The da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction?

[Music] it's my pleasure to introduce to you tonight ward gask dr. gas has dedicated his life to making theology accessible he's a graduate of Wheaton College Fuller Theological Seminary and received his PhD from Manchester University he's also written a number of books commentaries and essays you'll also have access to one of his articles later this evening dr. gas has served in a variety of academic leadership positions including visiting scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary an adjunct professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary of the Northwest he's currently president of Pacific Association of theological studies and founder of the Center for innovation in theological education in Seattle he and his wife live on an island off of Vancouver and it is my pleasure to welcome them up please help me welcome dr. Ward gaskey thank you very much it's good being with you might move this up slightly to talk to you about The Da Vinci Code now obviously it's fiction because it is a novel on the other hand a lot of people seem to miss that point and we're going to talk about that tonight here's Dan Brown the author of The Da Vinci Code he's a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter School in New England where he taught English until he decided to be a writer he was doing Graduate Studies as he looked forward to a career as an academic I dawned on him he has a lot more fun writing novels and so he started writing them and he wrote three novels before The Da Vinci Code and they had moderately successful sales five 10,000 copies each and if you published a book that's pretty good but then along comes the Da Vinci Code and here he hits the big time 35 million copies plus and it hasn't come into paperback in North America yet it's absolutely amazing it is the phenomenal best-selling novel of all x in terms of that time spread two and a half years it's been up ever since its first week it has been on the New York Times bestseller less for hardback fiction and it is still on that list depending on which bestseller list you look at he's on all of them the publishers week bestseller list for this week lists him number 10 on the hardback fiction which is quite a ways down but it must be several new books came out and he'll be back up the list later and these other books that only sold five or ten thousand copies have now sold over a million each and the Angels & Demons volume which is sort of a companion piece in one sense to The Da Vinci Code has sold three or four million I think at the moment there is I think enjoying the life of a writer I tell my students if you want to be a writer don't quit your day job yet because you're not likely to be Dan Brown but we keep hoping it's just like winning the lottery if you have how many have read the book Vinci Code okay there's probably 60% 70% of you that's great the characters Jacques Sean air the curator of the Louvre expert in winners aunts art as it turns out he has been a leader of the so called Priory of Seon turns out to be a secret society designed to keep the truth alive about the origins of Christianity and the sort of thing it's quite different from what you've heard Robert Langdon is professor of religious symbology at Harvard is there a professor of religious symbology at Harvard not yet I'm sure that the development department has their eyes on Dan Brown and down in such a chair captain bezu Fache of the Paris Police Department a typical lieutenant captain out to solve a crime comes on as a bumbling person but as time develops he's smarter than he appears soughing never a cryptologist an expert in codes and Dan Brown's all of his books have to do with codes he's got a new one coming out by the way probably shortly after the movie comes out on The Da Vinci Code which is scheduled now for May 19th 2006 and his new book is going to be the Solomon key and surprise it's about the Masons and other side sorts of intrigue well Sophie Neveu happens to be the estranged granddaughter of Jean Sean air she's got red hair that's significant Sophie that names mean anything to you Greek for wisdom never the new Eve maybe Silas the mock he's about my size but he's an albino I don't know how they can do this in the movie because it's not politically correct to do it the way they did it in the book but anyway there he is he's a monk a member of Opus Dei Copas de don't actually have monks but who knows maybe there is a monk somewhere that has involved in the Opus Dei organization and then there's Bishop Manuel aringarosa the who is the head of Opus Dei a Catholic secret movement and sir leigh teabing the British royal historian I just haven't found out yet if there is one but in any case it makes a good read the plot is that stron heir is murdered in the Louvre as it turns out he's one of four people murdered that very day by Guess Who the monk he leaves clues as he is dying he has about 20 minutes to leave these clues and he leads them in encode for Sophie his granddaughter and Langdon who knew he knew would be on the scene he had an appointment with Langdon but it wasn't really kept and so he becomes Langdon becomes a prime suspect in the case and this all leads to a merry chase around Paris and the barns and eventually to London and also a brief trip to Edinburgh all within about 30 hours of time very fast moving to say the least this is the entrance to Louvre the modern entrance law pyramid design by I am paying Chinese American distinguished architect said to have according to the da vinci code 666 planes of ground panes of glass does that seem significant to you someone actually contacted I am pays office and said how many panes of glasses are there in that pyramid and it said according to our records there's actually 687 which damages the theory a little bit but in any case what if there was 666 would it make any difference anyway this is the new stunning entrance to the Louvre lots of people when this was first built and open made fun of it and now everybody likes it virtually everybody and here we are taking a walk through the Louvre there are literally thousands and thousands of great works of art and display in this great museum it said that the average American tourist who visits the Louvre spends at least an hour and 15 minutes seeing all those great works of art and stops especially at the really famous works of art along the way one of them is winged victory this famous statue and they spend about a minute minute and a half seeing this as they go by and here we're moving through the museum the great halls and we're coming towards the most famous work in the Louvre the Mona Lisa people are lining up to see this beautiful historic important portrait you can see why people don't stay too long because if you stay very long the person buying it says come on I want to see it as well so there you go ventually you get to see this striking portrait why is she smiling this is the world's most famous portrait it's also the most reproduced by important artists such as Michelle Michelle Deshawn and the war'll and Jasper Johns as well as by lots of unknown or lesser-known artists along the way it embodies the Renaissance artistic discoveries of perspective things changed about the way portraits were done at this particular time in history it has a new view of anatomy and composition it seems that prior to this pettalia time in history most people that poor painted portraits didn't actually look that clearly at the people they actually looked at other portraits and Lonardo is representative of a new generation of artists who decide to actually look at people including naked human bodies and corpses and other things so that he could get things right and also they learned a new way of looking at that we today call perspective and it really is quite different from anything before and Leonardo sets a standard for Renaissance portraiture note the use of perspective with all the lines converging on a single vanishing point behind Mona Lisa's head and the triangular composition prior to this portraits were stiff flat and more than a little dull Leonardo Cheng's portrait painting forever note the smile why she smiling well Leonardo is said to have