'Da Vinci Code' stirs controversy

12:36 PM EDT on Sunday, May 14, 2006

By KEN GARFIELD / The Charlotte Observer

It's there in the Gospel of Matthew: Jesus posing the question, demanding an answer from the disciples, and the definitive reply from Peter:

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Some 2,000 years later, that answer remains the foundation of Christianity. And yet, in books, archaeological discoveries and a movie expected to pack theaters worldwide this week, the question is big enough to spark fresh interpretations.

Is Jesus the son of the living God?

A counterculture rebel?

A Jewish prophet?

The lover of Mary Magdalene?

From academic works to "The Da Vinci Code," research continues, opinions abound, debates rage and the hearts and minds of seekers evolve.

"This is one of those things that people have to figure out for themselves, with the new methods, new data and new questions furnished by a new cultural situation...," Davidson College religion professor Greg Snyder told the Observer in an e-mail interview. "This is work that has to be done and redone."

Scholars have been on the case for centuries. But the emotional aspect of redefining Jesus is reflected in reaction to "The Da Vinci Code." The story line of the Dan Brown novel, and now film, challenges the tenets on which many Christians base their faith. In a nutshell, "The Da Vinci Code" says a powerful Roman Catholic organization conspired to cover up the secret that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child and the bloodline survives.

Snyder believes that's more than enough to provoke some to question their deepest convictions.

"For some Christians," Snyder wrote, "their ideas about Jesus are merged with their own sense of themselves ... and so changing the image of Jesus is threatening to their own Jesus-formed self."

Others, though, remain confident that their faith, and the Bible, can withstand any challenge.

"It's always OK to explore Jesus," the Rev. James Emery White, incoming president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, with a campus in Charlotte, said in an e-mail interview. "If the Bible is true, it will stand up under any amount of intellectual scrutiny. These supposed revisions, however, do not."

Others tackle the question

Academicians and authors who have devoted their careers to exploring Jesus are amused by how a blend of fact, fiction, murder, intrigue and actor Tom Hanks in the lead role has driven the "The Da Vinci Code" debate onto cable news talk shows and into entertainment magazines.Far more serious works new and old, Snyder and others agree, have taken on the question, "Who do men say that I am?"

• In the recently released "The Jesus Dynasty" (Simon & Schuster, $27), for example, UNC Charlotte professor James Tabor relies on early Christian documents and archaeological finds to write that Jesus' father wasn't God or even Joseph, but may have been a Roman soldier named Panthera.

Tabor said his book is partly aimed at "The Da Vinci Code" market: "They have a desire to know and maybe they're not satisfied with just what they've heard in theological approaches to Christian faith."

• Perhaps the best known rethinking of Jesus comes from the scholars who belong to the controversial Jesus Seminar. The group came together in 1985 to explore what they called the historical Jesus.

Among their contentions: Jesus did not rise from the dead, there probably was no tomb, and his body probably was disposed of by his executioners.

Now on the religious best seller list: "The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem" (HarperSanFrancisco, $21.95) by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.

• UNC Chapel Hill religion professor Bart Ehrman, who helped lead a packed forum on "The Da Vinci Code" at Duke Divinity School in Durham, weighs in with the 2005 "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95).

His premise: Ancient scribes changed the Bible, distorting or even adding some of the words attributed to Jesus that inspired basic moral lessons. Jesus telling a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman that the one without sin should cast the first stone? Ehrman believes scribes added it to the biblical canon centuries after Jesus lived.

What do you believe?

Some Christians refuse to see Jesus in a new light.

Tina Witt of Matthews, a stay-at-home mother of six who is helping to organize protests outside Charlotte-area theaters showing "The Da Vinci Code," calls the film evil. Everything she needs to know about Jesus, she said, is found in the Bible.

"There's no question he's the son of God, he's the second person of the holy trinity, he's our savior and redeemer, he's everything," said Witt, who attends St. Patrick Cathedral. "Truth is immutable. Truth doesn't change."

Others question the value of some of the research.

White, of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, said the redefining of Jesus is based largely on the wrong material -- documents written long after Jesus.

"It comes down to which documents you are going to give credence to," White wrote in an e-mail to the Observer. "In essence, will it be the biblical materials, or second-third century Gnostic documents?"

Looking in the mirror

For others, the issue is more fundamental than the research."For evangelicals, Jesus' birth, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection must be historically true in order for them to be efficacious," Philip Goff of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture in Indianapolis told the Observer.

Goff believes that to deny the essence of Christianity -- to write that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, as in "The Da Vinci Code" -- is to deny the essence of what gives believers hope.

"It is faith in the historicity of events -- most especially Jesus' death and resurrection -- that they believe grants them eternal life," Goff wrote.

To look more deeply at Jesus, said Davidson's Snyder, is to look more deeply at yourself.

"Albert Schweitzer is still right," Snyder said. "People writing about Jesus often look down the well of history and find their own reflection looking back up at them."

As if all that isn't daunting enough, now the controversy is coming to a multiplex near you.

" `The Da Vinci Code' takes it to a whole new audience," Snyder said. "Scholars have been saying threatening things -- and truer things -- about the historical foundations of Christian faith for 200 years, but the population as a whole has paid them no mind."