Was Jesus Married?

Fiction

Brown claims that Jesus wed Mary Magdalene. He writes: “The early Church needed to convince the world that the mortal prophet Jesus was a divine being. Therefore, any gospels that described earthly aspects of Jesus’ life had to be omitted from the Bible. Unfortunately for the early editors, one particularly troubling earthly theme kept recurring in the gospels. Mary Magdalene…More specifically, her marriage to Jesus Christ…It’s a matter of historical record” (244).

Fact

Jesus never wed anyone. The idea that he did is totally absent from Scripture and the early church traditions. No spark of evidence of this possibility exists anywhere…even in the bizarre, second-century apocryphal gospels…there is no evidence or even reference that Jesus ever got married. Brown theorizes that Jesus was expected to get married and must have according to rabbinical traditions. But this is a logical error to claim that Jesus could not have remained single because of a general expectation of marriage. Exceptions for bachelorhood were granted by the rabbis, and there were whole sub-groups in Judaism that practiced celibacy, such as a branch of the Essenes or the Egyptian Therapeutae familiar from Philo. Nor did many of the great prophets, such as Jeremiah, or the wilderness prophet Banus – under whom Josephus studied – or John the Baptist, have wives. Jesus was regularly linked with such as a desert prophet early in his ministry.

Fiction

There are many variations, including Brown’s, on the theme of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene, and their child (Sarah) or children. In Holy Blood, Holy Grail – the source of many of Brown’s theories in The DaVinci Code – Mary, pregnant with Jesus’ child, fled to France, where she gave birth to a girl named Sarah, who became an ancestress of the Merovingian dynasty in France. Do these allegations come from early, original sources?

Fact

No. This version of Jesus’ family life first surfaced in the ninth century AD!

Fiction

Brown continues with further bizarre claims writing: “Jesus was the first original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene…She was of the House of Benjamin…of Royal descent” (248).

Fact

There is no record whatever of Mary’s Jewish tribal affiliation, nor of a member in the tribe of Benjamin thereby having royal blood. And there is nothing to suggest that Jesus commissioned Mary instead of the apostles as the original church leader.

Fiction

The cornerstone of Brown’s evidence for Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene comes from the apocryphal Gospel of Philip. In one passage Jesus supposedly kisses Mary as his “companion,” which Brown translates as “spouse or wife in Aramaic”: “And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” (246)

Fact

1. If Jesus had a wife, it would have been unthinkable for his disciples to speak out against her, no matter how strong their disapproval.

2. The Gospel of Philip was not written in Aramaic, as Brown claims, but in Greek!

3. The Gospel of Philip is very late among the apocryphal gospels, dating to the third century, at least two centuries removed from Jesus’ time. Scholars dismiss the work as having no genuine historical recollections that are not drawn from the canonical Gospels. The early church rejected this document.

4. It is apocryphal also in the literal understanding of that term today: “not genuine, spurious, counterfeit.”

Fiction

Brown also refers to another document in support of his married-Jesus hypothesis, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Brown’s character Teabing exaggerates, “I shan’t bore you with the countless references to Jesus and Magdalene’s union” (247).

Fact

First, neither of these documents specify that Jesus was married. Both references are late, and even they do not explicitly report any “union” of Jesus and Mary!

Fiction

Why is there no evidence of Jesus’ marriage in all of church history? Dan Brown, echoing other revisionist authors before him, claims that the church suppressed this evidence in a great conspiracy of silence. This, of course, raises the antennae of conspiracy-lovers everywhere, the sorts who thrive on UFO sightings and alien invasions from outer space and who fear the Tri-Lateral Commission. “Everyone loves a conspiracy,” writes Brown, knowingly, and clearly, many do. For this reason he can get away with the outrageous lie that Jesus’ marriage is a “matter of historical record” (244).

Fact

REALITY: No history, No record! While we do not have one wisp of historical evidence that Jesus ever married, we do have powerful evidence that he did not. Even the most radical revisionists agree with sober biblical scholars that the writings of St. Paul constitute our earliest – and therefore most credible – records of Christianity. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul defended his right to have a wife – a prerogative he never implemented: “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas [Peter]?” Now if Jesus himself had ever married, Paul would surely have cited that as the greatest precedent of all, after which it would have been unnecessary even to mention such subordinate examples as Peter and the other apostles. Without question, 1 Corinthians 9:5 is the graveyard of the married-Jesus fiction.

