“Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses - or hierodules - with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH - the sacred name of God - in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.”

Nice bit of fiction. Of course it doesn’t link with the evidence available to us.

1. The early days of Judaism began after the destruction of the temple. Up to that point the followers of YWHW were known as Israelites.
2. The idea of God having a female equal would never have caught on in the strongly monotheistic Judaism.
3. The practice of sex in the temple of YHWH is never described in the Hebrew scriptures.
4. The Hebrew word, שכן.transliterated as ‘Shekinah’, refers to settling, being present. While the word has feminine qualities, there is no sense of it being expressed in a feminine deity.
5. The word ‘Jehovah’ is a European translation of יהוה (YHWH), providing vowels where the Hebrew language did not. It was not used until the fifteenth century BCE.
6. YHWH is more likely to be associated with ‘YH’ (god) and a root referring to being.
7. The practice of visiting hierodules or temple prostitutes is associated with many ancient civilisations, including ancient Greece and Anatolia. It was likely to be common in Canaan and Babylon - a temptation faced by Hebrews living in those places. The prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 43:7-9) condemns the practice.

The GPS dot in Langdon’s pocket
The Virgin of the Rocks, which hangs in the Grand Gallery
Albinism
Wiccan religion
Tarot Cards
Dead Sea Scrolls
Louvre’s 60 curators
Symbiology not a real academic discipline
Lack of metal detectors at Westminster Abbey
Inconsistencies re Sophie’s use of metric and imperial measurements
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa
Alexander Pope
Gospel of Philip
Witch hunts
Priory of Sion

Almost full marks for use of paintings in the movie. Stand out scenes in this regard included the flight of Sauniere in the Louvre and the room used for the conference of clerics at Castel Gandolfo. I felt the use of visual effects in Teabing’s analysis of The Last Supper was overdone.

Introduction of Langdon as an alternative voice in Teabing’s analysis of the Holy Grail mysteries. Without Langdon’s protests, the dialogue would have come across as ill informed.

Negatives

The constant flashbacks became rather irksome. The references to the memories of the characters were fine. The historical references, however, gave the movie the feel of a badly done television documentary. Some scenes were laughable, such as the Council of Nicaea portraying perhaps a hundred ornately dressed clergy all speaking at the same time. Were these the imaginings of Teabing - speculative and unbalanced? Isaac Newton’s funeral came across as something out of The Sixth Sense.

Changes

To keep the plot moving, conversations were abbreviated or conflated. Langdon came across as the expert while Neveu as the helpless damsel in distress. Their dialogue would have been enhanced by introducing more of her skills as a cryptologist. The addition of a faith element for Langdon was fascinating. Was Ron Howard attempting to make the film more accessible to an American audience? Langdon’s exploration of the human/divine element put into words what I had been thinking through the movie.

Understandably, the red Smart Car was changed to a lighter colour to allow for filming in night scenes.

The ending is slightly different, providing a focus on the feminine side of the story and downplaying the male connection.

Audience Reaction

At the end of the movie one woman clapped and cheered and yelled, “Nice one. Well done Ron!”. And that was it.

Teabing remarks on the discrepancy between Da Vinci’s painting and the Biblical and legendary accounts. What is missing is the one cup. Instead each person around the table has their own cup, “tiny, stemless and made of glass”.

In fact, the Last Supper was most likely a Seder meal, a Jewish Passover meal, in which there were four cups of wine. The cup referred to in the New Testament account is one of those four cups.

Teabing goes on to speculate about the person sitting to Jesus’ right, usually assumed to be John the beloved disciple. Teabing contends that this is not John, but a feminine figure, Mary Magdalene. He points to the female symbol, the chalice, found in the way Jesus’ body intersects with the ‘beloved disiciple’. The letter ‘M’, outlined in the painting, is said to be Da Vinci’s clue to the nature of Mary Magdalene.

The Last Supper, also known as “Il Cenacolo” and “L’Ultima Cena”, was painted by Da Vinci as a mural in the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. He began the work in 1495 and completed it in 1498. Based on a manuscript attributed to Da Vinci, art historians name the twelve disciples in the painting, from left, as Barthomolew, James the Lesser, Andrew, Judas Iscariot, Peter, John. On the other side of Jesus are Thomas, James Major, Philip, Matthew, Jude Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot.

