What Da Vinci Didn’t Know: An LDS Perspective

reviewed by Robert Pritchett

The authors of What Da Vinci Didn’t Know: An LDS Perspective separate fact from fiction by combining their findings instead of creating 3 separate books on the topic of Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/reviews.html and not Ron Howard’s movie of the same name.

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thedavincicode/

They don’t make assumptions or bend towards speculation of any kind. They just go with knowledge based on fact and have end notes, a bibliography as well as an index.  The chapters are short and cover how history is approached, the suppression of early Christian texts, whether or not the Savior was married (yes he was, but no speculation as to who His wife or wives were), the search for the holy grail, the story of Mary Magdalene, Leonardo’s The Last Supper, and women in early Christianity. 

And their conclusion? The book is carefully orchestrated to attack the divinity of the Saviour and His role as Redeemer of mankind. The legitimacy of the early Christian church is denigrated along with the integrity of the canonical New Testament, the existence of God the Father and His son, Jesus the Christ, the commandment of Chastity and the authority of the original 12 Apostles. The book by Dan Brown passes of fiction as though it were fact and “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals…are accurate” may indeed not necessarily be so. At best it is Christian revisionist history, at worst, it denigrates the God of this world. After all it really is a work of fiction and should be treated as such.

The Lord will reveal in His own good time who His wife or wives were and who His children were and are. There is good reason why those facts are hidden from the public view. After all, religious wars have been fought for centuries over much less.

Was the Saviour married? Yes. To whom, we do not have the texts that would tell us at this time. We have a fairly good idea, but we don’t preach it as Gospel. Is that information laying around somewhere? No doubt. We continue to find ancient records and we know that there are sealed records that humanity is not ready or purified enough yet to be shown. We’ve been promised that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. Some things are not so important. Like if He had any mortal offspring. Supplanting the divinity of the Son of God with the Sacred Feminine would be considered heresy in earlier times. It still would be. Our understanding is that we may become like Him after this life – as families.

What Da Vinci Didn’t Know does an excellent job showing which books were suppressed and shows what is and is not in the Nag Hamadi texts, whether or not Constantine was converted and most importantly, the concept of marriage and the Saviour from a Latter-day Saint perspective. We know he was married or He would have been a hypocrite on the sacredness of Family. He would not ask us to do something He Himself would not have done, right? Just like we have a Heavenly Mother or mothers, along with a Heavenly Father and we are their spiritual children brought to earth to experience mortality before we all “go home” to them after this life.

May we be found worthy to do so. ;^)

Digging Deeper

http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/davinci/

The movie trailer:

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thedavincicode/

So who won the Da Vinci Code contest? http://googlefact.blogspot.com/ The last sequence of the Code spelled A.P.P.L.E.

Sandra Miesel quashes Dan Brown’s book grandly at

 http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm

Collin Hansen does more debunking here

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov14.html

Priori of Sion Demythified  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion