DownshoreDrift

Assertions of the Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code:  PRIORY OF SION

“FACT: The Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization. In 1975

Paris

’ Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.”

The TRUTH:

The Priory of Sion was founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard and Andre Bonhomme, Frenchmen who wanted to establish a line of royalty from the Merovingian line of Frankish Kings (400-700).  This secret society, was supposedly created to protect the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdeline, who married and had a daughter named Sarah.  The Priory of Sion was revealed to be a hoax in 1993 when Plantard, under oath, admitted that the whole thing had been made up.

In the 1970’s Plantard’s hoax was propagated through the planting of papers, called the Dossiers Secrets, in libraries in

France

. They were found by a researcher named Henry Lincoln, who, joined forces with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Their research led to the pseudohistorical Secret Files of Henri Lobineau at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in

Paris

, compiled by Plantard and de Cherisey under the pseudonym of "Philippe Toscan du Plantier"; the three authors also met up with Plantard and de Sede. Such 'evidence' became the source for their book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in which they reported claims that:

• with illustrious Grand Masters including Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci, the Priory of Sion has a long history starting in AD 1099;
• the Knights Templar were created as its military and financial front;
• it is sworn to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem;
• the order protects these royal claimants because they think they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his alleged wife Mary Magdalene
• the Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to maintain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.

This entire thesis has been proven to be patently false. It was made up by a con man, Pierre Plantard, who fancied himself as the rightful King of France. Dan Brown has taken this background and has woven a tale of goddess worship that goes beyond what even Plantard could have come up with.

Main Views of the Da Vinci Code

1. The Bible is not trustworthy
2. Jesus is not God, nor did the first century church believe him to be God
3. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and intended to restore the worship of the goddess 

The Bible Is Not Trustworthy

“At the outset of the project [writing The Da Vinci Code], one of my desires was to explore the origin of the Bible...[this] took me to the Gnostic Gospels (essentially those parts of the Bible that were drafted, but ultimately did not appear in the final version)…the story we read in the Bible is a partial story and it is an edited story. Many historians believe that the Gnostic Gospels are one of the missing pieces.” Dan Brown ^{4  p.91-92}

One of Brown’s characters, Leigh Teabing, a renowned religious historian, shares this view held by the author:

"The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not God." ^{5 p.231} "More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion...Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned." ^{6 p.234}

The truth is, the Bible is the most attested to book in antiquity.  There were never 80 gospels to choose from. The gospels that are being referred to are what are called the Gnostic gospels.  Gnostic, comes from the Greek work, gnosis, meaning “knowledge”.  Gnostics believed that all matter was bad and to achieve salvation, you had to release your inner light through secret knowledge. There were books written approximately 100-150 years after the time of Christ claiming that he was a divine teacher that would help show us the path to the release of our inner light through secret knowledge.

The real Bible was written by eyewitnesses, apostles, or close companions to the apostles.  All of the gospels were written by 60-80 A.D., with the entire New Testament being completed no later than 95 A.D.  The Canon, or rule of books, was common knowledge in the first century and was commonly agreed upon by 150 A.D.  Constantine, the Roman Emperor, who ceased persecution of Christians, had nothing to do with deciding which books went into the New Testament. That is completely false. Dr. Paul Maier,

            Dan Brown almost makes Constantine the universal editor of the earliest Bible, which is just pathetic, because the canon was already known a century and a half to two hundred years before

Constantine

. Eusebius, the earliest Chrisitan church historian, tells us how the canon came to be and how other books were added later on, but by Constantine’s time, it was already deteremined. There’s no question about that.  And the Council of Nicea in 325 did not decide which books should go in the canon or which should not. Nothing of that is true. Not one of the decrees of the Council of Nicea deals with the canon. So, again, you simply have falsehood multiplied here.

Jesus is not God

That is not all Brown believes happened at the Council of Nicea, as further attested to by Teabing.

“At this gathering [Council of Nicea] many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon [including] the divinity of Jesus...until that moment in history [325 AD], Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet...Jesus' establishment as the ‘Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council...A relatively close vote at that.” ^p.233

Not even looking at the Bible, let’s hear the words of early Christians related to the divinity of Jesus:

·         Ignatius: “God Himself was manifested in human form” (105)

·         Clement: “It is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God (150)

·         Justin Martyr: “The Father of the universe has a Son. And He . . . is even God (160)

·         Irenaeus: “He is God, for the name Emmanuel indicates this” (180)

·         Tertullian: “Christ our God” (200)

·         Origen: “No one should be offended that the Savior is also God” (225)

·         Novatian: “He is not only man, but God also” (235)

·         Cyprian: “Jesus Christ, our Lord and God” (250)

·         Methodius: “He truly was and is . . . with God, and being God . . .” (290)

·         Lactantius: “We believe Him to be God” (304).

