Da Vinci Ehrman, Bart D.

Da Vinci Ehrman, Bart D. Truth or Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. The author of Truth or Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine is a scholar of Early Christianity who enjoyed Dan Brown's book the Da Vinci Code, and the film based upon the wildly popular work of fiction.

However, Bart Ehrman stresses that Brown's work is imaginative, not factual, despite Brown's claims in the introduction to his novel. The novel tells the tale of a longstanding 'cover-up' by the Vatican of the fact that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene, had a child by her, and thus has mortal descendants. The Vatican uses a secret organization called the Priory of Sion to perpetuate the orthodox doctrine of Christ's chastity, according to Brown.

In detailing Brown's inaccuracies, Ehrman presents a compelling and readable account of how what we think of as modern, institutionalized Christianity came into being. Contrary to Brown's assertion, the Emperor Constantine did not control the creation of the Christian canon, much less try to cover up Christ's humanity as expressed in the currently canonized gospels. The process of canonizing the books of the Christian Bible was a long one, and involved much discussion and debate between many competing sects. Many of these sects were later deemed heretical.

But the majority of the heretical gospels excluded by the church patriarchs at the council of Nicaea did not conceptualize Jesus as a more sexual and human being. These gospels saw Jesus as even more divine and ethereal, as entirely removed from the realities of the world, in contrast to the more human, suffering Jesus of the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

The Gnostics, for example, saw the world as evil and inherently riddled with imperfections and sin, while Jesus was pure, and this ideal is reflected in the gospels written by Gnostics. The more mainstream representations of Christianity exemplified in the current canon saw the world as fundamentally good because it was created by God, despite humanity's sinful nature. As the result of the Fall of Adam, Jesus came to right the wrongs done by humanity's many transgressions.

That did not invalidate the fact that Jesus was both human and divine, and the earthly as well as the heavenly aspects of Jesus were both real and good. The current canon contains two competing strains of Early Christianity that were eventually fused into one. One strain suggested that Christ was human and suffered the travails of the world like a mortal man.

The other strain stressed the importance of the spiritual aspects of the crucifixion and how Christ justified humanity before the eyes of God, and redeemed humanity for its sins. The orthodox idea that Christ's sacrifice is both an acceptance of the goodness of the world and a rejection of the world was not always present within all of Christianity's branches, as is evident in the Gnostic gospels.

However, simply because the debate about canonization and how to interpret Christ's sacrifice and the creation of the world was more pluralistic than debates between Christians does not mean that there is or was a gigantic 'cover up.' The diversity among Christianity pre-canonization makes the divisions between Christians pale in comparison to our own era, and that is what is truly surprising to modern eyes, according to brown. Brown's work also lacks a true historical foundation in the cultural and political situation of ancient Israel.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were not Christian documents, contrary to Brown's version of events. Rather they were produced by a radical sect of world-denying Jews who were resistant to the current Jewish leadership of the day. It is true that within some of the heretical sects, women did play a more significant role in the development of early Christianity, especially sects like the Gnostics that denied the importance of the physical body, including whether the body was male or female.

But another historical inaccuracy about the nature of Jewish life perpetuated by Brown is the idea that Jesus had to be married, and could not have been celibate, because Jewish men were not permitted to be so in ancient Israel. None of the many gospels that exist about the life of Jesus that narrate his life from a variety of perspectives (and there are many) indicate that he.