Code or Cover-up?

FACT: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate. — from the Prologue of The Da Vinci Code

Any attempt to interpret Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper is futile without taking into account that it is the object of a very apparent act of vandalism, that it is a crime scene with evidence which has not been addressed. Any interpretation of the meaning of this controversial painting is on its face bogus if it does not take into account two things: 1) evidence that the original painting was repainted; and 2) the wishes of the patron of the painting and how he may have wished for it to be painted. Neither of these things is addressed by an author who has used The Last Supper to portray Jesus as the lover of a woman far removed from him to his right. The author of The Da Vinci Code has made a statement of fact with a work of fiction, which cannot be a factual, truthful statement, and so he has failed as a researcher and he has lied, perhaps purposely, in an attempt to portray Jesus as someone other than who he was. This statement of fact which is untrue is more than an untruth, it is an act of heresy, blasphemy and sacrilege clearly based on deceit on a world scale which surpasses any and all previous acts of the sort.

The question is … does the author of The Da Vinci Code know that he has been deceitful in his portrayal of Jesus as the lover of a woman who is depicted in this painting? If he does not know that he has been deceitful, then he is a fool and someone not to be taken seriously. If he does know that he has been deceitful in his interpretation of The Last Supper, this act of deceit is one of enormous significance, one which implicates his agent, his editor and the publisher of this book, which is a scary thought; and it is because presenting Jesus in a deceitful light, if Jesus is the Son of God, will surely has divine repercussions. But is Jesus the Son of God? Clearly the author, his agent, his editor and his publisher does not believe that he is. They have a fifty-fifty chance of being right. Those are not good odds — and so The Da Vinci Code and what it does and what it says is a very reckless act.

In light of this recklessness, we can only wonder how reckless the sequel to this novel will be, what the motive for writing it will have been, what statement it will attempt to make on a worldwide scale. If the author of The Da Vinci Code is either a fool or a liar there is every reason to believe that the new novel will offer more of the same heresy, blasphemy and sacrilege. The author is quoted as saying that the writing of this new novel “has been a strange and wonderful journey.” In light of it predecessor, this new novel could be much more than strange — it could be shocking in its scope in an effort perhaps to build upon the reckless deceit or foolishness contained in The Da Vinci Code. If the author knows that he is lying about his characterization of Jesus based on his interpretation of The Last Super, one can conclude that he will surely do something and say something just as outrageous and boldly heretical, blasphemous and sacrilegious.

What it is that makes Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper the object of vandalism and a crime scene with evidence which has not been addressed is a simple feature: a disembodied hand holding a dagger which does not belong in the painting. The hand appears behind the back of Judas. By virtue of its presence where it clearly should not be, the original painting has therefore been repainted to remove the person who was once holding the dagger. And, if the original painting has been repainted, which it clearly has been, we are prompted to ask what the original must have looked like that should have caused someone to want to repaint it. This question speaks to the original intent to have the painting painted in the first place. What about this painting as it was commissioned by its patron may have been so objectionable that it should have been repainted? Who included a person gripping a dagger who is no longer present in the painting and for what reason?

A joke? A vandal’s prank? Or was there something in the painting or someone whom the patron requested to be in the painting that someone wished to have painted out? If the repainting was a joke or a prank, it would have been carried out with some completion; that is to say, if it was a prank, there at one time was a person whose hand was holding the dagger, because a disembodied hand holding a dagger is not a prank, not a real one, unless the person who was at one time holding it is also shown. So, what person holding a dagger was painted out of The Last Supper? We have several if we take into consideration the actual biblical event that the painting depicts, which is the Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples before he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane after Judas’ betrayal. The biblical event, a scene described in John 13:21-25 in the New Testament, is very precisely described. These five verses follow:

“After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, ‘I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.’ His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, ‘Ask him which one he means.’

“Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, ‘Lord, who is it’?”

In the Gospel of Mark (14:20), this question by the Beloved Disciple — who is a man named John, whom we’re told by early church fathers wrote the Gospel of John — is answered this way: “It is one of the twelve.”