hired musicians to play for people while he was doing their portraits maybe that's why she's smiling look at her eyes look at her hands you never saw hands or eyes like that in any portrait of prior to about 1500 AD Napoleon hung this portrait in his bedroom until it was returned to the Louvre in 1804 who is this woman mano a mano is abbreviation for Italian Madonna or mrs. Lisa obviously a woman's name presumably her first name or Christian name the majority opinion is that she's the young wife of a florentine businessman by the name of Francesco del Giocondo that's what most art historians believe the rest of the artists Oracle world would say we're not sure exactly who she was no art historians that I have identified yet quite agree that she is who the da vinci code suggests that she is this is the famous vitruvian man by Leonardo it's designed to illustrate an important essay on human proportion written by a first century Roman architect engineer by the name of Vitruvius Jacques Shan there had recreated this image the Vitruvian Man by his body before his death he had about 20 minutes because he had triggered a mechanism that protected him from the killer would-be killer coming in and finishing off quickly so he's able to leave certain clues so one of the things he did was to take his clothes off and to end up dying on the floor in a circle painted in his own blood and having a little star that we call a pentacle or pentagram pentagram a five-pointed star that today in popular culture is identified with Wicca or Satanism but historically had a lot of different meanings in the Christian tradition the pentagram or pentacle is a symbol of the five wounds of Christ and early Chinese pre-christian Chinese science it's simply an astronomical symbol and there are lots of other meanings that it has in various various types of cultural but any case to make this story more interesting it obviously has some sort of pagan symbol in the story but it's different from the sort of negative popular idea of Satan worship and so on that we have today he also leaves little codes written again in his own blood in other places so that Sophie and Robert Langdon can find out the truth about what has happened what are the things that Sean hare did was grab a [Music] Caravaggio painting and tear it off the wall and that triggered the mechanism that caused the gate an iron gate to fall down and protect him and give him that 20 minutes to leave those clues we don't know if this is the Caravaggio that Dan Brown had in mind but it's not all that far away and it's one of a number of Karagias in the Louvre here's Leonardo da Vinci himself as a young man he's the person who really gave the meaning to the term Renaissance man an amazing person he personified the ideal of the Renaissance man he's a painter a sculptor and architect engineer and vente scientist creative genius he was universally admired for his handsome appearance his brilliant intellect and charm tall with long blonde hair and a beard he described by a contemporary as a person quote whose every movement was grace itself and whose abilities were so extraordinarily that he could readily solve every difficulty and if that was not enough Leonardo could sing divinely and his conversation won all hearts he observed everything carefully and kept sketches in his notebooks humans animals machines geography he was one of the first moderns to make a careful study of human anatomy by the use of cadavers he was a superb idea man but he wasn't really all that great on the follow-through most of his works that he started he never really completed it's sort of like students not completing their essays and so on some people are good at starting and others are good at finishing and those that finish get the degrees well Leonardo was very good at getting commissions and that kept his enterprise going but he wouldn't run out of money and work on other commissions and not really follow them through so in fright of the fact that The Da Vinci Code refers to thousands of works by Leonardo actually there's there's less than a hundred in total and probably no more than a dozen or so they were actually completely finished by Leonardo having said that he is one of the most influential artists in history by the way his name is Leonardo it's not da Vinci da Vinci is the name of the town that he came from Vinci he's from Vinci calling Leonardo da Vinci as in da Vinci Code is sort of like calling Jesus of Nazareth am azeroth of where jesus came from Vinci is where Leonardo came from his name that art historians would call him is Leonardo here he is as an older man I used to say old man until realize it he was about the age that I am and when he died this was Don's self portrait done shortly before his death at the age of 67 he died in France where he had been summoned and given a pension very generous pension by the king of France King Francis the first so that if the King got tired of all the sinka facts surrounding him telling him what he wanted to hear he could go talk with somebody who really was sure smart and could carry on an intelligent conversation so that was his contribution to to the society where he lived was to provide some good conversation for the king from time to time in any case he didn't continued his work as he always had done and did a number of warts there as well the da vinci curve suggests a number of things about Leonardo first of all that he was a homosexual the fact is that he along with three or four other young men was accused anonymously but publicly of homosexual behavior and this was brought to a local court concerned with morals of youth and others in society but it was thrown out twice because there was no witness no one was willing to come and put his name to discharge and you could argue that it may have been intended to embarrass someone else other than Leonardo Leonardo was not a member of a prominent Florentine family the other young men involved in the accusation were and they are probably more likely to have enemies who wanted to get them in trouble but any case it was tossed out and having said that that is the evidence for Leonardo being homosexual there are some quotes from his notebooks and writings that are said to make it very clear that he was homosexual but I've read those writings and I'd say well maybe he was more attracted to males and female sexually I don't really know but there's no proof that that is true there's no actual historical evidence of that he was certainly not a blazing homosexual as Dan Brown suggests in the book secondly it suggested that he was not a Christian well he was not a very good Christian but there's no evidence that he actually thumbs his nose to the Christian faith or denied the Christian faith particularly he didn't always live up to the standards of the faith but he was a professing believer not very faithful and church attendance and so on but at the end of his life he did ask for final rites from the church and there's no suggestion that this was somehow forced upon him he was born out of wedlock he was always hurt by the fact that his father had not really acknowledged him and he sort of felt a little bit abused by his father but loved by his mother a peasant woman so this was a source of a burden to him thirdly it suggested that he was the Grand Master of this organization which allegedly was founded in the 11th century AD called the Priory of see'em well there's no evidence at all that he had anything do with any secret society of any kind but not one of this particular name and setting in Florence in fact there's no evidence that this organization actually did exist until the nineteen and I think about 60s or so when it was started as a religious nonprofit organization in France by a man with a criminal record who was clearly into fraud and some documents were slipped into the National Library of France them for some fraudulent documents giving all the evidence for this a shadowy organization which only really existed in the 20th century the founder of this organization is gone and far as we can tell they're there no active people involved in it today but we don't know in any case there's no evidence that this organization went back historically into the Middle Ages and Renaissance and so on