The Da Vinci Code: A Novel

What You Should Know about ULTIMATE REALITY

The Da Vinci Code: A Novel

DELIGHT AND DANGER

My strength is not found in evaluating novels. I hardly read them. But let me be the first to say that I really
enjoyed reading The Da Vinci Code: A Novel. I do appreciate its fast-moving plot, with its thrills and its clever
puzzles. I could hardly put the book down.

Its content is another story. A book can be delightful in style and at the same time dangerous in content.
This book is a very good example of this type of combination. The author Dan Brown presents us with a
Jesus who cannot save us from our sins. For him, the real Jesus was only a mortal man, although a famous,
ancient Jew who got married, fathered a royal line of descendants, and died. Mr. Brown’s Jesus is certainly
not the Jesus of historic Christianity, but neither is he the Jesus Who actually walked along the shores of
Galilee, despite Dan Brown’s iconoclastic proposal.

More than likely, the Jesus of history was never married. Whether He was or not is a question worth asking,
and it calls for an honest answer. Both sides in this debate know more is at stake than first appears. A
merely human, married, mortal Jesus would brand the Roman Catholic Church as a misogynistic master of
deception and manipulation in its central proclamations about the Person of Jesus. Many people relish the
thrill of knowing a big, bad secret about the Roman Catholic Church, and Brown’s tantalizing offer of this no
doubt contributes to the widespread success of The Da Vinci Code.

Perhaps the best summary of Brown’s over-arching thesis is found on page 124. He writes, “[By making the
mortal Jesus into God,] 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.” Is the divine Jesus of historic
Christianity really part of a power-grabbing plot against women and their spirituality? For Brown and many
others, it seems that a marriage to Mary Magdalene would somehow make Jesus only human—and very far
less threatening!

So today the question, “Was Jesus married?” gets entangled with political agendas. It has been used to
serve the feminist campaign for women priests and the popular challenge of priestly celibacy. Brown’s novel
heartily “aids and abets” both movements. More and more people are asking, “Can the Church prove that
Jesus was never married?” (And more and more people are skeptical that a Catholic priest such as myself will
answer this question truthfully!)

Unfortunately, this may become a demand for a demonstration of the impossible. After all, how can the
Catholic Church prove for sure that Jesus never entered into the state of matrimony, when we know
absolutely nothing about so many years of His adult earthly life? For example, if He married someone when
He was eighteen, and his wife died a few years later, we could have no knowledge of this fact. Also, a
widower who never remarries often appears in the historical record very much like a celibate, who never
marries. All we can say with reasonable certainty is that Jesus of Nazareth appears to be single at the many
moments we catch sight of Him.

It is impossible to prove a “universal negative.” For example, can anyone prove that there are absolutely NO
mermaids anywhere? But anyone who believes in mermaids, and is honest, must admit that there can be light-
years of distance between opinion and fact. An opinion is not necessarily a mental state based upon fact. It
may be little more than a convenient speculation or sheer fantasy. A wise person once quipped, “A man has
a right to his opinions, but no one has a right to be wrong in his facts.” This was meant to be a universal
statement, with no exception made for novel writers.

If the truth be known, it is really Brown who has played fast and loose with the facts, under the disguise of
creating an entertaining novel. “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals
in this novel are accurate.” The Da Vinci Code labels this statement as FACT on its first page. This is the
epicenter of real danger. This is a violation of the readers’ trust, because Dan Brown’s novel offers us some
indisputably reckless, misleading inaccuracies, seldom in architecture, but frequently in artwork, AND
ESPECIALLY in ancient religious documents.

We need to be fair to the novelist. After all, he never claimed any of his descriptions of historical events are
accurate. But how do we find out most events in the past? From documents, and this is where Brown greatly
disappoints us. Supposedly, there exist many ancient documents, hidden today by the Priory of Sion.
According to Brown’s characters, Mr. Robert Langdon and Sir Leigh Teabing, these documents show that
Roman Catholicism is a fraud. But, of course, by the end of the novel, no one shows that these documents
ever existed! What do Brown’s characters claim that these hidden documents prove? 1) Jesus was married
to the Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene, 2) with her, he had a daughter named Sarah, 3) when he died, he
intended church leadership to pass to his wife instead of to the Apostle Peter, and 4) Jesus was first
proclaimed divine when the Roman Emperor Constantine shrewdly used his political power in order to stamp
out widespread “matriarchal paganism”!

By stating that all the novel’s descriptions of documents are true, Dan Brown has set up his readers to
swallow a whole lot of hooey. This novel (soon to become a movie!) is not a threat to the truth of Christianity,
but it is a threat to the souls of Catholics, because it attacks faith in Christ’s divinity and in Peter’s primacy. It
does this rather subtly. We become aware of liking the novel, and then begin to admire and trust its talented
author. When his erudite characters finally lecture us about ancient documents, we take their descriptions to
be factual. Before we know it, we doubt our faith!

