Decoding The Da Vinci Code
Gary Gromacki, Th.M., D.Min., Ph.D calvary.academia.edu Gary Gromacki Th.M D.Min Ph.D
This paper gives an evangelical critique of the best selling novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code(2003) –henceforth DVC-has acquired a matchless reputation and it has been privileged with incomparable studies which have reached the utmost scope of controversy since it was supposed to rock the foundations of Christianity because of Jesus Christ's marriage and to none other Mary Magdalene (1) , the uprightness of the Holy Bible, and the deity of Jesus, which, the three topics, lie behind Jesus Christ's and Mary Magdalene's marriage. Such a controversy has led the researcher to investigate a number of expert historians' and documentary studies to shed light on the backbone of the present study: Did Brown break or repair taboos in his novel? Or, let us ask, what is his real purpose as regards the above three tabooed topics? The researcher has intended to analyze a number of extracts taken from the novel focusing on those related to the deity/humanity of Jesus and His alleged marriage to Magdalene. The analysis will be based upon the information, which is, as Brown claims, taken from pieces of "fact-based historical and scientific evidence ". These pieces are related to the sexuality of Christ and the assertions of His marriage to Magdalene. Thus, the study aims at answering the question whether Brown broke or repaired the three tabooed topics mentioned above. To answer these questions, the researcher has analyzed his, Brown's, pieces of evidence which he claims are "accurate, true and well-researched" for they are completely taken from actual documents and sources. The analysis will be linguistic-religious. It aims to ascertain whether this evidence is accurate or erroneous, and subsequently, to judge whether Brown had broken or repaired the taboos in his novel.

We first learned of a letter of Clement of Alexandria “to Theodore” and of the “mystic” Gospel of Mark that it quotes in 1958, when Morton Smith catalogued a manuscript (Mar Saba 65) that constitutes the only extant evidence for both these works. The lack of external corroboration for this gospel has made the spectre of forgery particularly hard to dispel. Fortunately, indirect evidence bearing on Clement’s knowledge of this gospel exists but has been mostly overlooked. Given the letter’s premise that the gospel pericope which it quotes has a “true interpretation” of a mystical (i.e., allegorical) nature, we might expect that aspects of this interpretation would appear in Clement’s undisputed writings in the various places where he expounds equivalent phrases (e.g., “for he had many possessions” in Mark 10:22; “the mystery of the kingdom of God” in Mark 4:11) and themes (e.g., Jesus raising a person from the dead, a period of seven days, wearing a single linen garment) in other texts. The present paper asks, what would happen if we apply those allegorical expositions of other texts to the mystic gospel’s story about Jesus and the young man? Certainly if the letter isn’t by Clement, and he did not actually know this gospel story, we wouldn’t expect these scattered expositions to make much sense when brought together, and we most certainly wouldn’t expect them to combine into a consistent allegorical interpretation that could constitute the “true interpretation” promised at the point where the letter breaks off. Yet that is precisely what happens. The conspicuous parallels in Clement’s expositions of other texts all concern aspects of his path to perfection through the church, and they combine in their proper order and with remarkable detail to represent Jesus leading the young man through this entire progression. Hence we can conclude that he indeed knew this gospel and wrote this letter.