Mrs. Jesus
The most provocative assertion of the Da Vinci conspiracy is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a secret marriage, resulting in a child that perpetuated his bloodline. Furthermore, Mary Magdalene’s womb, carrying Jesus’ offspring, is presented in the book as the legendary Holy Grail, a secret closely held by a Catholic organization called the Priory of Sion. Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci were all cited in the book as members of this secret organization.
Romance. Scandal. Intrigue. Great stuff for a conspiracy theory. But is it true? Let’s look at what scholars say.
A Newsweek magazine article, that summarized leading scholars’ opinions, concluded that the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were secretly married has no historical basis.15 The proposal set forth in The Da Vinci Code is built primarily upon one solitary verse in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip that indicates Jesus and Mary were companions.
In the book, Teabing tries to build a case that the word for companion (koinonos) could mean spouse.16 But Teabing’s theory is not accepted by scholars.
There is also a single verse in the Gospel of Philip that says Jesus kissed Mary. Greeting friends with a kiss was common in the 1st century and had no sexual connotation. There is no historical document to confirm its theory that Jesus and Mary had a marital relationship. And since the Gospel of Philip is a forged document written 150-220 years after Christ by an unknown author, its statement about Jesus isn’t historically reliable.
The “Secret” Documents
But what about Teabing’s disclosure that “thousands of secret documents” prove that Christianity is a hoax? Could this be true?
If there were such documents, scholars opposed to Christianity would have a field day with them. Fraudulent writings that were rejected by the early church for heretical views are not secret, having been known about for centuries. No surprise there. They have never been considered part of the authentic writings of the apostles.
And if the book’s expert, Teabing, is referring to the apocryphal, or Gnostic Gospels, they are not secret, nor do they disprove Christianity. New Testament scholar Raymond Brown has said of the Gnostic gospels,
We learn not a single verifiable new fact about the historical Jesus’ ministry, and only a few new sayings that might possibly have been his.”17
The historical evidence reveals that Jesus’ followers believed in his deity from the time of the resurrection and early church history. The true church never deviated from the eyewitness accounts recorded in the New Testament. And although conspiracy theories like The Da Vinci Code attack the validity of the New Testament, scholars deem it the most reliable of all ancient writings. As New Testament Historian F. F. Bruce explains,
There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.”18
New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger revealed why the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas was not accepted by the early church:
It is not right to say that the Gospel of Thomas was excluded by some fiat on the part of a council: the right way to put it is, the Gospel of Thomas excluded itself! It did not harmonize with other testimony about Jesus that early Christians accepted as trustworthy.19
Click here to read page 10 of 10 of “Was there a Jesus Conspiracy?”