Cracking the Da Vinci Code

We finally tackled the Louvre Museum today. Wow, what an incredible collection of art, artifacts, and second empire decorating! I almost died of gold poisoning from all the gilded lamps, walls, picture frames, ceilings, and bricabrac. When we left our hotel, we told Phillip where we were going, and he said, "see you tomorrow, or maybe the next day." It's true, you could spend several days just to walk slowly through all the galleries, let alone actually look at the works of art. It's almost as big as the Megamall. Seriously, there is an incredible array of art and antiquities on display here, and we only walked through about a quarter of the galleries in the 7 hours we were there.

We started the day meeting Mary, a guide from Paris Muse, a museum tour company that comes highly recommended. They take only 4 people per tour guide, unlike the hoards of other tourists following a single guide that we saw with other groups. Actually, we were the only 2 in our group, so it was basically a private tour.

Here in brief was our itinerary:
The Code of the Hammurabi, Babylon, 1792 BC (first written laws in history; one of them says--no lie--that if a surgeon operates on you, you have to pay him for his work, so there)
Palace of Khorsabad, Assyria, 721 BC (the guys who captured Israel's northern 10 tribes)
Palace of Darius I of Persia, 500 BC (the guy that Daniel dealt with)
Neolithic Statue from Jordan, c. 7,000 BC (oldest piece in the museum)
Walls of the original medieval Louvre castle, including moat and dungeon, 1180 AD
Statue of Diana from 100s AD
Venus de Milo 100 BC, statue, one of the big 3 together with Nike and Mona Lisa
Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace, 190 BC, statue #2 of the big 3
Apollo gallery (death by gold leaf and royal excesses; the crown jewels of France are here)
Botticelli, Venus and the Graces... 1483 painting
Cimabue, Virgin and Child, 1280 painting in a very Byzantine style
Lippi, another virgin and child painting, 1437 in a much more life-like style
Ghirlandaio, Portrait of an old man, 1490
Leonardo, (Da Vinci is where he was from) another virgin and child, 1508, to set us up for:
Leonardo, Mona Lisa, 1506 (the last and most crowded of the big 3)
Veronese, Wedding at Cana painting, 1672
Raphael, Portrait of Castiglione painting, 1514
Caravaggio, Fortune Teller painting, 1610
Michelangelo, 2 Slaves, marble statues, 1513

There you have it, folks: 2.5 hours of fun in the Louvre. Mary was extremely helpful and insightful throughout the tour, pointing out interesting "little known facts" and picking the best pieces to understand a particular painting style, like Leonardo's use of sfumato, or "smokiness" to blur the background and shading around Mona Lisa's face and torso, so she appears to be always facing you, whether you are looking from the right side of the gallery or the left. We tried this, and sure enough, she actually appears to turn her head and shoulders toward whichever side you are standing. It's freaky.

If you come to Paris, and if you want to give the Louvre a shot, spend the money and pay a good tour guide to take you to see the treasures of the Louvre collection. Mary is a PhD candidate in architecture studying at the Sorbonne, Paris' most prestigious university, so we got a lot of good info in a very short time from a very reliable source. After she left us, we visited the Cafe Marly, one of 4 or 5 restaurants inside the Louvre, and had lunch. Then we spent the afternoon in the Richelieu wing, which houses the non-French painters, especially the Dutch, Flemish, and German schools. Beth especially likes the tiny Flemish portraits and family scenes from the 1600s.

I saw a desk at the entrance where you could rent an audio guide (a headset and a sort of built-in MP3 player) for various parts of the museum. One of the most popular was the Da Vinci Code guide, which takes you to all the areas of the Louvre that the book and film describe. Caveat Emptor: If you read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, loved it, and believe his conspiracy theory whole-heartedly, don't read any more of this post, or at least don't send me any unsigned hate mail. If you are one of the 10 English-speakers in the world who haven't read the book but still plan to, don't read this (I'll give away the ending). All others, allez-y (read away).

Opinions about this book vary widely, but fall into basically three categories: those who love it and believe the conspiracy theory, or at least seriously question the motives of the religious establishment; those who hate it out of principle and usually haven't read it; and those who liked the thriller aspect but doubt the basic premise of the book. I am of the latter category, having read the book last February while on vacation in Nevada. The entire book was one long chase scene broken up every few pages by a soliliquy or diatribe by one of the 3 principal characters about a secret conspiracy.

The synopsis is this: an American professor of "symbology" is in Paris to give a lecture. While he is there, the curator of the Louvre is murdered in one of the galleries, but lives long enough to leave arcane clues on various paintings that lead the professor and a beautiful French police cryptologist on a daring mission to uncover a deep, dark secret: that Jesus really didn't die on the cross, but married Mary Magdalene, had children by her, their family blood line continues to this day, and it actually includes the beautiful young French police cryptologist.

