© SCMP, Thu May 18 2006

by Steve Cray

International debate over The Da Vinci Code has been heated, but local theologians are more measured, writes Steve Cray

Novelist Dan Brown has let all hell loose by selling Hollywood the rights to adapt his book The Da Vinci Code. The film version starring Tom Hanks opens to the public in Hong Kong today. It has already caused a furore in the Christian world and scholars say there is increasing evidence for an academic review of the life of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene based on research underlying the novel and movie.

Although there have always been doctrinal disagreements between Christian sects, mainstream churches have tended to sing off the same hymn sheet when it comes to the basic story about Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection. But their agreed version could now be challenged by an alternative one.

A central theme of the book is that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had children. The Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Christian groups have responded that that idea is fictitious at best and blasphemous at worst. Magdalene scholars argue, though, that there is circumstantial and documentary evidence to support a large part of the story.

And an alternative version of Jesus' life is not necessarily bad news, according to Stephen Palmquist, associate professor in the department of religion and philosophy at Baptist University, himself a Christian, who sees the new stories emerging as an opportunity rather than a challenge.

'I don't see what these guys are doing as anti-religious,' he said. 'It's only so if religion means we have to practise what people 1,000 or 1,500 years ago thought was the only true religion and that what they ossified is what we have to keep to.' He welcomed the opportunity to learn more about a 'different side' of Christ.

Not everyone agrees with Dr Palmquist. The book, which has sold more than 60 million copies and been translated into 44 languages, stands accused of seriously misrepresenting Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church.

The plot involves a quest to unearth the truth about the marriage of Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene, who was said to have fled to the south of France to avoid persecution from the Roman Empire. Her offspring married into the French Merovingian royal family to produce a Messianic bloodline. Both the novel and scholars say the legendary Holy Grail as a chalice was the result of a misunderstanding. They claim Magdalene was herself the grail.

The story also says fictitiously that Leonardo da Vinci painted clues into his work to hint at the real status of Mary Magdalene and that he was a grand master of the Priory of Sion, a secret society charged with guarding the Magdalene secret.

The book and film are banned in Lebanon and there have been calls for one or both to be boycotted in Jordan, South Korea, India and the Philippines, where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's executive secretary Eduardo Ermita said of the storyline: 'It's something we shouldn't be talking about, we might get struck by lightning.'

In Rome, Archbishop Angelo Amato, number two in the Vatican doctrinal office, called the book 'stridently anti-Christian, full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the church'.

In India last week, the Mumbai Catholic Council threatened to disrupt screenings of the movie if the government failed to ban it, and former Mumbai municipal councillor Nicolas Almeida put a 1.1 million rupees ($189,224) bounty on Brown's head.

The reaction of the Hong Kong Catholic diocese has been more measured, with action confined to holding two seminars to correct 'misunderstandings of the people to the film'.

Reaction to The Da Vinci Code falls into two categories: outrage at the questioning of orthodox Christian doctrines and beliefs, and concern over Brown's blurring of fact and fiction.

Historian and author of The Magdalene Legacy, Laurence Gardner, claims that for all his flaws, Brown got the basic story about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the holy bloodline right. He argues there are now alternative views of Christianity and the life of Christ. And research based on recent discoveries of alternative early Christian texts, such as an alternative Gospel of Judas and the Nag Hammadi epistles of the gnostics - an outcast third-century Christian group - have further threatened to dent the credibility of the canonical version.

'Blind faith is no longer a viable option, for now there are new balances to be weighed. Either we take full account of the evidence to hand, or we ignore it to follow the old courses regardless. Dogma is an obligatory system of acceptance, but it cannot function in an environment of free will and choice,' Gardner wrote.

A central theme of Brown's novel is the alleged anti-feminine stance of the Catholic Church, but it was more anti-Magdalene than anti-feminine, scholars say, and that was because she and her followers in France and beyond posed a serious challenge to its version of Christianity and the New Testament that took shape under Constantine at the Conference of Carthage in AD 397, in response to a growing but unwritten consensus.

The church's response to what it perceived to be threats from unorthodox 'heretical' Christian groups, including the Cathars and others who accepted Magdalene's status, are well documented. Tens of thousands of Cathars were slaughtered over a 35-year period following the Episcopal Inquisition established by papal bull (an official letter from the Pope) in 1184, the group having been criticised in 1208 by Pope Innocent III for unchristian behaviour. This was followed by the bloodshed of the Papal Inquisition in the 1230s, the Roman Inquisition established by Pope Paul III in 1542 and the Spanish Inquisition decreed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1478. Indeed, such was the eventual weight of collective guilt that Pope John Paul II issued a verbal apology in St Peter's Basilica, Rome, in March 2000, for past 'errors and sins', including wrong done to 'women, jews, gypsies, other Christians and Catholics'.

If there are factual errors in Brown's novel, there is also enough material that Gardner and others claim is backed by evidence that could lead to a major academic review of Christianity.

Dr Palmquist said this could result in a more human picture of Jesus which could serve as a better example to believers. 'It is the purity, the sinlessness of Jesus that is at stake here, because for thousands of years sex and sin have been put together as equivalent, but I don't perceive sinfulness in that way.

'If Jesus is going to serve as a religious example he has to be someone who can empower the believer to be a better person and has to combine two features; he has to be a convincing human and yet has to represent something we feel we fall short of.' Could this film pose problems for students and educators?

'I would probably tell students that the film combines fact with fiction, but I'd ask them what message we get from the different elements in the story. What they really have to be warned about is believing that one particular story is necessary for the possibility of true religion,' Dr Palmquist said.

James Rice, assistant professor of philosophy at Lingnan University, described the debate surrounding the novel as 'healthy and interesting'. 'Students should always take a critical view of how much credence they place on a film or a novel. My view is that it is just entertainment,' he said, adding that an interesting feature of the debate was the contrast with the recent controversy over a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

'Here we have serious allegations levelled against a major Christian institution and even the doctrine as a whole, and I'd like to contrast the way this debate has been handled with the lunacy and threatening behaviour surrounding the [Prophet] Mohammed cartoons. The fact that we're having this discussion and there is no fatwa against us testifies to the nature of the debate.'

Professor Lai Pan-chiu, chairman of the department of cultural and religious studies at Chinese University, said the institution had a number of students working on the quest for the historical Jesus at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and it was part of his department's aim to equip students to think critically about the issues.