forth it suggested that Leonardo's painted paintings that include included veil veiled attacks on Christianity or the proclamation of an earlier pagan understanding of religion and morals and so on again there's no evidence of this we'll look at some of his key paintings but there's no evidence of this that would be recognized by artists or yes some of his painting like all art has symbols and is you have to interpret it in song but they're not hidden anti-christian symbols as far as any art historians have observed fifth that his notebooks were written in code to keep what he was writing secret so that because it was explosives and it was controversial it would be attacked by people well there's every evidence that Leonardo wanted people to read his notebooks that he was really writing for the public its son is it's hard to explain why he didn't arrange for them to be disseminated either before his death or after death and so on and he didn't it was sort of divided up among his friends and they want to come up in modern times but they're not written in code you can read them if you can do two things one it's helpful to know Italian because they're written in a time they occasionally use abbreviations shorthand but not really in code so you have to know Italian three them second Li if you can read mirror image text that is to say it's like remember the old-fashioned hot type metal type that used to value have had a friend whose father worked the newspaper office and I used to go over and they'd pour this type and my friend's father used to set the type and he could proofread the type in mirror image and I could never even read it much less proofread it in mirror image but if you spent a little time you can do this I once met and I think it was the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Cambridge University Press in Cambridge England their celebration and we were showing off all the technology and in that time you still have hot type you're just on the phase of phasing out hot type for the modern type that we have to set by computers and I met a young man who was not a university graduate so fresh out of high school but he'd learn to trade of printing and he could read the mirror image text proofread in about 16 or 17 languages so it's it's something you can learn to do so if you've ever been to a museum that has Leonardo's notebooks or if you've a sort of a display is brought your way and you will see people bringing big mirrors and holding them up so they can read them now easier way than that is you can just go to the library and you can check out books that will give you photographic reproduction of his notebooks he wrote about 15,000 pages in his notebooks he made notes on everything and there's no hidden codes coded material there and it's not all that controversial except that Leonardo was a very creative person and he's basically writing his thoughts down and some of his creative projects and so on well here's the Virgin and rocks it's in the Louvre today one version of a picture telling the story the legendary story from one of the apocryphal Gospels of Jesus and his mother and Joseph who was not in the picture stopping off in a cave in the wilderness of Judea on his way to Egypt fleeing the wrath of Herod the Great and in the book the Vinci Code those of you read it will remember this angel is supposed to be pointing sinisterly at Jesus who would be the little guy over here and this is supposed to be John the Baptist pointing again threatening towards Jesus actually this little guy over here is John the Baptist and this person happens to be the baby Jesus and the angel is not particularly threatening but Jesus and the angel pointing towards John the Baptist saying in effect listen to him and what's the little baby John the Baptist who was the cousin of Jesus say six months older behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world if you look at this next version a later version of the same painting adapted a little differently is hanging in the National Gallery of London today you can see the stamp that john the baptist's is holding makes it very clear that this is john the baptist's and also he's got a sort of a girdle of fur around his chest which again is the symbol of John the Baptist in the book of the New Testament in the Gospel according to Matthew and so on so nothing really all that sinister about this it's simply an account of a legendary stop on the way down into Egypt Jesus and the Holy Family fleeing for their lives according to the New Testament here's the église San sublease in Paris part of the story takes place here you can visit there today and it's more crowded than it usually is tourists coming through two-thirds of them with copies that DaVinci could under their arm and they come up to the priest and they say I'll tell us where this look lies in that place and the priest says this church has nothing to do with this book and what you've read is mistaken and people sort of shake their head in disbelief and saying well we know what you're trying to hide why is this book been such a powerful bestseller well perhaps this has something to do with it rumors of this conspiracy Americans law of conspiracy and evidently not just Americans people all over the world then whispered for centuries in countless languages well you could probably count them as necessary but including languages of art music and literature some of the most dramatic evidence can be found in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci which seems to overflow with mystifying symbols anomalies and codes our historians agree that da Vinci's paintings contain hidden levels of meaning well Dan Brown's wife is an art historian and Dan took some courses in art history in Spain they maybe wanted to other friends and that would be probably the limit of the art historians who would take this this approach many scholars believe that his work intentionally provides clues to a powerful secret a secret that remains protected to this day by a clandestine Brotherhood of which da Vinci was a member well that gives you a hint of what lies in the background does Dan Brown to really believe this he's given only two or three interviews since he's published this book it gives you the impression that he's not he would doesn't want to be dogmatic about it and to say that these so-called alternative historical theories are really definitely true but he says more less I was skeptical when I began investigating and then when I thought about it it seemed to me that well they they may be just very well be true at least they're as credible as the traditional explanation that's on here's the headquarters in New York of Opus Dei yes it exists and that is its headquarters and that's about the evidence for the Opus Dei conspiracy that much is true Monalisa again why is she smiling is she smiling because this is really Leonardo in drag this is really a Leonardo as a hermaphrodite a perfect blend of female and male the blending together the ideal feminine divine and natural male humanity and so on well that's a fall this is is Leonardo's famous picture of the Last Supper this is in the monastery a dominican monastery of Mary of grace in Milano outside of Milano the top [Music] material of a that's all late had nothing to do with Leonardo this picture here basically of the people around the table as Leonardo this is not a fresco as Dan Brown refers to it but it's rather on canvas that is attached with gesso and mastic and other materials to the plaster Leonardo would not have [Music] painted on wet plaster because he worked slowly you know if you're going to do a fresco which is painted into wet plaster you can't really take weeks and weeks and we used to do it the plaster will dry so because he really didn't work that way and he did it on canvas and the canvas was affixed to the wall it's actually done with with tempera on stone with a heavy base of gesso pitch mastic so my art historian wife tells me it began to deteriorate almost from its inception there were numerous attempts down through history to restore it and all of them but the most recent one made it worse dampness damaged by the doorway notice down here under the bottom there's a sort of an archway here that's because some Abbot got