The Truth About The Da Vinci Code

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The Truth About The Da Vinci Code
Responding to the movies claims
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Questions From the Book

• Is Jesus God?
• Is the Bible true?
• Was Jesus married?
• Lost Books of the Bible - Are They Real?
• What is the Sacred Feminine?
• What about the Holy Grail?

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Is Jesus God?

• My dear, Teabing, declared, "until that moment
  in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as
  a mortal prophet. . . a great and powerful man,
  but a man nevertheless. A mortal." "Not the
  Son of God?" "Right," Teabing, said. "Jesus'
  establishment as the Son of God was officially
  proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea."
  
• The Da Vinci Code p. 233

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Is Jesus God?

• Fact Jesus was viewed as divine from the very
  beginning of Christianity. He is referred to as
  God at least seven times in the New Testament and
  Lord as a divine title many other times.
• Fact The earliest documents from the Christian
  church ascribe to Jesus divine status.
• Fact The entire flow of the Old Testament
  requires that God come into the world, as
  Immanuel (God-with-us e.g. Isaiah 714).

5
Is Jesus God?

• "Many scholars claim that the early Church
  literally stole Jesus from His original
  followers."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code p. 233

6
Is Jesus God?

• Fact Even non-Christian writings from Romans
  such as Celsus, Pliny and Lucian state that the
  Christians venerated Jesus as God.
• Fact Jesus' original followers were routinely
  martyred for their belief that Jesus was God - a
  belief they would not recant even unto death.
• Fact It is always possible to find someone
  holding such a view, but to claim there are many
  is simply untrue.

7
Is the Bible True?

• "The Bible is a product of man my dear, not of
  God."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p. 231

8
Is the Bible True?

• Fact The Bible is the most reliable book of
  antiquity - with more manuscript evidence and
  less significant variations deviation than any
  other, by a long shot.
• Fact The Bible demonstrates its inspired origin
  in many ways, including its lofty doctrine, its
  historical precision, its predictive prophecy and
  the way that it was acclaimed by Old and New
  Testament figures, especially Jesus and the
  apostles.

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Is the Bible True?

• "The Bible has evolved through countless
  translations, additions, and revisions. History
  has never had a definitive version of the book."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code p. 231

10
Is the Bible True?

• Fact The New Testament has more manuscript
  evidence for its preservation as the original
  authors wrote than any other book in antiquity.
• Fact The nearly complete consistency between the
  many versions is recognized as an astonishing
  testimony to its single origin.

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Is the Bible True?

• "The Bible as we know it today was collated by
  the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great."
  
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci
  Code p. 231

12
Is the Bible True?

• Fact The earliest testimony we have today of a
  list which corresponds exactly to our New
  Testament is from Athanasius of Alexandria, in
  367. However, the concept of a New Testament, and
  much of its content are attested as early as I
  Clement (95 AD), and is essentially the same as
  ours by the mid second century, which is 175
  years before the Constantines rule (306-337).
• Fact Tradition strongly suggests Constantine
  became a Christian in 312. He did a lot for the
  church, including forbidding persecutions and
  calling councils, but it would not have occurred
  to him to collate the Bible.

13
Is the Bible True?

• "Fortunately for historians, some of the gospels
  Constantine tried to eradicate somehow survived
  (in the Dead Sea Scrolls)."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci
  Code p. 234

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Is the Bible True?

• Fact There are two main types of documents
  contained in the scrolls Biblical books (all
  except Esther), and a large collection of
  documents, some complete, some in fragments of
  stuff written by the Essenes. However, there is
  no Christian literature in the Dead Sea scrolls
  at all!
• Fact Not only was no attempt made to suppress
  these books, but they cast considerable light on
  the New Testament background.

15
Was Jesus Married?

• Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for
  the future of the church to be in the hands of
  Mary Magdalene
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p.248

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Was Jesus Married?

• Fact If Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, we
  would expect to see some type of her veneration
  in the history of the early church like we see
  for Mary Jesus mother. However, there exists no
  reference or tradition anywhere to worship or
  veneration of Mary Magdalene.
• Fact The Son of God came to earth not to start a
  family but to save the Church, which is his true
  bride (Ephesians 522-33)

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Was Jesus Married?

• If Jesus were not married, at least one of the
  Bible's gospel's would have mentioned it and
  offered some explanation for His unnatural state
  of bachelorhood.
• Robert Langdon The Da
  Vinci Code p.245

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Was Jesus Married?

• Fact Whenever Jesus' family is referred to, it
  is his brothers and sisters who are mentioned,
  but never a wife. Contrast this to descriptions
  of the rest of the apostles, Peter, and the
  brothers of the Lord - all of whom are said to
  have had wives.
• Fact At the crucifixion, Jesus shows no special
  concern for the care of Mary Magdalene as he does
  his mother.
• Fact This claim commits the fallacy of Hasty
  Generalization just because the majority of
  Jews would be married, it doesnt follow that
  EVERY Jew would be.

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Was Jesus Married?

• "When Grail legend speaks of 'the chalice that
  held the blood of Christ' it speaks, in fact,
  of Mary Magdalene - the female womb that carried
  Jesus' royal bloodline."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code
  p.249

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Was Jesus Married?

• Fact There exists no mention of a wife in any
  scripture of Jesus, in his ministry, when he was
  tried and crucified, or after his death.
• Fact The legend of the Grail is indeed about the
  lost cup from the Last Supper. But biblical
  language about a mothers womb is always a
  reference to gestation and protection, never
  about bloodlines. Indeed, shed blood was always
  about the opposite of birth, that is, death.

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Was Jesus Married?

• "Companion of savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ
  loved her more than all the disciples and used to
  kiss her often on the mouth. The disciples were
  offended at this."
• Gospel of Philip The Da
  Vinci Code p. 246

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Was Jesus Married?

