The Faulty History of the DaVinci Code
{Note: Lord willing, next month the special topic article will be a fuller
treatment of "The DaVinci Code". Note this month's special topic article "What
is the Gospel of Judas" for a related article}.
Though there are others, four excellently preserved ancient manuscripts dating
from about 200 AD completely disprove the contention made in "The DaVinci
Code" that no one thought of Jesus as Lord until the Council of Nicea in 325
AD. Constantine, in a shrewd political move, joined with church leaders and
doctored and altered manuscripts, and changed the thoughts of the world about
the nature of Jesus. That is supposedly the genuine historical setup for the
novel and the movie.
That is the point. The fiction in The DaVinci Code story is supposedly
based on genuine history. If so, faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior; Son of God
and the source of our eternal hope is vain. He was nothing more than a
philosopher who married Mary Magdalene and had children and they grew old
together.
But discoveries of ancient, undoctored manuscripts prove that not only is the
story of the DaVinci Code fiction, it is also based on fictional history as
well.
Papyrus Bodmer II (around 200 AD) -
contains most of John's Gospel: 1:1--6:11; 6:35--14:26, 29-30; 15:2-26; 16:2-4,
6-7, 16:10--20:20, 22-23, 20:25--21:9. This manuscript consists of 75 leaves as
well as some fragments. Bible students familiar with this text will quickly
realize that this manuscript includes the wonderful identification of Jesus as
the Word made flesh; that He pre-existed His incarnation in the flesh; that He
was with God and was God before the creation of the world (John 1:1-3; 14).
The DaVinci Code is built on a faulty premise that no manuscripts ever read
this way before 325 AD. Modern belief of faithful Christians about Jesus is
correct. The DaVinci Code is wrong!
There is, in fact, over 5,000 existent ancient Greek manuscripts of the New
Testament. Three other very notable ones are the
Chester Beatty manuscripts, so named
in honor of their discoverer who found them in Egypt in 1930. They also date
from around 200 AD, again long before the Council of Nicea. They are:
P 45 was originally a codex which
contained all Four Gospels and the Book of Acts. Unfortunately, what has
survived are two leaves of Matthew, seven of Luke, two of John, and thirteen of
Acts.
P 46 consists of eighty-six nearly
perfect leaves, out of a total of 104, which contain Paul's epistles. Philemon
and the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy, Titus are missing, but Hebrews is
included.
P 47 contains Revelation 9:10 to
17:2, except one or more lines is missing from the top of each page. This
constitutes a little under half of the book of Revelation.
Again, these wonderful documents prove that our faith in Jesus as God's Son was
not an invention of the Council of Nicea. The sad thing is that many are being
led to believe that the historical background to "The DaVinci Code" is
accurate, and if it is, then Jesus is not who we have thought Him to be. But the
background history is not true, and that is provable.
