The Da Vinci Code

The intriguing question about this novel is why it has attracted such a huge cult following and controversy – in the West at least. Yes, it is a page-turner, but for me the potboiler style was a turn-off from page 1. It was only the insistent words of the person who gave it to me ("you must read this") which made me persevere. The answer to my question lies, I believe, on the page before the Prologue headed 'Fact'. It describes briefly a secret society, The Priory of Sion, (of which Da Vinci was a member) and a Catholic sect known as Opus Dei. At the bottom of the page it says, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." So what is the 'fact' that has so affected our psyche? I will leave other reviews (there are masses of them) to outline the story. All I need say here is that at the beginning of the book, a man in his dying moments makes symbols of his own body and entrails in order that a secret does not die with him forever. The book is about the decoding of those symbols and the secret is about the whereabouts of the Holy Grail – or is it? The crucial 'fact' is that there are documents (the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coptic Scrolls discovered in the mid 20th Century) that describe Jesus as having an intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene and she as being extremely important to his ministry – perhaps more so than any of the disciples. The supposition (no longer fact) in Dan Brown's story is that Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene with a bloodline which continues to this day. A character in the novel says that Jesus was not The Son of God but just a very important and gifted spiritual leader of his time and that The Holy Grail is not the chalice that held the blood of Christ, but the documents which contain proof of the bloodline of Christ and the relics of Mary Magdalene kept hidden from the Catholic Church by the Priory of Sion. Now the idea of Mary Magdalene having a very different role is not new – indeed it was covered in a recent BBC documentary ('Bible Mysteries'). But Dan Brown uses a powerful and potentially misleading mix of story and fact in a popular format which gives people permission to believe in a Christ who was mortal, revered the feminine and loved Mary Magdalene above all others. A sudden release from cognitive dissonance – a story of Christ, backed to some extent by written evidence, which would be in accordance with our current scientific worldview and cultural beliefs in the equal importance of women. This is why I believe the book has such a following. But again one might say this is not an unprecedented release. For example, quite a number of today's Christian leaders have shown how it is possible to be a practicing Christian without a literal belief in the Christian story. (Anthony Freeman's book 'God in Us' is a good example.) The main character in The Da Vinci Code says "Those who fully understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical" but is then challenged by another character who asks why so many people do in fact believe in their literal truth. The answer he gives is that "Religious allegory has become part of the fabric of reality. And living that reality helps millions of people to cope and be better people." He goes on to say this is no more false than mathematical cryptographers who believe in imaginary numbers in order to break codes. Dan Brown therefore does touch on the metaphysics of truth. The irony is that visitors to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland have increased hugely as a result of the publication of his novel. This is where the fictional denouement of the novel takes place, but apparently many visitors have taken this part of the book as true. It seems we humans cannot help ourselves from believing stories to be fact. Dan Brown may just have replaced one story by another. The success of this novel may also be due to the way it revels in the mystery and interpretation of symbols and stories. One might say that, even if it casts doubt on one miracle, it replaces it with another – the miracle of meaning. In the beginning was the Word….which is why there is already a genre of books on how to decode The Da Vinci Code itself.