Introduction

The Testimony of the New Testament

There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted early Church scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that "the all but universal Christian conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive confession had been ‘Jesus is Lord’ [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age." (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1960; revised edition, 1978], 138). Jesus was indeed a prophet, explains German theologian Karl Adam, but the Gospels depict him uniquely more: "There can be no doubt: the Canonical Gospels see in the person of Jesus Jahve [Yahweh=God] himself. According to them, Jesus thinks, feels, and acts in the clear consciousness that he is not simply one called like the rest of the prophets, but rather the historical manifestations and revelation of God himself" (Karl Adam, The Christ of Faith, [Pantheon Books: New York, 1957), 59).

Explicit and implicit evidence that Jesus and his followers believed he was more than a mere mortal is found throughout the New Testament. The infancy narrative in Matthew’s Gospel quotes from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: " ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (which means, God with us)" (Matt 1:23). In that same Gospel there is an account of the baptism of Jesus; as Jesus comes up out of the water "the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’ " (Matt. 3:16-17).

John’s Gospel contains some of the strongest statements about the divinity of Jesus. The densely theological prologue proclaims: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn1:1-3); the Word is Jesus, the incarnate Son: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (Jn 1:14). Later, after upsetting some of the Jewish authorities because of his activities on the Sabbath, Jesus’ life is threatened, "because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God" (Jn 5:18).

The eighth chapter of John’s Gospel contains another firm affirmation of Jesus’ divinity. After having a debate about Abraham with some of the religious leaders, Jesus declares: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" (Jn 8:56). Indignant, the leaders respond, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" (v. 57). "Truly, truly, I say to you," Jesus replies, "before Abraham was born, I am" (v. 58). This is met with hostility; the crowd attempts to kill Jesus, recognizing that he has applied to himself the name of God–"Yahweh," or "I AM"–revealed to Moses in the burning bush (Ex 3:14). After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus appears to the disciples (Jn 20:19-23), but "Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came" (Jn 19:24). Eight days later Jesus appears to the disciples again; this time Thomas is among them. Upon seeing Jesus and touching his pierced hands and side, "Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’" (Jn 20:28). Many other examples from the four Gospels could be given, including over forty passages where Jesus is called the "Son of God" (cf., Mt 11:27; Mk 12:6; 13:32; 14:61-62; Lk 10:22; 22:70; Jn 10:30; 14:9), is ascribed the power to forgive sins (Mk 2:5-12; Lk 24:45-47), claims unity and oneness with the Father (Jn 10:30; 12:45; 14:8-10), and performs many miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead (Jn 11). Even if readers believe the disciples were mistaken or that Jesus was a charlatan, there’s little doubt that they believed he was divine and was far more than a mortal prophet.

Similar affirmations of Jesus divinity are found throughout the canonical writings of Paul and the other New Testament authors. In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul declares that "no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). In his letter to the Philippians, he writes that "though [the Son] was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phil 2:6). The Son’s willingness to become man will, paradoxically, lead to the universal confession "that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:11). Paul’s first letter to his young son in the Christian faith, Timothy, contains the emphatic declaration that the "Lord Jesus Christ . . . is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen" (1 Tim 6:15-16).

The final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse) presents Jesus as the eternal, conquering, and resurrected King and Savior–another far cry from a "mortal prophet." When John sees Jesus, he falls "as a dead man" at his feet. "And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last" (Rev. 1:17). The title of "the First and the Last" is one of titles used in the Old Testament to describe Yahweh, the one true God: "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me" (Isa 44:6; see Isa 41:4; 48:12). This title is applied to Jesus two more times in the Book of Revelation, including 2:8 and 22:12-13. The latter passage, at the conclusion of the book, identifies Jesus as "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Rev 22:13). This is the same language used by the Lord God at the opening of the book (Rev 1:8), making an overt and purposeful connection between God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Testimony of Early Christian Writers

There is much testimony from numerous Christian writers between 100 A.D. and the fourth century to the Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity. In addition to proving what Christians really did believe about Jesus in the first three centuries of Christianity, these writings also provide invaluable context to the theological issues and battles that would eventually be addressed, at least in part, by the Council of Nicaea.

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c.107) was the bishop of Antioch; it has been speculated that he, just like the apostle Paul, may have been a persecutor of the Christians prior to his conversion (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [Oxford: New York, 1997. Third edition], 817). Captured by the Roman army and en route to Rome to be executed, he wrote a series of seven letters to churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and one to Polycarp (c. 69-c. 155), the bishop of Smyrna. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes:

"There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even Jesus Christ our Lord." (Letter to the Ephesians, ch. 7).

Later, in the same letter, he tells his readers that they must "do everything as if he [Jesus] were dwelling in us. Thus we shall be his temples and he will be within us as our God–as he actually is" (Letter to the Ephesians, 15). He then states, "For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water" (par. 18). Further, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius refers to Jesus as "the Christ God" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 10).

Justin Martyr (c. 100-c.165) was born into a pagan family and became a Christian around the age of thirty. He was a Christian philosopher who taught in Ephesus, then later in Rome, where he had a school. Justin was one of the leading apologists for the Christian faith in the second century; he defended Christian teachings–including the belief that Jesus was divine–against pagan philosophers. He and several of his disciples were arrested, beaten, and then beheaded by the Romans for their refusal to worship pagan gods. In his First Apology, he writes, "Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man according to His will, He taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race . . ." (First Apology of Justin Martyr, par. 23). In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin provides a lengthier defense of his belief that Jesus is God:

"But if you knew, Trypho," continued I, "who He is that is called at one time the Angel of great counsel, and a Man by Ezekiel, and like the Son of man by Daniel, and a Child by Isaiah, and Christ and God to be worshipped by David, and Christ and a Stone by many, and Wisdom by Solomon, and Joseph and Judah and a Star by Moses, and the East by Zechariah, and the Suffering One and Jacob and Israel by Isaiah again, and a Rod, and Flower, and Corner-Stone, and Son of God, you would not have blasphemer Him who has now come, and been born, and suffered, and ascended to heaven; who shall also come again, and then your twelve tribes shall mourn. For if you had understood what has been written by the prophets, you would not have denied that He was God, Son of the only, unbegotten, unutterable God." (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 126).