But all this does not devalue the question, “Was Jesus married?”— nor answer it. One biblical scholar has
remarked that to seek the answer to this question is to “seek to solve the riddle of a largely unnoticed
sphinx.” Almost everyone down through the ages has simply assumed that Jesus was not married. But is
this mind-set justified? What do we really know about Jesus, His times, and ancient Near Eastern culture?
Let’s consider some important facts.

The New Testament documents do NOT once mention a wife for Jesus. So we have a difficult task; we must
interpret this silence. Does it mean that Jesus was married, or that He was not? Only the proper context of
this silence can show us the sure answer to this question, if one can be found. Jesus’ celibacy most easily
and naturally accounts for the complete silence of Scripture and tradition on this matter of a spouse of Jesus.

The New Testament teaches the sanctity of marriage. Certainly there is nothing shameful or dishonorable
about being married, unlike adultery (Hebrews 13:4). Marriage allows millions to lead holier lives. Many dead
Catholic saints were married while they lived. “Holy matrimony” is a sacrament in Catholic teaching. A
marriage for Jesus need not in any way detract from His holiness.

Jesus was born a Jew in a world heavily influenced by Greek ways and Greek ideas. It is true that the Jews
have always looked upon sexual intercourse within marriage as a blessing from the Creator. The married
state for adults is a norm in Jewish society, AND in almost every other society, ancient and modern. Also,
almost every society has examples available of adults who did not marry. Was Jesus married? Surely He did
not always do what His Jewish contemporaries expected of Him. He did not always do what the Jewish
leaders wanted Him to do. Jesus Christ is fully divine as well as fully human. So He is unique. This makes
our attempts to answer this question about ancient history even more difficult.

Again, the Greek influence upon Jesus’ Jewish culture was great. Within this Hellenized context, male
celibacy easily fit, especially for Gentile teachers promoting wisdom. Names such as Epictetus and
Apollonius come to mind as outstanding examples. While the rabbis from a later period took a very dim view
of celibacy, Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, important Jewish writers near the time of Jesus, did not.
Before the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, there were many widely diverging Jewish
movements with conflicting ideas, some about celibacy, even within Palestine itself. In Jesus’ day, a Jewish
male celibate might be a member of the Essenes, or the Dead Sea Scroll community at Qumran, or the
Therapeutae sect. These are some groups we know about. Among the many that have disappeared totally
from the radar screen of history, probably some favored a celibate lifestyle for members.

In the popular mind, Jesus was taken to be “John the Baptizer, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets”
(Matthew 16:14). Biblical data about John the Baptist, Elijah, and Jeremiah suggest that all these holy men
lived celibate lives as God’s messengers.

Jesus was more than a prophet, but he surely was not less than one. Jewish tradition accepted the celibate
lifestyle of several prophetic figures, including even Moses! The Bible teaches that the LORD God
commanded Jeremiah to be a celibate as a sign of judgment to a sinful people. Also, Elijah seems to have
had no family ties, and his successor, Elisha, forsook family life. While the Scriptures report that Elisha said
goodbye to his father and his mother, a wife or a child is not mentioned. It seems that St. John the Baptizer
was a celibate. He was raised in the desert until he began his dynamic but short-lived ministry. After his
beheading, it was his disciples who came to claim his corpse for burial, not a wife and children. He
apparently had chosen celibacy for the sake of God’s service. His food, locusts and wild honey, came directly
from nature, and he kept roaming the barren regions of the Jordan Valley—no place for a family. During His
own ministry, Jesus also had no domestic stability. At least once our Lord is known to have proclaimed,
“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head” (Luke 9:
58).

The New Testament is far from silent about the relatives of Jesus. The gospel writers spend many pages
telling their readers about a year or more of Jesus’ active ministry. They actually name His mother Mary, His
foster-father Joseph, and several of His male relatives (called “brothers”), James, Joses, Judas, and Simon.
Jesus also had many female relatives (called “sisters”) who were living in Nazareth. An uncle, Clopas, and a
cousin, Symeon, were remembered by one of the early Church Fathers, Hegesippus. The Bible also
mentions the names of many of the female friends of Jesus during His public ministry, not only Mary
Magdalene, but also another Mary, still another Mary, her sister Martha, Joanna, Salome, the mother of the
sons of Zebedee, and Susanna. If Jesus had been married, surely the name of His wife would have been
mentioned or remembered, especially in the conflict at Nazareth.

The repentant, devoted woman with the alabaster jar in Luke 7 was neither Mary Magdalene, nor the wife of
Jesus. This woman’s act of anointing Jesus was shocking to the host, but it would have been tolerable for a
wife to perform this sort of action for her husband.

If Jesus had been married to Mary Magdalene, who was present at the crucifixion, at least one gospel writer
would have mentioned that Jesus made provisions for her after His death, not only for His mother Mary. John’
s report is clear. Jesus’ only concern at the cross for a family member was for the Blessed Mother, apparently
because she was a widow about to lose her guardian, and He had no siblings who were her children. Mary
Magdalene showed up that day as a devoted disciple, but nothing more (John 19:25-27).

