being the tomb of Jesus? Can one question without foundation known persons, the women designated by name and Joseph of Arimathea? ["The Resurrection and Jesus' Tomb: Mark 16, 1-8 in the Gospel Tradition," in P. de Surgy, op. cit., pp. 88, 101].
If the tomb where Jesus was laid was indeed empty, could his body have been stolen away by someone? To assume that the body was stolen one must first of all disregard the story of the guard posted at the sepulchre (Matt. 28:65, 66) . We need then to ask, Who would have stolen the body and why? The Romans had no reason to do so; they had surrendered the body to Joseph of Arimathea. It is illogical to suppose that the Jews stole the body, since they could easily have suppressed the nascent Christian movement and exposed the Christians’ claim of Christ’s Resurrection by simply producing his body.
Hermann Reimarus, whose works were published posthumously by Gotthold Lessing in the eighteenth century, did suggest that it was the Christians who removed the body and hid it somewhere. But this is psychologically incredible since the disciples would not only be perpetrating a fraud but also be dying for a deliberate deception. The neatly deposited graveclothes and napkin observed by Peter and John (John 20:7) are evidence against tomb robbery by ordinary thieves, as they would not have taken the time to tidy up the sepulchre.

G. The Impact of the Resurrection

Not even the most skeptical can deny the historical attestation of the faith of the early Christians in the Resurrection of Christ. This simple fact is of importance if we accept as genuine the numerous predictions of Jesus concerning his death and resurrection (Matt. 16:21; 17:9, 22,23; 20:18, 19; 26:2; etc.). Charlatans such as Theudas (Josephus, Antiquities XX. 5.1), who claimed to have the power to divide the Jordan River, or the Gnostic Menander, who claimed his disciples would remain ageless, were quickly exposed by the failure of their claims. The Qumran community, which has some features in common with the Christian community, did not survive the destruction of its monastery by the Romans in A.D. 68 because the people had no comparable faith to sustain them.

Something earth-shaking must have transformed the despairing disciples. A. M. Ramsey (The Resurrection of Christ, 1946) reminds us: “It must not be forgotten that the teaching and ministry of Jesus did not provide the disciples with a Gospel, and led them from puzzle to paradox until the Resurrection gave them a key” (p. 40).

It should be obvious that the early Christians were completely convinced of the Resurrection. If this were not so, they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. By preaching the Resurrection of Christ they further antagonized the Jewish authorities and in effect accused them of slaying the Messiah (Acts 2:23,24, 36; 3:14, 15, 4:10; etc.). As H. C. Cadbury notes:

The effect of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection on the early Christian belief in the wider resurrection experience can hardly be overestimated. It was the kind of assurance, contemporary and concrete, that the most ardent though speculative convictions of Pharisees or other non-Christian Jews could not have equaled ["Intimations of Immortality in the Thought of Jesus," in T. T. Ramsey et al., The Miracles and the Resurrection, 1964, p. 84].
Professor Lillie concludes:
The followers of a religious group do not preserve traditions of their leaders forsaking their master and behaving in a cowardly and despairing fashion unless these traditions happen to be true. The fact that the Gospel was boldly and successfully preached by these same followers is attested not only by the New Testament record, but by the historical fact of the growth of the Christian Church. It is indeed one of the few New Testament facts for which we have independent evidence outside the Christians’ own traditions. The Roman historian Tacitus (Annals XV. 44) states that “a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment (by the crucifixion of Jesus) again broke out” [in D. E. Nineham et al., op. cit.].
I would argue that only the appearance of the risen Christ can satisfactorily explain how Jesus’ skeptical brother James (John 7:5) became a leader in the early Church (I Cor. 15:7; Acts 15), how despondent Peter became a fearless preacher at Pentecost, and how a fanatical persecutor of Christians became Paul, the greatest missionary of the Gospel.
A Concluding Challenge
I have tried to show that theories attributing the Resurrection of Christ to the borrowing of mythological themes, to hallucinations, or to alternative explanations of the empty tomb are improbable and are also inadequate to explain the genesis and growth of Christianity. To be sure, the Resurrection of Jesus is unprecedented, but Jesus himself is sui generis, unique. As Tenney remarks, “Although the resurrection was without precedent. it was not abnormal for Christ…. He rose from the dead because it was the logical and normal prerogative of the Son of God” (op. Cit., p. 133).
The historical question of the Resurrection of Christ differs from other historical problems in that it poses a challenge to every individual. Christ said (John 11:25): “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” For the Resurrection of Christ to be more than a beautiful Easter story, each person needs to believe in his heart that God has raised Christ from the dead and to confess with his mouth Jesus as Lord.