One of the most important of the pre-Nicaean Christian writers was Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 200), the bishop of Lyons and an ardent opponent of the Gnostic theologian Valentinus (d. c. 165). His major work was Adversus omnes Haereses, commonly known as "Against Heresies." In arguing against the Gnostic dualism of the Valentinians, Irenaeus explain and defends the Christian belief that Jesus is God. This includes lengthy statements such as this one, which condemns those who believe that Jesus was a mortal only:

"But again, those who assert that He [Jesus] was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son . . . Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man. But that He had, beyond all others, in Himself that pre-eminent birth which is from the Most High Father, and also experienced that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin, the divine Scriptures do in both respects testify of Him: also, that He was a man without comeliness, and liable to suffering; that He sat upon the foal of an ass; that He received for drink, vinegar and gall; that He was despised among the people, and humbled Himself even to death and that He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men;–all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of Him." (Against Heresies, book 3, ch. 29:1, 2)

 Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) was a Greek theologian and the author of several works, including "Exhortation to the Greeks." In that work he teaches that "He [Jesus] alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things" (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]); he also states: "Despised as to appearance but in reality adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine Word, he that is quite evidently true God, he that is put on a level with the Lord of the universe because he was his Son" (ibid., 10:110:1). Similar remarks were made by the great African Church father, Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225). He wrote that "God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God" (The Soul 41:3 [A.D. 210]). In another work he discusses the relationship of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ: "The origins of both his substances display him as man and as God: from the one, born, and from the other, not born" (The Flesh of Christ 5:6—7 [A.D. 210]). The Alexandrian scholar and theologian Origen (c.185-c.254), who authored hundreds of books, stated around 225 that "although [the Son] was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4). Writing at nearly the same time, the theologian Hippolytus (c.170-c.236) stated, "Only [God’s] Word is from himself and is therefore also God, becoming the substance of God" (Refutation of All Heresies 10:33 [A.D. 228]).

Have an opinion about this? Want to know what other people are saying as well? Discuss this in our online discussion forums. Click here to go there now!

The Gnostic Jesus

A serious question ignored by The Da Vinci Code is this: "Why should the writings of the Gnostics be considered be more dependable than the canonical writings, especially when they were written some fifty to three hundred years later than the New Testament writings?" It’s easy for writers such as Brown, who are sympathetic to the Gnostics (or at least to some of their ideas), to criticize the canonical Gospels and call many of the stories and sayings contained in them into question. But without the canonical Gospels there would be no historical Jesus at all, no meaningful narrative of his life, and no decent sense of what he did, how he acted, and how he related to others.

As we pointed out in Part 1 of this critique, the "gnostic gospels" aren’t gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical Gospels, which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life. Contrary to the assertion that "the early Church literally stole Jesus" and shrouded his "human message . . . in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power," the Church was intent, from the very beginning, of holding on to the humanity and divinity of Christ and of telling the story of his life on earth without washing away the sorrow, pain, joy, and blood that so often accompanied it. "It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . . insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical realities," writes Philip Jenkins, "rather than the random mythologies reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless never-never land" (Hidden Gospels [Oxford University Press, 2001], 211).

The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a Jewish carpenter, teacher, and prophet dwelling in first century Palestine; instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures at length about the "deficiency of aeons," "the mother," "the Arrogant One," and "the archons"–all terms that only the Gnostic elite would comprehend, hence their gnostic (gnosis = secret knowledge) character. One strain of Gnosticism, known as Docetism, held that Jesus only seemed, or appeared, to be a man (Gr., doceo = "I seem"); adherents believed this because of their dislike for the physical body and the material realm, a common trait among Gnostics. The tendency towards a docetist understanding of Jesus–if not a fully formed docetist Christology–existed in the first century and was addressed in some of the writings of Paul (Colossians and the pastoral Epistles) and John (cf. 1 Jn 4:2; 5:6; 2 Jn 7). In the second century, docetism became a formed theology and made appearance in various Gnostic writings, including the Acts of John, written in the late second century:

"Sometimes when I would lay hold on him, I met with a material and solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial and as if it existed not at all. And if at any time he were bidden by some one of the Pharisees and went to the bidding, we went with him, and there was set before each one of us a loaf by them that had bidden us, and with us he also received one; and his own he would bless and part it among us: and of that little every one was filled, and our own loaves were saved whole, so that they which bade him were amazed. And oftentimes when I walked with him, I desired to see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it" (Acts of John, 93.)

If the material realm was evil, as so many Gnostic groups and movements believed, why would a being such as Christ have anything to with it? And why should we be concerned at all with history and the common life of ordinary people? The Gnostic Jesus is not interested in earthly, historical events. "In the second-century Gnosticism described by the Father," writes Ronald Nash, "Christ was one of the higher aeons, or intermediary beings, who descended to earth for the purpose of redeeming man. Christ came into the world, not in order to suffer and die, but in order to release the divine spark of light imprisoned in matter. The Gnostic Jesus was not a savior; he was a revealer" (The Gospels and the Greeks [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003. 2^nd edition], 209).

Gnosticism was exclusive, elitist, and esoteric, open only to a few. Christianity, on the other hand, is inclusive, open to all, and exoteric, open to all those who acknowledge the beliefs of the Faith handed down by Jesus and enter into a life-giving relationship with him. The Jesus of the canonical Gospels is a breathing, flesh-and-blood person; he gets hungry, weeps, eats and drinks with common people, and dies. The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is a phantom, a spirit who sometimes inhabits a body and sometimes doesn’t, and who talks in ways that very few could understand. Once again, The Da Vinci Code has it backwards.

The novel’s assertions about Jesus and his followers fail to make sense of some daunting questions. If the first followers of Jesus never believed he was divine (and thus never rose again from the dead), why did so many of them willingly die as martyrs? Is it reasonable to believe that thousands of people would face death by lions, the sword, and fire for the sake of a "mortal prophet" who himself remained dead? And why would these followers, who are so clearly confused and distraught when Jesus is taken away to be executed, reemerge a few weeks later and begin proclaiming boldly a belief in their fallen leader? If Jesus had remained in the tomb where he was placed after his death, couldn’t the authorities have shown his body and stopped once and for all the audacious teachings of the suddenly confident Christians?

