Christianity is based on a firm foundation. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that today with some of the TV specials out these days. Recently, Hollywood released what I understand is an anti-Christian movie, Angels and Demons. I would see it myself, but I don’t want to give a penny to support them. Every time you see a movie, you vote with your feet. You say, “Yes, Hollywood, make more movies like that!” (Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide, saw it and pans it from a Christian perspective, so that will suffice for me for now, until there were some way I could see it without supporting it.)

Anyway, the movie is based on the book by Dan Brown, author of the blockbuster, The DaVinci Code. I read that book a few years ago (but never supported the movie), nor did I buy the book. Someone gave it to me. I read it because I was assigned as the lead producer of a Coral Ridge Ministries-TV special on the subject. Plus, I wrote a book with the late Dr. Kennedy on the subject, to come out in time for the movie. The book was called The DaVinci Myth Vs. the Gospel Truth (Crossway, 2006). Because of the movie coming out, some of the documentary-type channels (History Channel, etc.) have shown specials (since Angels and Demons came out) that have promoted many of the lies found in The DaVinci Code. The book is a novel. If you take it as a 100% novel, fine. But the bad thing is that the author claims that his alleged background information is true. If it were true, and it’s not, then Christianity would be bogus.

Since these myths keep resurfacing, let me address some of the main ones. (This is adapted in part from the aforementioned book I wrote with Dr. Kennedy) as well as the television documentary John Rabe and I produced for Coral Ridge Ministries---The Da Vinci Delusion.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

Upon examination, The Da Vinci Code is chock full of errors. Some are unimportant; others, if true, would spell the end of Christianity. If they were true, by the way, we would be the first to abandon the faith. We do not seek to perpetuate something which is untrue. We do not seek to worship the Jesus Christ who never really was. As Paul said, if Jesus were not raised from the dead—if His body did not come out of that tomb—then our faith is vain and we are most pitied of all men (1 Corinthians 15:19).

           
Instead, the Christian faith rests on a very secure foundation. How firm? So firm that the apostles—the ones Jesus picked to send out into all the world—sealed their testimony with their own blood. All but John (and Judas the traitor) died a martyr’s death.

∙Was Jesus married?

∙Were there other gospels and writings that were excluded from the New Testament? Were these the original writings about Jesus?

∙Was Jesus’ divinity something not believed by the early church but only added later, in the 4^th century?

First issue: Was Jesus married? Note what Darrell Bock said in our TV special, The DaVinci Delusion (Coral Ridge Ministries, 2006) on this issue. “The most glitzy error is the idea that Jesus Christ was married.  That’s probably what has grabbed a lot of people’s attention.  We don’t have any evidence anywhere in any kind of document of any sort that Jesus was married.  In fact, John Dominic Crossan, a liberal Christian of the Jesus Seminar, and I, were both asked to write pieces for beliefnet.com on whether Jesus was married, and we both agreed that He wasn’t that there was no evidence for that.  And I tell my classes that when you get a conservative and a liberal Jesus scholar agreeing on something about Jesus, it’s probably true.” 

Sandra Miesel, Co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax, said this on our program: “Dan Brown is not the first person to think this.  This is, in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Templar Revelation and lots of other places.  Possibly the seed of the interest of the American public in the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was started by Martin Scorsese’s film 20 years ago The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Mary Magdalene has a romantic interest in Jesus and that’s also true in Jesus Christ, Superstar.  So that’s down in the bedrock of the society we’re living in.   And sex is so overblown today.  People are titillated by the idea of a sexually active Jesus.”

While the idea of Jesus being married may be gaining some traction in the popular culture, it’s important to underscore it has absolutely no documentation from antiquity whatsoever. Here is another observation of Darrell Bock: “I have a collection in my library of 38 volumes, several hundred pages each, small font, single spaced, double columned, and out of all that material, both orthodox and unorthodox, none of those documents, not a single sentence anywhere says Jesus Christ was married.” 

           
Finally, Dr. Paul Maier, Professor of Ancient History, Western Michigan University, notes:  

We can prove that Jesus did not get married.  1 Corinthians 9, verse 5, where Paul, St. Paul says, “Don’t I have the right to have a wife accompanying me, like the brothers of the Lord and like the apostles?”  Now, if Jesus would’ve been married, he would use a subordinate generation.  He would’ve said, “Don’t I have a right to have a wife like our Lord and Master did?”  He doesn’t say that, ‘cause Jesus wasn’t married. 

So much for the “Was Jesus married?” question. Next, we consider this:

∙Were there other gospels and writings that were excluded from the New Testament? Were these the original writings about Jesus?

           
The Da Vinci Code claims that Constantine created the Bible. Rebuttal: Constantine had nothing to do with the canon of the New Testament. The book also claims that the early Church destroyed the gospels that challenged the four canonical ones. Rebuttal: Not true. The only destruction of “Scriptures” related to Christianity (either biblical ones or extra-biblical ones) was done by Roman emperors in persecutions, e.g., Diocletian did that a couple years before Constantine took the throne.

           
In 1945, near Nag Hammadi Egypt, some ancient writings were found. These were writings of the ancient Gnostics, a Christian New Age-type of sect. Some authors, like Dan Brown, like to trumpet these writings as if they are just as important or more reliable than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John---which is a totally false charge.

