THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NOVEL "THE DA VINCI CODE"

<<Behold, this [child] is set for the fall and rising again of many; and for a sign which shall be spoken against>> (Luke 2:34-35)

It had not been the wish of our Church during this Festal Season after Pascha (the Christian Passover into Life with the Resurrection) -- a period of joy for all due to the triumph of the Resurrection of our Lord, the greatest miracle through History -- to have to deal (for the umpteenth time in the past two millennia) with the confutation of unhistorical and fabular opinions, which were met by scientific rejection and theological disapproval each time they appeared.

Nevertheless, our responsibility towards the truth and the conscience of the faithful, oblige us once again to inform the Orthodox people, "speaking the truth in love", as regards the forthcoming screening in our Country [of Greece] of a film related to the book "The Da Vinci Code" written by Dan Brown.

It is well known that the fictional novel "The Da Vinci Code", that became an international best seller thanks to the cooperation in its advertising campaign of many "circles", succeeded in becoming a great publishing success after Harry Potter, making both the author of the book and his publishers extremely rich.

The unhistorical and at the same time contumelious messages that the author Dan Brown tries to "transmit" to his readership can be summarised as follows:

1) Our Lord Jesus Christ and St. Mary Magdalene supposedly got married and had children.

2) Supposedly Christ was not God, nor had He ever been worshipped as a God by the first Christians.

3) There was a supposed worship of a female deity next to God, that in this work of fiction is represented in the person of St. Mary Magdalene.

4) This "truth" was allegedly banished from the gospels by St. Constantine, in cooperation with the male priests, who as an Emperor supposedly used the laws of his nation to impose Christ as God; and

5) Supposedly there existed many ancient Gnostic documents that certify this alleged "truth".

For the sake of truth and the faithful, whose Orthodox consciousness is insidiously and unhistorically being attacked and undermined by the fictional plot of the book, we are obliged to clear matters by making the following points:

The contents of the book are totally untrue both from the Historical and the Christian (ecclesiastical) perspective.

1) Christ never wedded anyone. In particular He did not wed St. Mary Magdalene. Our Lord as perfect God and perfect man was without sin, and thus He did not have our human inclinations of the Fall or suspect passions.

2) Christ is recognised as God since the beginning, in the first Church. This is a fact that is certified not only by the Gospels, the Epistles of Apostle Paul (dated 55 AD) and the Acts of the Apostles (around 75 AD), but also by the monograms and symbols that have been found in the Catacombs and testify about Christ. We also have a multitude of Roman and first Christian texts dated in the first and second centuries AD. For example, Apostle Peter confesses: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"; Thomas exclaims: "My Lord and God", whereas the centurion by the Cross will declare: "Truly, this was the Son of God".

3) Furthermore, God is not attributed by nature to a gender. He is neither a man nor a woman, but Spirit (the word Pneuma in Greek is neuter). Therefore, we cannot talk about an eternal female or about a female deity, because such perceptions are completely enclosed within human passions and stem from the pre-historic idolatric antiquity on one hand and from the fictional spirit of the author on the other.

4) The truths that the gospels describe and teach are not an invention of St. Constantine. After all, it is historically documented that together with his favour towards Christianity, he did not oppose the idolatric religions. During the times of St. Constantine, the Ecclesia had almost completed her dogmatics on the Triune God, the Person and God/Man nature of the Lord etc. Millions of people were already Christian or had already died after having undergone torture in the amphitheatres and Roman arenas all over the world; exactly because they believed in Christ as God.

The author, as Marie-France Etchegoin (a reporter for Le Nouvel Observateur) has discovered, had collected his source material from an extreme organisation with seemingly far-reaching plans, that was presented as a civic company in 1956 under the name "Priory of Sion". This organisation had created and promoted a series of documents that supposedly "proved" the wedding of Jesus Christ with St. Mary Magdalene. It is certain that they used elements from the teachings of the Gnostics, the Crusaders, the Purists, and of other heretics.

Author Dan Brown maintains that he is allegedly based upon the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels while he rejects the texts of the New Testament.

However, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not contain any Christian references but only fragments from the Old Testament and other fragmentary texts, without any reference to Christ, or of course to the Holy Chalice. The well-known "gnostic gospels" (of Thomas, Philip, Mary, the Egyptians and the Truth) -- also known as pseudo-gospels -- borrow the names of the disciples of Christ in order to lend authority to their writings; something analogous to what happens with the texts of Pseudo-Herodotus or of Pseudo-Lucianus of ancient literature.

We are not certain what the contents of these pseudo-gospels initially were, although the majority of researchers place them from the 4th century AD onwards. This is because we do not have in our possession a sufficiently large number of codes for these pseudo-gospels in order to be able to authenticate their integrity. The same is not true however for the texts of the Holy Writ, where approximately 25,000 codes contain the New Testament. The pseudo-gospels are derivative texts and not original to the Writ, while they also alter the New Testament.

However, the credibility of the New Testament has been proven scientifically. More specifically:

1) The number of codes in which the text of the New Testament has been kept (approximately 25,000) is incomparably larger than the sum of all extant ancient codes. Homer's Illiad has been saved in 643 codes, Horatius' works in 500, whereas Thucidides' History in only 8.

2) The antiquity of the codes saving the text of the New Testament for us is superior over that of the other ancient texts. The most ancient codes that have saved the text of the New Testament for us (the Sinaite, Alexandrine and Vatican codes) were written around 250 AD, in other words they are less than two centuries away from the time of the text's writing (50 - 70 AD). There is also "Papyrus 52", that contains a fragment of the Gospel according to John and is dated only a few decades later than the original.

On the contrary, the codes of Thucidides' History, that had been written in the 4th century BC, date in the 10th century AD, i.e. the extant copies of this History are found and saved 14 whole centuries later than the writing of the original.

Therefore, since no one disputes the credibility and validity of the aforementioned ancient texts, how is it possible to dispute the New Testament, when the scientific witness proves that it is "the most credible book in the world" (Greenlee J.H., Introduction to the New Testament Textual - Criticism, Grand Rapids 1964, p.16)?

Finally, we need to say that salvation in the (Orthodox) Church is not achieved through man's aristocratic, biological or kin relationship with Christ or His supposed ancestral offspring (essentially, this is a racist attempt of the occultist circles of Europe to enforce a supposed religious and blood aristocracy directly from the line of Christ), but through the by-grace participation of the uncreated energies of God, through which the Holy Spirit visits the faithful, when they live in repentance, humility and love.

In conclusion, we say that through the fiction "The Da Vinci Code", the author attempts to attack the salvific faith of the Ecclesia, viz. that Christ is perfect God and perfect man. The author also attacks the human nature of Christ, since he considers Him to be an imperfect man having passions. He also attacks the Ecclesia, accuses Her, and insults Her directly by saying that until now She has been based upon deceit, lies and beguilement.

Our Ecclesia has wished to inform Her pleroma in this short, responsible and detailed manner. At the same time, She trusts in their deep and unshakeable faith, their worthy interests, and, more importantly, in their correct (orthos) judgment.

Thus, She is not going to make any suggestions as to whether they should watch the related film or not, or as to whether they should read the book or not, as the adherents of illiberalness would expect us to do. On the contrary, She is certain that anyone who may happen to watch the film or read the book, they will be able to establish the presence of the unhistorical inventions, reject their ludicrous content, and proclaim instead

<<that the Lord our Almighty God reigned. We are glad and rejoice and give glory to Him>> (Revel. 19:7).

Holy Synod of the Church of Greece

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