Last year, The Da Vinci Code swept other books aside in sales as well as cultural impact. The plot consumed readers while its esoteric information piqued widespread curiosity and its religious themes struck a universal nerve, the divine feminine hidden in history, art, and culture emerging from obscurity. The book asserts that Leonardo Da Vinci encoded heretical messages in his paintings, particularly the idea that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were an intimate couple. This has sparked a mass fascination with Magdalene and with secret traditions such as esoteric Christian, Gnostic, hermetic, pagan, Templar, and Grail mysteries. The result is that a legendary medieval heresy has reached a 21st-century popular audience, creating a kind of Magdalene zeitgeist. Why is this book so compelling to so many people? Are the book’s ideas reliable or valuable?

Maxine Hanks, Margaret Starbird, Rev. Dr. Lance S. Owens