Da Vinci follows the convention of his time of placing Jesus and his fellow guests on one side of the painting. We can imagine Jesus saying to the disciples, “If you want to be in the painting you better get on this side of the table.” Da Vinci departs from religious convention by painting the thirteen men realistically, without halos.

The Last Supper was painted on a dry wall and as a result deteriorated over time. In fact it was descried as ruined only sixty years after its completion. There were several attempts to restore the painting over the years. The most significant restoration was done by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon between 1978 and 1999.

The two images below show Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting after and before its most recent process of restoration.

“He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest. In Constantine’s day, Rome’s official religion was sun worship - the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun - and Constantine was its head priest. Unfortunately for him, a growing religious turmoil was gripping Rome. Three centuries after the crucifixion of Christ, Christ’s followers had multiplied exponentially. Christians and pagans began warring, and the conflict grew to such proportions that it threatened to rend Rome in two. Constantine decided something needed to be done. In 325 CE (Common Era), he decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity.”

Sophie asks why a pagan emperor would choose Christianity as the official religion. Teabing responds by saying that Constantine could see that Christianity was on the rise, and managed to convert sun-worshipping pagans to Christianity. By fusing pagan symbols, dates and rituals into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties.

So who was this Constantine the Great? Constantine was the son of Helena and Constantius Chlorus, Caesar of Britain, Gaul and Spain. His formative years were spent in the court of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor who had developed an absolute monarchy, centering all power in the Roman empire in himself as the semi-Divine ruler. In 306 CE, on the death of his father, Constantine was proclaimed Emperor at York. In 312 he defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge to become the senior ruler of the Roman Empire. At that battle Constantine adopted the Labarum standard, using the symbolic Chi and Ro of Christ.

Constantine’s coming to power was good news for Christians who had suffered nine years of intense persecution throughout the Roman Empire. As Emperor in 313 he and Licinius met at Milan to recognise the legal entity of the Christian Churches and to tolerate all religions equally. Constantine did go on to intervene in the affairs of the Church, giving a ruling in internal debates such as the North African dispute between Donatists and the mainstream bishops between 313 and 316. Constantine summoned the Council of Nicaea in 325 to settle the Arian dispute over the person of Christ.

Constantine was careful not to officially endorse Christianity as the official religion of the empire. After all he had legislated for the tolerance of all religions. As was common for many Christians in his time, he was baptised on his deathbed in 337 CE. It was believed by many that sins after baptism would be a problem. However it is just as likely that Constantine was playing his political cards wisely.

Teabing’s assertion that the New Testament as we have it now was collated by Constantine bears little resemblance to historical record. The Four Gospels and thirteen epistles of Paul were being recognised as authoritative in most parts of the Christian community by around 130 CE. They came to be regarded as Scripture alongside the Hebrew Scripture between 170 and 220. The first exact record listing the present New Testament was provided by Athanasius in 369 CE, 32 years after the death of Constantine.

Dan Brown is quoting a real person, Canon Martyn Percy, who since 2004 has been principal at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. Martyn Percy teaches and researches in three areas: practical theology, modern ecclesiology, and Christianity and contemporary culture. He is involved in most aspects of ministerial formation, and in shaping the life and future of the College. A

Martyn is a regular contributor to Radio 4, The BBC World Service, The Independent, The Guardian and other media. His recent books include Salt of the Earth: Religious Resilience in a Secular Age (T&T Clark) and Engagements: Essays on Christianity and Contemporary Culture (Ashgate). He has studied at the Universities of Bristol, Durham and London. He currently holds an honorary Chair in Theological Education at King’s College London, as well as an Adjunct Professorship of Theology and Ministry at Hartford Seminary, Connecticut, USA. Since 1999 he has served as a Council Member and Director of the Advertising Standards Authority in London. He is also Canon Theologian for Sheffield Cathedral. Martyn Percy also co-ordinates The Society for the Study of Anglicanism at the American Academy of Religion.