But what if there were some real piece of evidence for Jesus’ marriage? One can hardly resist speculating as to whether Jesus’ mission to the world would have been compromised had he, in fact, wed. Certainly, entering into marriage, as ordained by God, is not sinful, so might not Christ have done so? The DaVinci heroine, for example, claims she would “have no problem” with a married Jesus, and many reader might agree. But one of the principal purposes of marriage is to have children, and an enormous – even cosmic – problem would have arisen if Jesus and the Magdalene had produced offspring. Theologians would have argued for centuries as to whether such children did or did not participate in Jesus’ divinity. And what of their children and grandchildren in turn? It would have caused no less than theological bedlam. But no such documents or arguments exist! That Christ remained celibate was very wise indeed!

Fiction

According to Brown, the church suppressed this secret, yet the secret would not die! To guard and convey that secret and to retrieve the Sangreal documents that corroborated it from under the Jerusalem Temple, the Priory of Sion supposedly created the oldest of the church’s military-religious orders: the Knights Templar.

Fact

This group did exist during the Crusades to protect pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land, the Knights were indeed founded in 1118 and should have become obsolete when the last Crusader fortress at Acre fell in 1291. But by then they had amassed considerable wealth and had metamorphosed into a medieval banking institution cum travel agency.

Roman Emperor Constantine

Fiction

Constantine is next on the list in Brown’s revisionism. Paul Maier calls Brown’s work on Constantine “the most concerted falsification of a historical personality that I have ever encountered in either fiction or nonfiction.”[1] The first Christian Roman Emperor is depicted as thus in Brown’s work: “The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever” (page 124). Brown claims that Constantine eliminated goddess worship in the Roman Empire, collated the Bible, used Christianity for political gain, moved Christian worship from Saturday to Sunday, and decided that Jesus should be made into a deity in order to suit his own purposes.

FACT

The first Christian emperor did many things for church and society in the early fourth century, but not one of these claims is among them. According to Brown’s character Leigh Teabing, 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” (234). This is totally false. Most of the canon was well known and in use nearly two centuries before Constantine, a time when the early church had already dismissed the many apocryphal gospels that arose later in the second century. The rejected gospels, far from containing the real truth about Jesus, were all distortions derived from the first-century canonical Gospels and laced with fanciful aberrations.

For Brown, Constantine “was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest” (232). FALSE. While Constantine was a flawed individual, historians agree that he certainly abjured paganism, became a genuine Christian convert, repaid the church for its terrible losses during the persecutions, favored the clergy, built many churches throughout his empire, convened the first ecumenical council at Nicea – underwriting the expenses of clergy to attend it – and desired baptism near death. As for the last, he was only following the custom at the time (innocent though mistaken) of delaying baptism until the end of life because it wiped your solate clean of preceding sins.

Did Constantine shift worship from Sat. to Sun. “to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the Sun” (232-233)? No. The earliest Christians started worshiping on the first day of the week, Sunday, which they called “the Lord’s Day,” to honor the day on which Christ rose from the dead. This is obvious both from the New Testament (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10), as well as in the writings of the earliest church fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, the Didache, and even the pagan author Pliny the Younger.

The Council of Nicea (in Brown’s revisionism) deified Jesus. Before that, “Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and powerful man, but a man nonetherless,” not the Son of God (233). Wrong! Jesus’ deity was attested by many New Testament passages, as well as by the earliest Christians and all the church fathers, even if there was some disagreement as to the precise nature of that deity. The Council of Nicea did not debate over whether Jesus was divine or only mortal, but whether he was coeternal with the Father. Still, Brown says it was by “a relatively close vote” that the Council of Nicea endorsed Jesus’ deity (233). In fact, the vote was 300 to 2…and the 2 dissenters were followers of Arius, the heretic (see sheet from Who’s Who in Christian History regarding Arius).

[1] The Da Vinci Code: fact or fiction?, p. 13.