tired of walking about a hundred feet around to the other side of the building but wanted to come in to the refectory this is in a dining room Factory in a monastery and wanted to come straight into the to the refectory and so they cut a hole in the wall including this famous page it's now been sealed up but that part of the painting is missing this is so-called Last Supper who are these people well Leonardo doesn't leave us in doubt he actually has a diagram or a sketch of this in his notebooks and he gives you their names starting from left to right there is Bartholomew there is James the less there's Andrew there's Peter his brother and this little guy that seems smaller and a little bit darker on the face is Judas in some of the earlier pictures of the Last Supper and later one's Judas is on the other side of the table he can't really be on this side of the altar but in Leonardo's picture Judas is right there on that side and then there's this who is this woman one two three twelve apostles and one of them is a woman huh come back to her or him or what Jesus obviously in the middle and in Renaissance high Renaissance perspective the focal point in spite of what you've read in The Da Vinci Code about an imaginary him being there is actually out the window behind Jesus this is classic a Renaissance perspective that Jesus is central in this picture and he it's what it's all about and then you go on to beyond that Jesus there's Thomas he's the guy with his finger pointed upwards doubting Thomas Lord is a lie James the brother of John is the next person Philip Matthew Jude and the final guy is Simon the zealot is this a woman and if so is this Mary Magdalene the disciple of Jesus how many of you think this looks like a woman don't be embarrassed go ahead okay how many of you who think that are had a course in Renaissance art okay in Leonardo's notebook this happens to be John the Beloved Disciple mentioned in the Gospel of John and also one of the twelve disciples why does he look so effeminate well if you look at Renaissance art of the period and you see pictures of young students males all or apprentices that's what they look like this is an idealized young apprentice or disciple or students in residence parts of the time of Leonardo beginning of the sixteenth century this is what they looked like the illustrated edition of The Da Vinci Code has three pictures where you have an effeminate looking young disciple one of them in by albrecht dürer he's going to sleep or she's going to sleep the book says clearly here are three pictures of women at the last supper among Jesus disciples no art historian that I'm aware in Renaissance art would actually concur with that and nor is anyone in antiquity ever made the suggestion it's only a very very recent suggestion and it's plausible only to those who really don't know a lot about the history and the art of the period this picture by the way is not about the institution of the Lord's Supper it's the moment in the narrative when Jesus basically says some of you one of you who is per taken of this food with me sitting around this table is going to betray me it's that moment that Leonardo is captured and the disciples are shocked and responding no it's not I that's what's on the picture that's why the institution the Lord's Supper is not the subject matter it's basically about the Jesus and his relationship disciples and particularly the coming betrayal of Jesus now I don't have a slide that shows you the dagger that there is sort of behind the back of Peter who is talking to John or is it Mary Magdalene but there's a dagger there and that's suggested that well there's something sinister going on maybe it's Peter is gonna stab Mary Magdalene maybe because he's jealous or something strange is going to happen it's suggested that they is the the the actually arm and the dagger are disembodied but in actual fact it seems to be Peter's hands now if you've read the Gospel story you will know there is a mention in the passion now of a dagger and who had it Peter and what did he do with it it chopped off the high priest servant's ear and jesus healed it now there's something symbolic about that that's really part of the narrative and why is it so strange it's sort of awkward sort of his arms are crossed like this by his horns dang does that symbolic of anything do you know the subsequent tradition about Peter this is this say anything to you symbolically he too was crucified he too was crucified so he was in spite of this time of challenge and even denial that little symbol is probably referring to his coming crucifixion as well well here's Mary Magdalene and as you know Mary Magdalene is fairly important in this story it is said that although the New Testament celebrates her or identify her as the first witness to the resurrection of Jesus and one who brought this message to the disciples that somehow she's been erased from the story well in actual fact all four Gospels underline the fact that she was the first witness to the resurrection and that's why she's called an early Christian tradition as the apostle to the apostles of God the one who is sent to the ones who are sent the original apostles with this story so the New Testament actually does celebrate her as a witness to the resurrection and the idea that somehow she's been suppressed doesn't really follow very well because if you take after Peter and Paul and Mary the mother of Jesus you probably have more churches around the world old name for Mary Magdalene than anybody else and I haven't done a scientific analysis of that but there may be another more popular name but their Lots often and this is one of the four famous ones of Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem and at Oxford University and Cambridge University their colleges name for her and so on all over the world icons celebrating her and so on here's a Northern European Renaissance engraving of Mary Magdalene doesn't look very sinister the suggestion is that she was turned into a prostitute to to undercut her credibility as a leader in the early church well two things might challenge that number one there are some prominent prostitutes in the Bible anybody ever heard of Rahab Rahab is listed in the Epistle of the Hebrews as being a great example of faith so there is one prostitute who is celebrated in memory so even if it were true that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute before she met Jesus that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing all of Jesus disciples were sinners and sinners who acknowledge that they were sinners but called the grace but in any case here's a picture western-european picture of Mary Magdalene is essentially a young serious devout woman studying the Bible that theory comes from the fact that in the 6th century the beginning of the 6th century Pope Gregory the gate preached a sermon in which he identified Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany and the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee as the one in the same person in the eastern church and nobody has ever suggested that in the Western Church the tradition started with Gregory the Great simply because probably some research assistants of his who helped him prepare sermons that heard this story from somebody and saw to put it together and it sort of passed on into traditional tradition but there's no sign of any sinister intent to that there are all these other texts that are quoted in The Da Vinci Code that having to do with Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Thomas is the most famous one that you've heard about there's a five Gospels have been published this is the fifth gospel there's a competition between Peter and Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene has a close relationship with Jesus in the final Logan this Gospel of Thomas is not like the Gospels in the New Testament which contained historical narrative but rather it's simply a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus some of them you'll recognize from the Gospels in the New Testament some of them seem to be a variation of those Gospels with a little strange term or two or strange ideas mixed in and some seem really weird compared to the other Gospels but any case there's