Dan Brown's Assertions about
Mary Magdalene
Introduction
In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown makes several assertions about Mary Magdalene, all but one of which are false. In this article I address some of these assertions, quoting the actual dialogs in his book and providing the page number where it is found. I also include the chapter number in case the text appears on different page numbers in future editions. Second, I give brief answers to each assertion to show how it is wrong. I know that many people are only seeking a brief answer and will be satisfied. For those desiring more explanation I provide links to other resources that give more detailed background information to support my answers.
Brown also makes assertions about Mary and Jesus being married and having a child. I deal with those in the article Assertions about a Marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
Assertion 1: The Early Church smeared Mary's reputation.
"That, my dear," Teabing replied, "is Mary Magdalene." Sophie turned. "The prostitute?" Teabing drew a short breath, as if the word had injured him personally. "Magdalene was no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her dangerous secret-her role as the Holy Grail." (Chapter 58, p. 243 - 244)
Brief answer
Brown/Teabing actually gets the first part of this right. There is no evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. However, there is also no evidence pointing to a "smear campaign" against her, especially one that tried to cover up Brown's fiction that she and Jesus married and had a child. Pope Gregory (6th century) certainly was wrong in connecting Mary Magdalene with the unnamed prostitute in the Gospel of Luke 7: 36 - 50, but there is no evidence of malice. Please refer to my article What We Know and Don't Know About Mary Magdalene from the Bible.
Assertion 2: Mary Magdalene was royalty.
Sophie could now see the title of the family tree. THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN "Mary Magdalene is here," Teabing said, pointing near the top of the genealogy. Sophie was surprised. "She was of the House of Benjamin?" "Indeed," Teabing said. "Mary Magdalene was of royal descent." "But I was under the impression Magdalene was poor." Teabing shook his head. "Magdalene was recast as a whore in order to erase evidence of her powerful family ties." Sophie turned back to Teabing. "But why would the early Church care if Magdalene had royal blood?" The Briton smiled. "My dear child, it was not Mary Magdalene's royal blood that concerned the Church so much as it was her consorting with Christ, who also had royal blood. As you know, the Book of Matthew tells us that Jesus was of the House of David. A descendant of King Solomon, King of the Jews. By marrying into the powerful House of Benjamin, Jesus fused two royal bloodlines, creating a potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne and restoring the line of kings as it was under Solomon." (Chapter 58, p. 248)
Brief answer
There is no mention in the Bible, early Christian literature or in any other ancient literature of her ancestry. Brown or someone else made this up for their own literary purposes. Of course, as a Jew of that time period she was a descendant of one of the twelve original tribal leaders, but we simply can not know which one. What is really important, however, is that it would not have mattered anyway, especially to Jesus. It is clear to see that according to Jesus' teachings He did not associate His Kingdom with any earthly ruler or human government. Jesus plainly stated to Pilate,
"My kingodom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36)
Obviously, Dan Brown did not read this, or he intentionally ignored it. And, of course, the fact they never got married is another reason why Mary's bloodline is unimportant. (please see Assertions about a Marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene) Jesus' human bloodline ceased when He died; Mary's ceased when she died. There can not be any descendants.
Assertion 3: Mary Magdalene wrote the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
He (Teabing) motioned to another passage. "This is from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene." Sophie had not known a gospel existed in Magdalene's words. (Chapter 58, 247)
Brief answer
Someone needs to inform Dan Brown that Mary Magdalene did not write The Gospel of Mary (Magdalene). It was written some time in the second century-long after Mary had died. As was typical with the Gnostic Gospels the author attributes it to a famous person probably in an attempt to gain acceptance by association with her.
Assertion 4: Jesus intended Mary Magdalene to be the leader of the Church.
She read the text:
And Peter said, "Did the Saviour really speak with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?" And Levi answered, "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Sure the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us."