Martyn responds to his quote in The Da Vinci Code in a web site, The Truth behind the Da Vinci Code, by clarifying his thinking about the Bible. He concludes his article by writing:

Dan Brown's book does raise some fascinating questions for Christians as they read scripture. He suggests, in a rather exaggerated way in my view, that the Bible is a cosy kind of serendipity, in which the church only endorses the books that in turn endorse it. This is one of the more ancient conspiracy theories, and it is interesting that it should be alive and well in the twenty-first century. I wonder what that says about the faith people now place in ancient institutions such as the church? Clearly, an explicit message of the Da Vinci Code is that the church has always protected its interests, and that scripture - chosen by the church - helps this ongoing process. But I suspect the truth is more subtle than that.

The 20 second ad begins with an adaptation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. In Monty Python style the focus moves around the painting. On the left we have Dan Brown talking with two fellow guests. The voiceover asks, “Has the Church been lying for 2000 years?”. The camera moves to a lip sticked woman, sitting in the place of the ‘beloved disciple’. “Is this Mary? Did she bear Mary’s child?” On the right 0f Jesus we have Templar knights. “Has someone guarded this secret for centuries?” The view switches to Jesus, who is reading his own copy of The Da Vinci Code. “Is this all news to Jesus?” “Hmm?”, says Jesus. The tagline, “FIND THE TRUTH”, is connected with a web site, www.challengingdavinci.com.

I’ve written the story up at Duncan’s TV Ad Land, including links to downloads for the cinema ad.

In the book, Sir Leigh is a historian, an English knight, suffering from the effects of polio. In the book he’s described as follows:

“Portly and ruby-faced, Sir Leigh Teabing had bushy red hair and jovial hazel eyes that seemed to twinkle as he spoke. Despite the aluminium braces on his legs, he carried himself with a resilient, vertical dignity that seemed more a by-product of noble ancestry than any kind of conscious effort.”

In the movie Sir Leigh Teabing is played by Ian McKellen, who couldn’t be described as portly.

Leigh is an obvious reference to author Richard Leigh. Teabing is an anagram of Baigent, the last name of Leigh’s co-author Michael Baigent.

Leigh and Baigent, together with Henry Lincoln, wrote “Holy Blood and Holy Grail”, a book speculating on theories associated with the Priory of Sion hoax. In the television documentaries preceding the book, and in the book itself, the three authors speculated that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had one or more children. They proposed that the children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene settled in northern France and established what came to be known as the Merovingian Dynasty. The Priory of Sion supposedly was established to protect the secret of their existence.

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln founded much of their work on the proposal put forward by Pierre Plantard. Plantard developed a conspiracy theory around the revelation in the 1950s that the town of Rennes-le-Chateau had been bankrolled by a mysterious priest called Bérenger Saunière.

The obvious references to the names and work of Leigh and Baigent in The Da Vinci Code are what led to the recent court case between them and author Dan Brown.

Chapter 52 begins:
“The sprawling 185-acre estate of Chateau Vilette was located twenty-five minutes northwest of Paris in the environs of Versailles. Designed by Francois Mansart in 1668 for the Count of Aufflay, it was one of Paris’s most significant historical chateaux. Complete with two rectangular lakes and gardens designed by Le Notre, Chateau Vilette was more of a modest castle than a mansion. The estate had fondly become known as la Petite Versailles.”

The Da Vinci Code movie was shot on location at Chateau Vilette. It is owned by an American real estate broker and is hired out through French tourism agents such as Au Chateau and A Taste of France. The seventeen deluxe bedrooms were remodeled recently. As you can expect with 185 acres, there is plenty of room for guests to jog, ride bicycles, hunt, play tennis or relax in or around the swimming pool. The chateau is flanked by a chapel with adjoining reception room, as well as horse stables and a greenhouse.

The chateau has been the setting for fashion shoots and the Jaguar ‘Gorgeous’ automobile commercial. See my post at Duncan’s TV on the Jaguar Gorgeous ad.

If you’re like me, and making your way through the Google Da Vinci Code Quest, you’d be looking for a few clues on how to work out the names of symbols, places and people referred to in the puzzles. I’ve listed here a few of the walkthrough web sites dedicated to sharing the experience fellow members of the quest.

Da Vinci Quest Answers by Chris Taylor

Matt Thornton’s Walk Through

Google Fact

Warped From the Pipe

D.A. Resler’s Da Vinci Code Quest Walkthrough - probably the most detailed help, linked with a blog

Student Rant’s Walkthrough