Scholarly Smackdown: Is The Da Vinci Code Anti-Christian?
Continued from page 1 This core set of beliefs was used by the early Christians as a litmus test for organizing the canon of the New Testament books as well as a test for placing other books on the list of apocryphal writings, those that did not make it into the New Testament, including the Gospel of Mary, which is one of the sources for the legends about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Their exclusion from the canon was not an attempt to suppress truth–quite the contrary. Interestingly enough, the early church also rejected as too sensationalistic the Gospel of Peter, which was a documentary account of Jesus and the apostles marching in triumph and joy out of the empty tomb. In a conspiracy view like Dan Brown’s, such writing would have surely made it into the canon. “The Da Vinci Code” makes terrific summer reading; the film will make great summer viewing. But readers and viewers need to approach the book and the film critically. They need to measure its truth claims in light of the 2,000
