The close of one long day

kw: book reviews, mysteries, fiction, continued review

So is it here, under Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, supposedly named for the "Rose Line" or meridian upon which it lies? The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, doesn't end in as big a cop-out as I was expecting, but… The attempt near the end to make Bishop Violet (Aringarosa) into a sort of good guy falls flat, and the long-lost missing family reunion was as expectable as an oncoming train.

I mean, it is sort of a nice note that what Langdon and Neveu really find at Rosslyn is a great treasure indeed. But in a turn as much out-of-the-blue as any hairbreadth, nick-of-time escape, it is just too much to have Langdon return to Paris for a "just maybe this is really it" moment.

Does the tip of the lower pyramid signal a bigger structure below? Does it matter? In the end, the author tries to make nice, stating that Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion were "innocent", just pawns of the real villain. The damage is done already.

I went to the Opus Dei website, where they discuss "mortification" as it is actually practiced. By the way, none of their members is a monk, though some are priests. Their discussion includes a paragraph beginning, "Penance and mortification are a small but essential part of the Christian life." The forty-day fast of Jesus is given as an example. I'll simply state this, according to my own study of the Bible: Jesus, John the Baptist and the Apostles called for Repentance. There is no "penance" in the New Testament. Penance means to pay for your own sins, which the NT writers all state is impossible. Secondly, fasting and early rising are the only "mortifications" found in the NT, and both are clearly seen to be for the purpose of closer fellowship with God, particularly when dealing with troubling events. In my experience, effective fasting occurs when you're too busy to eat.

Finally, I just have to present some symbolism that makes it a lot less likely that Constantine "chose" the four Gospels or any other Bible books. He'd called together Christian leaders from all over the Empire, who had been out of contact for long times because of persecution. The conference just ran away with itself, and the Emperor did little but moderate the louder disputes. And it was not at Nicea that the Canon was settled; that was a council at Chalcedon, about fifty years later.

Once artwork began to be added to the fancier Bibles of the early Middle Ages, the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—had animal avatars added to icons of them. An angel or man for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, and an eagle for John. These were chosen, because they were the four faces of the Cherubim of the Old Testament, and of the "four living beasts" in Revelation 4. Interestingly, there is a rationale given for each of these choices in traditional theology, but explanations I have seen do not mention the real reason. In Ezekiel 1:10, the four faces of a Cherub are given in the order Man, Lion, Ox and Eagle. This is the real source of the medieval animal choices, and rationale was later applied to fit.

However, in Revelation 4:7 the four creatures (one face each) are, in order, Lion, Ox, Man and Eagle. This order better matches the character of the four Evangelists, in order:

• Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus, "son of Abraham, son of David". Matthew is written for Jews, proving that Jesus is their King. The appropriate symbol for a king is a Lion.
• Mark has no genealogy. The book focuses on the things Jesus did, much more than on what he said. He is presented as the laboring servant of God. An Ox is appropriate here.
• Luke includes a genealogy of Jesus, this one going through a different son of David, and continuing to Adam. The book focuses on Jesus's teachings, and contains the greatest amount of ethical instruction. Jesus, son of Man, is shown to be the prototype of an ethical man, so the Man is the best symbol here.
• John presents a transcendent Jesus, the divine Jesus. Only in John do we read that Jesus said, "If you do not believe I am, you will die in your sins." Lion, ox and man are ground-bound. Not so the Eagle, the transcendent creature.

The book of Revelation was written late in the First Century, about 90-95 AD. Even the latest of late-daters dare not put its authorship later than 140 AD. In either case, it is not until 250-300 years later that this symbology even matters. There is no hint in the documents that survive that Revelation 4 had anything to do with the choice of four Gospels out of dozens.

By the way, I have translations of a couple of dozen early Gospels. Other than the four we find in the New Testament, they all read like stories from the Arabian Nights or like miracle-adventure stories. The language is overblown. None has the sparse, descriptive narrative we find in our received Evangelists. I see the hand of God, not just in the choice of the books of the New Testament, but in their order of presentation. The writer of Revelation had no idea that his vision of four beasts would have a connection to the Gospels that would be noticed only fifteen centuries later (you'll find much of what I have written above follows documents written after the Sixteenth Century).

And, even more finally, a big point is made that Jesus "could not" have remained single in First-Century Palestine. Every generation of every culture has had its confirmed bachelors. Paul was also single, only half a generation later. Where he catalogs the married apostles, he mentions "the brothers of the Lord" and Cephas (Peter), but leaves out Jesus (1 Cor 9:5). Since he was defending marriage, he'd have definitely mentioned Jesus had He been married.