This account of this Passover meal does not include a woman. Indeed, a Passover meal involving a woman would have been blasphemous and grounds for stoning by the authorities. Jesus died an innocent man, as Pontius Pilate indicates. As closely as Jesus’ actions were scrutinized by the religious leaders of his day, any sexual impropriety, even a hint of it, would have brought Jesus’ stoning death immediately. But the real point to be made here has to do with Jesus’ response to the Beloved Disciple which is recorded in Mark 14:20: “It is one of the twelve,” which, of course, means Judas. But note how Jesus phrases his answer. He doesn’t tell the Beloved Disciple … it is one of you twelve … Jesus says “It is one of the twelve” — suggesting that the questioner, the Beloved Disciple, is not one of the twelve disciples. If we know that the Beloved Disciple is presumably a man named John, because we know that the Beloved Disciple wrote the Gospel of John, who would be a disciple of Jesus’ who was not one of the twelve disciples present at the last supper?

We have one very good candidate: a young man who actually hosted the last supper, whose name was John. What we know of this man named John is sketchy, but a Coptic biography tells us that this man named John with an unusual surname “Mark,” which he acquired later on after Jesus ascension, was an African. Is that not a surprising thing to consider — that the home which hosted Jesus and his disciples on more than one occasion was an African home? It is surprising, because this is not generally known. If the Beloved Disciple is not one of the twelve, who may have been a young host of the Passover meal, and if he was an African, and if the location in the scene places this young man next to Peter … is it possible that the disembodied hand has something to do with this man, if he was the Beloved Disciple? If we are willing to admit that the identity of the Beloved Disciple has been obscured, and there is biblical evidence that he has, what are the odds that he also might have been obscured in this painting, if the patron of The Last Supper was a man of color, which we’re told in a biography of Leonardo that he was?

Might the patron of The Last Supper have known something about the Beloved Disciple, Jesus’ closest friend, which we may not know? Does the author of The Da Vinci Code know about any of this? He doesn’t say so, but we know that he is either a fool or a liar. We can’t trust what he does or does not know about Jesus and Jesus’ closest male friend, a man named John.

Why would someone holding a dagger have been painted out of The Last Supper in the place where a disciple of Jesus who is not one of the twelve disciples would have been seated? Who named John might have been at the meal who was a disciple but not one of the twelve disciples? And does the identity of the patron of The Last Supper have anything to do with any of this?

For all the questions that The Da Vinci Code raises about The Last Supper, it leaves far too many unanswered, which has prompted us to think that the novel and the whole media campaign never had anything to do with a code. We believe it’s not about a code but a cover-up … perhaps of the man who owned the home where the actual last supper was held, John Mark, an African scholar. By the way … there are only eleven male disciples in The Last Supper, and the one missing is John, the son of Zebedee.Alas, of the 30 some odd other versions of the last supper painted during the Italian Renaissance by other artists … not a single one, none … features a woman and leaves out John.

On the author’s official website a close-up photo and a caption were added after the novel was published. For a long time there was no caption. Was the decision to run the photo in response to our questions about the mysterious hand gripping a knife behind Judas’ back, with no arm or person attached … which The Da Vinci Code never mentions? The close-up photo of the hand gripping a knife is at the bottom of the page on the author’s website.

SO, SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS … and all the author has done is smile (having allowed his wife to do much or all of his research).

What’s important is that a novel and film about a mysterious code never deals with the most mysterious aspect of The Last Supper. We still wonder why.

It also bears pointing out that Leonardo da Vinci was a perfectionist, an obsessive one, to the point of being a huge procrastinator, so afraid of failure he was. Leonardo painted this fresco from 1495 to 1498 — three whole years! … which we say would have been plenty of time for Leonardo to catch any boo boos. The patron for the painting was Leonardo’s somewhat ruthless boss of 18 years Ludovico “il Moro” Sforza, the duke of Milan, but a lover of the arts nonetheless. It is highly doubtful that Leonardo would have experimented with painting a fresco for his boss on dry plaster (when wet plaster is strictly used), as The Last Supper has been.

— rcg