• Fact This passage comes from the Gnostic gospel
  of Philip and was written very late. It was
  written in Coptic, not Aramaic or Hebrew, and
  there IS no word in Aramaic where companion means
  spouse.
• Fact The actual manuscript is broken at this
  passage, so we don't know where it claims Jesus
  kissed Mary.
• Fact The Gospel of Philip is a Gnostic document,
  and Gnostics held that the physical expression of
  sex is not sacred or spiritual - it actually
  defiles the soul who believes by holding to the
  corrupt physical.

23
Lost Books of the Bible

• "More than eighty gospels were considered for the
  New Testament, and yet only a relatively few were
  chosen."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p.231

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Lost Books of the Bible

• Fact Other than the four recognized gospels,
  there are only eleven ancient documents still in
  existence today that are called "gospel" .
• Fact In all of antiquity, there are only twenty
  eight other sources no longer in existence that
  are cited or mentioned in Jewish or Gnostic
  writings as gospels.
• Fact Most of the Gnostic works are rejected
  because they are too late to be written by the
  purported authors, they rely heavily on the
  stories in the existing gospels, and they
  contradict the beliefs taught in the orthodox
  gospels.

25
Lost Books of the Bible

• "The Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls are
  the earliest Christian records."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p.245

26
Lost Books of the Bible

• Fact All of the Biblical gospels date from the
  last half of the first century, where the two
  texts the Da Vinci Code relies on most, the
  gospel of Philip and the gospel of Mary
  Magdalene, are from the third to fifth century.

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Lost Books of the Bible

• "Constantine commissioned and financed a new
  Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of
  Christ's human traits and embellished those
  gospels that made Him godlike.
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p.234

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Lost Books of the Bible

• Fact All four canonical gospels exist in lists
  of church scripture as early as Papias (c. 115
  AD) and Justin Martyr (d. 165) and no other
  gospels ever appear in any list as authoritative.
  
• Fact Constantine did not summon the council of
  Nicaea until A.D. 325 - far too late for this
  claim to be taken seriously.

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Lost Books of the Bible

• Those who 'chose' the original history of Christ
  were the world's first heretics.
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da
  Vinci Code p.234

30
Lost Books of the Bible

• Fact The Gnostic gospels reflect a line of
  thinking that didn't arise until the second
  century, and it was criticized by the early
  church fathers Irenaeus, Hippolytus and
  Tertullian.
• Fact Irenaeus makes it clear that the so-called
  gospels of the Gnostics are heretical precisely
  because they were secret documents. The Apostolic
  writings commend themselves because they are
  public and verifiable.

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The Sacred Feminine

• "Powerful men in the early church conned the
  world by propagating lies that devalued the
  female and tipped the scales in favor of the
  masculine."
• Robert Langdon, The Da Vinci Code p.124

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The Sacred Feminine

• Fact The Advent of Christianity radically
  transformed the fate of women. Even ancient
  Roman pagan scholars agree that it was a turning
  point for the freedom and dignity of women.
• Fact According to sociology scholar Steven
  Goldberg, The findings of the past 50 years
  have failed to include a single shred of
  evidence that such matriarchies had ever existed
  All the claims of societies ruled by women are
  nonsense. We have no reason to believe they ever
  existed.

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The Sacred Feminine

• "Constantine and his male successors successfully
  converted the world from matriarchal paganism to
  patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of
  propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine."
• Robert Langdon, The Da
  Vinci Code p.124

34
The Sacred Feminine

• Fact Christian women were powerful witnesses to
  Jesus' message, often despite the sinfulness of a
  male-dominated culture. Examples throughout many
  centuries include Perpetua, Monica, Clare,
  Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of
  Sienna, Katherina von Bora, Susanna Wesley,
  Catherine Booth, Mother Teresa, and Anne Graham
  Lotz.

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The Sacred Feminine

• "According to these unaltered gospels, it was not
  Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which
  to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary
  Magdalene."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code
  p.248

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The Sacred Feminine

• Fact The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, to which the
  book refers, records Jesus as wanting to
  transform Mary Magdalene into a man to make her
  acceptable to enter heaven.

37
The Sacred Feminine

• "The Priory of Sion's membership has included
  some of history's most cultured individuals men
  like Botticelli, Sir Isaac Newton, victor Hugo...
  and Leonardo Da Vinci... The Priory has a well
  documented history of reverence for the sacred
  feminine."
• Robert Langdon, The Da Vinci Code p.113

38
The Sacred Feminine

• Fact The modern Priory of Sion was created in
  1954 by Pierre Plantard. All documents proving
  a blood line and a list of historical Priory
  members were proven to be forged in a French
  court of law.
• Fact Much of the supposed research done for The
  Da Vinci Code is embarrassingly incorrect

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The Holy Grail

• "Mary Magdalene became secretly known by many
  pseudonyms - the Chalice, the Holy Grail..."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code
  p.254

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The Holy Grail

• Fact Before the twelfth century, there were no
  legends about the grail by the thirteenth
  century, the tale had become intertwined with
  Arthurian legends. The characters from Chretien's
  story developed into supposed historical figures
  from the Gospels, and the grail had become the
  Holy Grail.

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The Holy Grail

• ""The word Sangreal derives from San Greal - or
  Holy Grail. But in the most ancient form, the
  word Sangreal was divided in a different spot..
  Sang Real .. literally meaning Royal Blood."
• Sir Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code
  p.250

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The Holy Grail

• Fact There is no historical evidence to connect
  the ancient female symbol of the chalice to the
  Holy Grail, since the grail's concept can only be
  traced back as far as the twelfth century.
• Fact The re-division of the word Sangreal into
  Sang Real or Royal Blood appears to be completely
  manufactured.

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