In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 In 2003, Dan Brown became an overnight success and a media sensation with the publication of The Da Vinci Code. The novel is formulaic: a thriller. Before the reader can adjust her chaise longue and slather on her sunscreen, our hero, Dr. Robert Langdon, is falsely accused of a heinous crime at the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris. A beautiful, intelligent Frenchwoman—Sophie Neveu—appears and helps Langdon escape. At first, he does not even realize that he is the intended prey of the authorities. Chases ensue, on foot, by automobile, and by airplane. The mystery begins with strange signs accompanying the murder of Jacques Saunière, a curator at the Louvre, and spirals out from there. Our hero, a Harvard “symbologist ,” does not have the leisure to sit and cogitate, as he is undoubtedly accustomed to doing back home in the Widener Library stacks. No, he has to run fast and think faster. Not only must he be clever and quick, he must also be physically agile—even forceful—and attuned to the twisted channels of the minds of criminals , religious fanatics, eccentric historians, cunning priests, and corrupt officials . . . all of whom turn out to have a lot in common, since they are on the side of evil. Whom can he trust? As Western Christian history unravels before him, the apparently good turn out to be evil, and vice versa. Jesus, Christian readers may be relieved to learn, is good, very good. So is his mother, the Virgin Mary. So far so . . . Catholic. But wait: don’t start to genuflect yet! Yes, Jesus is good, and his mother is good, but so is his wife! That’s right, Jesus’s wife, Mary Magdalene. And his great-greatgreat -etc. granddaughter, our hero’s beautiful sidekick and skilled code cracker, Sophie Neveu. If you’ve never heard of Jesus’s wife—or you had, but thought she was a reformed prostitute and devoted disciple, but not a “special friend” of our 1 The Travels and Travails of Matriarchal Myth 2 Travels and Travails of Matriarchal Myth Lord—don’t feel bad. It’s a news flash for most of us, because the world’s most powerful and secretive institution (the Catholic Church, naturally) has conspired to keep this information from Jesus’s flock for nearly two thousand years. Only a few, the elect, the Leonardo da Vincis of the world, have kept the flame of truth alive for future generations, hoping that one day all Christians will be able to accept the full humanity of the Christ. After The Da Vinci Code raced to the top of the best-seller list, it prompted a culture-wide discussion, from Internet opinion-fests to sermons and Sunday school lessons. It was a boom time for New Testament scholars, who were abruptly handed an audience clamoring to know if any of the novel’s revelations could possibly be true. Had Jesus been married? Did he have children? Was Mary Magdalene actually sitting at the table with Jesus and his disciples in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper? Had the Knights Templar carefully preserved secrets too combustible to be acknowledged by the Catholic Church for thousands of years of Christian history? Was there a secret society called the Priory of Sion dedicated to protecting the truth about Jesus and his bloodline? Could the Catholic Church—which everyone seemed ready enough to believe was sufficientlyconnivingtohideinconvenienttruthsfromitslaymembers —successfully keep something like that secret? And if it were true that Jesus had been married and had children, what would it change? Everything? Or only a few details, none of them faith shattering? Indeed, was it possible that the new Jesus, the post– Da Vinci Code Jesus, could be even better suited to modern sensibilities than the old one? The Da Vinci Code broke upon the consciousness of most readers not only with the predictable force of a fast-paced thriller, but with the bracing air of unanticipated iconoclasm. And yet part of the appeal of The Da Vinci Code’s plot is that it is not really new at all: it is simply the elephant of six-blind-men fame suddenly seen from a different angle. The main fixtures of The Da Vinci Code are familiar. With the exception of the alluringly subterranean elements of Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, they are drawn from Christian high culture: Jesus, Mary Magdalene , the Emperor Constantine, the Catholic Church, the Holy Grail, Leonardo da Vinci...

Share