no historical narrative here there's no crucifixion of Jesus there's no walking along the roads of Palestine there's no resurrection there's no history really at all in this but any case Mary Magdalene is there as she is in the New Testament and has a close relationship with Jesus in the final Logan Peter says to Jesus let Mary leave us four women are not worthy of life Jesus responds I myself shall lead her in order to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males now that has been suggested by various minority scholars in our time as somehow being a liberating text for women but it doesn't sound that way to me the the fact is that in the so-called Gnostic Gospels these second third fourth century Gospels that have come out of a sort of heretical time group or at least a marginal group of professed Christians actually have a mixed view just like Orthodox Christianity in his inception as to whether it affirms women or not the fact is that Gnosticism denies the material world the material world is essentially evil and all evil in the world is because of the aterial material world so Gnosticism is very anti sexuality period male or female the ideal is a blending so that you you have a human person that really transcends sexuality that is our sexual infect and not also immaterial free once and for all from this human material sinful dirty created world that we live in quite different from anything you read in the New Testament or the Old Testament these other texts that are quoted in the text the so-called gospel of Mary it comes out of Greek written in early in the third century found among the NAG Hammadi texts and a 5th century document Mary shares secret revelations from the Lord she's resisted by Andrew ridiculed by Peter by defended by apostle Levi Peter says we know the Lord loved you more than the rest of women and Levi said the Savior loved her more than us that's basically what you find in this text not a lot of material to go on to develop a theory another Gnostic texts called pista Sophia 3rd century dialogues with Jesus 39 of the 64 questions of the disciples are asked by Mary she's described as the one in whose heart is directed towards the kingdom more than all of her brothers superior in every way to all the disciples and that's about it another document is the dialog of the Savior 3rd century document Mary Magdalene is one of three disciples chosen to receive special teaching she's more significant than Matthew and Thomas because she spoke as a woman who knew the all that's very deliberate Gnostic language another document from the third late 3rd century Gospel of Philip describes Mary Magdalene as a companion of the Lord Sir Hugh t-bone says companion and Aramaic that means spouse well this text was originally written in Greek and exists in Coptic today and the word concern is actually a Greek long word calling us which means simply companion or partner or friend fellow disciple it's the word from which we get the word Koinonia Greek word we translate usually fellowship it said that Christ loved her more than the other disciples and that she was frequently kissed by Christ the standard text put in square brackets on the mouth there's a missing words in the document and the guests of some scholars is that Jesus kissed her on the mouth well it could have been on the cheek it could have been on the arm or hand I don't know but it's customary in the Middle East today and in certain parts of the world I can go back or France or Switzerland where I've lived in Italy for men and women who are family and close friends sometimes and disciples in the same Christian community to kiss one another regularly when they agreed Paul says in the New Testament greet one another with the holy kiss and we would say give everybody a hearty handshake I've seen a picture on the front page of the Seattle Times of the former governor of Iraq the American governor of Iraq kissing one of the most prominent ayatollahs in in Iraq there is not one person in Iraq who would look at that picture and say that that somehow these two men were having a homosexual display not at all this is just an a culturally appropriate way to respond in that context and other tax the acts of Philip which refers to another prominent woman by name of Mary well there you have all the evidence for the idea that somehow that Jesus intended Mary Magdalene really to be the leader of his apostolic band in fact is there's not much evidence of that but there is evidence in the New Testament that has been universally recognized by Christians down to the ages that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection and she was a prominent disciple of Jesus the eastern church has never suggested that she was wont converted prostitute the Western Church since the 6th century has but there's no evidence that this was done to somehow denigrate her witness early tradition suggests that she went with Mary the mother of Jesus and the Apostle John to emphasis an important city and that she actually was married to John that's not a very strong tradition but it is fairly early she lived and was buried in emphasis there much later traditions that connect Mary Magdalene is going to France along with John Martha and Lazarus and a very late tradition of her going with Joseph of Arimathea who turns out to be the rich uncle of Jesus and he drops Mary Magdalene and her child and the child is by Jesus off in France well the child part is a 20th century tradition the Mary Magdalene going to France is a late medieval tradition there's no tradition prior to a book being written in 1970 by a presbyterian professor at a small college on the east coast to suggest that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene the Mormons some Mormons believe that Jesus was married to Mary and Martha of Bethany but as far as I know that's the only other suggestion prior to 1970 publication of a book by William Phips well they're illusions and I think time is going so I'll just whizz through the rest their allusions to connections with the Knights Templars if you start reading around on the Knights Templars you realize there's a lot of literature on the Knights Templar some of it written by scholars quite reliable but most of it and not and there's a lot of a lot of stuff there is there any reason to connect the Knights Templars with this prior in Sion which far as we know we can't find any evidence of it existed until the 20th century and so on or to somehow feel that they discovered some truth about Christianity and its origin that they were keeping secrets and that's why there was this great attack upon him in the Middle Ages in Europe and so on no I'm afraid it's probably not joseph of arimathea any historical basis for his being the first bishop of england of one part of England not really and even less evidence for his having dropped Mary Magdalene off in France on his way to England how about King Arthur and his Knights they were looking for the Holy Grail is there any evidence to suggest that they were not looking for the cup that was used in the Last Supper but rather looking for the seed of Jesus the descendants of Jesus the chalice of the womb of Mary Magdalene no it makes for an interesting read but there's no real evidence of this what about Sir Isaac Newton being a leader in this secret society designed to keep the truth about the true origin the Christianity which seems more pagan than what became out to be Orthodox Christian de what about Isaac Newton he sort of gave up his academic career having made quite a mark on the history of science to study religion what was he doing well we have texts of what he is doing we have his manuscripts he published books he was studying the Bible he would became an effect a lay theologian and devoted having made a great mark on science trying to make a mark on the study of the Bible no evidence anywhere in the life and documents writings about or his own personal writings that he in any way was promoting paganism some of the ideas come from a sort of a conspiracy theory if you will coming out of between the two world wars and after the Second World War concerning a little village called rennes-le-chateau and a a priest by the name of Father Sohn there same name as the the guy in the novel