The early Church readily acknowledged the married state of many of its leaders in Jerusalem. Peter and
others of the Twelve were married, and “the brothers of the Lord” were married. St. Paul was not even a very
tiny bit embarrassed by these domestic facts (First Corinthians 9:5). Married leadership was hardly an issue
in early Christianity. If Jesus had been married, this also would have been remembered and mentioned. Not
only would Peter, James, John, and Paul have known about it. All the earliest Christians in the regions of
Jerusalem and Galilee would have known of it as well. Such a widespread awareness could hardly have been
suppressed, even if people had foolishly tried to do so. But who would have wanted to do so? As far as we
can learn, the earliest Christians did not care very much about this one way or the other. There is no
evidence that biblical writers deliberately suppressed any truth about the marriage of Jesus. Such a wild
“conspiracy theory” is complicated and unable to account for all the many known facts.

The Jewish writer of the earliest New Testament documents was St. Paul. Soon after he became a Christian,
he spent half a month living with St. Peter. St. James was in the neighborhood (Galatians 1:18-19). Paul
must have learned much about Jesus from them. In First Corinthians, written less than thirty years after the
cross, St. Paul set himself and Barnabas forward as examples of Christians who freely gave up cherished
rights for the sake of others. One of these was the right to travel with one’s own believing spouse, one
exercised by other Apostles (First Corinthians 9:5-6). St. Paul did not use this right, and he did not mention
whether Jesus did or not. For him, Christ is noteworthy for having freely renounced personal pleasures in
order to help others grow spiritually (Romans 15:2-3).

It seems that St. Paul lived a celibate life, either as a life-long bachelor or, perhaps more likely, as someone
who was no longer married, for whatever reason. He was certainly not married when he wrote First
Corinthians. In chapter seven, he encouraged other Christians to live a single life, if they were able, as he
himself was doing. In chapter eleven, St. Paul exhorted his readers to imitate him as he imitated Christ (11:
1). In First Corinthians, chapter seven, the Apostle Paul is recommending celibacy, perhaps because he
knew that Jesus had recommended it.

Very few scholars dispute that the Gospel of Matthew is a first-century document whose author is a Jewish
Christian. He presents Jesus the Jew as approving celibacy for the sake of God’s service. “Some are
incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some,
because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this
ought to accept it” (Matthew 19:12). Apparently, some Jewish males of the first-century era were known to be
already living the celibate lifestyle before Jesus Christ advocated it for any of His disciples who were capable
of it. Would He have recommended what He Himself had earlier refused to embrace for the sake of the
Kingdom of Heaven?

The singleness of Jesus allowed some New Testament people to portray Him as the bridegroom. This would
not have been an easy theological image to popularize, if many early Christians knew that Jesus had, in fact,
already been married to Mary Magdalene, or someone else. St. John the Baptizer called Jesus the
bridegroom (John 3:29), St. Paul presented the Church as a bride betrothed to Jesus Christ (First Corinthians
6:15-17, Second Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 1:4, 5:25-29), and St. John, the writer of Revelation, did the
same (Revelation 14:1-5, 19:7, 21:2,9, 22:17). It seems that Jesus even referred to Himself as the bridegroom
(Mark 2:19).

No scholar disputes that one or two Gnostic gospels mention that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ “companion”
whom He “kissed.” This ancient word for “companion,” however, often lacks a sexual meaning, and this kiss
was simply a sign of spiritual intimacy, not sexual intimacy. In another Gnostic writing, Jesus also “kissed” St.
James for the same reason. This surely was not an erotic kiss, anymore than the kiss of Judas was! Kissing
had many meanings in ancient cultures, and in Eastern cultures today. Indeed, the early Gnostics, in
general, despised sexual expression, within marriage or otherwise, and also tended to portray Jesus as a
great phantom-like teacher who revealed their own very controversial teachings to be the truth. If the
Gnostics’ fear of persecution did not keep them from clearly teaching their heresies, why would fear keep
them from clearly teaching Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene, if they had understood that this union
happened? It seems fair to say that they also did not believe that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene.

Dan Brown is dead wrong. Gnostic writings are NOT older and more reliable than the New Testament
documents. Copies of the surviving Gnostic gospels, which were written many years after most of the New
Testament writings, do not mention that Jesus had a wife. But what if they had? While virtually all biblical
scholars believe that our four canonical gospels tell us something about “the historical Jesus,” they studiously
reject any notion that the Gnostic gospels tell us anything new about Him, except for the Gospel of Thomas.
Yet feminists who want to argue against Jesus’ celibacy tend to ignore this gospel, since it weakens their
position.

Apart from the merits of official Catholic teachings concerning marriage, celibacy, and priesthood, one can
fairly conclude that the most reliable data available in the earliest Christian records, and otherwise, strongly
suggest that Jesus Christ was not married to Mary Magdalene because He was not married to anyone at all.

What will you do with Jesus?

Neutral you cannot be.

Some day your heart will be asking,

"What will He do with me?"

--A. B. Simpson

Turn away from sin, and be faithful to the gospel.