DA VINCI AND THE BIBLE - A SUBJECT OF INTERPRETATION

Maybe it’s because I am so accustomed to having the Jewish understanding of the Bible delegitimized that I cannot get overly excited at the hoopla over the Da Vinci Code. Have I read it? Sure. Will I see the movie? Doubtful. Foolish, I know, but I still have a hard time thinking of Forrest Gump going toe-to-toe with the Apostles.

I’ve also read Constantine’s Sword, the Gnostic Gospels and copious chunks of Sts. Augustine and John Chrysostom, watching them vacillate between teaching Christianity as fact and fiction.

This might be precisely the point in putting to rest the rancor over a 21st-century pop-hit of fiction-purporting-to-be-fact or vice versa. The source of real interest in the Da Vinci Codes is not the response among fundamentalist Christians. For them, the stuff of the Da Vinci Codes is heresy, plain and simple. Their rejection of this fact-cum-fiction is a function of their pure faith. I say God bless them, and leave them alone. We Jews, too, have entire movements that reject the legitimacy of any faith less than in the verbatim Divine revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and I say, bless them, too.

The real test of the Da Vinci Code and its like falls more squarely on those of us whose faith is unwavering, yet derived of an interpretive reading of the Bible, or even more radically, from an alternative notion of what it means for the Bible to be “true.”

Ironically, Jesus himself subscribed to an interpretive, far from literal, understanding of the Bible via the Midrash and other contemporary sources. The Gospels are rife with his references to them, including Hillel’s citation of the Golden Rule and the majority of the Lord’s Prayer, crafted from the traditional Kaddish.

In such an interpretive tradition, variant explanations of “how things got to the way they are” may never have been intended as truth, but simply points of interest. Or, perhaps they were differing accounts of the same events told around family campfires from one generation to the next, until one reigned supreme, or another was ruled too barbaric or silly, or one seemed to be most supportive of the rising faith. Is this any less “the truth” when God guides the Story of All Stories to emerge from the spirit of His people?

Then too, perhaps we have confused the modern Western notion of literalism with Oriental truth, forgetting that our Bible is in its entirety an Oriental document. The notion of “truth” in the Oriental tradition is that which delivers a transcendent, ennobling and enduring lesson:

Does it really matter whether Creation took place in six 24-hour days, or that unlike any other early creation epic, ours has the world created solely by one benevolent God? Or perhaps that God creating the world over eons is a sign of His majesty, that anything less would infer His wimpiness. Likewise, did Methuselah literally live 969 years? Who cares? What’s important is that God’s world was built on men who were larger than life (like the fabled George Washington and Abraham Lincoln).

Likewise, should faith be intimidated by scientific inquiry? Why not consider scientific truth and Divine truth two seemingly incomparable slices taken vertically and horizontally by a CT scan? Better yet, let people of faith covenant among themselves that truth is defined by loving ones neighbor, taking the destitute poor into ones home, doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly, the redemptive power of a loving God, the God who welcomes the repentant. Scientific inquiry, then, may be helpful, but it will never be the truth, because it is cold, merciless, soulless, ruthless.

We whose faith is built on an interpretive tradition and a differing understanding of truth dare not be smug or strut with superiority. But, neither should we be defensive. We ought declare our faith without equivocation, lustily chant our hymns and prayers, relish our sacred texts and defend them without apology to those sad souls who deride them as meaningless.

We Jews have experienced plenty of attempted debunking of our own beloved traditions. Thus, even though I am not a Christian, I can speak to you about the Da Vinci Code and its like: You will encounter plenty of challenging, even threatening, forces along the path. Some of you will see them as points of interest. Some of you will see them as heresy.

But, let there be no mistaking. From Matthew through Revelations, you have your truth. Nothing, certainly no book nor movie, will ever stand in its way.