Although I consider myself a bookworm, I’m not much of a novel reader. I usually don’t pay any attention to the fads in that arena. But I’ve been reading articles lately about the cottage industry that’s grown up around Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, so maybe it’s time I give that book some attention, especially since Jesus is involved. Not that I’m gonna actually read the book. Hey, who needs to. With all the web sites set up to pick his book apart chapter by chapter, you don’t need to plunk down twelve bucks to know what goes on in The DaVinci Code.

As you probably know, The DaVinci Code has gained a lot of attention for implying that Jesus was not the Son of God, and furthermore, that Jesus had a thing going with Mary Magdalene (and had children through her). The DaVinci Code has been interpreted by many readers as going beyond fiction, into the realm of speculative (and even plausible) history. As a result, devout Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants (the unholy alliance of the 21st Century) have launched an attack on the Code’s many historical weak spots. From a quick surf on the net, I saw a phalanx of web sites devoted to intelligently blasting The DaVinci Code to pieces. And they seem to be doing a good job of it.

Here’s my two cents on the DaVinci situation. Brown’s plot is darn interesting, but it belongs solely in the land of fiction. Still, I must admit that just because Brown is wrong does not mean that the churchy people are right. The question of Jesus’ status as a lover and a parent remains an historical mystery. The New Testament doesn’t say anything about it one way or the other. It was quite unusual back then for a Jewish man to reach the age of 30 without having been married and having produced children. Unusual, but not impossible. Being an itinerant preacher always on the go from one village to the next, it wouldn’t be easy if you had a wife and kids. But then again, Peter had a wife, and the New Testament wasn’t embarrassed about admitting that.

So perhaps the absence in the Gospels of any mention of Jesus having obligations to a wife or kids was significant. Or maybe not. The earliest Gospel manuscripts that we have today were written at least 200 years after Jesus was crucified (about the time of the Council of Nicea, which is cited by Brown as the primary historical cover-up event). That leaves a lot of time for subtle editing by factions seeking to remember Jesus in a very Godly way. Brown cites the many “alternative Gospels” as evidence of an historic conspiracy to cover up Jesus’ true nature, given that one of them (the Gospel of Philip) talks of the jealousy that the Apostles had regarding the attention that Jesus was giving Mary of Magdala, including kissing her on the lips.

Well, my friends, most scholars agree that these alternative Gospels were mostly composed in the Second Century, well after Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were committed to papyrus. They are generally imaginative take-offs on the basic themes from the Fab Four. On the other hand, even conservative scholars like the late, great Raymond Brown admit that some of these writings might contain a memory of Jesus here and there that, for various reasons, just didn’t make the cut in the primary gospels. It’s not impossible that Jesus was remembered early on as having an interest in Mary M., that this unsettling interest was washed out of the accepted gospels by those inspired to honor Jesus as God’s true son, and that a later-composed backwater gospel somehow survived with that little tid-bit intact.

Not impossible — but not necessarily probable either. In the end, the whole thing remains a mystery, and probably always will. But one thing is for sure. Dan Brown really is a talented and creative novelist. He discovered and tapped into the occultist edge of pietistic European Catholicism and then twisted it around 180 degrees to support a modern secularist / feminist agenda. I can relate to what he’s playing with. I grew up in a Polish Catholic household just one generation removed from Europe, and I experienced the gray zone where populist Catholic spirituality slips over into superstition, into a world of ghosts and mystery rites and intricate symbols (e.g., dark and strange looking icons) and deep secrets about the end of the world (recall the three secrets of Fatima). Imagine the irony if those European ghosts and rites and symbols and secrets were real after all, but were protecting a very different kind of Holy Grail.

But no. In the end, Brown’s ghosts and rites and symbols and secrets are just as unreal as the ones that I heard and saw as a kid, despite the updated political correctness that Dan Brown infuses them with. I have decided to side with the scholars in my search for the real Jesus, or at least the realest one we can have. The academics have the better way of approaching and discussing the important questions about Jesus. One reason that you can put more trust in a scholarly book is that it will never be made into a movie. By contrast, Ron Howard is already working on a film version of The DaVinci Code. And good old Ron isn’t exactly noted for being a stickler about historical accuracy. The DaVinci Code is ultimately just an entertaining ghost story, a dead end on the search for the real(est) Jesus.