Put simply, if Jesus were merely mortal and was not considered anything more until the fourth century, then it is impossible to make any sense of Christianity and how it came into existence. Historian Paul Johnson writes that "in order to explain Christianity we have to postulate an extraordinary Christ who did extraordinary things. We have to think back from a collective phenomenon to its agent. Men and women began frantically and frenetically to preach Jesus’ gospel because they believed he had come back to them from the dead and given them the authority and the power to do so." (Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity [New York: Atheneum, 1976], 27).

An implicit assumption behind the remarks of Teabing and Langdon is that Christians–whether of the first, fourth, or twenty-first centuries–are mindless drones who simply believe what they are told by their leaders. Thus, Constantine deified a man who no one ever thought of as divine and none of the Christians were bothered by it. And so the same people who often suffered and died for their beliefs are now willing to accept a radical, wholesale change in doctrine without so much as a peep? This is not only impossible to accept as logical, it is contrary to history and fact.

Constantine’s Childhood and Conversion

Included in the lengthy lecture given to Sophie by Teabing and Langdon are several remarks about the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (d. 337). Most, if not all, of these statements are taken directly from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Dell Books, 1983. See pages 365-9); in some cases the phrases and order of ideas used are identical.

Many of the claims made about Constantine are either falsehoods or half-truths based on conjecture and material taken out of context. Debate continues today in scholarly circles about Constantine, his exact beliefs, his relationship with the Catholic Church, and his influence upon Christianity. Most historians acknowledge that he was a complex man, a powerful and sometimes cruel emperor (he executed a wife and a son under mysterious circumstances) whose apparent passion for Christianity was not always guided by theological knowledge or godly wisdom. There is also no doubt that the course of Christianity was influenced by Constantine.

Constantine’s passion for religion was based, in part, "on his political intuition that the unity of the empire restored by him could be maintained only with the help of a Church united in belief and government and subordinated to the state" (Hugo Rahner, Church and State in Early Christianity [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992], 41). But it would be incorrect to portray Constantine as simply a calculating leader who merely used the Church for his political ends. Historian Hugo Rahner writes that "the real religious motives behind Constantine’s efforts to achieve effective control of the Church ran much deeper. These can be reduced to one theme. Even before he became involved with the Church, Constantine was obsessed with a superstitious religious conviction that revealed itself in his strange personal cult of the invincible sun, in the worship, influenced by Stoicism and Platonism, of the supreme Divinity, in a misty feeling that ‘Providence’ had bestowed on him a mission as its herald and miraculous instrument" (Rahner, 41-2).

In 313, Constantine and his fellow-emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, which recognized Christianity as a legal religion. It stated that "Christians and all others should have the freedom to follow the kind of religion they favored; so that the God who dwells in heaven might be propitious to us and to all under our rule. . . . Moreover, concerning the Christians, we before gave orders with respect to the places set apart for their worship. It is now our pleasure that all who have bought such places should restore them to the Christians, without any demand for payment." (Edict of Milan, March 313. Par. 3, 7). The Edict, Paul Johnson writes, "was one of the decisive events in world history. Yet the story behind it is complicated and in some ways mysterious" (A History of Christianity, 67).

Historians will likely never know for certain what happened at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, where "a most incredible sign appeared to [Constantine] from heaven" (Eusebius, quoted by Johnson, 67). Having seen the Cross of Christ in the sky, Constantine underwent a conversion. But, as Johnson notes, "there is a conflict of evidence about the exact time, place and details of this vision, and there is some doubt about the magnitude of Constantine’s change of ideas. His father had been pro-Christian. He himself appears to have been a sun-worshipper, one of a number of late-pagan cults which had observances in common with the Christians." (p. 67). Here Johnson refers in part to the fact that the Christians had been celebrating their weekly liturgy on Sunday, the first day of the week, since the time of Paul and the other apostles. Sunday was also the feast day of the Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) cult, whose worship of the pagan sun god had appeared in the Roman world around the middle of the second century and had been strongly supported by the Emperor Aurelian (270-5 A.D) (Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992], 121). It should also be noted that Rome’s official religion was not sun worship. "Rome's official religion" states Dr. Margaret Mitchell, Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, "was the cult of Roma–the goddess–and of her deified emperors, and the Capitoline trio Jupiter, Juno and Minerva."

In The Da Vinci Code, the historian Teabing states that Constantine "was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest." He claims the official religion of Constantine’s time was "sun worship–the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun–and Constantine was its head priest." He adds that in 325, Constantine "decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity." (p. 232)

This is a mixture of truth and error, most of it again drawn from Holy Blood Holy Grail (see pages 365-8), although that book’s account is more accurate than what is found in Brown’s novel. The existing evidence indicates that Constantine did become a sincere and believing Christian and sought to renounce his former worship of pagan gods. Yet it is also evident that he did struggle with reconciling his attachment to the Sol Invictus cult and his belief in the God of the Christians. Part of this was due to his position as emperor, the fact that the majority of the population was pagan, and likely his own inner decision to be a ruler before being a Christian.

It would be a gross oversimplification to think that Constantine could only benefit from becoming a Christian and publicly supporting the Church. "The Christians were a tiny minority of the population," states A.H.M. Jones in Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, "and they belonged for the most part to the classes of the population who were politically and socially of the least importance, the middle and lower classes of the towns. The senatorial aristocracy of Rome were pagan almost to a man; the higher grades of the civil service were mainly pagan; and above all the army officers and men, were predominantly pagan. The goodwill of the Christians was hardly worth gaining, and for what it was worth it could be gained by merely granting them toleration" (Jones, 73).

From Paganism to Christianity

Constantine’s move from paganism to Christianity was not immediate or always consistent. But over the course of several years he increased his support of the Church and implemented laws against certain pagan practices and activities. Some scholars argue that the chasm between the monotheism of Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus was not as wide as it might initially appear. The cult of Sol Invictus was not polytheistic or even pantheistic, but monotheistic; it was "the worship of the divine spirit by whom the whole universe was ruled, the spirit whose symbol is the sun; a symbol in which this spirit in some way specially manifests itself. . . . The whole cult is penetrated with the idea of an overruling divine monarchy. Moreover, the cult was in harmony with a philosophical religion steadily growing, in the high places of the administration, throughout this same [fourth] century, the cult of Summus Deus–the God who is supreme" (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [New York: Image, 1964], 29-30).