Edwin M. Yamauchi is a professor of history at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

This article, used by permission of the author, first appeared in two parts in Christianity Today on March 15, 1974 and March 29, 1974.

Finding the Truth
How the earliest church decided Marcion and the Gnostics, among others, were wrong.
by Justo González, Jr

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/51h/51h026.html

Long before the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, the church had already been dealing with heresy for some time. Early on teachers arose who said they had special access to Jesus’ “real teachings.” So early on, the church had to come up with methods for discerning truth and rejecting error.

In his The Story of Christianity (Harper & Row, 1984), Justo González, a member of the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, discusses the two most powerful heresies of the earliest church and how it responded.

Secret knowledge
Of all the differing interpretations of Christianity, none was as dangerous, nor as close to victory, as was Gnosticism. This was a vast and amorphous movement that existed both within and outside the church.

The name Gnosticism derives from the Greek word gnoses, which means “knowledge.” According to the Gnostics, they possessed a special, mystical knowledge reserved for those with true understanding. That knowledge was the secret key to salvation.

Salvation was the main concern of the Gnostics. They concluded that all matter is evil, or at best unreal. A human being is in reality an eternal spirit that somehow has been imprisoned in a body. Since the body is a prison to the spirit, and since it misguides us as to our true nature, it is evil. Therefore the Gnostics’ final goal was to escape from the body and this material world in which we are exiled. The world is not our true home but rather an obstacle to the salvation of the spirit.

How, then, is the origin of the world and of the body to be explained? Gnosticism affirmed that originally all reality was spiritual. The supreme being had no intention of creating a material world but only a spiritual one. Thus a number of spiritual beings were generated. Gnostic teachers did not agree as to their exact number, with some systems positing 365 such spiritual beings or “eons.” In any case, one of these eons, far removed from the supreme being, fell into error and thus created the material world. According to one system, for instance, Wisdom, one of the eons, wished to produce something by herself, and the resulting “abortion” was the world. That is what the world is in Gnosticism: an abortion of the spirit and not a divine creation.

But since this world was made by a spiritual being, there are still “sparks” or “bits” of spirit in it. It is these that have been imprisoned in human bodies and must be liberated through gnosis.

In order to achieve that liberation, a spiritual messenger must come to this world to waken us from our “dream.” Our spirits are “asleep” within our bodies, being driven by the impulses and passions of the body, and someone must come from beyond to remind us who we really are and to call us to struggle against our incarceration. This messenger brings the gnosis, the secret knowledge and inspiration necessary for salvation.

Above us are the heavenly spheres, each ruled by an evil power whose aim is to impede our progress to the spiritual realm. In order to reach the spiritual “fullness,” we must break through each of those spheres. The only way to do this is to have the secret knowledge that opens the way-much like a spiritual password. The heavenly messenger has been sent precisely to give us that knowledge, without which there is no salvation.

In Christian Gnosticism, that messenger is Christ. Christ has come to earth to remind us of our heavenly origin and to give us the secret knowledge without which we cannot return to the spiritual mansions.

Since Christ is a heavenly messenger, and since body and matter are evil, most Christian Gnostics rejected the notion that Christ had a body like ours. Some said his body was an appearance, a sort of ghost that miraculously seemed to be a real body. Many distinguished between the heavenly “Christ” and the earthly “Jesus.” In some cases, this was coupled with the notion that Jesus did have a body but that this was of a “spiritual matter,” different from ours. Most denied the birth of Jesus, which would have put him under the power of the material world.

All these notions are various degrees of what the rest of the church called docetism-a name derived from a Greek word meaning “to seem,” for all these doctrines implied, in one way or another, that the body of Jesus appeared to be fully human but was not.

Meanwhile, how is this life to be lived? At this point, Gnostics gave two divergent answers. Most declared that, since the body is the prison of the spirit, one must control the body and its passions and thus weaken its power over the spirit. But there were also some who held that, since the spirit is by nature good and cannot be destroyed, we are to leave the body to its own devices and let it follow the guidance of its own passions. Thus while some Gnostics were extreme ascetics, others were libertines.