The Council of Nicea was called in 325 to address the teaching of Arius, who in 318, began teaching that Jesus was a created being, just like other humans, and was not the begotten Son of God. He was opposed by Alexander, the bishop of

Alexandria

, who declared Arius a heretic in 321. Arius kept teaching this and sent letters to the surrounding churches.  A great uproar ensued that gained the attention of Emperor Constantine, who called a council of over 300 bishops settle the dispute, so there would be peace in the empire.  He had stopped the persecution of Christians through the Edict of Milan in 313 and was favorable toward Christianity and wanted to see peace.  The teachings of Arius were soundly defeated, led by the bishop Athanasius.  Christ was verified as being divine and co-eternal with the Father.  The church affirmed the teachings of the previous 300 years and settled any questions that Arius brought up with a 298-2 vote.  The Nicene Creed was the result.

Jesus, Magdalene and Goddess Worship

Perhaps the most controversial of Brown’s assertions is his belief that Jesus was married and on a mission to restore the worship of the sacred feminine. In support of this, Brown’s characters put forth the idea that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail, the lost chalice.

"...the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father. My dear, Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel. She was the chalice that bore the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. She was the womb that bore the lineage, and the vine from which the sacred fruit sprang forth.” ^p.249

"...it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene...Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene." ^p.248

"The Priory of Sion, to this day, still worships Mary Magdalene as the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother." ^p.255

Comments made by Brown indicate this is not just a fictional concept for him, but represent his personal beliefs that have been carefully and skillfully woven into the fabric of the book.

Margaret Starbird's books [The Woman With the Alabaster Jar and The Goddess In the Gospels] opened our eyes to the concept of the Church's subjugation of the sacred feminine...”I began to realize that history barely mentioned the Church's systemic subjugation of the sacred feminine.

My eyes were now wide open to the idea of the suppression of the sacred feminine. My reading convinced me that there was a great case to be put forward that woman had been unfairly treated in the eyes of society for hundreds of years if not longer, and that religion had played a big part in this. I could not imagine how this information about suppressing the sacred feminine had been done or why it was not known in the mainstream. Blythe…encouraged me to incorporate the theme of the sacred feminine and the goddess.

This concept of the lost sacred feminine became the backbone of The Da Vinci Code and would become the central theme of the novel...the novel 'draws heavily on the sacred feminine.'”

I also decided to describe the Priory as "the pagan goddess worship cult" in order to further steer the emphasis of the novel towards Mary Magdalene and the lost feminine. This portrayal of the role and ideology of the Priory was my personal interpretation.

Truthfully, before the time of Christ, women were treated terribly.  They were considered property and objects, under the ownership of their husbands. They had few rights and were dependent upon men.  Christianity lifted women to a higher plane and gave them rights as people.  The idea of the sacred feminine is pure paganism and is being proposed through Gaia, Mother Earth, and the re-emergence of other goddess cults. Paganism is back. 

As far as the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, this is so fanciful as to not even need a proper argument.  There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married.  This is as made up as it could be.  Jesus’ bride is those who believe in Him and have been cleansed by His blood.  The true Holy Grail, the receptacle of the blood of Christ, is each one of us who have put our faith in Him.  It matters if we think that Jesus was married or not – some say it does not.  But, this historically has not truth to it at all.

Frederic Baue, in The Spiritual Society, says that we are entering into a new age of spirituality.  With the decline of modernism and faith in the enlightenment and science, we are beginning to believe, once again, that there is something beyond us. We are looking to the past and within to find this spirituality.  The problem is, this spirituality will not be friendly to Christianity.  It will be hostile. It will turn against Christianity and seek to tear it to pieces like a ravenous dog, not from a materialistic platform, but from a spiritual platform.  The gods and goddesses of the East are upon us. 

This is not the first time we have encountered this type of thinking.  As a matter of fact, it was the predominant worldview of the first century.  Everywhere Paul and the Apostles went in the

Roman Empire

, the pagan, mystery religions were dominant.