For Constantine–a man without much concern for theological precision–there was probably little, if any, distinction between the pagan and Christian notions of God (even though he surely recognized the differences in worship and morality). "The transition from solar monotheism (the most popular form of contemporary paganism) to Christianity was not difficult," writes historian Henry Chadwick. "In Old Testament prophecy Christ was entitled ‘the sun of righteousness’[Mal. 4:2]. Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 2000) speaks of Christ driving his chariot across the sky like a Sun-god. . . . Tertullian says that many pagans imagined the Christians worshiped the sun because they met on Sundays and prayed towards the East" (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church [Penguin Books, 1967, 1973], 126).

The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his wishes. Actually, the Emperor had desired to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River, where Jesus had been baptized, but it was not to be. Not long after the Easter of 337 he called together some bishops, removed his purple robe, and put on the white garments of a catechumen, then was baptized by Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia (Jones, 195-200). He died a few days later. It was common for Christians at the time to put off baptism until their deathbed. Serious sins committed after baptism would require severe penance, so some considered it safer to wait until the end of life to be baptized. (This practice was mentioned by Augustine in Confessions (Book 1, ch. 10.17 ). This approach to baptism would have fit Constantine’s case since he undoubtedly understood that many of his actions were considered grave sins by the Church: "It was common at this time (and continued so until about A.D. 400) to postpone baptism to the end of one’s life, especially if one’s duty as an official included torture and execution of criminals. Part of the reason for postponement lay in the seriousness with which the responsibilities were taken" (Chadwick, The Early Church, 127).

Constantine did see Christianity as a unifying force–and he was correct in his assessment that Christianity, not paganism, had the moral core and theological vision to change society for the better. He was not a saint, but he didn’t make choices without any concern for moral goodness, as The Da Vinci Code portrays him. William Durant, hardly friendly to the Church, writes, "His Christianity, beginning as policy, appears to have graduated into sincere conviction. He became the most persistent preacher in his realm, persecuted heretics faithfully, and took God into partnership at every step. Wiser than Diocletian, he gave new life to an aging Empire by associating it with a young religion, a vigorous organization, a fresh morality" (Durant, Christ and Caesar: The Story of Civilization, Part III [New York: Simon and Schuster], 664). Nor was Constantine was not a life long pagan or a cynical manipulator. "[Dan] Brown has turned him into a cartoonish villain," states Dr. Mitchell. "That Constantine the emperor had "political" motives (The Da Vinci Code, p. 234) is hardly news to anyone! The question is how religion and politics (which cannot be separated in the ancient world) were interrelated in him."

Tune into the discussion about The Da Vinci Code (and many other exciting topics) on our online discussion forums. Click here to go there now!

Pagan Roots or Modern Myths?

According to Teabing, the Church allowed Constantine to take pagan symbols and create a "hybrid religion." But according to Langdon, the Church never considered such a concession, but sought to eliminate by force all vestiges of pagan worship and belief. So which was it? Brown’s confusion is possibly due to the sloppiness of his research, or to a desire to have the best of both worlds: accuse the Church of damning compromise and of equally damning intolerance.

Neither account does justice to the complex and difficult relationship that Christianity had with the many varieties of paganism that existed in the third and fourth centuries. One thing is clear: the early Christians had proven that they were not willing to compromise with paganism, which is why so many of them were persecuted and killed by the Romans at various times in the first three centuries of the Church’s history. Why would Christians who had suffered just a few years earlier under Diocletian for refusing to renounce their unique beliefs about God, Jesus, and salvation, willingly compromise those same beliefs without so much as a whimper?

Brown is following the popular, but long discredited, argument developed in the late nineteenth-century by skeptics attempting to undermine the historical claims of Christianity. As Ronald Nash explains, "During a period of time running roughly from about 1890 to 1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan mystery religions, or other movements in the Hellenistic world." A number of scholarly books and papers were written rebutting those claims and today, Nash notes, "most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue" (Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003. 2^nd edition], 1).

Secondly, the depiction of a "hybrid religion" that mixed together Christian and pagan elements is a gross misrepresentation of how Christians took certain symbols and feast days and Christianized them–cleansing them of those elements not compatible with their doctrines and practices, but keeping what could be used for good ends. It misrepresents the actual sources for Christian beliefs such as the Virgin Birth, the deity of Christ, and the Passion and Resurrection. These beliefs are rooted in historical claims, not mythological stories, and most–if not all–predate those pagan ideas that appear, at least superficially, to have similar features.

The Da Vinci Code drags out several of the standard lines–many taken nearly verbatim from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (see pages 367-8)–about how everything in Christianity was taken from pagan sources. Langdon makes mention of "transmogrification" and insists that "the vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable." He states:

Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual–the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of ‘God-eating’–were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions." (p. 232)

Teabing adds, "Nothing in Christianity is original" and claims that the ancient pre-Christian god Mithras was the inspiration for many of the details surrounding Jesus’ person and life: the titles "Son of God" and "the Light of the World," his birth on December 25, his death, his burial in a rocky tomb, and his resurrection three days later. "By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus," the historian remarks, "The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." (p. 232).

There are a number of problems with these statements. Not only did the Christians not borrow ideology or theology, there is little or no evidence that most pagan mystery religions such as Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris or the cult of Mithras existed in the forms described by The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail prior to the mid-first century. This is a significant point, for much of the existing evidence indicates that the third and fourth-century beliefs and practices of certain pagan mystery religions are read back into the first-century beliefs of Christians–without support for such a presumptive act. Ronald Nash, whose book The Gospel and the Greeks refutes these claims in detail, explains that the methods used to arrive at the pagan-Christian connection are sloppy at best and severely biased at worst:

"It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers use this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults. This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship and should not be allowed to stand without challenge. Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century." (Ronald Nash, "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?" Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994).

