Please Accept This Emotional Appeal

With the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard film on its way in May, we're headed into another season of media attention for the Da Vinci Code and its claims about Jesus and early Christianity. It will be hard to miss interviews with scholars, pseudo-scholars, the man-in-the-street, and maybe even a rare interview with Dan Brown himself. Our course, I'd like to weigh-in on these heady issues myself, using this forum. But tonight I won't. I have a number of (I'd like to think) well-argued, thoughtful responses to Browns' claims that (1) no one believed Jesus was God until after 325 A.D., 2) Constantine commissioned the writing of the New Testament, 3) Jesus was once widely known to have had children with Mary Magdalene; 4) the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls threaten Christian orthodoxy, and 5) the Gnostic Gospels are better sources of historical information about Jesus than the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). Yes, I've got a few things to say about all these things -- but so do, and so have, many other scholars. And, frankly, it doesn't take particularly savvy scholarship to answer many of Brown's claims -- rather, it takes an hour-and-a-half at your nearest public library.
So, instead of a scholarly response, I'd like to draw on all of the trust capital I may have earned with you, gentle reader. I'd like to make a direct appeal to any amount of credibility my education warrants, a plea for consideration based on the simple assurance that I am a generally reasonable person. All of these appeals in order to say: please, please, please believe that what the Da Vinci Code says about Jesus Christ and ancient Christianity is just sheer poppycock. Really, just an incredible pile of unwarranted silliness. I'm not making an argument here, I'm making an emotional appeal. Even anti-Christian scholars wouldn't think of trying to publish most of Brown's stuff in a respected journal. The problem with a lot of the media coverage is that, in the name of objectivity, I suppose, Brown's ideas are introduced as some kind of "fresh perspectives" that are "at least worth considering." Even non-committal talk show hosts want to allow that Brown is at least "thoughtfully examining long-held beliefs." But I'm here tonight, writing way past my bedtime, to say, 'No, no, no,' Dan Brown is not "onto something" here, or even "at least asking hard questions." He's not really asking questions at all, he's making deeply, deeply ridiculous claims through the extended monologues of his characters.
People speak of the sin of "heretical" claims, or the mistake of "ahistorical" claims, but what's at issue here is first, simply, "ridiculous" claims. No one believed in Jesus' divinity until after the Council of Nicea in 325? How does one even begin to answer such an outlandish assertion? The first challenge, certainly, would be to even keep a straight face while trying to make reference to the thousands of parchments that pre-date Nicea that would prove such a belief was widespread -- but now I'm actually making an argument. Brown's ideas in The DaVinci Code are not just wrong -- for you can be earnest, well-researched, and still make wrong conclusions. They are not even exactly devious, for that would suggest some kind of clever manipulation of the data. To date, the best word I've come up with is "ridiculous." Please, please, trust me on this one unless you are planning to pick up one of the many published rebuttals. If you are, my favorite is Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel's The DaVinci Hoax. Until then, I hope that while you may never think of me as the single most discerning, brillliant, penetrating thinker you've ever encountered, you'll at least trust me in this: I know cookoo-rookoo when I read it.