Interesting Article

I read this article in the Deseret News yesterday and thought it was really interesting. I for one will see the movie. Just like Adam said, we have to remember is that it really is just a novel and movie.

Cam


Errors in 'Da Vinci' covered

3 Y. professors tackle assertions found in popular work of fiction

By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret Morning News

If there is one topic of particular interest to Latter-day Saints in "The Da Vinci Code," it is the assertion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, because many believe it could well be true.
Formal doctrine and scripture unique to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that, in order to obtain the highest level of "exaltation" in the afterlife, members must be "sealed" or married in one of the faith's temples for "time and all eternity," and that such unions are a central part of God's plan for humanity.
So while the question of Christ's marital status isn't new among Latter-day Saints, a trio of LDS scholars who have fielded numerous questions about it since the book's release three years ago decided to address the topic head-on in the first LDS book to answer queries sure to be raised again with the film's premiere next week.
"What Da Vinci Didn't Know," a 124-page book explaining what LDS doctrine does and doesn't say about Christ's marital status and other issues, has been published by Deseret Book. Authored by three Brigham Young University religion professors — Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Andrew C. Skinner and Thomas A. Wayment — it contains a list of factual errors in the book and details the historical documents and context used by author Dan Brown.
In discussions with students, family members, friends and strangers about the novel, the authors found "excitement fades" when they outline how the book was based more on "imagination than solid historical foundation."
They sometimes find they are not just correcting misinformation but dismissing "a precious facet of a reader's inner life, having given him or her some sort of 'gnosis' or special knowledge. Somehow, pop history, obtained with little effort or thought, helps some people define themselves and their relationships to others," they write.
Skinner, a professor of ancient scripture at BYU with a master's degree in theology from Harvard and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Denver, said part of the reason is the general decline in readership of non-fiction works and primary source documents among the population in general, rather than Latter-day Saints in particular.
"There is a lot of truth out there, but not all truth is of equal value ... That's certainly true with documents that were produced in the Christian age up to about 600 A.D.," including the Gnostic gospels, on which parts of Brown's novel were based. "Some of them are spurious — from an LDS point of view, we know them to be patently false. It takes more effort than it used to, to keep up with all information we're being deluged with," Skinner said.
As for questions about Jesus' marital status, there's nothing wrong with asking the question, "but when the debate focuses solely on the question of his marriage, that does us a great disservice" by deflecting attention away from Christ's role as the Savior of mankind.
The book notes that many LDS leaders, including church founder Joseph Smith, "have inferred or believed that Jesus was married," including former church president Joseph F. Smith, who taught that Christ was married and "fulfilled the entire law of God and asked men and women to follow him."
Other LDS leaders, including Orson Hyde and former president Wilford Woodruff, concurred, while others have been more cautious on the subject. >"In recent years, we have, in fact, been counseled by current prophets and apostles ... that where the scriptures are silent, we should pass over them with reverence and focus on those doctrines that are revealed with clarity." As for future discovery of extra-biblical texts referenced in "The Da Vinci Code," Skinner said LDS scholars expect "a continual discovery of records from the Earth and other religious documents" to surface in years go come. As director of BYU's Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Skinner said the school is leading out in preservation and translation of ancient religious texts from a variety of faith traditions.
"They are not going to go away, but will continue to flood the market."