For Your Consideration - Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro 

     I loved The Da Vinci Code – except I didn’t!?

     I “loved” the book because I always enjoy suspense novels. Even if the heroes of such stories don’t eat or sleep for days and somehow escape a thousand improbable brushes with death, I accept the genre for what it is and have a good read.

     That is why I “loved” The Da Vinci Code, although I also disliked it because the book presented a misleading vision of how religions develop. The “Code” suggested that Christianity, as it exists, is the result of a trick. Those who knew the “truth” about Jesus deliberately suppressed it.

      In fact, reading between the lines, The Da Vinci Code implies that all religious traditions are suspect because you never know who lied or squelched someone else to make their view of religion triumphant.

     Here’s what is unhelpful with that notion. It reduces the real drama of history to conspiracy theory. If you accept the “Code’s” idea that someone is always trying to eliminate someone else’s ideas even when they may be right, you end up being suspicious of just about any received tradition. You also fail to appreciate how fabulous and awesome the development of Christianity and, for that matter, Judaism really is.

     How do we have Christianity today? How do we have Judaism in its present form? In both cases, we are the heirs of human beings who in their time struggled to understand reality. To be sure, those human beings disagreed. Early Christians had many ideas about Jesus and the road to salvation. (Witness the appearance of The Gospel of Judas.) Early Jews also understood God, Torah, and the future in many different ways. Some Jews did try to quiet the views of others. Some Jews incorporated the views of others.

     But did our ancestors or early Christians “conspire” to hide the truth? To me, that sounds foolish. There is no hidden “code.” On the contrary, our tradition enshrines “the four questions” in order to teach us that knowledge is not hidden. No secrets. As Hillel taught, we are welcome to learn. The Torah and our world are an open book.