The answer to that latter question is simply, "None." In fact, there is strong evidence that many of the pagan mystery religions may have taken elements of Christian belief in the second and third centuries to use as their own, especially as the strength and appeal of Christianity continued to grow. "It must not be uncritically assumed," writes early Church historian Bruce Metzger, "that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction" (Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11). The fact that many authors won’t even consider that there existed a two-way street indicates that they are less interested in truth than they are in attacking Christianity by any means possible.

A host of scholars, including Nash, E.O. James, Bruce Metzger, Günter Wagner (Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries), and Hugo Rahner (Greek Myths and Christian Mystery), point out in detail that the pagan mystery religions were quite different from Christianity in significant ways. Those religions were based on an annual vegetation cycle, they stressed esoteric (hidden) knowledge, they emphasized emotional ecstasy over doctrine and dogma, and their central goal was mystical experience. They were also very syncretistic, taking elements from other pagan movements and shedding beliefs with little regard for any established teaching or belief system–completely contrary to the apostolic tradition so intensely guarded by Christians (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 105-20). Perhaps most importantly, there is a sharp contrast between the mythological character of pagan mystery religions and the historical character of the Gospels and the New Testament writings. "In the nature of the case a most profound difference between Christianity and the Mysteries was involved in the historical basis of the former and the mythological character of the latter," writes Metzger in his classic study Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. "Unlike the deities of the Mysteries, who were nebulous figures of an imaginary past, the Divine Being whom the Christian worshipped as Lord was known as a real Person on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New Testament were written. From the earliest times the Christian creed included the affirmation that Jesus ‘was crucified under Pontius Pilate.’ On the other hand, Plutarch thinks it necessary to warn the priestess Clea against believing that ‘any of these tales [concerning Isis and Osiris] actually happened in the manner in which they are related.’" (Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 13).

With this mind, here is a brief examination of some of the pagan religions that The Da Vinci Code claims Constantine and the Church borrowed or stole key beliefs from in the fourth century.

Walking The Mithraic Maze

The pagan religion of Mithraism was one of the most important of the ancient mystery religions. Although there has been much scholarly dispute over the exact origins of the Mithraic religion, it is generally agreed that Mithra was originally a Persian god who was depicted as a bucolic deity who watched over cattle. Mithraism was not introduced to the West and the Mediterranean world until the first century at the earliest, where it "emerged as one of the most striking religious syntheses in antiquity: in the first four centuries of the Christian era it swept across the Roman world, becoming the favoured religion of the Roman legions and several Roman emperors" (Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy [Yale University Press, 2000], 75). This second form, contemporaneous with Christianity, was for males only–it has "often been described as a type of Roman Freemasonry" (Stoyanov, 75). In the early third century, this form would result in Mithras being elevated to the status Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun). While scholars distinguish between the earlier Iranian Mithraism and the later Roman Mithraism, those straining to connect Mithras to Jesus usually do not.

This failure (purposeful or not) to distinguish between the two often results in later beliefs being read back into the earlier, pre-Christian form of Mithraism. But the Mithraic beliefs and practices that Christianity is accused of "stealing" did not come into vogue until the end of the first century at the earliest, far too late to shape the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus. Although there are numerous theories about how Mithraism moved from Persia to Rome and how it changed along the way, the physical evidence indicates that "the flowering of [Roman] Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions." (Nash, "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"). David Ulansey, author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University Press, 1991), substantiates Nash’s assessment: "The earliest physical remains of the cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism reached its height of popularity in the third century" ("The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras").

Mithraism was highly syncretistic, absorbing and borrowing an eclectic range of beliefs and religious ideas. By the time it became popular in the Roman Empire it had changed from a public religion for the many to a mystery religion meant for a few elite. "Ultimately," Stoyanov writes, "the novel and composite form of Mithra-worship that developed and became widely diffused in the Roman world was virtually a new mystery religion, in which the old Irano-Babylonian core seems to have been refashioned and recast into a Graeco-Roman mould tinged with astrological lore and Platonic speculation" (Stoyanov, 77-8).

Many serious differences exist between the myth of Mithras and the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. In some accounts, Mithras is "born" by "being forced out of a rock as if by some hidden magic power. He is shown naked save for the Phrygian cap, holding dagger and torch in his uplifted hands" (Abstracted from Mithras, the Secret God, M.J. Vermaseren [London, 1963]). In the Persian legends, he was born of a virgin mother, Anahita (once worshipped as a fertility goddess), who swam in Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan where Zoroaster/ Zarathustra had left sperm four hundred years earlier. Christians believe Jesus is born of a virgin Jewish girl, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The central feat of Mithras’ life on earth was the capturing and killing of a stolen bull at the command of the god Apollo, symbolizing the annual spring renewal of life. While Mithras was subduing the bull, other animals joined in the fray. After Mithras finished his appointed task, he and Apollo quarreled, but eventually reconciled and feasted together (Peter Clark, Zoroastrianism, An Introduction to an Ancient Faith, 157-158). The central accomplishments of Jesus’ life were his death and resurrection, which Christians believe were historical events that took place in first century Palestine–not in a nebulous mythic netherworld. Other key differences include the Gnostic-like dualism of the Mithraic belief system and a belief that the human soul has fallen from its heavenly home and must now ascend, after a time of testing here on earth, back to heaven.

Mithraism did not originally have a concept of a god who died and was then resurrected (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 136-7; E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 246-9). Despite the claims made in The Da Vinci Code, there is no ancient account of Mithras dying, being buried "in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days" (The Da Vinci Code, 232). That assertion apparently is taken (either directly or from a second-generation source) from Kersey Graves’ The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (1875), a work of pseudo-scholarship and anti-Christian polemics that is so shoddy that even atheists and agnostics disavow it. Graves writes that several pagan deities, including " ‘Mithra the Mediator’ of Persia did, according to their respective histories, rise from the dead after three days' burial" (chapter 19). However, Graves provides no documentation (his common practice). E.O. James, who was professor of history and philosophy of religion at the University of London, references an ancient work by Pseudo-Dionysus when he notes that "in contrast to the other Graeco-Oriental Mystery divinities, the Persian saviour-god [Mithras] did not himself pass through death to life, though by his sacrificial act [killing a bull] he was a life-giver" (E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 247). James later observes that Mithraism–which was a strong adversary of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries–was overcome by Christianity, not by being absorbed, "but because the Church was able to meet its adversary on the sure ground of historical fact." Christianity went far beyond "the ancient seasonal drama with its polytheistic background" and offered initiates a "renewal of spiritual life and regeneration of outlook . . . to a degree unknown and unattainable in any rival system. Therefore, Christianity ultimately prevailed because it provided a different gift of life from that bestowed in the pagan cults." (248-9).