"The woman they are speaking of," Teabing explained, "is Mary Magdalene. Peter is jealous of her." "Because Jesus preferred Mary?" "Not only that. The stakes were far greater than mere affection. At this point in the gospels, Jesus suspects He will soon be captured and crucified. So he gives Mary Magdalene instructions on how to carry on His Church after He is gone. As a result, Peter expresses his discontent over playing second fiddle to a woman. I daresay Peter was something of a sexist?" Sophie was trying to keep up. "This is Saint Peter. The rock on which Jesus built His Church." "The same, except for one catch. According to these unaltered gospels, it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene." Sophie looked at him. "You're saying the Christian Church was to be carried on by a woman?" "That was the plan. Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene." (Chapter 58, p. 247 - 248)
Brief answer
The confrontation of Mary and Peter is found in other Gnostic Gospels, as well. It would not do justice to the passage or the Gospel of Mary to view it as a literal (actual) conversation. The Gnostics would certainly cry, "Foul!" Rather, it is a fictitious, allegorical dialog where the characters represent different ideals that were in conflict between the orthodox Christians and the Gnostic Christians. The orthodox Christians held that from the beginning of the Christian movement Jesus' teachings and the reporting of them was publicly available to anyone. Jesus appointed his Disciples to be Apostles (Sent Ones) to pass on accurate information about His life and teachings. Then in successioin, the Apostles appointed the next generation of official leaders to pass on and maintain the integrity of the teachings. Whether we like it or not, these Apostles were all men. In stark contrast, the Gnostics taught that His teachings could only be understood through private revelations, visions and subjective interpretations. They believed Jesus taught in secret code and that only Gnostics could decode them. The author makes Peter and Andrew represent the former position while making Mary Magdalene represent the latter position with the latter winning out.1 However, this was only wishful thinking on the part of the Gnostics, as not enough people bought into their private revelation claims. People had enough common sense to see the holes in their teachings. People instinctively believe in what can be publicly scrutinized, not what someone claims to have seen in a personal vision. Gnosticism did not die out because the powerful Church persecuted it out of existence. It died out because it was an elitist, snobby, complicated and esoteric religion that only superficially resembled Christianity.
Jesus did hold women in higher esteem than ancient culture, but he was also limited somewhat by that culture. His Apostles would only be credible if they were male.
Assertion 5: Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail.
The Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene and the mother of the royal blood-line of Jesus Christ. Sophie felt a new wave of disorientation as she stood in the silence of the ballroom and stared at Robert Langdon. (Chapter 60, p. 263)
A not so brief answer
I feel a wave of nausea as I consider how Brown tries to argue for this. I identify 8 major premises on which he builds his case.
The first premise is that the Gnostic Gospels, like Gospel of Philip and Gospel of Mary are reliable historical accounts of Mary Magdalene's life, showing she was married to Jesus and struggled against chauvanistic leaders like Peter. Furthermore, the Church suppressed these documents. I addressed these issues above already. The problem with this premise is that the Gnostic Gospels were never intended to be historical accounts of actual people, events and conversations. Written one hundred to two hundred or more years after Jesus and Mary, they are, instead, highly symbolic fictional works that have abstract, theological meanings. Often only those steeped in Gnosticism knew those meanings. Regarding the confrontations in them between the male apostles and Mary Magdalene, they are probably promoting the supposed superiority of private revelation. Some scholars (and now nonscholars) interpret this conflict between Peter and Mary to be about the acceptance of women as teachers and leaders in the Church. I think this doubtful as the same scholars point out that Gnosticism was misogynistic to the core.
What is most important to recognize is there is no evidence from the earliest Christian literature (within 60 years after Christ) that these kinds of (fictitious) confrontations occurred in reality. They occurred after Peter and Mary Magdalene were long dead and only as peculiar literary devices. As to the suppression of Gnostic Gospels, the Church, indeed, eventually suppressed them, but Gnosticism seems to have died out more as a result of public debate than from suppression. It just never became as accepted as the original Christian teachings passed down from the Apostles themselves.2
The second premise is that Mary Magdalene fled with her child to France. There is no evidence of this legend being true. It is just a legend. I must point out the double standard of what Dan Brown requires as historical proof. He says the New Testament is based on fabrications (i.e. legends) and therefore cannot be trusted to give us objectively true history (Chapter 82, p. 341, 342). So, it seems, that he relies on the legends that support his views while insisting that legends can't be trusted. How interesting!
