Rev Prof Amjad-Ali on the Cartoon Controversy

The “da Vinci Code” and Mary Magdalene
The Independent Foreign Service syndicated an article – yet another article – headed, “More grist to the ‘Da Vinci Code’ mill’, by Peter Popham, which was reprinted in The Star, Johannesburg, on Mon Oct. 17.
The headline is revealing: Dan Brown’s novel, “The da Vinci Code” has become an international best-seller. But more that that – it has spawned a whole industry of debate, discussion and refutation.
Why is this so?

Dan Brown abandons the normal conventions of the historical novel. Normally, in a historical novel, there is reference to a number of public facts – that is events which are generally accepted as historically verifiable. These facts provide the framework within which the novelist constructs the story. In his Introduction, Dan Brown actually says that he is following this tried and tested approach: he claims that all the facts to which he refers are historically verifiable. But this is not the case. On the contrary, he presents as fact a great many happenings that are either not part of the historical record, or are simply contrary to it (for some details, see www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who trusts us to tell the truth”: much more is available elsewhere on the web).
Peter Popham’s article mentioned above demonstrates the cavalier treatment of historical truth which characterises Dan Brown and his admirers. The article contrasts a sensual and provocative picture of Mary Magdalene which has recently gone of show at Ancona in Northern Italy, with Leonardo’s chaste and enigmatic Mona Lisa. Now the plot thickens. The Magdalene is normally attributed to Giampietrino, a pupil of Leonardo. But Popham quotes a certain Carlo Pedretti, who we is a “Leonardo expert”, who thinks that the figure normally regarded as John the Baptist is Leonardo’s Last Supper is actually a portrait of Mary Magdalene. Dan Brown and Carlo Pedretti are just about the only people who actually think this may be true. Pedretti thinks that there is a strong case for ascribing the Magdalene portrait to Leonardo himself. Peter Popham piles further speculation on to this by saying that it would be no surprise if Leonardo, who carried round with him the Mona Lisa because he was so fond of it, also took along the Magdalene, with its “shame-free eroticism”. Really? Hardly anybody is willing to state that Leonardo actually painted the Magdalene – even Giampetrino only floats it as an idea worthy of further investigation. Popham has built onto this the speculation that Leonardo actually carried it with him everywhere! He concludes with a speculative question, “Did Leonardo depict Mary Magdalene in the act of seducing Jesus?”
Why should anyone find this kind of nonsense even remotely plausible – and why is it worth space in Newspapers all over the world?
What Dan Brown has succeeded in doing is to give a platform to all those post-Christians in the West who harbour a grudge against the church, and who find that the rise of feminism provides them with a convenient stick with which to beat the church. Brown angles his attack with some cunning: ostensively it is on the Roman Catholic Church and the Opus Day order which are targets of his attack. Protestants appear to get an easier ride. However, his fanciful rewriting of the story of Mary Magdalene is also a re-writing of the story of Jesus, and one that is completely destructive of any kind of Christian faith. I say this not because Jesus could not have married, or that if he had it would have somehow disproved his divine status (see www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who is part of the human story and shares our human experience”). But the Jesus of the gospels is the Jesus whom God raised from the dead. The story of the resurrection and the account of commissioning of his followers to reach out to all humankind and to include all within his new community of love and peace are central to the New Testament as a whole, and to the four gospels in particular. This is totally incompatible with a story about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and secretly establishing a dynasty. It is the very bedrock of Christianity which is at stake here.
It might seem odd that after nearly 200 years of critical study of the Bible, and the exploration and rejection of all sorts of fanciful reconstructions of Christian origins which attempt to displace the resurrection and the church from the central role in Christianity attributed to them by the New Testament, an even wilder suggestion should gain a hearing across the western world. The difference is that earlier speculations were intended to be taken seriously, and studied seriously. Brown is offering us a sort of joke – one can easily imagine him saying, “But isn’t it amusing to tell this sort of story about Jesus, and to give the old fogies who will be shocked a bit of a fright?” And then, if we attempt a serious response, no doubt we will be told, “It’s only a novel, it’s only a bit of fun”.
It may be a bit of fun, but if so it is a joke in very bad taste. Just now, it may seem acceptable because of the immense power of the feminist lobby in western culture, and the growth of post-Christian new age thinking which is in reaction against the perceived patriarchalism of traditional Christianity. This is a rather sleazy kind of joke. Let us hope it is quickly forgotten.
Theo Simpson
See also www.theologon.org.uk and select one-page document  “a God who trusts us to tell the truth” and
www.theologon.org.uk and one-page document  “a God who is part of the human story and shares our human experience”)