Secrets behind 'The Da Vinci Code'

Stone Phillips Anchor • Profile

Inside the Louvre Museum, under the mysterious gaze of the Mona Lisa, a museum curator is gunned down. In his dying moments, he leaves behind a bizarre trail of clues, some written in his own blood. The gunman is a towering albino monk, but police suspect the murderer is a Harvard professor of religious symbols and art.

As the professor races off into the Paris night to prove his innocence, he embarks on a journey through ancient history, art, and the Bible, and the discovery of dangerous truths hidden for 2,000 years -- secrets, that if revealed, could "devastate the very foundation of Christianity."

That scene, from the opening pages of “The Da Vinci Code” is, of course, fiction. But readers are told right from the start that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." That provocative statement gives an air of credibility to the book's elaborate conspiracy theories and it's caused millions of readers to wonder how much they really know about Jesus and a woman named Mary Magdalene.

"Fiction, as if it were fact, as if it were history, and say 'Well, this really rocks my world? What I’ve always come to understand about Jesus and the Catholic church is suddenly everything’s up for grabs and that shakes a lot of people up,” says NBC News analyst Father Thomas Williams of Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.

In the book, the monk kills the curator in a quest for the legendary Holy Grail, a mythical vessel often thought of as the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. But in “The Da Vinci Code,” the grail takes on an entirely new meaning. It might not be a cup at al, but a secret, the author suggests, that would radically change our understanding of Jesus and the life he led.

To understand that secret and to separate fact from fiction in “The Da Vinci Code,” we pieced together a portrait of the novel's key figure, a woman who lived 2,000 years ago: Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene was born, it is believed, in the town of Magdala, a fishing village on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. She lives in our memory as the Biblical figure with the flowing red hair, a fallen woman until she is forgiven by Jesus.

Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King is an authority on women's roles in the early church and author of a recent book on Mary Magdalene.

Stone Phillips, Dateline correspondent: How important do you think she was to Jesus?

Karen King, Harvard Divinity School professor: Mary Magdalene had to be one of the most important people in Jesus' life. And she's said to be the first witness to the resurrection. That role in his story places her at the center of the Christian message, and, one has to assume, at the center of Jesus' life.

Few scholars doubt that Mary was an important follower, but there is another label that has stubbornly shadowed her through the ages -- prostitute.

Phillips: Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?

Dr. Ben Witherington, III, Asbury Theological Seminary: No. No, she wasn't. In no text in the New Testament is Mary Magdalene ever said to be an adulterer or a sinful woman.

Even so, in a 6th century Easter sermon, Pope Gregory the Great declared that Mary was a prostitute. Why would he do that? Many believe he simply mixed her up with another Bible figure, an unnamed prostitute who appears just before Mary is introduced in the Book of Luke.

Bart Ehrman, author of "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code": They’re clearly different women. But Pope Gregory the Great identified the two and said they were the same. And from that point on, in the 6th century, it came to be thought that Mary Magdalene must have been a prostitute.

But the novel's professor, who's trying to unravel the mystery of the grail, suggests something more sinister behind the slander: a conspiracy by the church to hide the true nature of Mary's relationship to Jesus. The fictional professor points to some tantalizing clues, buried in the sand for almost 1,600 years, that help explain Mary's secret connection to the grail. They're clues that are, in fact, based on something real.

In December 1945 near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, a peasant smashed open an earthenware jar and pulled out more than 50 ancient texts hidden since the 4th century. “The Da Vinci Code” refers to them as scrolls, but they are, in fact, leather bound books, part of a collection known as the Gnostic Gospels. These texts have never been recognized by the church, but some scholars say they contain revealing new insights about Mary.

King: We get these later Gospels that elaborate on these possibilities for what Jesus may have told Mary. And later tradition also sees her as someone who was a leader in the church. And that set of images, make for a strong figure.

Phillips: Not the shy, retiring, passive type?

King: Not the shy retiring, passive type.

In these more recently discovered alternative Gospels, Mary emerges as a kind of original feminist, Jesus' most trusted disciple and advisor, and a rival to the apostle Peter, the fisherman thought to be the first head of the church.

Phillips: I think most people will be surprised to hear that there is a gospel in which she is foremost among the Apostles.

King: According to this Gospel, Mary was the disciple who understood. She was the one who was able to carry on Jesus' teachings.

Phillips: She got it.

King: And to preach the Gospel. She got it.

The novel says passages of the once secret books depict Mary as the true heir to Jesus' church and a threat to its male leaders. But many, like noted Evangelical scholar Darrell Bock, say that's misreading the text.

Dr. Darrell Bock is research professor of New Testament Studies and professor of Spiritual Development and Culture at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Darrell Bock: Now Mary Magdalene is a very important figure in the early church and in the Bible. But it is a misrepresentation to suggest that she held some kind of formal office or had some formal teaching role. We have no real evidence of that at all.

As it is with most figures from the Bible, the portrait of Mary is incomplete. Her life is a puzzle with some intriguing pieces; a scrap of parchment, a few lines in an ancient manuscript. The novel says the truth about Mary and her link to the Holy Grail is "everywhere once you open your eyes..." including some of the world's greatest works of art. You just have to know how to read the clues.

Phillips: According to this book, "The Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci, holds the key to the mystery of the Holy Grail.

David Nolta, art historian: It's the crucial image in ‘The Da Vinci Code.’

Are the clues in a crucial image, hiding in plain sight— revealing the dangerous secret behind “The Da Vinci Code”? The bond between Mary and Jesus may have run far deeper than anyone imaged.

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