The Da Vinci Hoax (13)

Miscellaneous Errors

The name Jehovah

Brown claims that "the Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH - the sacred name of God - is derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Habraic name for Eve, Havah" (p. 309).

Any Scripture student could tell him, Jehovah is actually an English word. It appears nowhere in Hebrew or Greek versions of the Bible. It did not even exist until about the 13th century and became popular in the 16th century with the King James Version of the Bible. It is a rendering of the English four letters that most closely represent the four Hebrew characters designating God's name, YHWH, combined with the vowels of Adonai ("Lord").

Opus Dei

Paul Bettany as Silas the monk

Brown's depicts his albino killer, Silas, as a monk of Opus Dei.

In fact, there are no monks in Opus Dei, which has primarily lay membership and whose celibate lay members are called numeraries. It has its own priests who minister to the members.

Brown calls Opus Dei "a personal prelature of the Pope himself" (p. 30). The term personal prelature does not refer to a special relationship to the Pope (like some private army) but means an institution in which the jurisdiction of the prelate is not linked to a territory but is over persons, wherever they are.

Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder & first Prelate of Opus Dei

While some of its members do practice traditional forms of mortification they do not mutilate their bodies. Neither is there any evidence that they bailed out the Church during the Vatican Bank Scandal.

Tarot Cards

  

Brown claims "originally, Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church" (p. 92).

While many hermetic claims are made as to their origin historically the earliest extant specimens of Tarot decks are of North Italian origin and date to the early 15th century. These were called carte da trionfi or "cards of the triumphs." They were soon being used for a game called Tarocchi. Tarot cards are still used in a number of European countries to play different versions of the game. Their association with esoteric studies appears to have come about in the 1780s, when occult philosophers mistakenly associated the symbols on Tarot cards with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Goddess Worship

Brown claims that goddess worship universally dominated pre-Christian paganism with the hieros gamos (sacred marriage or sexual union) as its central rite.

In fact, goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world-not in the religions of Rome, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice.

There is no indication the ancient world was permeated by sacred feminine cult. The ancients were genuine polytheists. They did not believe that the many gods and goddesses they worshipped merely represented different aspects of single deities. In that respect they were more like animists peoples today. The gods and goddesses have specific domains of power over human activity. Aphrodite/Venus presided over love, Artemis/Diana over hunting and childbirth, Ares/Mars over war, etc. (Philip Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality, 1998)

The Dead Sea Scrolls



Brown has his character Teabing state that, "some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950's hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert" (p. 234).

The Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian documents at all, let alone Christian gospel accounts. They are Jewish writings. Some think they may have belonged to the Jewish sect called the Essenes. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in more than one cave, beginning in 1947 not the 1950s.

The Olympic Games

The assertion that the original Olympic Games were held "as a tribute to the magic of Venus" every 8 years (p, 36).

Although the origins of the Olympic festivals remain in obscurity, it has been well documented that they were religious festivals in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Venus, and occurred every four years - just like today. Further, "Venus" is the Roman version of the name for the goddess of love. The Greek name for her is Aphrodite.

Astronomy

Brown originally depicted the star Venus as visible in the east shortly after sunset (p. 448). This is an astronomical impossibility. It was corrected to "west" in later editions.

Likewise Brown characterized the cycle of Venus as tracing "a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years," but Venus completes five cycles in eight years. This too was changed to "eight years" in later editions.

Krishna

Brown contends that at the birth of Krishna the Hindu god was given gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (p. 232).

The story of the Hindu deity Krishna's birth and the presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh apparently comes from Kersey Graves and The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. Graves conveniently provided no sources or citations, which is one of many reasons his book has been long been discredited by scholars working in the field of comparative religion. There's good reason for this absence of evidence. The Bhagavad-Gita (first century AD) doesn't mention Krishna's childhood, and the stories of Krishna's childhood recorded in the Harivamsa Purana (c. AD 300) and the Bhagavata Purana (c. AD 800-900) don't mention the gifts.

Pictographs of Isis and Horus

Brown has Langdon say, "Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus" (p. 232).

It's a curious statement since any sensible person recognizes that the image of a baby with its nursing mother is hardly unique to one religion or culture.

Pagan Sunday

Brown's character Teabing states, "Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." (p. 232). Langdon concurs declaring that originally Christians worshipped on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but changed to Sunday under Constantine's influence so that it would "coincide with the pagan's veneration day of the sun" (p. 232-3).

The Christians by New Testament times were already worshipping on Sunday, or the "day of the Lord," as it is described in Revelation 1:10. This was to honor the day that Christ rose from the dead. This practice is referred to in Acts 20:7: "And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread." Ignatius of Antioch, writing around AD 110, declares, "They no longer observe the Jewish Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord's day, on which, through Him and through His death, our life arose" (Epistle to the Magnesians, chapter 9). Around the year AD 112 Pliny, governor of the province of Bithynia, wrote to the Roman Emperor Trajan that the Christian communities came together twice on a Sunday for worship.

Constantine's Baptism

The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his wish (p. 232).

One wonders who could force an emperor to be baptized? Eusebius of Caesarea wrote the Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini). It is written as a eulogy and so suffers from inherent prejudices. He was, however, Constantine's biographer and gives us an account of the Emperor's baptism. He says Constantine had desired to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River where Jesus had been baptized but was instead baptized on his deathbed in Nicodemia not long after Easter of 337. His biographer relates: "When he thought that he was near his death, he confessed his sins, desiring pardon for them from God, and was baptized." Constantine died a few days later. It was common for Christians at the time to put off baptism until their deathbed. Serious sins committed after baptism would require severe penance, so some considered it safer to wait until the end of life to be baptized.

Left-handedness

On page 125 Brown says, "Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church's defamation." He blames the Church on the French and Italian languages having words for "left" with negative overtones (gauche and sinistra).

However, the association of "left" with terms such as "sinister" and other negative overtones is older than Christianity. The pre-Christian Latin word for left was sinister, with negative implications, and the word for right was dexter, with positive implications. A negative connotation associated with the left exists in many cultures as diverse as Hinduism and Zulu.

Paris and the Merovingians

It is Teabing who informs Sophie that Paris was founded by the Merovingians (p. 257). The Merovingians were the rulers of the Franks, a Germanic people who conquered what is now France in the late fifth century. Archeologists have established that the Gauls settled Paris by the 3rd Century BC. The Romans, who knew it as Lutetia, captured it in 52 BC under Julius Caesar. This means that by the time of the Merovingian dynasty Paris was already seven hundred or more years old.

The Louvre Pyramid

The book states that at the explicit demand of French President François Mitterrand, the Louvre Pyramid in Paris was constructed with 666 panes of glass (p. 21).

The pyramid actually contains 603 diamond-shaped and 70 triangular panes of glass, for a total of 673. Any number of readily available sources could have easily supplied Brown with the correct specifications. This is simply more evidence that for all his claimed research and concern for accuracy Brown shows himself incredibly unreliable.

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