The third premise is that there was a smear campaign against Mary Magdalene by the Roman Catholic Church (Pope Gregory the Great) in the 6th century. Pope Gregory certainly was wrong in connecting Mary Magdalene with the unnamed prostitute in the Gospel of Luke 7: 36 - 50, but there is no evidence of malice. Please refer to my article What We Know and Don't Know About Mary Magdalene from the Bible for more on Pope Gregory's mistake.
The fourth premise is that there is something of substance to legends about the Holy Grail. These legends began to pop up in the Middle Ages, that is, around a thousand years after Jesus died. The idea that it was the cup Jesus drank from or that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch his blood was only one of many objects speculated. Dan Brown stands in this tradition of reworking old legends about the the Holy Grail. It doesn't have to be a cup. While we're on the topic I want to address the the idea it was a cup because that is the common form it takes in modern entertainment like in the last Indiana Jones movie.
The problem with any theory involving the cup Jesus used during the Last Supper is that it would not have been an important souvenir for the Disciples to keep and esteem. There is no mention of the cup until the legends about it were made up centuries later, and the orgins of the legends are murky. Perhaps some in the Roman Catholic Church of today dream of finding the cup, I don't know, but it would be a misguided desire. There is nothing special about the cup. Contrary to the legends in literature and Hollywood, it would not hold any power or special blessing for the one who possesses it.
The fifth premise is that Mary Magdalene represents the sacred feminine. As a devoted first century Jew she would have denounced that as idolatry. There is simply no room in the theologies of Old Testament Judaism or of Jesus Christ, or of the Apostles for a female goddess or sacred feminine or whatever you want to call it. They all would have said God is spirit, neither male nor female. He chooses to relate to humanity as a Father figure, but there is no Mother God or female consort or anything else. If Mary Magdalene believed in a female goddess then Jesus certainly would not have put her in charge of His Church, as Brown, asserts He did! She would have been disqualified from the start. If she got anything from Jesus' life and teachings she would be horrified to read how Dan Brown and others have elevated her to such a lofty position.
The sixth premise is that Leonardo da Vinci and the Priory of Sion preserved the secret that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that he devulged this secret through his paintings like The Last Supper and The Virgin of the Rocks. There is no evidence that he was a member of any secret society and Dan Brown completely misunderstands Leonardo's paintings. For more details please see my article "Real" Art Historians on The Last Supper and The Virgin of the Rocks.
The seventh premise is there are "thousands of documents" that tell the real story. They are contained in what Brown calls the Sangreal documents, the Purist Documents, and the Magdalene Diaries (Chapter 58, p. 249 and Chapter 60, p. 256). There is absolutely no real evidence of these fictitious documents. The books that Brown cites as authoritative on these documents in Chapter 60, on page 253 are pure speculation, not serious academic, historical research. And the Da Vinci Code is based on them! Ha!
The last premise is the modern Roman Catholic Church continues to cover up these secrets. This is absurd, as the Roman Catholic Church does not own the market on early Christian literature and historical research. Non-Catholic, liberal Protestant scholars do most of the research on all periods of Church history. These scholars have no allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, and many do not have any allegiance to the Bible or orthodox Christian beliefs or doctrines. They would expose any coverup they found. The only sources Dan Brown uses for his premises are non-scholars using tabloid style speculation rather than trustworthy, objective historical research.
Conclusion
I have dealt with each major premise that Dan Brown uses to build his argument that Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail. I have shown that every premise is false. Many of them are pure speculation and the burden of proof is on Dan Brown and others to prove them. It is very unfortunate that his interviewers in the media do not confront him on these things. It is one thing to make things up for a work of fiction, but another to argue they are true and get away with it. This shows that the biased news media endorse his views or at least support his attack on the Christian Church. If there is any conspiracy it is among the radical liberal cultural leaders of our world, and they are willing to use any means to attack Christianity.
References
1 Robinson, James M., Gen. ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3rd ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco-HarperCollins Publishers. 1988. p. 524.
2 See:
Robinson, James M., Gen. ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3rd ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco-HarperCollins Publishers. 1988. 10-11.
Jenkins, Philip. Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001.
Lee, Philip J. Against the Protestant Gnostics. New York: Oxford Universtiy Press. 1987.
Logan, Alastair. Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the History of Gnosticism. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers. 1996.
Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage-Random House. 1979.
Perkins, Pheme. Gnosticism and the New Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1993.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1987.
Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