who's murdered and the idea was that this poor priest had a lot of money and somebody suggested it was because he discovered these treasures including money but they also concluded these important documents that told the real story of the origin of Christianity and that's how he was able dinh this very poor place this poor priest took to build this nice house and to build a nice Church and all this sort of thing as it turns out the way he got that money was basically advertised in the French newspapers that he would say back this is the days before Vatican 2 that he would say a mass for your loved ones who had gone on before and this became economically very successful the only problem was he collected a lot more money than he had hours of the day to say those masses and so he really didn't fulfill it and he ultimately was defrocked not because he had discovered some secret that put Christianity in jeopardy but rather he was crook he was giving he was raising money for the church basically by lying the Vinci Code seems suggests that all good all at pagan religions were the same and they are good suggests that Ammon and Isis and little baby Horus were related and that's sort of a confusion of the gods and goddesses in ancient Egypt and then somehow this really is a Fountainhead of some aspects of early Christianity what about the Dead Sea Scrolls professor or the historian t-bone pontificates wrong wall of information and the Red Sea Scrolls that demonstrate this to scholars well there's nothing actually in the Dead Sea Scrolls that has anything at all to do directly with Christianity it has to do with pre-christian Judaism and it gives us a lot of information these scrolls have been mostly not all yet published but they are in the process of being published most of them are already been published you can go read them and translation and you can see if there's anything there about the eternal feminine or the true origins of the Christianity and scholars simply laugh and say there's nothing there what about Rosslyn Chapel this strange chapel outside of Edinburgh well they've got a problem now because they have to let people in there's so many people want to visit this place and again most of them with copies of The Da Vinci Code under the arm so the fabric is being destroyed by all the people breathing and moving through the building and all following out the suggestions of The Da Vinci Code it's a weird building I tell you it has a lot of weird symbols and so on but no evidence that Mary Magdalene was once buried there or that it was the center of this particular cult well where did Dan Brown get his ideas basically these two books several of us he has a website in which he lists about 30 titles only a few of them by recognized academics but probably 80% of his theory comes from this book Holy Blood Holy Grail by three journalists a two of these journalists actually have tried to sue Dan Brown I don't know if the suit is still pending and they really should be giving him a commission on the raw to their book because their book had sort of you know settled down to selling four or five hundred copies a year until The Da Vinci Code came out now they've been on the bestseller list two recent years as well as a result of Dan Brown's but anyway his historical research is essentially related to these two books and and to a handful of others none of which would be recognized by professors of history at University of California for example theological assumption what I mean team encountered is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false as other stories about the Holy Grail every faith in the world says Langdon is based on fabrication these are sort of the assumptions well another assumption history since the beginning of recorded time has been written by the winners well if you really believe that you would probably agree with Henry Ford in the history's bunk or at least you would be totally skeptical but I don't really believe that is there some evidence in the NAG Hammadi texts well I have sort of highlighted all the evidence that it is there and it didn't sound like to me there was any evidence for the original pagan origin of Christianity as something quite different from what has turned out to be contrast the New Testament Gospels with the so-called Gnostic Gospels the basic differences are the Gnostic Gospels have no historical context in the Creed it says Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate Jesus is not crucified in the gnostic traditions because he wasn't really a human being he was a spirit and because he is a spirit we too can escape from the physical realm because he came to show us the way so there's no historical context and salvation is not by his death burial and resurrection but rather by esoteric knowledge hence we call agnosticism Greek as Gnostic gnosis is the greek word for knowledge salvation by religious secret knowledge so to speak well why the people believe that a lot of this is more than just a novel that all of these references to history really are factual well this is what is claimed in the front of the book I have already noted that this the so called secret documents were actually forgeries placed there and again you can document that you don't have to just take my text the whole idea of the Priory of Sion going back to the 11th century is on historical he says all descriptions of artwork architecture documents and secret rituals in the novel are accurate are they occasionally they are occasionally and he could have been more accurate but the fact is maybe 80% of the even in terms of some of these details he really gets it wrong the idea that Constantine the first Christian Emperor and his male success has converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of coq10 and that somehow Constantine was responsible for producing these Nicene Creed up to that time Jesus was just a really nice man who had wonderful words of wisdom about how you should live and love and so on and then all of a sudden overnight the Council of Nicaea declares that he is God well I'm afraid the question was not really discussed the question at Nicaea was what does it mean to say what all Christians believed up to that time and bleed from the first century and there's lots of documentary evidence for that to say that Jesus is God what does that really mean there were two basic groups one that had meant that he was really equal with the Father and also the Holy Spirit that the doctrine that we would call the doctrine of the Trinity three people in three persons in one being when Godhead the second group was led by a man named Marius who argued that Jesus was God but he was sort of the highest of the created God so next to the eternal God Jesus is sort of next in line he is the instrument who is sent by the father to bring salvation but he's not really equal with the father the book says that there was a very close vote at the council well the actual vote on that issue was something like about 327 to about four or five it wasn't very close and it wasn't the issue what it on reference to the Inquisition that you've heard this probably and I've heard people say there were thirty or forty million women in the Middle Ages condemned as witches scholars will tell you that it's probably more like twenty or thirty thousand and many of the witches happen to be men in Switzerland I am told that there were actually many more men there were accused of being witches and were killed but the second thing they weren't killed generally by the church they were killed by the state even though the church colluded in this very often now I don't think it's a good idea to kill anybody who even if they were a real witch it's not a good idea but it says so it was a terrible thing but this is more than a little exaggerated tarot cards that's a very interesting thing according to Langdon talking to Sophie originally Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the church to keep the truth well is that true actually tarot cards seem to had come out as a game similar to a lot of card games that we have today first it was it was a basically a wordless picture book to tell stories to children are very wealthy Italians and about three centuries later somebody took some of those