Refuting The Da Vinci
Code Fable

Dr. Stan Fleming
Gate Breakers Ministries Gatebreakers@hotmail.com

The DaVinci Code by author Dan Brown is a best-selling novel with movie following in May, 2006. The plot undermines the essential beliefs about the origins of Christianity. Though it poses as a fictional novel, it begins with a Fact page: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” Yet, many of the descriptions are inaccurate, misleading, and fabrications. Below is a partial list of errors the book purports along with brief refutations.

1.        The Louvre Pyramid has 666 window panes corresponding with the number of Satan (p.21). Not true. There are 673 and have nothing to do with Satan.¹

2.         The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950’s, tell the true Grail story, speak of Christ’s ministry in human terms, and survived Emperor Constantine’s plot to destroy them (p.234). They were actually discovered in the 1940’s, say nothing about the Grail story, confirm the authenticity of the Old Testament, and had nothing to do with Emperor Constantine.

3.         The Christian story of the Magi bringing baby Jesus gifts was borrowed from a Hindu story about Krishna (p.232). Ancient Hinduism has no such story.

4.         The scientist Robert Boyle was a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, thus against formal and historical Christianity (p.326). Rather, he was a devoted Christian. For instance he wrote: “The Christian Religion brings mankind diverse positive Benefits, such as are, more cleare and extensive knowledg of God, and divine things; the Remission of Sins; the Favour of God; severall graces and vertues suitable to mens respective needs and conditions; and above all, a happy Immortality in the Life to come.”² (Old English)

5.         Leonardo DaVinci was a flamboyant homosexual (p.45). According to most of his biographers, he was falsely accused of this. DaVinci was celibate, non-sexual. None of his massive writings indicate any sexual activity. He wrote, “Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.”³

6.         The Last Supper painting by Leonardo DaVinci supplies hidden codes and Mary Magdalene sits next to Jesus (p.243). The painting is a scene from John 13:21-24. DaVinci did not include Mary Magdalene. John is youthful looking because he was the youngest. Florentine artists of DaVinci’s period often characterized young, unmarried men with feminine facial features to contrast with older, breaded men with rougher features. DaVinci’s painting of John the Baptist is similar. 

7.         Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene is of historical record (p.244), and they had a daughter named Sarah whom Mary bore in France (p.255). They were not married and there is no such historical record. The strong ancient tradition regarding Mary Magdalene is that after Jesus’ death and resurrection she went to Italy. There she witnessed to Tiberius about the resurrection of Christ and preached the gospel throughout Italy. The legend of her having a child in France did not emerge until the ninth century. Tradition says Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary went to France.

8.         The Merovingian bloodline is from Christ and there are descendents today named Plantard and Saint-Clair. The ancient secret society of the Priory of Sion holds this knowledge (pp.257, 442). According to the early Church fathers (Clement, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Methodius and numerous others) Jesus was a virgin all of His life, never married, and had no offspring. The ancient Priory of Sion was not secret and rather unremarkable.⁴

9.         80 gospels were considered for the New Testament. Constantine chose the four current Gospels in 325 AD. The others were outlawed by him (pp.231, 234). Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were perceived as authentic from the beginning. They are referred to early on by Clement of Rome (96 AD); Polycarp (160 AD); Justin Martyr (160 AD), etc. Tatian’s Diatessaron harmonized the four prior to 170 AD.. Constantine did not choose them and His Edict of Milan in 313 gave freedom of religion.

10.      Constantine never converted to Christianity. He plotted with early Church Fathers in 325 to control the empire.  He was forced into baptism near the time of his death (pp.231-235). Constantine converted in 312 when he saw a vision in the sky during a battle campaign. Only 10 percent of the population was Christian in 325 so there was no political advantage. He was baptized near death as was the custom in those days in that part of the empire.

11.      Thousands of ancient documents chronicled Jesus life as merely a moral man (p.234). Where’s the proof of Brown’s claim. Even many of the erroneous Gnostic apocryphal books revere Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (i.e. Gospel of Thomas, The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, The Dialogue of the Savior).

12.      Before the Council of Nicaea in 325 nobody thought Jesus was God (p.233). From the beginning, Christians understood that Jesus was the Son of God, thus God, “Immanuel – God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Clement, Aristides, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, etc. all wrote in terms of Jesus being divine.

13.      Jesus never claimed to be God (p.232). False, here is Matthew 26:63-64 in which the high priest was interrogating Jesus: “And the high priest answered and said to Him, ‘I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.’" Jesus also said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26).

14.      Thousands of documents and tens of thousands of pages of Sangreal documents from the first few centuries chronicle Jesus life as a mortal man and reveal His bloodline (pp.234, 256).This is a complete fabrication. Dan Brown, show us the proof?

15.      Jesus’ death and resurrection were from a myth and his followers knew he was only a mortal man (pp.232-233). Not true. Here are two of his followers: Tertullian (207 AD): Against Marcion “God lived with men as man that man might be taught to live the divine life; God lived on man’s level, that man might be able to live on God’s level: God was found weak, that man might become most great. If you disdain a God like this, I doubt if you can wholeheartedly believe in a God who was crucified.”⁵ Clement (96 AD): 1^st Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians “Think, my dear friends, how the Lord offers proof after proof that there is going to be a resurrection, of which He has made Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead.”⁶

¹ Glass on Web: www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/94/
² Robert Boyle, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boyle/
³ http://www.adherents.com/people/pd/Leonardo_DaVinci.htm
⁴ http://priory-of-sion.com
⁵ Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1956)
⁶ Clement, chapter 24, as recorded in Betty Radice, 33

For more details and documentation exposing The Da Vinci Code
please see the video presentations,
“Exposed! Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Fantasy”
and
“The Proof and the Power of the Resurrection”