Christmas Gifts, Halos, the Nursing Christ, and Other Details

The story of the Hindu deity Krishna's birth and the presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh also apparently comes from Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. In the seventh chapter of that work, Graves writes:

"Other Saviors at birth, we are told, were visited by both angels and shepherds, also ‘wise men,’ at least great men. Chrishna, the eighth avatar of India (1200 B.C.) (so it is related by the ‘inspired penman’ of their pagan theocracy) was visited by angels, shepherds and prophets (avatars). ‘Immediately after his birth he was visited by a chorus of devatas (angels), and surrounded by shepherds, all of whom were impressed with the conviction of his future greatness.’ We are informed further that ‘gold, frankincense and myrrh’ were presented to him as offerings." (chapter 7)

Graves conveniently provides no sources or citations, which is one of many reasons his book has been long discredited by scholars working in the field of comparative religion. But that doesn’t keep this popular idea from appearing on numerous websites–none providing sources or citations (and rarely mentioning Graves’ book). There’s good reason for this absence of evidence. The Bhagavad-Gita (first century A.D.) doesn’t mention Krishna’s childhood, and the stories of Krishna’s childhood recorded in the Harivamsa Purana (c. 300 A.D.) and the Bhagavata Purana (c. 800-900 A.D.) don’t mention the gifts at all. Even if they did, those works were written well after the birth of Christ, making such a claim absurd.

The halo, or nimbus, used in Christian art was used by a number of pre-Christian cultures, including Greek and Roman, to distinguish figures who were gods or demigods (see Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [Oxford University Press, Third edition, 1997], 732]. Roman emperors, for example, were depicted on coins with radiant heads. This is a good example of Christians gradually appropriating a cultural element and using it in a way totally in keeping with their theology and practice. For Christians to take over this attribute is about as scandalous as later artists depicting Jesus in philosopher’s robes or in the clothing of a later historical age. The use of a halo would have been a natural choice for Christian art since both Moses and Jesus are described in the Bible as having shining faces after significant events. Moses face radiated light after he came down from Mount Sinai and the presence of God (Ex 34:29-35) and at the Transfiguration, Jesus’ "face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light" (Matt 17:2). The use of halos in Christian iconography is simply a case of Christians recognizing the usefulness of an artistic motif and appropriating it for their specific needs.

Langdon claims, "Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus." It’s a curious statement since any sensible person recognizes that the image of a nursing mother is hardly unique to one religion or culture. Christian artists undoubtedly copied the poses of figure depicted in pagan art, including mothers (or goddesses) nursing children. One of the earliest renderings of Mary is a late second-century/early third-century fresco found on a wall of the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome (Andre Grabar, La Premier Art Chretien [Gallimard Editions, 1996], p. 99. Figure 95.], mentioned by Pope John Paul II in a general audience on May 23, 1990. The Madonna and Child have been depicted in numerous ways throughout history, often reflecting the culture of the respective painters and sculptors (see Herbert Haag, Caroline Ebertshauser, Joe H. Kirchberger, Dorothee Solle, Peter Heinegg, Mary: Art, Culture, and Religion Through the Ages [Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 1998]).

As Nash and others point out, the real issue is not of similarity, but of dissimilarity. The Egyptian goddess Isis was part of a polytheistic fertility cult. After her husband Osiris was assassinated and dismembered, Isis searches and finds all the parts of his body and then restores him–not to life on earth, but to life in the underworld, as a "dead god" (E.O. James, The Cult of the Mother-Goddess [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994], 241ff). Originally, Isis was one of several goddesses (e.g., Nut, Neith, etc.) and Horus, her son, was one of the eight gods "of the Ennead" (James, Cult of the Mother-Goddess,, 57). Worship of Isis was established in Greece around the fourth century B.C., where she remained a goddess of fertility, and became a popular deity whose temples were established in numerous cities. In this Hellenistic form, the Isis cult was a pagan mystery religion in which adherents underwent esoteric, occult rites [Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 126-8. For more on Isis, see "Isis as Saviour Goddess" by C.J. Bleeker, S.G.F. Brandon, ed., The Savior God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation [Manchester University Press, 1963], 1-16).

Langdon claims that "the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of ‘God-eating’–were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions." First, it should again be noted that "mystery religions," strictly speaking, did not come into existence until the end of the first century at the earliest, making it impossible for the first Christians to take, borrow, or steal much of anything from them. The word "miter," or "mitre," is derived from mitra, a Greek word meaning "turban" or "headband." It is the liturgical head-dress and part of the insignia of the bishop (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1096). It didn’t appear in the West until the middle of the tenth century and was not used by bishops in the East until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In the East it seems to have been derived the crowns worn by Byzantine Emperors; in the West is appears to have been a variation of unofficial hat, the camelaucum, worn by the Pope in processions. In both cases, the mitre has no connections with pagan mystery religions.

Altars are a common element in most religions and there are over three hundred references to altars in the Old Testament. Thus, the first Christians, who were all Jewish, would hardly be new to the concept of an altar, especially when the altar in the Temple was a focal point of the Jewish religion. Not surprisingly, there are several references to altars in the New Testament, including references in the Gospels to the altar in the Temple (Matt 5:23-24; 23:18-20; Lk 1:11) and references in The Apocalypse to the heavenly altar in the throne room of God (Rev. 6:9; 8:3-5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:8; 16:7). There is also this passage in the epistle to the Hebrews: "We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat" (Heb 13:10). It is likely a reference to the Eucharistic table of the Christians and a similar use of language was common among the early Church Fathers. For example, Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 110), writing to the church at Philadelphia, states, "Take care, then, to partake of one Eucharist; for, one is the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup to unite us with His Blood, and one altar, just as there is one bishop assisted by the presbytery and the deacons, my fellow servants. Thus you will conform in all your actions to the will of God" (Letter to the Philadelphians, par. 4). Other references to a Christian altar appear in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian.