OK, a lot more happens in the book (I haven't seen the movie, although Audrey Tautou, who played Amelie in that movie and plays Sophie Neveu in this one, is one of my favorite actresses), but let's leave it at that for my purposes. The point of the book seems to be to raise a conspiracy theory to cast doubt on the historical and theological record as we have received it. He attempts to build a case that:

1. The 4 gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were chosen by Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in the 300s AD, essentially to promote the idea of Jesus' divinity for the first time. This, as the conspiracy theory goes, would bolster Constantine's political strength and keep him in power, with Jesus as his sort of divine mascot.
2. Many of the rejected "gospels" like the gospel of Mary and the gospel of Peter (Brown claims that there are more than 80 competing gospels, all equally valid), portrayed Jesus as completely human, not divine at all, and therefore just like the rest of us, wanting a wife and children.
3. Jesus had a special relationship with Mary Magdalene that went far beyond a teacher and pupil relationship, and ultimately led to a marital one that produced children.
4. Somehow this would elevate Mary Magdalene to divine status, affirming the "divine feminine" and opening up goddess worship as the best and highest form of divine worship.
5. The secret of Jesus and Mary's family and bloodline has been scrupulously protected and preserved, along with the bones and relics of Mary, by many secret groups, including the Knights Templar during the middle ages, and the Masons and the "Priory of Sion" since then.
6. The "Priory of Sion" is said to include many famous people including Leonardo Da Vinci (thus the book title) and Sir Isaac Newton, just to name 2.
7. Da Vinci supposedly left many clues to Mary Magdalene and the divine feminine in his works of art, including the Mona Lisa and others.
8. All the secret records, including the "Holy Grail" (which isn't the cup from the last supper at all, but by a process too long to even begin to describe, turns out to be the bones of Mary herself), are buried beneath the inverted pyramid in the lower level of the Louvre itself.

Alright, where to begin? So much nonsense, so little time. Like I said, I loved the book length chase scene, but the diatribes every few pages about the divine feminine left me either laughing out loud or shaking my head that anyone could be taken in by the conspiracy. But that's the thing about a conspiracy theory: you first buy into it a little, then everything you read or experience feeds your belief that the theory is true. Thomas Aquinas said, "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

Aquinas also said, "I believe so that I may know." He understood that knowledge isn't acquired in a vacuum; we build our knowledge on a sort of scaffolding of basic things that we believe to be true. So in my opinion, what Brown is trying to accomplish is to set up an alternative scaffolding of basic things that we can then "flesh out" with the kind of facts that we can detect with our senses. In essence, he is pitting his own scaffolding of truth-claims against the truth-claims handed down over time based on the Bible and the teachings of the Church over the centuries.
Let me just refute the 8 major items above in a sentence or two:

1. The four gospels are the earliest, most reliable, and most internally consistent of all of the early works about Christ's life, and in fact established his humanity in very clear terms, as well as establishing his claims of divinity (both spoken claims and implied ones, i.e. the miracles he performed).
2. The later gospels were all gnostic to one degree or another, and since the gnostics believed that anything material was by definition sinful, they tried to argue that Jesus was entirely divine, not entirely human as Brown tries to argue.
3. Scripture alludes to the disciples having wives (e.g. Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law), but no reading of the biblical texts could be twisted enough to give serious weight to the idea that Jesus was married, least of all to Mary Magdalene.
4. Mary is mentioned several times in the gospels, each time as a faithful follower, but nothing could be read to give her any special status as an embodiment of the "divine feminine."
5. The Knights Templar were a powerful and enigmatic group from the 1100s to the 1300s, then the King of France hunted them down and they basically disappeared from history. There is no evidence they guarded any secrets as Brown claims. The same goes for the Masons, a secret society started by stone masons in the late middle ages and popularized in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Enough is known about the Masons that, if Mary's relics and bloodline were guarded by them, the knowledge would be public by now.
6. The "Priory of Sion" is a hoax started first in the late 19th century, then revived and promoted by a Frenchman in the 1950s who "discovered" a secret list of names purported to be leaders of a secret society sworn to protect the divine bloodline started by Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
7. No qualified art historian to date has verified any of Brown's claims about Da Vinci and the "divine feminine."
8. The Louvre grounds were extensively excavated hundreds of feet down for the installation of I. M. Pei's glass pyramid entrance, which opened in 1989. During that excavation the walls and foundations of the original medieval castle (c. 1100 AD) were uncovered. If several trunks full of Mary's relics and records were down there (as Brown claims), they would have been discovered and displayed. For instance, many tiny fragments of a gold crown worn by King Charles II were found during the excavation of the moat, and ultimately pieced together painstakingly like a jigsaw puzzle, and the nearly complete crown is on display there.
9. BTW, why only Mary Magdalene's bones? Why not Jesus' bones as well, since he didn't die on the cross and wasn't raised again on the 3rd day? Now that would be some proof that Jesus wasn't divine. Unfortunately, even the Roman soldiers who guarded the tomb and the Pharisees who hated Jesus couldn't come up with his body, but accused the disciples of stealing it from the grave...

I won't bore you with any other minutiae refuting the Da Vinci Code. Enjoy the book, but don't toy with the conspiracy theory: it's as full of holes as a boat made of chicken wire, and holds about as much water. The gospels stand as some of the most reliable 1st century AD records we have, and new discoveries in archeology and textual science serve to strengthen, not weaken their reputation. Thus, when an elected official swears an oath of office, he or she does it with their hand on a Bible, not a copy of the Da Vinci Code...

By the way, over the almost 600 years since Gutenberg first invented the printing press, there has only been one best-seller ever: the Bible. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article listing the top-selling books in history (it may not be completely up-to-date).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

The top all-time seller, with an estimated 6 billion copies: the Bible. The next best "seller": the sayings of Mao (I bet most of those were not sold, but distributed by the Chinese government). The Da Vinci code is listed at #9 with 60 million copies, but current estimates are at closer to 100 million copies. So Brown only has to sell 100 times as many copies as he has sold to date and he will equal the sales of the good book.

There has never been a year, probably not even a week, when any other book has ever out-sold the good book. So really, the New York Times 10 best-sellers are actually #2 through #11, even the NYT taking for granted that nobody will ever unseat #1, and for good reason....