The Da Vinci Code claims there were eighty Gnostic gospels. Rebuttal: By any criterion, that number is grossly exaggerated. One liberal scholar, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, says there may have been 17 (5 of which are the 5 gospels found in the Nag Hammadi texts). Even if we accept that figure, 17, it is far less than 80. Perhaps the most respected recent Bible scholar, who died a few years ago, was the Catholic Raymond Brown, editor of the massive The Jerome Biblical Commentator. He was respected by liberals and moderates alike (but not necessarily by all conservatives, because he was too liberal for them). Brown says of the Gnostic writings, such as the 52 Gnostic texts (including five “gospels”) found at Nag Hammadi: They were rubbish then (in the second, third, and fourth centuries). They are rubbish now. 

The Da Vinci Code claims that there are thousands of documents besides the New Testament documents. One of the characters in the novel states about Jesus: “…his life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land.” Rebuttal: Try 52—at least that is the number of the Gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. There are other Gnostic writings beyond the Nag Hammadi texts, but no reputable scholar would agree that there were thousands (or even hundreds) of such texts.

The lord went into the dye works of Levi. He took seventy-two different colors and threw them into the vat. He took them all out white. And he said, “Even so has the son of man come [as] a dyer.” 

Erwin Lutzer says of The Gospel of Philip: “Read this gospel and you will find it to be a rambling and disjointed work…” 

Returning to the idea that Christ’s life and words were recorded by “thousands of followers,” Dr. Gary Habermas points out that 90 percent of the population at that time in Israel was illiterate, and not all of those who were literate could write. Brown offers no evidence for these thousands of documents.

The clear implication in the novel is that the Church suppressed equally, or even more, valid gospels that didn’t tell the story the way the Church wanted it to be told. 

Furthermore, Dr. Gary Habermas, author of The Historical Jesus, says of the whole idea in general that there were other Gospels out there, but these were suppressed by the Church:

The major problem with that kind of approach can be stated in one word: evidence. You’ve got the four First Century Gospels.  They are the only four First Century Gospels.  And you say, “Well, that’s because they squashed these other things.”  I want evidence.  I want somebody to tell me what the books are, what’s the competition, and what got squashed in this process.  I’m saying there’s nothing like that.  Where’s the data that there were competing Gospels decades after Jesus that got kicked out and only these four remained?  Frankly, there are no written Gospels from the same time frame that are even in the picture.  We don’t have Gospels.  We don’t have stories of Jesus that are even competing.  [emphasis mine]

The final question to explore here is this: “Was Jesus’ divinity something not believed by the early church but only added later, in the 4^th century?”

Jesus answered,….” I and the Father are one.” Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:25, 30-33, NIV).

These words come from a first century document, the Gospel of John. Most scholars think it was written near the end of the first century. Some scholars think—with good cause—that it was written before A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. There was no mention of these cataclysmic events (an argument from silence), but more importantly, there is reference to things as if they were still there. For example, in John 5:2, it says, “Now there is in Jerusalem…” (emphasis ours). How could this be if Jerusalem had already been devastated?

           
Furthermore, we are told that the vote at the Council of Nicea, supposedly determining that Jesus was divine. No one believed that prior to Nicea. Rebuttal: That is errant nonsense. Again, in the Gospels, written in the first century, we see that Jesus was divine. This is why He was delivered up to be crucified. The Jews accused Him of blasphemy, which is why the Jews arrested Jesus and had a “trial” among themselves:

Again, the high priest asked Him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am,” “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think?”

And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.  (Mark 14:61-64).

Note that in the Greek, when Jesus said, “I am,” it is emphatic. We could translate it, “I AM!” (which to His hearers was a veiled reference to Exodus 3:14, when God identifies Himself to Moses as the great “I AM.”)

           
Even Arius, the heretic (and catalyst for the Nicene Council), is closer to the truth than Dan Brown. Arius believed that Jesus was a god, a created being, who then co-created the universe with the Father. But there was a time when He was not, declared Arius. To resolve the conflict between Arianism and orthodox views, Constantine called the Council.  The orthodox formalized the traditional view of the Trinity in the Nicene Creed (325), but it was hotly contested. Yet, when the vote was finally cast, 316 bishops voted against Arius’ views—only two voted with him.

Dan Brown’s view that the early Christians believed Jesus was only a mortal rests on historical quicksand. From the very beginning, Christians worshiped Jesus as the Son of God. Jim Garlow and Peter Jones have compiled a list of several Church Fathers—all of whom wrote before the Council of Nicea in 325—affirming this most basic Christian doctrine that Jesus was divine. Those Fathers include: Ignatius (writing in 105 A.D.), Clement (150), Justin Martyr (160), Irenaeus (180), Tertullian (200), Origen (225), Novatian (235), Cyprian (250), Methodius (290), Lactantius (304), Arnobius (305).  Furthermore, one of the earliest Christian creeds was “Jesus is the Lord” (Kurios) (1 Corinthians 12:3).

           
When you watch these TV specials these days that attack the Christian faith, please keep in mind that there are Christian answers.