pictures and adapt him into playing cards and it became sort of a parlor game and eventually some three centuries after that gypsy fortune tellers developed them into a system of telling your fortune and there are at least four major traditions and what these cards mean and none of them is it anything like what is suggested by the da Vinci Code we've already indicated that the pentagram or pentacle is not always a symbol for Satan or paganism but it has other histories what can we learn from The Da Vinci Code one is that more people are interested in reading literature or looking at art than in reading theology or even history and certainly at our culture the power of literary literature and art to communicate so if you're going to make a living writing go into fiction and do it well secondly is the presence of images and symbols that our culture very often many Protestant churches have been moved far away from the use of symbols even in oral preaching and in music and so on but images and symbols are very powerful and very much very important in a culture and so Dan Brown is right in calling our attention to the meaning of these symbols even if he gets most of them wrong thirdly there's a need to read and think critically and I suppose the most pressing need I think in our educational system today starting in grade school but continuing at the university is to teach people to think critically when our daughter was young and growing up we used to say when we didn't ban television but we said look don't believe anything that you see on television they're lying to you generally occasionally caves may may be but it's generally a false be prepared short laugh and so on but take it with a whole cup of salt we need to say that about everything I hear people is just so excited about the internet all this wonderful information allegedly knowledge is doubling every two or three years well maybe data is wisdom isn't truth isn't accurate knowledge certainly isn't we need to teach people I've had students in various places I have taught have picked up bogus information on the Internet have woven it into the papers they've written and claimed it for themselves well I too can google and find those sources and I would like my students to be a little more critical in the use of these things also learned how to write footnotes and so on finally there's there's the importance of historical research in understanding America has a poor rate of even traditional literacy I think it's something pushing 8 or 9 percent of the people who live in the United States are totally literal that is they cannot read or write I would guess that 90% of the people who live in the United States and it'd be true many other countries not just the United States are historically illiterate and the reason something like The Da Vinci Code and in terms of its historical illusions is so attractive is because people don't know anything about history they have only heard of Constantine or maybe they haven't the Nicene Creed what's that even Christians haven't heard of the Nicene Creed in many cases and so on Leonardo in 16th century Florence and Milan and in Amboise where is that I read somewhere that 35% of adult Americans can't find the United States on the map and so on now I do this not to belittle Americans but to say that we have tended to lose a understanding of history and a knowledge of history even our own short history but much less other history and so this is very important then finally this is important it underlines a study of this underlines the difference between Christianity and gnostic religion now I would like to end with an affirmation Dan Brown's book may not win the Nobel Prize it will not get a Pulitzer and probably won't win any other prizes other than those offered by the books the book publishing industry or or some Wall Street Journal maybe for financial success but it was a really fun read and I stayed up late to nights to finish it and to enjoy a rereading and son so as fiction terrific good is well better than most anything on television it will it's a super script for a movie and I am sure I'm looking forward to see the movie but ladies and gentlemen it is fiction and whatever Dan Brown himself believes it's not really history or fact I conclude simply with saying from GK Chesterton one of the most popular writers and public speakers of his day and I conclude with that thank you [Music] thank you doctor we're gonna move into a time of Q&A so if there are any questions that you'd like to ask dr. Gaskin outing the material that he shared tonight or any questions that you have about the book there are two microphones up here we just ask that you limit it to one question keep it brief and make sure that it's something that requires an actual answer so it's a question not a statement so we'll go into that time of Q&A and come on up and please come to the microphones to do that so everybody can hear please and also speak into the mic because this is being recorded I don't personally object if you want to make a response either so it doesn't have to be a question I'm willing to response but if you have any questions as to any details that I didn't cover or did you'd like covered cold who'll be first before there's a lineup two microphones in either hi oh thank you yes I read it about while I read it I keep reading it but I've read it about a year and a half ago the first time it was about they'd been out about seven months when I first read it and I've been through the illustrated edition and looked at all the pictures in that respond academics I generally don't read ask a literature and I've tried to persuade a lot of my colleagues historians philosophers biblical scholars to actually read it and say something about it and their general responses are just not going to waste my time on this well you might have fun too but in any case I think it's important enough to respond to because by when it's all over they're going to be about probably three four hundred million people have read this book so it seems to me that any academic who's involved in historical research or religious studies or theologies on my desk ought to have an opinion and ought to get to give one on it that's what I've been willing to do anybody else they did a survey recently in Canada the hypose Reid group which is sort of the equivalent in Canada form of the Gallup poll and they determined that something like 40% of all people have read the book in Canada believe that the historical claims are true they're the insinuations of the historical background that's 1.4 million people in Canada translated into the United States which is 10 times bigger you know there's 13 or 14 million Americans who presumably read it who believe that - yes following up on that last comment then what would be your reasoning that why so many people bought into it when it sits on an honor as a fiction book and all this that doesn't say it's nonfiction that's very interesting that his book angels and demons which is at least is exciting but even less plausible and the reason it's bless possible does because it's more contemporary nobody believed he says the same thing at the beginning of angels and demons and nobody believes it that he really believes that or that there's anything to it but with The Da Vinci Code they do I think it's because they are millions of people who have read it who were brought up as some type of Christians whether nominal or real and somewhere along the lines like many fellow Americans and this is true in other parts of the world they've sort of stopped going to church but they didn't make a decision to leave they just sort of drifted away and they haven't thought about why and they read this book and they say oh now I understand the light goes on it's it's because it's a fraud I knew there was a reason I stopped now I think that for some people I think that is the reason but that's just just a guess anybody else yeah as mothers somebody was coming um it's loud are you discounting where you spoke on the Holy Blood Holy Grail and they claim they did extensive extensive research on the topic of Mary Magdalene and the whole search of the Holy Grail Knights Templar a lot of stuff are you discounting their research or are you discounting the