Gnosticism was a serious threat to Christianity throughout the second century.

Anti-Jehovah
Marcion, whose father was bishop of Sinope in Pontus, knew Christianity from an early age. But he had a profound dislike towards both Judaism and the material world. About a.d. 144, he went to Rome, where he gathered a following.

Since Marcion was convinced that the world is evil, he concluded that its creator must be either evil or ignorant. But instead of positing a long series of spiritual beings, as the Gnostics did, Marcion proposed a much simpler solution. According to him, the God and Father of Jesus is not the same as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. It was Jehovah who made this world. The Father’s purpose was that there be only a spiritual world. But Jehovah, either through ignorance or out of an evil intent, made this world and placed humankind in it.

This means that the Hebrew Scriptures are indeed inspired by a god, although this is Jehovah and not the Supreme Father. Jehovah is an arbitrary god, who chooses a particular people above all the rest. And he is also vindictive, constantly keeping an account on those who disobey him and punishing them.

Over against Jehovah, and far above him, is the Father of Christians. This God is not vindictive but loving. This God requires nothing of us but rather gives everything freely, including salvation. This God does not seek to be obeyed but to be loved. It is out of compassion for us, Jehovah’s creatures, that the Supreme God has sent his Son to save us, who simply appeared as a grown man during the reign of Tiberius. Naturally at the end, there will be no judgment, since the Supreme God is absolutely loving and will simply forgive us.

All this led Marcion to set the Hebrew Scriptures aside. If the Old Testament was the word of an inferior god, it should not be read in the churches nor used as the basis of Christian instruction. In order to fill this gap, Marcion compiled a list of books that he considered true Christian Scriptures. These were the epistles of Paul-one of the few, according to Marcion, who had really understood Jesus’ message-and the Gospel of Luke. As to the many quotations from the Old Testament in Luke and Paul, Marcion explained them away as interpolations-the handiwork of Judaizers seeking to subvert the original message.

For a number of years, this rival church achieved a measure of success, and even after it was clearly defeated, it lingered on for centuries.

Back to the Bible
Marcion’s list was the first attempt to put together a “New Testament.” When early Christians spoke of “Scripture,” what they meant was the Hebrew Scriptures, usually in the Greek version known as the Septuagint. It was also customary to read in church passages from one or several Gospels, as well as from the Epistles-particularly Paul’s. Since there was no approved list, different Gospels were read in different churches, and the same was true of other books.

But Marcion’s challenge required a response, and thus the church at large began to compile a list of sacred Christian writings. This was not done in a formal manner, through a council or special meeting. A consensus developed gradually.

There was no question, except among Gnostics and Marcionites, that the Hebrew Scripture was part of the Christian canon. This was important as a proof that God had been preparing the way for the advent of Christianity and even as a way of understanding the nature of the God who had been revealed in Jesus Christ. Christian faith was the fulfillment of the hope of Israel and not a sudden apparition from heaven. As to what is now called the New Testament, the Gospels were the first to attain general recognition. It is important to note that those early Christians decided to include more than one Gospel in their canon. They did this as a direct response to the challenge of Marcion and Gnosticism.

Many Gnostic teachers claimed that the heavenly messenger had trusted his secret knowledge to a particular disciple, who alone was the true interpreter of the message. Thus various Gnostic groups had a book that claimed to present the true teachings of Jesus. Such was, for instance, the Gospel of Saint Thomas.

In response, the church at large sought to show that its doctrines were not based on the supposed witness of a single apostle or Gospel but on the consensus of the entire apostolic tradition. The very fact that the various Gospels differed in matters of detail but agreed on the basic issues at stake made their agreement a more convincing argument.

By the end of the second century, the core of the canon was established: the four Gospels, Acts, and the Pauline epistles. On the shorter books of the present canon, there was no consensus until a much later date. It was in the second half of the fourth century that a complete consensus was achieved as to exactly which books ought to be included in the New Testament.

The symbol of faith
Another element in the church’s response to heresies was what we now call the Apostles’ Creed. Its basic text was put together, probably in Rome, around the year 150. It was then called “symbol of the faith.”