A doxology is simply a hymn or ascription of praise and glory (doxa = "glory"; logos = "word"). Almost all religions have statements about the glory and power of a deity, reflecting the natural human desire to recognize what is sacred and Other. Traditionally, in historic Christianity, there are three types of doxology: the Great Doxology, the Less Doxology, and the Metrical Forms. Langdon is probably referring to the Great Doxology, which begins with these statements of praise:

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
We praise You; we bless You; we worship You; we glorify You; we thank You, for Your great glory.
O Lord King, God in Heaven, the Father Almighty. O Lord, Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, Who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us; You, Who takes away the sins of the world;
Receive our prayers, You, Who sits at the right hand of the Father, and have mercy on us .
For You alone are Holy; You alone are the Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God, the Father. Amen.

All of this language is taken directly from passages in the New Testament; all of it reflects the unique beliefs of the Christians. Such language did not, of course, come from pagans, who were mostly polytheistic and did not believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Langdon’s reference to "God-eating" is likely an appeal to Mithraism, for it was the only mystery religion that celebrated anything resembling Holy Communion (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 148-9); many of the mystery religions, such as the Orphic cult, had no sacred meal at all. In his work on comparative religion, E.O. James writes that the Christian’s "sacramental outlook differed from that of the pagan Mysteries in several important respects. So far as we know, initiates in those cults were neither baptized into the name of the saviour-god or goddess, nor were they the recipients of a pneumatic gift as a result of lustration." Jones goes on to note that the Christian Eucharist was strongly connected to a life of holiness and purity, while "normally in a Mystery cult initiation was an end itself irrespective of any ethical considerations." (Jones, Comparative Religion, 239. See Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 14).

In the myth of Mithras, the god does not even die, but is a savior-god by virtue of killing a bull. Initiates into the Mithraic cult would dramatize this mythical event and the blood of a slain bull would be ceremoniously poured over initiates. At the higher stages of the cult members participated in a sacred meal of bread and water (or wine, but that detail is still a matter of debate); there is no indication that those participating believed they were engaging in "God-eating." Little is known of that meal, so a fuller comparison with Christian communion is difficult to make.

Regardless, the Jewish character and context of the Passover Meal, the Last Supper, and the Christian Eucharist are the essential elements that shape the Christian sacrament and ritual–not pagan rites. "[O]n almost any view of this matter," Metzger writes, "the Jewishness of the setting, character, and piety expressed in the rite is overwhelmingly pervasive in all the accounts of the origin of the Supper" (p. 16). The Jewish character is explored by Jean Danielou in his important study, The Bible and the Liturgy (University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), where he writes:

"[T]he Eucharist is the fulfillment of the meal of Jewish worship; It signifies, then, as did these [Jewish communal] meals, participation in the blessings of the Covenant. . . . In fact, the meal in the course of which Christ instituted the Eucharist seems to have been a ritual meal, a chaboura, such as was customarily celebrated by the Jewish communities. . . It was, then, in this framework of a sacred Jewish meal that Christ instituted the meal of the New Covenant, as it as in the framework of the Jewish commemoration of the Pasch that He died on the Cross." (p. 160; see 142-190).

Let us know what you think. Join the online discussion... Click here to go there now!

Sunday and Christmas Day

Teabing states, "Even Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." (The Da Vinci Code, 232). This is false. Equally false is Langdon’s declaration that originally Christians worshipped on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but changed to Sunday under Constantine’s influence so that it would "coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun" (p. 232-3).

The implication here is that for nearly three hundred years, until the time of Constantine, the Christians worshipped on Saturday. But the Christians of the New Testament era were already worshipping on Sunday, or the "day of the Lord," as it is described in Revelation 1:10. This was to honor the day that Jesus rose from the dead; having been crucified on a Friday, his resurrection occurred on the third day (cf. Mk 16:2)–the day after Sabbath, or Sunday (Sabbath was the only day of the week named by Jews; the other day were simply numbered: "first day," "second day," etc.). This practice is referred to in Acts 20:7: "And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to depart the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight." The Apostle Paul mentions in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 16:2) that tithes and offering should be set aside on the first day of the week, another indication that the early Christians viewed the day after the Jewish Sabbath as the most important day of the week.

There are numerous references by the early Church Fathers to Christians worshipping on "the day of the Lord" (or Dies Dominica, as it came to be known in the West). Ignatius of Antioch writes around 110 , "How, then, shall we be able to live apart from Him, seeing that the prophets were His disciples in the Spirit and expected Him as their Master, and that many who were brought up in the old order have come to the newness of hope? They no longer observe the Jewish Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord's day, on which, through Him and through His death, our life arose" (Epistle to the Magnesians, ch. 9). The Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably written before the end of the first century, states, "This is why we also observe the eighth day with rejoicing, on which Jesus also rose from the dead, and having shown himself ascended to heaven" (Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15). There are many references to the "eighth day" in the writings of the Church Fathers, as Danielou details in The Bible and the Liturgy (see chapter 15, "The Lord’s Day," [242-261] and chapter 16, "The Eighth Day" [262-286]). Danielou also flatly states that "the Lord’s Day is a purely Christian institution; its origin is to be found solely in the fact of the Resurrection of Christ on the day after the Sabbath" (p. 242). Another early, non-canonical reference to the Lord’s Day is found in The Didache: "And on the Lord's Day, after you have come together, break bread and offer the Eucharist, having first confessed your offences, so that your sacrifice may be pure" (14.1). Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the second century, makes the first known reference by a Christian author to "Sunday"; all prior references had been to the day of the Lord.

