Things The Da Vinci Code Gets Right About Religion

When it was first published in 2003, The Da Vinci Code was an immediate hit. It's easy to understand why. Dan Brown's novel contains a dramatic story in which professor Robert Langdon gets caught up in an ancient conspiracy, concealed beneath many layers of mystery, that claims Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene produced a "holy bloodline" that lives to this very day. Plus, there are murderous monks.

While readers were eating it up, historians cringed. Much of the story is entirely fictional, though Brown repeatedly claimed that he drew upon genuine fact. In a 2003 interview with CNN, he even claimed that "99 percent of it is true," including the novel's lurid tales of secret societies like the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei. In the years since, however, few of the claims between the covers of The Da Vinci Code have been definitively verified.

Yet, as much as it's been derided, The Da Vinci Code occasionally gets things right. Sure, oftentimes you'll need to approach some of its claims sideways to find a hint of reality, but that genuine history is there nonetheless. Certainly, Brown's claim that the history of Christianity is more complex and divisive than many people realize is very true indeed.

The Gnostic Gospels have been causing trouble for a long time, but they only came to modern attention within the past century. Frontline reports that these 52 texts were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in late 1945. Muhammad 'Alí al-Sammán later said that he and his brothers were digging for soil to use with their crops. Muhammad 'Alí al-Sammán uncovered a clay jar and, thinking that it might contain valuable treasure, smashed it open. Instead, he found 13 leather-bound papyrus documents.

Ultimately, some of the documents made it to Cairo, where researchers soon began to investigate the texts. Professor Gilles Quispel traveled to Cairo's Coptic Museum, where he began to translate the fragile papyri. The first line he deciphered shockingly referred to Jesus' "twin," Judas Thomas. Another, the Gospel of Philip, reads like an extended edition of the sayings of Jesus.

The texts uncovered by Muhammad 'Alí al-Sammán were actually translations of even older works that were about 1,500 years old. They would have been buried near Nag Hammadi because church authorities were already suppressing work they deemed unfit by the second century. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, these early heretical Christians were called Gnostics from "gnosis," Greek for "knowledge." Broadly speaking, many Gnostics believed that spiritual knowledge had to come from within one's self, rather than from the church. It's easy to see how religious leaders would have wanted to squash independently minded Gnosticism.

As PBS reports, the Gospel of Mary is a controversial Gnostic gospel that singles Mary out for special status, similar to Dan Brown's depiction of her in the novel. In one fragment, Peter addresses Mary Magdalene directly after the Resurrection, saying, "Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women."

When Mary goes on to describe the vision she had of a post-Resurrection Jesus, Peter appears to grow sour at this point. "Did He really speak with a woman without our knowledge [and] not openly?" Peter asks. "Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He Prefer her to us?" Other disciples come to Mary Magdalene's defense, saying she must be special if Jesus singled her out. 

However, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene doesn't say she's anyone's wife. That's the job of the even more contentious bit of parchment known as "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife," though, as The Atlantic reports, scholars aren't sure it's genuine. The fragment, written in Coptic, contains the phrase, "Jesus said to them, 'my wife.'" Yet, as many have pointed out, the fragment may have been intentionally cut, as if more context would show that Jesus wasn't referring to a literal spouse. Furthermore, it's possible that the fragment's owner, a German immigrant named Walter Fritz, may have forged it, either to make some money or even bring The Da Vinci Code into reality.

The Da Vinci Code will have you believe that the Priory of Sion is a shadowy organization formed centuries ago to keep the secret of the "holy bloodline" established by Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their children. Dan Brown based his novel on the much-criticized 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which claimed that the priory was the real deal. In fact, the similarities between the books were so striking that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail sued Brown for copyright infringement, though The Guardian reports that they lost the case in 2006.

So much for the fight amongst authors, but what about the Priory of Sion? Could it have been real after all? In short, no. The priory was a hoax that first cropped up in the 1950s, though some documents led incautious researchers to think that the organization was founded in the 12th century. According to CBS, the perpetrator of the fraud was a French man named Pierre Plantard who claimed to have been a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. He set up the organization in 1956 and apparently forged historic documents to establish a better pedigree for his venture. Real clues, like the use of text from an 1889 version of the Bible in supposedly ancient writings, made it clear that the Priory of Sion was nothing more than an elaborate ruse.

The Da Vinci Code implies that Mary Magdalene eventually leaves Jerusalem and makes it to Europe. It doesn't get too into the weeds of how, exactly, Mary or at least her bones made it to a new continent, but the novel ends with protagonist Robert Langdon praying before her hidden sarcophagus. The Louvre in Paris denies that Mary Magdalene's remains are somewhere in or around its Pyramide inversée skylight, as The Da Vinci Code claims. Coincidentally, the Louvre says that the inverted pyramid is actually inside an underground shopping mall, instead of in the museum proper.

Yet, there is a tiny bit of truth to the idea that Mary made it to France. Those looking for definitive proof will be disappointed, however. Instead, we must turn to folklore. National Geographic reports that southern France hosts a cave shrine to her based on the tradition that she either crossed the Mediterranean or else trekked across Europe sometime after the crucifixion. One town, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mar, claims to have been the site where all three biblical Marys arrived by boat after the crucifixion, according to The Independent.

Whether that was part of her post-Resurrection life as a wanderer, as some traditions claim, or whether she was hauling some divine kids alongside her is left up to individual interpretation. Though there's no concrete evidence supporting this claim, enough believers have flocked to her shrine over the centuries to keep the mysterious and compelling story alive.

Female Christian saints have always been part of the religion, but the stories of early Christian saints indicate that maybe, despite all of the fretting over Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic gospels, women held real power in the new faith. Consider Saint Thecla. According to the Biblical Archaeology Society, she was said to have been a noblewoman who was so taken by the preaching of Paul, one of Jesus' disciples, that she immediately converted to Christianity. Under Paul's advice, she became celibate and dumped her fiancé.

Thecla's family didn't take kindly to her new faith and tried to burn her on a bonfire. She survived and left town, following Paul and repeatedly defying death, before settling down and becoming a religious teacher in her own right. As the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla claim, a 90-year-old Thecla finally makes it to paradise while avoiding yet another mob. During the chase, God opens up a rock and commands her to walk inside. The rock closes up behind her, leaving behind an astonished crowd.

Thecla's story was complemented by that of Perpetua. According to Britannica, Perpetua left behind a journal documenting her impending martyrdom in a Roman arena in 203 C.E. This document, recounting much of Perpetua's story in her own words, gives voice to one of the venerated female saints who, in many ways, embodied the divine feminine so central to Dan Brown's novel.