Ted Walther's Private Diary

Sarah the Priestess and the Da Vinci Code

An interesting coincidence happened a few weeks ago. I've been meaning to read The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown for several years now. I finally did read it. But just before I read it, a book fell into my hands called Sarah the Priestess, The First Matriarch of Genesis, by Savina Teubal. The two books are intimately related, although I didn't know it. The one was an essential preparation for the other.

Savina's book is a religious abomination. She recklessly equates the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Moses with that of the Babylonians, and based on that, claims that Sarah, the mother of all Israel, was a sacred prostitute.

Savina's book is a good education in Babylonian religion, and she did point out some interesting parallels between the Bible and the religion of Babylon. But she failed to make her case.

What was most interesting was the way her book went into depth on the concept of hieros gamos, the sacred marriage ceremony. I never read up on hierogamy before, yet right after reading her book, I started the Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a nice little mystery story, which hinges on the concept of the hieros gamos. As a conspiracy story, it does not stand up to Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. It seems flat and boring, like some trashy piece of American sensationalism.

Dan Brown makes references to things that "scholars all agree on". Having read Savina's book, I knew which scholars he was referring to, and that he, as did she, made leaps of logic not justified by the available facts. Dan Brown makes the pagan version of hierogamy out to be an innocent, Disney type ceremony, holy, clean, and good fun for everyone. It is not, and was not.

I cannot recommend the Da Vinci Code. It lacks artistic merit, and religiously it is a piece of poison.