Book Review: The DaVinci Code. And a Mormon Girl's Take on The DaVinci Code.

“History is always written by the winners...By its very nature, its always a one-sided account” 

 

Another book review.  I like reading books. What can I say? Anyhow, this one has some interesting things beyond the book to talk about.  So, at the beginning, there will be the regular book review, followed by a second section that will be called "A Mormon Girl's Take on The DaVinci Code. 

Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist (a non-existent thing, but whatever), is in Paris when he is woken very rudely by the DCPJ--the French FBI. The curator of the Louvre has been murdered.  But the man left behind a vast expanse of complicated clues and codes.  What could they all possibly mean?  As the code unravels, Langdon learns that it may not be just the ravings of a dying man, and that it wasn't nonsensical, or just about his death.  It may shake the very foundations of the modern world. What follows is a fast-paced search around Europe to learn what the code means.

 

 I was intrigued.  It was very cleverly done most of the time and had some good thoughts (though sometimes frustrating...but we'll get to that).  I was sometimes frustrated when I got to a place where they could just say, "Oh, of course...the Ancient Codex of X shows us that this means this if we rearrange the letters in this excessively long phrase," but then sometimes I wanted to go, "Really.  You haven't figured this out.  It's so easy, you moron!" And then when they figure it out they all go, "He was a genius!"  Not really.  I figured that one out 10 chapters ago, and I definitely am not good at solving these types of puzzles, whereas you have a Harvard symbologist and a DCPJ crytographer.  Just saying.  

   

The last book I read before this was about the different strengths that dyslexics show and they said that a lot of dyslexics have dynamic thought which means that they are very good at predicting where stories or events go, or presuming what led up to a certain event.  There were some of the thought processes that I did have, even though I'm not dyslexic which the book said could happen to non-dyslexic-immediate-family-members-of-dyslexics. This trait was not one I had.  I am bad at predicting stories.  And yet, sometimes it was so predictable.  On the other hand, sometimes it was so unpredictable and one mystery had me guessing the entire book. 

I will say that the end isn't quite as critical of Christianity as people make it out to be (and as much as I thought it was going to be as I read it and where I thought it was going with it), but it does portray Christianity as something that makes people better, but something that isn't really real.

 

 Intriguing and rather clever, I go back and forth between 3 and 4 stars.  Seriously, I keep on changing my mind.  The last riddle to open the final cryptex was so obvious that I solved it almost as soon as it was presented (all of it), but the characters took all this time to figure it out that it was just kind of disappointing for the last riddle.  And the final motivations of the villain were kind of not-defined.  I did however think its final approach towards religion was intriguing.

 

 So, at the moment.  3 stars. But I go back and forth.

 

AND NOW, for the next piece, I must warn you that it will be impossible to have these thoughts without spoiling pieces of the story.  I do not give you the end, or the identity of the villain or anything like that. But some pieces that unravel as the story goes on will be included.  I must also give this disclaimer: I am Mormon--or a Latter-day Saint.   But I am not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church).  I do not speak for the LDS Church.  There are many things in our faith out in the outskirts of the speculation (such as where some of this book dwells) that there is no official doctrine on.  I hope that my thoughts are in line with the LDS Church, but I do not speak for it. 

Also I know that The DaVinci Code deals with the Catholic Church and not specifically Mormonism.  I can't say anything about Catholic doctrine. I'm not Catholic.  However, if he was only talking about Catholicism, he shouldn't have always referred to it as Christianity.  Since I am Christian, I am entitled to respond to the sometimes unfair accusations against Christianity.  It is, however, worth noting that as a Mormon, I do not believe that my religion stemmed out of Catholicism in any way shape or form.  We are a Restorationist sect of Christianity, not Reformationist.  This means that we believe that we are skipping over Catholicism, back to the original Church of Christ, and are not attempting to reform Christianity, but restore it.

That being said, here we have A Mormon Girl's Take on The DaVinci Code

When I was in high school a very close friend of mine caught me on a bad day and told me that, essentially, my form of morality as a religious person was lesser than his as an atheist, because I was a deontologist (someone who believes that there is right and wrong because some higher being said so).  Now, I probably see that what he was doing was pushing back against that argument that I hear all too frequently from religious people that atheists can’t have morals because they don’t believe in God, which is, of course, ridiculous.  I pushed back, probably not as kindly as I should have (I was tired), and said, “That’s not true.”  He tried to argue with me and convince me for awhile before I had the chance to explain. “It’s not true because I don’t believe that God created right and wrong.  I believe that right and wrong exist inherently, that God is just as bound by them as we are, and that God, in His perfect knowledge and love, directs our paths to the right and away from the wrong.  But He didn’t create them.”  He stood there for a moment, dumbstruck.  The problem wasn’t that his logic was flawed.  The problem was that he was making conclusions from false, generalized premises. I’m not a deontologist.  Because he didn’t understand my belief.

A lot of reading the DaVinci code was like that. I agree with the premise B they set out, but not the premise A they assume I hold.  Therefore, A+B doesn’t equal C.  It actually equals D.

