The Questions of the Da Vinci Code

The Questions of the Da Vinci Code
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
June 9, 2006  

Long before the movie was released, I was intrigued over the whole hoopla surrounding the book The Da Vinci Code. But I didn't have time to read the book, so I bought a special collector's edition of U.S News and World Report entitled "Secrets of the Da Vinci Code." As release of the movie neared, all kinds of articles began appearing and boycotts and protests were announced, so I dug deeper into the issues surrounding the movie. Finally I was left with no choice but to actually go and see it. Not being employed as a movie critic, take my words as you wish. I guess the book is better than the movie considering its sales, and its rating of 1 ½ stars was probably a little high.  But there are serious questions that can be and need to be asked and answered about such a book and movie. They raise questions of substance that are aimed at any and every faith, Judaism as well. From a long list let me indicate the following:

1. How did a faith begin?
2. How does its story get told?
3. Are our Tanakh and the New Testament the complete record of the faiths?
4. Is anybody hiding anything?
5. How/why/why not to believe in that which faith proclaims?

The language of my questions might seem strange but it should not be if you take faith seriously. If you relate to Judaism as a system of does/don'ts/responsive readings/sits and stands/ without the substance of its faith, then all this is extraneous and irrelevant. But if you take faith seriously, then these are core questions. Maybe this book and movie excited many people because it raised a lot of questions about Christianity. I will let their representatives propose their answers. I will address these from Judaism's prospective.

1. How does a faith begin? We only know the answer that the faith itself provides. How did Judaism begin? We look into the Torah and it tells us about Abraham hearing God's voice commanding him to leave his home and go on a journey. The Rabbis living more than a thousand years later asked this same question and answered it with the midrashim of Abraham smashing his father's idols and his looking at the moon and sun and realizing that there was a power greater than both of them. Beyond that we don't know and we cannot know. The birth of a faith community is a mystery. We cannot know why a faith appears on the scene of history. To a point, it is irrelevant. The Torah's focus is on Abraham's mission which is our mission. What are important are the content,message, and the history of the faith community. For Judaism what is important is our belief that Abraham's family and his descendants, us, were chosen for reasons only God knows, to proclaim to the world a belief in the One God who demands just, righteous and sacred living. The history of the Jewish people is the history of the faith. Our existence and history is only relevant to the world and ourselves when we are bearers and proclaimers of the faith.
2. How does the story get told? Every faith community has its sacred documents that are the foundation of the faith. The community selects and protects its documents. When we pick up the Torah we declare: "Zot HaTorah Asher Sam Moshe L'fnai B'nai Yisrael Al Pi Adonay b'yad Moshe – This is the Torah proclaimed by Moses to the Children of Israel, at the command of the Lord." We declare: This is our story. We tell it.  We retell it. We embody it. We live it. Reading Torah on Shabbat and Yom Tov defines the identity of a Jew. Reciting the Haggadah is the essence of Seder night. We tell our story, perpetually and eternally. We are the story of a faith community. As we tell the story of the faith, we are its community. Without the faith and without its story we cease to exist.
3. Are our Tankh and the New Testament the complete records of the faiths? The simple answer is no. Our Tanakh mentions many books that were not preserved. Books that were not considered sacred and included into the official canon of Judaism were partially saved in collections called the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed an entire genre of Jewish literature that had been lost for two thousand years. Who knows what else might someday be discovered in the Negev? With documents found in the Egyptian desert, it is clear that the Christianity has the same phenomenon. The history of faith communities is very complex. Both the community and its faith evolved, changed and developed. The leaders in each time and place winnowed the chaff of large collections of writings to select and preserve those that best taught the faith and told its history. Under the leadership of Ezra in the 400's B.C.E.the canon, the official compilation of our texts, was completed.
4. Is anybody hiding anything? This is where the Da Vinci Code gets juicy and really fictional. Yet the question is good for us too. Again, the answer is no. Judaism is based on a faith which proclaims that God never takes human form and human beings are not God. Christianity proclaims a faith about Jesus as being divine and the redemptive power of his death. Change either statements for the faiths and we all disappear! Our Torah and the rest of the Tanakh are only snapshots of history and essential pieces of the chain of tradition. It is similarly true for Christianity. There is a special history and purpose to each document in the New Testament as that faith community developed its faith. It is not an issue of hiding something, which is the crux of the book and movie. It seeks to make something sinister out of the development of faith and thus undermine the very existence of the faith. There were many who articulated the faith. There was a struggle to formulate faith statements. Some were accepted and some were rejected. That is not sinister. It is the true history of how faith communities develop and determine their identities. We have done it in Judaism. It is the same process in Christianity and in Islam as well. The details are different. The process is similar. This book and movie are aloof from the true history of faith communities and faith. It is a work of pure fiction.
5. How/why/why not to believe in that which faith proclaims? The Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies held a symposium a year ago about Dan Brown's book to discuss why everyone was reading it and its impact. They came to several conclusions. One was that everyone is intrigued by allegations of conspiracies and cover ups: Watergate, Iran gate, the Contras, who shot JFK and MLK, and who knew what before 9/11. What not better than to bring this attitude to religion!?! Religion is ripe for 'character assassination!' The representatives of religion are put on the immediate defensive. It is not the details of The Da Vinci Code that are important. That we can dismiss forthwith. It is the attitude towards religion, Judaism as well as Christianity, that is the crux of the matter.

Beyond that, it raises the question of the truth of the faith, as it has been proclaimed.  The Da Vinci Code takes aim at Christianity and says quite frontally – it's a lie. The Church craving for power and money has hidden the truth and proclaimed a lie for all these centuries. The book and movie proclaim – Christianity is a fraud, and there is no faith to profess. That is what got people so angry, and rightfully so. And lest anybody snicker, the same can be said about Mt. Sinai, the Burning Bush, and King David for Judaism, and of the experience of Mohammed for Islam. We can't even tell current history about weapons of mass destruction accurately and question the president and the presidency. It is no stretch to question the very existence of each and every faith and thus pull the rug from under the existence of each and every faith community, and of faith itself!

The faith communities respond by affirming the faith which we inherited, sanctified by the generations that carried it in their hearts, knowing full well that it has a history. To be a faith community means to have faith in God as the faith has developed its ideas. Within Judaism I can say that that development continues perpetually. We question and we affirm. We study our sacred texts, pray from them, augment them and do it all over again. Speaking for Judaism and our history, we are the bearers of a faith of three thousand, five hundred years. It grew. It branched out. It got trimmed. It was recapitulated. And we inherited it as the foundation for and the reason for our existence. It is our soul.

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The movie is in the genre of 'who-dun-it,' chasing around France and England. It is fiction, from beginning to the end. The book should be read that way and the movie seen that way. Yet it raises questions elevated above the actual book and film such as I have reflected upon tonight. My own stance which is worthy of every Jew, is to be a person of and with faith; to know what that faith is; to grapple with it; to be sustained by it; to grasp it to heart; and to pass it on to our children and grandchildren. May everyone be good people of good faith.

Shabbat Shalom.