The Priory of Sion

DaVinci Code: Fiction and Fact explanations:

(following Paul Maier’s explanations in "The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction")

“Why is The Passion excoriated and The DaVinci Code extolled? Why are Gibson’s motives denounced and Brown’s dignified? Why is Christ’s passion referred to as a “repulsive, masochistic fantasy” and his supposed marriage to Mary Magdalene touted as a researched material fact? The answer may surprise you. It is not just that in our increasingly secularist culture it has become politically correct to cast aspersions on Christ and the church he founded. It is because of a great reversal of values. Fiction – such as the notion that Christianity was concocted to subjugate women – is being cleverly peddled as fact, while fact – such as the deity of Christ – is being capriciously passed off as fiction.”[1]

(There is nothing new under the sun...see Isaiah 5:13, 20)

So, let’s take a look at the fiction and facts of this story: The DaVinci Code (as understood from historian Dr. Paul Maier's book: "The Da Vinci Code: fact or fiction?")

Fiction #1

The Priory of Sion: supposedly a secret European society founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a crusading French king named Godefroi de Bouillon. It’s purpose, according to Brown, was to preserve a great secret that had been handed down from generation to generation of Godefroi’s ancestors since the time of Christ. Hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem allegedly corroborated this secret. What was the secret? Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene, which resulted in a daughter named Sarah. Jesus’ bloodline supposedly continued through the Merovingian dynasty of French kings and survives even today. They exist to keep a watchful eye over the descendants of Jesus and Mary and wait for the perfect moment to reveal the secret to the world.

FACT

The “Priory of Sion” was actually registered in France in 1956 (google “Priory of Sion” and see site for “Priory of Sion Hoax” for more in depth info). The “Priory’s” first objective is to position itself in the mind of an unknowing public as the supreme Western esoteric organization. It dreams of utilizing that constituency in a synarchy-like fashion to promote its hybrid agenda of right-wing politics and turn-of-the-century esoteric teachings. It does not represent the real teachings of any positive esoteric order. It is materialistic, obsessed with attaining influence, and has fabricated documents without regard for any ethical considerations. It’s program is to manipulate people through lies in order to promote itself. The Priory’s role in this novel is supposedly “proven” by a cache of documents that were discovered in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. These documents really do exist, but they were planted there by a person named Peirre Plantard. In fact, one of Plantard’s henchmen admitted to assisting him in the fabrication of these materials, including the genealogical tables and lists of the Priory’s grand masters – all trumpeted as truth in The DaVinci Code. Plantard’s hoax was actually exposed in a series of French books and a BBC documentary in 1996, but this news – fortunately for Dan Brown – is reaching our shores only at glacial speed. Plantard turned out to be an anti-Semite with a criminal record for fraud, while the real Priory of Sion is a little splinter social group founded half a century ago. The most important strand in the central plot of The DaVinci Code, then, is a total hoax. So much for the “Fact” Brown claims on his first page!

[1] Hanegraaff and Maier, The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction?, viii.

Some "recent past" revisionism examples

In American culture, a double standard is surely at the top of the “food chain.” As Dr. Paul Maier states: “You dare not attack any of the religious systems of the world…except for Christianity.”

So, we have the “Jesus Game” (As described by Dr. Paul Maier)

· “Begin with a general sketch of Jesus on the basis of the Gospels, but then distort it as much as you please…The prize is maximum coverage in the nation’s print and broadcast media. Any frowns from the faithful will be ignored amid the skyrocketing sales of your product.”

Is this the first time this has been done? Absolutely NOT!

· England’s Hugh Schonfield unveiled a portrait of Jesus in 1966 that he defined as a false “Savior” who schemed the whole Golgotha scenario.

· Nikos Kazantzakis’ book The Last Temptation of Christ, later made into a movie, cast Jesus as an object of St. Paul’s scorn.

· Also in the tumultuous ‘60’s, we might even have expected to see “Jesus, the Radical Revolutionary,” courtesy of the S. G. F. Brandon books.