points they make by counter pointing them yeah I'm discounting the research I'm discounting the the credentials of the people who wrote the book they have been in detail by detail refuted it was originally the book was written in 1982 it became both what it was accompanied by a television program on the BBC it became very popular and then the BBC did three or four other television documentaries where scholars debunked it point by point and then it sort of became marginalized disappeared from public view until The Da Vinci Code came along now it's back in public view and people are reading and so on but you can't find any review by any historian and I won't just general use some sort of term like reputable start let's say any tenured professor of history at any university in the United States or Canada who would say that the whole blood holy grail had any degree of validity on any of the points contained in it it is a fraud it is now they may sue me the same that as they've been suing trying to say Dan Brown but you just can't find so it's in its uncredible so it's not just in the whole I mean it's not just in a general way or a few points it's it's it's just not valid historical research yes it was recently I think about two three months ago I read in the Los Angeles Times that the Vatican had promoted not reading this book if I guess it's so factually inaccurate and not significant why would the Vatican go out of their way to I guess make this claim yeah I wasn't really the Vatican but it was some some bishops in the Vatican well because the Vatican would say there are certain movies that are blasphemous I'm not a Catholic which brings another point and another weakness of this book I'm not a Catholic at all but there is a tradition in Catholic Church and in Protestant churches of believing that some things are morally harmful and this book they would believe or somebody not all Catholics believe that way would think that it's just morally and objectionable that's making fun or keep perverting the Catholic faith now I don't take that view I think people Auto read it and they ought to think through things but there's no evidence that and the present Pope the new pope happens to be a world-class historian and he's an expert in these texts so there's nobody and many many Catholic scholars are or leading historians so they're they're not afraid that something's going to be covered but it's it's just they don't like people making fun of their faith and you know if the same story were told and it was not the it's not the the Catholic Church but it was the Elders of Zion who were keeping these secrets you know it'd be obvious everybody not only Jews would be outraged the implication is that the Catholic Church is deliberately deceiving the world now I read a lot of stuff that I don't agree with even academic stuff but I don't so I don't take that stance but that's why that's they were concerned by the way one of the weaknesses of the book of course is that the only type of religion the only type of Christianity that dan Brown seems to be aware of at least in the book is Catholic Christianity now most of the early Christianity took place in the east so if anybody was hiding anything it would be the Orthodox the eastern know each turn Church because they really dominated early Christianity and they are the ones that keep all the traditions for the earliest of Christianity because Christianity took place mainly and what we call today the Near East and as far as just the edge of the West and the West developed later or if there really was a secret they're you know they're Protestants and they've attacked the Catholic Church lots of times so if this was really true there are lots of Protestants that like to expose this as much as in valence or there are a lot of secular historians who teach in departments of Religious Studies and they're not promoting any form of religion anything they read these documents and so on and you won't find any of them supporting the the insinuations here either now I don't know when he originally wrote the book of Dan Brown really intended to that people would really be taken in you know it's sort of like science fiction you don't have to believe it I wasn't I wasn't but I don't know if he intended it but in any case that's the way it works out it's very interesting they are historical documents if you've heard it all of my mind is blank at the moment but one of the roaster Christians know the rocha Christian myth the group there is there are several thousand at least Rosicrucians in the world today maybe ten thousand or so they have a world headquarters here in California somewhere I think of north and from here and so on the the basic crowd arose Christian faith comes of a novel written by an evangelical Protestant pastor as a satire and it sort of developed as a myth and it's floating around 30 years later the author of the novel said hey this was a joke I wrote a satire now some people believe this is history I predict that that will happen to the da Vinci Code it won't happen soon but within a generation or two there will be people claiming that this is pure history not just alluding to history simply because people don't have much sense of history do you know why Dan Brown decided to make the Catholic Church kind of the enemy of all his books yeah I just think you know it's it's a novel it it's the easy way to do it there's an awful lot of things that you can't include a narrative you know if you if you really were more nuanced you know you got a spline all this and that distracts people from the main main point in the Protestant tradition in the Evangelical Protestant tradition that many of you in this audience probably come from there's been a tradition for tradition shall we say to thank that the Catholic Church is dangerous and it's keeping secrets and trying to really keep the gospel from the world and so on and so certain Protestants might be inclined to think this way now I've found Protestants who have read this book and they first respond and say whoa maybe there's something to this I can't believe this about the Catholic Church and then when you think about is that well if this is true that we're all in trouble but I think that it's just a probably literary I don't know that he's particularly anti-catholic as such just like I said I am I ultimately doubt that he really does believe he's thinking but he probably doesn't want to hurt the sails by saying so okay no okay one more percentage are there any conspiracies out there that you do believe they say that I had any conspiracy that I believe yeah exactly well as Malcolm Muggeridge the journalist once said I find when I get up in the morning before I have breakfast I've I have already believed about seven things I know to be false so I suppose there might be but if I thought they were conspiracies that forced upon me I'd like to challenge I think probably in our culture there are lots of conspiracies that we really are taken enough having to do with money and things and and so on the marketing of of things and and some of us believe that we really can't live without this I remember seeing on television recently uh someone talking about the latest medical technology and you had these little mechanical pills that you swallow and they're going to go through your body and they'll they will take pictures of all your insides and find out what's wrong with you and maybe even correct the damage along the way and so on and I said to myself you know there are two billion people in the world that live on less than $2 a day and majority of the world's population not only doesn't have a cell phone or a computer doesn't even have access to a phone and so on so yeah I think there's probably a conspiracy to to do blind us about the real nature of the world and people in the world that don't have very much and we really should encourage to focus on accumulating a lot of stuff so it may not sound it's not a religious conspiracy but maybe it is thank you thanks again [Music] [Music]

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 319,826

Rating: 4.2319999 out of 5

Keywords: da, Vinci, Code, Dan, Brown, history

Id: s37yJ_nB7Nc

Length: 89min 20sec (5360 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2008