1. They set forth that because Christians believe Eve was evil, the Catholic Church had to wipe out goddess worship and the belief in the divine feminine.  It's sound logic with those premises, but here’s the problem.  I admit that I don’t follow other forms of Christianity, so I actually don’t know their whole relationship with Eve outside of what I’ve heard externally.  But I can tell you that the problem with this statement for a Mormon is that we don’t find Eve evil. In fact, we believe that Eve made a good choice.  (And that is doctrine).  And we do believe in the divine feminine. 
2. They claim that the Church, in order to malign womanhood removed Eve from the creator role.  After studying Mormon doctrine, you wouldn’t say that.  Because…we don’t believe that Eve was literally formed from Adam’s rib (which is how the book says they rearranged the creating order) and we oftentimes praise Eve as the ultimate mother and the reason we have life.
3. They say that if you know the truth about the divinity of womanhood, you must worship all the pagan female goddesses.  I actually, personally, believe that all the goddess worship of pagan religions is redirected veneration of the divinity of women (Eve, our Heavenly Mother (whoever she is), etc).  But that doesn’t mean that I worship Horus, or Isis, or Venus, or Aphrodite, or fill in the blank female goddess.  If I believe that they are non-malicious counterfeits of the divine feminine, why would I worship them?
4. They claim that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ, and that the Christian Church maligned Mary Magdalene and wiped out her marriage to Christ because him being married and having children would make him mortal and therefore not divine.  See, there’s a flawed premise here.  And I’ll explain why.

Do I believe that Christ was married?  Let me share an experience from my childhood.  I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember the gist.  Let me remind you that I grew up in a completely Mormon household.  Myself, my parents and all my siblings (and their spouses and children) are currently practicing Mormons.  This doesn’t mean that all of our beliefs are official doctrine, but…it does mean that you can be in the Mormon faith and hold these beliefs fully.

I was about ten, I think.  I went to my mom and said, “Mom.  Was Jesus

married?”  Her response?  “I think he probably was.”  Here’s why my mother said that (or, as an adult, why I think she said that…she can correct me if I’m wrong).  In Mormonism we do not find marriage, sex or procreation to be a necessary evil.  We find it to be the most beautiful arrangement of the kingdom of God, the highest form of godhood (you are creating CHILDREN OF GOD!  That is the work of the divine (just like Dan Brown says Pagans approached it)), and a commandment.  We also believe that the reason Christ asked John the Baptist to baptize him was because he had to follow all the commandments, or else He could not be perfect or divine and therefore unfit to be the perfect lamb for the sacrifice of the Atonement.  So, it makes sense that Jesus was also married.  And Him being married and having children, to me, would not make him mortal.  It would complete His divinity. 

            So I don’t know if Mary Magdalene was Christ’s wife.  I think it’s extremely possible (especially since she is the first one to whom He appears as a resurrected being), but I really don’t know.  But I kind of do believe that Christ was married to someone.

5. The book even contradicts itself because it concedes that the Jewish culture venerated women and marriage (and uses that as evidence for why Jesus would be married), but also attacks the fact that they don’t have female rabbis in the Orthodox sects. And there they fall into the same trap as the Ordain Women movement.  Not having women be the presiding leaders doesn’t mean that they do not have divinity, or that they are not venerated.  Might also add that marriage is a necessary prelude to full priesthood in Mormonism. Marriage, not celibacy, is seen as higher.
6. At one point in the book it non-explicitly explains that those who worship the feminine divine as well as the male divine practice a ritualized and public sexual intercourse.  Another one of their flawed pieces of logic:  If the union of male and female is divine, then sex is divine, and then ritualized, public sex is understandable and, in fact, beautiful.  Huh? See here’s how I would read that sentence. 

-The union of male and female is divine…I agree.

-Then sex is divine…okay, I follow. I agree

-Then ritualized and public sex is understandable and beautiful…wait what?

            Here is my logic train

           

                        -The union of male and female is divine.

                        -Thus sex is divine

                        -Thus sex is sacred

                        -Thus to practice it publicly or make it a group-activity is sacrilege and a defacement
of the divine

They also suggest that sexual union can be almost a form of prayer and communion with the divine.  I don't disagree with that, necessarily, but it still doesn't make it a group activity.

7. Yet another piece of flawed logic.  The Bible was written by men, therefore we can use documents written by other men to disprove the historical accuracy thereof.  I agree that the Bible was written by men (see the 8^th Article of Faith) and therefore subject to possible inaccuracy.  In fact, one thing that I learned once while I was studying Evangelical Christianity in a class at BYU: so do they!  We phrase it differently, but their Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy acknowledges that the Bible could have been tampered with, and they believe in its original form--the main difference being they believe that the original form is represented by modern translations, where Mormons believe that most of it is, but not all.  (Article X of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy “WE AFFIRM  that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.”)

But if the Bible was tampered with, why not any of the other documents that these people use to discount the Bible?

8.  The symbols of Christianity bear striking resemblance to symbols of Paganism, thus Christianity is a man-made construct building upon the existing religions.  Flawed logic, and here’s why:  I believe that Christ’s mission was, and is, eternal. So even though His atonement and life had not taken place at the advent of pagan religions, the prophecy of it had.  Therefore, I believe that because Pagan symbols bear a striking resemblance to Christianity, Paganism is a man-made construct building upon the true religion they all started at.


9.  Not so much a Mormon response, but why does the book go on and on about how the Catholic Church had to remove goddess worship because you couldn't have a divine woman, but then one major criticism I hear of Catholicism is that they have elevated the Virgin Mary to near-god status.   They even pray to her.  So, if you have the Mother of Christ as a goddess, why not the wife?

I just had to say these things. It was frustrating reading these accusations that I so wanted to respond to, but couldn't.

All this being said, I realize of course, that it is fiction. It's a novel.  It's not real.  In fact, some of the facts are wrong or inconsistent with real history (for example, Sir Isaac Newton died a virgin...physiologically recorded).  But, just because it's a novel, doesn't mean that some real-world things can't be maligned by it.  And I wanted to put these thoughts out there.

So there you have it.