· Of course, we must also remember authors like John M. Allegro, another British scholar who once worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls but ruined his reputation by favoring us with the image of “Jesus the Mushroom Cultist” in 1970. In his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, Allegro seriously argued that Jesus was invented by myth-makers who got high on the hallucinogenic qualities of the red-topped, white-flecked fly agaric mushroom and wrote the Gospels to communicate their cultic secrets!

· Not to be outdone, Moron Smith presented “Christ the Master Magician” in his 1973 book The Secret Gospel, explaining away Jesus’ miracles as sleight-of-hand.

· In claims similar to those in the Qur’an, Australian Donovan Joyce’s The Jesus Scroll unveiled “Jesus the Senescent Savior” who survived Golgotha and lived on to the ripe old age of eighty.

· “Jesus the Happy Husband” staged his debut in several books, the most influential of which was Baigent, Lincoln, and Leight’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 1980’s. These authors spun the impossible saga that is the heart of the storyline of The Da Vinci Code – that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that their offspring persisted in the Merovingian dynasty of medieval France.

· After Jesus as “The Clownish Christ” in Godspell and “The Rock Redeemer” in Jesus Christ Superstar (both forgivable) came the 90’s and the irrepressible John Dominic Crossan, oracle of the Jesus Seminar, who gifted us with “Jesus the Rustic Redeemer” (or, perhaps, “Seinfeld – the Savior,” depending on which chapter you follow in his The Historical Jesus – The Life of a Jewish Mediterranean Peasant).

And, this is not all of them…but as the ‘plot thickens’ as to who Jesus really was (and is), we must have a way of finding the truth, for not all of these “authors” have the right idea. There must be a “standard” by which we are able to tell. For this, we turn to the standard that the witnesses accounted for, The Holy Bible. These are the writings of the first century witnesses that account for the true life, work, and claims of the real Jesus. Of course, this isn’t often who we see portrayed.

Whenever one of the networks attempts a serious documentary on Jesus, it usually tips scholarly representation heavily in the direction of radical, revisionist critics rather than serious, centrist biblical scholars, as witness Peter Jennings’ ABC special “In Search of Jesus,” which aired in June 2002, or Dateline NBC in February, 2004.

And now, crowning this retinue of revisionism, comes The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. For one, this seems to be just a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1980). Dan is also capitalizing on what is already a vulnerable target: the Church. Current scandals with Roman Catholicism due to the pedophilia cases and other clergy and church leaders making horrific decisions in our society, allows Dan Brown to capitalize on the disingenuous regards most have for the church. Add to that the rise of radical feminism and the women’s movement (as seen on the cover of Newsweek (Dec. 8, 2003).

So, why is this so dangerous? Because of biblical illiteracy rates rising in our culture (consider less than 8% of the Millennial generation is in church on any given Sunday), many readers/moviegoers assume that all of the supplementary contextual and background detail involving Christianity is true WHEN IT IS NOT! A few factual references are heavily interlaced with fiction or outright falsehood. To represent such details as fact is positively dishonest.

For example, on the first page in the book (after the table of contents and such) we read a heading of “FACT” under which Dan Brown writes statements that form the basis of the entire novel. Furthermore, Brown has publicly clarified that he believes that the conspiracy theory he presents in The Da Vinci Code is actually true (Good Morning America, ABC: Nov. 3, 2003 and Primetime Live, ABC: Nov. 3, 2003).

Please remember our Lord’s regards for us in these last days…that many false prophets will be among us, and that the spirit of the anti-christ(s) will work against us. How do we determine these things? We test the spirits (1 John 4). See Colossians 2:8; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; and Eph. 5:6; but put on the armor of God…Eph. 6:10-20! We overcome this demonic teaching by taking all things to THE WORD MADE FLESH – JESUS, who gave us His Word as a ruler and measure for these things.

How should we understand this?

This notion that Dan Brown puts forth is nothing new. In fact, it is something we have seen more and more in the recent past. However, unfortunately this does not mean the book turned film is any less concerning. With the growing population biblically illiterate (which doesn't mean they cannot read, but that they have no real knowledge of God's Word), and the younger generations being found less and less in the churches in our country as well as others, we must concern ourselves with the combination of these vital concerns.

As we will see in some short exerpts from Dr. Paul Maier's "The Da Vinci Code: fact or fiction?", this new deception is nothing new at all.

As Paul Maier likes to elude to these sensationalisms: The “Jesus Game”…sensationalizing efforts by Hollywood’s best have these things in common:

1. The flight from hard evidence – solid historical, literary, and archaeological source material – to the flimsies of sensationalistic reconstruction.

2. The substitution of opinion for fact and hypothesis for history, leading to the most arbitrary conclusions possible.

3. Twisting the language of a historical source out of context to make it mean what the author wants it to mean in accord with his caricature.

4. Exchanging objectivity for bias, admitting only sources that favor the author’s hypothesis and dismissing the rest.

5. What might be called “smorgasbord research”: ignoring the succulent dishes of evidence spread out by the past but pouncing on a caviar wisp of data, then reporting that the entire dinner consisted of delicious fish eggs.

6. Façade “scholarship”: peppering the findings with references, book titles, or notes that may look authoritative, bur substantiate nothing at all.

7. In the case of fiction, exaggerating at will, removing data out of context, and masking outright falsehoods under the claim that the literary vehicle is fiction.

(These points taken from The DaVinci Code: Fact and Fiction, p. 37-38, Hanegraaff and Maier)

Also, consider these quotes from Hanegraaff and Maier’s book:

“But Brown uses this “fact” (which in reality is completely untrue) to cast aspersions on Jesus Christ, the historicity of the Gospels, and the uniqueness of Christianity.”

“As we will see, much of what Brown trumpets as truth is based on a fabrication concocted by an anti-Semite with a criminal record.”

“Let me be clear: no one should feel that his faith has been undermined by the fantasies and lies presented under the guise of truth in this novel.”

As we seek to further discern our way through this book and real history in coming posts, let it be known that Satan's most effective deception will include anything that separates us from real faith in Christ Jesus, our Savior. He knows his fate, it's only a matter of time...God's time...he's already lost the battle...his only way of attacking the God of the universe is by pulling us to hell with him in any way he can deceptively concoct. Let us run with perseverence the race marked out for us, that we may be blessed to be a blessing in leading people to his kingdom, the opportunities of His future delight.

Opening Day

With permission granted to me, I will submit a short document by Dr. Paul Maier and his concerns with this film. Dr. Paul Maier is a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University. He graduated from Harvard and Concordia Seminary before receiving his PhD "summa cum laude" at the University of Basel - the first American ever to do so. He is also a best-selling author of both fiction and non-fiction, including "A Skeleton in God's Closet." You can also find more interviews with other professionals at our links column to the right. Here is Dr. Maier.

THE DA VINCI DISTORTION

An Outline by Paul L. Maier

Society has a deplorable double standard: “It’s not politically correct to criticize anyone else’s religion – unless it’s Christianity!” The media are playing “The Jesus Game” as a result, offering us caricatures instead of Christ, and none are worse than Dan Brown’s in The Da Vinci Code.

A. A Literary Critique: The novel is engaging, a page-turner with rapid-fire action, but it’s hardly “pure genius,” as claimed on the book flap: the characters are thin, too many plot puzzles finally get tedious, errors stud its pages, and the ending is a huge let-down. Why, then, did it explode in sales? Controversy!

B. Attacks on Christ and Christianity: Halfway through the novel, its pages are littered with distortions, errors, exaggerations, misinformation, and outright falsehoods. Brown’s method is to offer an attractive pill coated with 20% truth to suggest credibility, but disguising the 80% of falsehood inside.. A few examples:

The Priory of Sion, the main premise of the novel, is a total hoax.

“Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.”

“The New Testament is fake testimony.”

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was really a lifelong pagan..

Early Christians thought Jesus was merely a man, but the Council of Nicaea turned him into a God, though “only by a close vote.” (314 to 2!!)

Out of 80 gospels, the fourth-century church selected four, and not necessarily the best. (In fact, only about 20 false “gospels” existed.)

The Gnostic gospels were more favorable to women than the canonicals.

The Gnostic gospels preserve a truer version of who Jesus was.

Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and they had a daughter named Sarah.

Jesus appointed Mary Magdalene to lead the church.

Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail.Leonardo painted Mary Magdalene, not John, to Jesus’ right in "TheLast Supper." (So where, then, is the missing John?)

False Freudian explanations for Medieval cathedrals.

God had a divine consort named Shekinah, and ritual sex took place in the Jerusalem temple!

YHWH, the ineffable name for God, derived from Jehovah (!!)

The Bible evolved through various recopyings. (Just the opposite, in fact.)

The Vatican tried to suppress the Gnostic gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And many more! Each of the above falsehoods is so easily refuted – the Gnostic gospels in particular, which are late, derivative, and packed with absurdities.

C. “Chill out: it’s FICTION, isn’t it?” This common objection breaks down, for two reasons:

1) Brown claims that his material 'is basically factual,' as witness the first page of his novel, as well as his repeated claims in media appearances: “Were I to rewrite the novel as history, I wouldn’t change a word.”

2) All novels have two action dimensions: the 'foreground,' in which fictional players act out their roles, and a 'background' or setting, which, for credibility, is always non-fiction. Obviously, novelists can do whatever they wish with the foreground, but they offer an authentic background. Brown has fictionalized the foreground – nothing amiss there – 'but he has also falsified the background,' and many readers don’t know this. (“Hitler wins,” if Brown wrote a WW. II novel.)

D. The Negative Results: When fiction becomes “fact,” truth suffers. Readers get a totally false view of the historical past, disinformation. “If it’s in print, it must be true,” people wrongly assume: 1/3 of Canadian readersassumed that "The Da Vinci Code" was totally factual! Seekers, who might have accepted Christianity, are now dismissing it. Even some Christians, who ought to know better, are not well enough grounded intheir faith (or even in history), and therefore that faith is shaken. After reading the book, some have totally lost their faith, and some have even died in despair as a result.

E. Who is Responsible? Not merely Dan Brown and radical sensationalist authors like him who distort the truth (James Frey, "A Million Little Pieces"), but the publishing industry itself, which seems to have sold its soul to the corporate bottom line and no longer seems to care about the truth.

F. The Positive Results: Paradoxically, the Da Vinci phenomenon can be a good opportunity for Christian witness, since people are now talking again about Jesus, the Bible, and the church as never before.

For further information, please see Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier’s book,"The Da Vinci Code – Fact or Fiction?" (Tyndale House, 2004), or amazon.com

Want to hear some experts?

(These broadcasts are no longer available at the current link)

Listen, in the comfort of your home, car, etc., to the broadcasts of "The Bible Answer Man" (Hank Hanegraaff) as he speaks to Lee Strobel on Wednesday and historian Dr. Paul Maier on Thursday. See the information on the link below:

http://equip.org/bam/index.asp#bsched (try the archives...but not at this page)

Also, please check out the interview of Dr. Paul Maier on the Whitehorse Inn radio program under the "Da Vinci Truth" links to the right on this blog.

God bless your studies.

Why all the fuss?

Many have said, "What's the big deal? It's only a fiction novel."

Although this statement is true, the results of this 'novel turned movie' can be devastating to those who are not equipped with the accurate historical information in order to diffuse the lies that are told. One only has to watch Jay Leno or David Letterman coerce the public of New York for two minutes to see that most do not even know simple historical facts of even our country's past.

I have even spoken to a few Christians from birth in their 70's who were thrown to tears over the alleged history proposed from the Da Vinci Code. What a beautiful opportunity to reach out into the hearts and minds of both believers and unbelievers, to affirm and help them discover the Truth about Jesus Christ.

So, what are the claims of this book turned movie called Da Vinci Code? This is our pursuit! To acknowledge what author Dan Brown suggests and put it to the test and fire of historic truth. After all, that is what the author, himself, claims for his 'version' of history, that it is historic truth! We hope to aid you in "checking these claims out for yourself," in order to decide FOR YOURSELF who is telling the Truth. Please feel free to dialogue with us on your journey to Truth. The chatterbox, but especially the comments at the end of posts, are great ways for us to speak regarding these issues. Let us know how we can help. God bless your adventure into the truth claims of this novel and their importance to Jesus Christ.