The DaVinci Fraud: If it were not for Mary Magdalene, Christianity would not exist!

The authors of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail are now suing Dan Brown, author of the wildly popular novel, The Da Vinci Code, for stealing their plot. This is a nuisance suit, of course, because Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln claim that their book is fact, not fiction. The suit is obviously no more than a publicity stunt aimed at selling books and cashing in on some of the fortune Dan Brown has made on his novel.

It’s too bad, though, that real historians can’t sue pseudo-historians like Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln; and novelists like Brown, for lying about history in print – in this case more lies about Mary Magdalene, the most maligned and abused woman in history.

Richard Hooper’s new non-fiction work, The Crucifixion of Mary Magdalene, is a three hundred and fifty page expose about the ancient Church’s campaign to obscure Mary Magdalene’s real importance, discredit her as the first apostle, cover-up her essential role in the foundation of Christian faith, attack her theology as heresy, and ultimately reinvent her as a prostitute -- six centuries after the fact.

Crucifixion—based on the research of the world’s preeminent New Testament and Gnostic scholars—is a detailed analysis of the fourteen ancient orthodox and Gnostic-Christian Gospels in which Mary Magdalene appears. It proves once and for all that Mary Magdalene was revered by early Christians, not because she was Jesus’ lover, but because she was his star disciple and successor, a celibate holy woman, and a leader and teacher in her own right. In fact, if it were not for Mary Magdalene, Christianity would not exist!

Since the Da Vinci Code became popular, real scholars—especially women like Princeton scholar, Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels), and Harvard’s Karen King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala)—have been working overtime doing damage control for academia by giving interviews to the press, offsetting with facts the claims made in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code. This debunking isn’t coming from the religious right, but from real scholars and historians who have no agenda other than to promote religious literacy.

In the trailer for the upcoming movie of The Da Vinci Code, a booming voice announces “Witness the greatest cover-up in human history.” Sorry Dan: right people, wrong conspiracy theory!

Brown and company aren’t scholars, didn’t read the source material and are woefully misinformed about early Christian history. Because it has no basis in history, their theory about Mary Magdalene being married to Jesus is not going to “blow the lid off Christianity”, as Brown’s novel claims. But if Christians knew about the real, historical, conspiracy and cover-up involving Jesus and Mary Magdalene, that information wouldn’t just “blow the lid off”, it would collapse the structure! The truth is out there!

Richard Hooper, M.Div, the author of The Crucifixion of Mary Magdalene is a former Lutheran pastor, Mary scholar, author of The Gospel of the Unknown Jesus, and religion columnist for UPI.

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Richard Hooper, M.Div.

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Sanctuary Publications, Inc.

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