I just got home from a long day. After having a meeting this morning, followed immediately by a graduate seminar, which was followed immediately by teaching class, which was followed immediately by a radio interview, which was followed immediately by a special lecture by Paul Maier that WMU’s InterVarsity’s graduate chapter sponsored. (Okay, some of those “immediately”-s actually include office hours, but it sounds much more dramatic this way.) The highlight of the day was the special lecture delivered by Dr. Paul Maier, a professor of history at WMU for over 40 years, a Fulbright scholar and author of numerous works, including historical fiction, scholarly monographs, and over 200 academic articles. Needless to say, the man is a “stud.” (His background and expertise is important to keep in mind as he passes judgment on the historical claims of the Da Vinci Code since he often dismisses certain claims as “ridiculous.” This is not handwaving or name-calling, this is professional judgment of a scholar who knows what is ridiculous.)

Fortunately (for you, I guess), I was there, and so was my iPod with microphone. And as a service to the internet community, I have made Maier’s talk available to you - for free - in it’s entirety - for anyone who is interested:

The recording begins in the middle of me being introduced (you can hear me laughing quite distinctly). Then, I introduce Dr. Maier, and the rest is the talk with Q&A. Below, I’ve included a transcription of the “handout” that was distributed at the talk.

Introduction: Society’s 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 non better than Dan Brown, 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 big 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, misinformation, and ouright falsehoods. Brown’s method is to offer an attractive pill with 20% truth to suggest credibility, but disguising 80% 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.”
• Character assassination of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emporer.
• The early Christians thought Jesus was only a man, but the Council of Nicaea turned him into a God, though “only by a close vote.”
• Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and they had a daughter named Sarah.
• Historical falsehoods about the Knights Templar.
• False Freudian explanations for Medieval cathedrals.
• Leonardo painted Mary Magdalene, not John, to Jesus’ right in The Last Supper.
• God had a divine consort named Shekinah, and ritual sex took place in the Jerusalem temple!
• The Gnostic gospels preserve a truer version of who Jesus was.
• YHWH, the ineffable name of God, derived from Jehovah (!!)
• The Bible evolved through various transcriptions (rather than vice versa).
• 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 later, 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.

(2) All novels have two 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 here — but he has also falsified the background, and many readers don’t know this. (The “Hitler wins” illustration.)

D. The Negative results: The the fiction becomes “fact,” truth suffers.

Readers get a totally false view of the historical past.
Seekers, who might have accepted Christianity, are now dismissing it.
Some Christians, who ought to know better, are not well enough grounded in their faith, 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 sensationalists 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 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.

[End of handout.]