The word symbol meant a means of recognition, such as a token that a general gave to a messenger so that the recipient could recognize a true messenger. Likewise, the “symbol” put together in Rome was a means whereby Christians could distinguish true believers from those who followed the various heresies, particularly Gnosticism and Marcionism.

One of the main uses of this symbol was in baptism, where it was presented to the candidate in the form of a series of three questions:

Do you believe in God the Father almighty?

Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Ghost and of Mary the virgin, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose again at the third day, living from among the dead, and ascended unto heaven and sat at the right of the Father, and will come to judge the quick and the dead?

Do you believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh?

Closer scrutiny clearly shows that this early creed is directed against Marcion and the Gnostics. First, the Greek word pantokrator, usually translated as “almighty,” literally means “all ruling.” What is meant here is that there is nothing, and certainly not the material world, that falls outside of God’s rule. The distinction between a spiritual reality that serves God and a material reality that does not is rejected. This world, its matter and its physical bodies, are part of the “all” over which God reigns.

The creed’s most extensive paragraph is the one dealing with the Son. This is because it was precisely in their Christology that Marcion and the Gnostics differed most widely from the church. First, we are told that Jesus Christ is the “Son of God.” Other ancient versions say “Son of the same” or “His Son.” Jesus is the Son of the God who rules over this world and over all reality. The birth “of Mary the virgin” is not there primarily in order to stress the virgin birth-although, quite clearly, that is affirmed-but rather to affirm the very fact that Jesus was born and did not simply appear on earth, as Marcion and others claimed. The reference to Pontius Pilate is not there to put the blame on the Roman governor but rather to date the event to insist on the fact that it was a historical, datable event. And docetism is further denied by declaring that Jesus “was crucified … died, and rose again.” Finally, it is affirmed that this same Jesus will return “to judge,” a notion that Marcion would never accept.

The “holy church” is affirmed because Christians were beginning to underscore the authority of the church. And the “resurrection of the flesh” is a final rejection of any notion that the flesh is evil or of no consequence.

No more secrets
In the struggle against heresy, the debate finally came to the issue of the authority of the church. All agreed that the true message was the one taught by Jesus. The Gnostics claimed that they had some secret access to that original message through a succession of secret teachers. Marcion claimed that he had access to that message through the writings of Paul and Luke-which, however, had to be purged of what did not agree with Marcion’s views regarding the Old Testament. The church at large claimed to be in possession of the original gospel and the true teachings of Jesus. Thus what was debated was in a way the authority of the church against the claims of the heretics.

At this point, the notion of apostolic succession became very important. What was argued was simply that, had Jesus had some secret knowledge to communicate to his disciples-which in fact he did not-he would have entrusted that teaching to the same apostles to whom he entrusted the church. If those apostles had received any such teaching, they in turn would have passed it on to those who were to follow them in the leadership of the church. Therefore, were there any such secret teaching, it should be found among the direct disciples of the apostles, and the successors of those disciples, the bishops.

But the truth of the matter is that those who can now-that is, in the second century-claim direct apostolic succession unanimously deny the existence of any such secret teaching. In conclusion, the Gnostic claim that there is a secret tradition, and that they have been entrusted with it, is false.

In order to strengthen this argument, it was necessary to show that the bishops of the time were indeed successors of the apostles. This was not difficult, since several of the most ancient churches had lists of bishops linking them with the apostolic past. Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, and others had such lists.

Be it through actual bishops or through other leaders (some early churches were headed by councils of “elders”), the orthodox church of the second century could show its connection with the apostles in a way in which Marcion and the Gnostics could not.

The “catholic” church
The word catholic means “universal,” but it also means “according to the whole.” To separate itself from the various heretical groups and sects, the ancient church began calling itself “catholic.” This title underscored both its universality and the inclusiveness of the witness on which it stood. It was the church “according to the whole,” that is, according to the total witness of all the apostles. Only the church “catholic,” the church “according to the whole,” could lay claim to the entire apostolic witness.

Ironically, through an evolution that took centuries, debates regarding the true meaning of catholic came to be centered on the person and authority of a single apostle-Peter.

A condensed excerpt from The Story of Christianity by Justo L. González (Harper & Row, 1984). Used with permission. From the manuscript, Diwan Abatur, or Progress Through the Purgatories / Bodleian Library, Univesity of Oxford, MS Drower 8RThe Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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