The truth; anything but the truth

The Da Vinci Code - and here I refer to the novel - is being given more credit than it is due. What Dan Brown did is to heavily rely on research material from a book published in 1982 and spin a good yarn around it. The book, first published on January 18, 1982 is entitled The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.

The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail poses such questions as: Is it possible that Christ did not die on the cross? Is it possible that Jesus was married, was a father and that His bloodline still exists? Is it possible that parchments found in the south of France a century ago reveal one of the best kept secrets in Christendom? Is it possible these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail? Sounds familiar? Anyone reading The Da Vinci Code will recognise these themes.

The critical difference is that the authors of The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail propounded what they explicitly admitted to be no more than a series of hypotheses.

In The Da Vinci Code, Mr Brown, however, took it a step further. He presented the conclusions derived from these hypotheses as facts and used them as a basis for a riveting novel. He presented them in such a manner that, at times, it is very difficult to distinguish the difference between fictitious entertainment and historical elements of the Christian faith.

In the circumstances, one would have thought it more appropriate to direct the energy spent in demonising The Da Vinci Code, which, after all, is a "novel", to the publication The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail. After all this second book is a serious, in-depth and scholarly thesis which per se merited critical analysis from theologians and ecclesiastics alike. Ironically, however, most attacks came from Protestants and Anglicans. The Catholic Church remained disturbingly silent on the subject.

One could argue that the Catholic hierarchy, in its wisdom, may have decided to adopt this stance to deny granting the work additional publicity or, as the authors claim, because the upper echelons of the institution - though they would never make a public statement on the matter - privately acknowledged the plausibility, if not indeed the veracity, of their conclusions.

For one thing the authors claim that one of the leading authorities on Vatican affairs and former member of the Vatican Pontifical Institute, a Malachi Martin, had conceded that there was no theological objection to the suggestion that Jesus might have been married and sired children.

The authors argue that the core of Christianity and Christian ethos resides in Jesus's teachings. These teachings promulgate values and attitudes that had not previously been expressed on the stage of human history and are valid in themselves. They go on to say that any thoughtful Christian would concur that Jesus's primary significance resides in the message he sought to communicate. That message would hardly be vitiated if it proved to have issued from a man who was also a husband and a father. Neither would it be any more valid if it issued from a celibate.

For anyone who wants to understand the pernicious nature of The Da Vinci Code, a book entitled Breaking The Da Vinci Code - which is also a New York Times Best Seller - is a must-read. The author is Darrell L. Bock, research professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, with a forward by Francis J. Moloney SDB, dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America, Washington DC.

At this juncture it should also be said that, in one's search for the truth, answers are hardly ever cut and dried. Conflicting interpretations of the same event tend to happen with monotonous regularity, which leaves one with the old feeling of being much better informed but none the wiser. It will eventually boil down to believing what one wants to believe, otherwise described as "a matter of faith" or, in the words of Mother Theresa, "in the final analysis it is between you and God; it was never between you and them".