Brown apparently thinks that since the observance of Sunday as a day of rest wasn’t sanctioned by civil authorities until the fourth century than it must not been observed prior to that time. But over one hundred years earlier, around 200, Tertullian writes about Sunday as a day of rest: "We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord's Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil" (De orat., xxiii; cf. Ad nation., I, xiii; Apolog., xvi). The Council of Elvira, a local Spanish council that convened around 303, decreed that Sunday was to be a special day of worship and rest, stating, "If anyone in the city neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him be excommunicated for a short time so that he may be corrected" (Canon xxi). Two decades later, in 321., Constantine officially declared Sunday a day of rest in the Roman Empire, "commanding abstention from work, including legal business, for townspeople, though permitting farm labour" (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1558). Since Christians considered Jesus to be the "Sun of Righteousness" (Mal 4:2) spoken of in the Old Testament and "the light of the world" (Jn 812; 9:5) in the New Testament, they thought it fitting that the true God would supercede the old Roman Sun-god. St Jerome (c. 345-420) wrote, "The Lord's day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called the Lord’s day because on it the Lord rose victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the ‘day of the sun,’ we willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays" [St. Jerome, Pasch.: CCL 78, 550. Quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1166].

Did Christians take December 25, the "birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus," a use it for their celebration of the birth of Jesus? Many Christians have essentially agreed with this statement and have argued that the Christians appropriated this important pagan holy day as a way of showing the superiority of the true God-man, Jesus. Recently, however, some scholars have argued that December 25 was not taken from pagans by Christians, but vice-versa.

In an article in Touchstone magazine titled "Calculating Christmas" (Touchstone, December 2003), William J. Tighe, the Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, explains, "The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many ‘pagan-izations’ of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many ‘degenerations’ that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel."

Tighe points out that none of the Roman cults had major celebrations on December 25. It was the Emperor Aurelian (270-5 A.D.) who "appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual ‘rebirth’ of the sun. . . . . In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for ‘rebirth,’ or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule."

Once Christianity had separated from Judaism (especially after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D.) and emerged as a unique religion, it sought to calculate the exact day of Jesus’ death. There was much confusion due to different calendars; after much debate and difficulty, the Eastern Christians chose April 6 and the Western Christians chose March 25 as the date of Jesus’ crucifixion. At this point the ancient and obscure notion of an "integral age" comes into play; this was the belief that the Old Testament prophets died either on the same date of their birth or conception. Most Christians accepted April 6 or March 25 as the date of Jesus’ conception, thus arriving at January 6 (in the East) and December 25 (in the West) as the date of his birth. Although these dates would not be made "official" until the late fourth century, they were held long before both Aurelian and Constantine. Thus, Tighe states, "the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the ‘Sun of Salvation’ or the ‘Sun of Justice.’"  

There’s no doubt that early Christians, who lived in a pagan culture, were influenced by paganism and sometimes used the same terms and motifs as their pagan neighbors in describing their beliefs. But the success of the Christian faith was impossible for pagans to ignore, and some of them sought to borrow Christian ideas, or at least terminology, in their rituals and practices. Dr. Margaret Mitchell writes:

"It is absolutely true that "The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable" (p.232). But the conclusion drawn from that –"Nothing in Christianity is original"– is not, and, from the point of view of the history of religions, an old, long-disqualified claim. Even new arrangements of existing materials are "original"! (and the Christian movements represent more than just that). Current scholarship recognizes that the relationship between the Christian cult and the world around it, and the ways in which it was culturally embedded in that world – sometimes unreflectively, sometimes reflexively, sometimes in deliberate accommodation, sometimes in deliberate cooptation – are far more complicated than noted here. Conspiracy theories sell books, but they do not explain complex human phenomena which are both local and more wide-spread – and hardly could have been instituted as a wide-spread, Stalinesque program of cultural totalitarianism as Brown has conjured up for Constantine." (Dr. Mitchell, LakeMagazine.com)

What Really Happened at the Council of Nicaea?

Brown makes several misleading statements about the Council of Nicaea, including the assertion (made by the historian Teabing, who apparently never studied ancient or Church history) that it was where Jesus was first declared divine. A full history and background to the Council of Nicaea, which convened in 325, is impossible here; there are a number of popular and scholarly works that provide that information (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [Image, 1964]; A.H.M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe [University of Toronto Press, 1978]). But a brief overview of the basic facts will show how egregious are the claims made in The Da Vinci Code.

The Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical of the Church, made possible by the patronage of Constantine and his desire to end the disunity and controversy being caused by the Arian heresy. Arius (b. c. 260-80; d. 336) was a priest from Alexandria who was noted for his preaching and ascetic lifestyle. Around 319 or so he began to gain attention for his teaching that Jesus was not fully divine, but was lesser than the Father. Arius held that the Son had not existed for all of eternity past, but was a created being begotten by the Father as an instrument of, first, creation and the, later, salvation. Put another way, Arius believed that Jesus, the Son of God, was not God by nature, but instead was a lesser god.

This belief was condemned by the bishop Alexander at a local synod held in Alexandria around 320, with ninety-eight of a hundred bishops voting against Arius’s views. But the priest’s teachings attracted interest and spread quickly, partially due to Arius’s clever use of catchy songs proclaiming his doctrinal beliefs and also due to the patronage of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea and one of the greatest scholars of his time. Arius’s beliefs were proving so popular and disruptive that Constantine decided to bring together the bishops and put an end to the controversy; his interest was most likely in unity over theological clarity, but he realized the former would defend in large part upon the latter.

On May 20, 325, a number of bishops, the vast majority of them from the East, convened at Nicaea (modern day Iznik, north of Constantinople); the council lasted until July 25 of the same year. The number of bishops in attendance has traditionally been listed as 318, likely a symbolic number (cf., Gen. 14:14); the actual number was probably around 220 to 250 (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1144). Due to poor health, the Pope did not attend, but sent two deacons to represent him. "The great bulk of the Council came from the Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire," writes A.H.M. Jones, "The bulk of the gathering were simple pastors, who would naturally resent any innovation on the faith which they had learned and would have little sympathy with the intellectual paradoxes of Arius. Many could boast of the proud title of confessor, having endured imprisonment, torture, and penal servitude for the sake of their faith" ( Jones, 131).

This rugged and tried character of most of the bishops is completely contrary to The Da Vinci Code’s implication that the bishops meekly accepted whatever the Emperor told them. Many of the bishops at Nicaea were