#literarycharacters

The Da Vinci Code Versus The Gospels

By Eli Kittim 🎓

Bart Ehrman was once quoted as saying: “If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.” This is an amusing anecdote that I’d like to use as a springboard for this short essay to try to show that it’s impossible to separate literary characters from the literature in which they are found. For example, when Ehrman says, “If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it,” his comment presupposes that James is a real historical figure. But how can we affirm the historicity of a literary character offhand when the so-called “history” of this character is solely based on, and intimately intertwined with, the literary New Testament structures? And if these literary structures are not historical, what then? The fact that the gospels were written anonymously, and that there were no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts, and that the events in Jesus’ life were, for the most part, borrowed from the Old Testament, seems to suggest that they were written in the literary genre known as theological fiction. After all, the gospels read like Broadway plays!

Let me give you an analogy. Dan Brown writes novels. All his novels, just like the gospels, contain some historical places, figures, and events. But the stories, in and of themselves, are completely fictional. So, Ehrman’s strawman argument is tantamount to saying that if we want to examine the historicity of Professor Robert Langdon——who is supposedly a Harvard University professor of history of art and symbology——we’ll have to focus on his relationship with Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist with the French Judicial Police, and the female protagonist of the book. Ehrman’s earlier anecdote would be akin to saying: “if Robert Langdon did not exist, you would think Sophie would know it.”

But we wouldn’t know about Robert Langdon if it wasn’t for The Da Vinci Code. You can’t separate the character Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code and present him independently of it because he’s a character within that book. Therefore, his historicity or lack thereof depends entirely on how we view The Da Vinci Code. If The Da Vinci Code turns out to be a novel (which in fact it is), then how can we possibly ask historians to give us their professional opinions about him? It’s like asking historians to give us a historical assessment of bugs bunny? Was he real? So, as you can see, it’s all based on the literary structure of The Da Vinci Code, which turns out to be a novel!

By comparison, the historicity of Jesus depends entirely on how we view the literary structure of the gospel literature. Although modern critical scholars view the gospels as theological documents, they, nevertheless, believe that they contain a historic core or nucleus. They also think that we have evidence of an oral tradition. We do not! There are no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts. All we have about the life and times of Jesus are the gospel narratives, which were composed approximately 40 to 70 years after the purported events by anonymous Greek authors who never met Jesus. And they seem to be works of theological fiction. So where is the historical evidence that these events actually happened? We have to believe they happened because the gospel characters tell us so? It’s tantamount to saying that the events in The Da Vinci Code actually happened because Robert Langdon says so. But if the story is theological, so are its characters. Thus, the motto of the story is: don’t get caught up in the characters. The message is much more important! As for those who look to Josephus’ Antiquities for confirmation, unfortunately——due to the obvious interpolations——it cannot be considered authentic. Not to mention that Josephus presumably would have been acquainted with the gospel stories, most of which were disseminated decades earlier.

Big 5 Personalities: Conscientiousness

A well rounded, developed character feels real. They feel like someone you would meet at school, at work, or at the coffee shop. They could be your family member or part of your circle of friends. But how do you develop such a realistic character? How do you go beyond basic characteristics such as hair and eye color, job preference, and favorite color? In this post, I’m going to show you a tool based in science and psychology that I use to create my characters.

Non-modifiable features such as ethnicity, age, and physical characteristics (hair color, skin color, eye color, etc.) are important only to character development only to a certain extent. While these features might give a reader a clue regarding the character’s background or culture, they are not certain. Families and cultures are diverse. Being part of a certain nationality won’t immediately win the hearts of your readers.

So, what will? Their personality. In fact, there is nothing more important that the quirks and baseline emotions that make up your person. If you have the character’s personality down, then certain things such as job preference, favorite color, favorite tv show, will flow together naturally.

When I have a character in mind, I will often take an online personality test to see where they line up. There are several out there to choose from. Myers Briggs is probably the most famous personality tests, but I don’t usually start there. I use the Big 5.

The Big 5 tests a person in the following 5 areas: consciousness, neuroticism (or negative emotion), openness, extroversion, and agreeableness. Now, when you look at this list, there are certain negative or positive connotations associated with each of these characteristics, however, when the data is analyzed, that’s not always the case.

For example, people extremely high in Conscientiousness (characterized by people who are always busy or are very orderly) can become too orderly. This can give rise to certain conditions such as anorexia. This is, of course, not to say that all people suffering from anorexia are high in Conscientiousness or vice versa, but the personality type that is common among people with this disease is Conscientiousness.

All of the big 5 personality traits are like this. They are a spectrum, and each are associated with pros and cons.

Conscientiousness is broken down into two categories: orderliness and industriousness. People high in orderliness have a higher sensitivity to disgust. Cleanliness is next to godliness. They often see the world as black and white, geometrical in shape, and everything in it has its own box. These are your perfectionists. Now this is not always bad, but you can see where it could go a little off the rails. With people extremely high in conscientiousness, anything perceived to be wrong or flawed must be removed or eradicated—or starved.

On the opposite side of this spectrum would be an individual unbothered by messes or disorder. It’s like the just don’t see the mess. Or they see the mess, but are not bothered by it.

In industriousness, your character has trouble sitting still and relaxing. They are always doing something—almost as if they have an aversion to inactivity. These people will often say they ‘just have to stay busy.’ Obviously, the problem related to this is that overly industrious people rarely relax and can wear their bodies down through constant stress.

However, personalities with high levels of conscientiousness are often on track to find success. Their perfectionism and constant work increase the odds that their ventures will turn out. Most people lie somewhere in the middle of the spectrum—neither unaware of messes nor overly concerned with them.

The most interesting part about these personality traits is that they are modifiable. A person can train themselves to become more conscientious over time. Often this can be done through forming a schedule and sticking to it, setting goals for oneself and working to meet them, and create habits conducive to accomplishing more work.

As an example, I’m going to talk about one of my characters who is very high in conscientiousness. In my novel SURVIVING MIDAS, my character Jared is a seventeen-year-old slave working on a drug farm. He has very little in terms of personal items, but each of them have a place and are always neat and tidy. His high levels of industriousness have not gone unnoticed by his captors—not that he is overly interested in their venture, he just can’t help himself—and he is given more responsibility than the others. When he’s not working for his masters, he’s always scheming and working toward escape.

So that’s a very unusual setting for a character with high levels of conscientiousness. Notice that I didn’t say he had excellent hygiene—because his current life doesn’t allow him this luxury. But his personality still shows up in other ways throughout the story.