Well, have you read it yet? Or are you off to see the movie first? Or does all the hype simply bore and put you off?

Having first read several rebuttals, I decided that I better read the book as well - Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, that is. I’m one of those people who like reading from back to front, reassuring myself that the end is worth the start and whatever goes on in between. So it was not out of character for me to read those rebuttals first. Then I would be more aware of the errors being put forward as facts and thus keep my head on my shoulders and my feet on the ground. With my orientation secured, I could then settle down to a good read knowing I have already seen through the final layer of whatever mystery there may be to figure throughout the story line. And despite a rather silly plot overall, it is a good read - along with John Grisham and Tom Clancy and similar.

The big thing to remember - this book is only a novel.

The novel features an opening page entitled “Fact,” which states: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” This is the first piece of fiction. It is like that saying “all generalizations are false including this one” as the book is a novel and while some aspects of novels are factual, like people having arms and legs and driving cars on roads and so on, the whole thing didn’t actually in reality happen at all. For a real fact, consider this: despite it claiming that all descriptions of artwork in this novel are accurate, it says that Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin of the Rocks” (which in the Louvre) is “a five-foot-tall canvas” yet it is actually six-and-a-half feet in height. So Dan Brown’s book does not pass the simple encyclopaedia test - or the Google test, if you like. But is this just a book writer’s version of poetic licence? I would be willing to make allowances except for that opening statement making claims of accuracy, and then he goes on to make even more serious errors - that prior to the Council of Nicaea no one believed that Jesus was divine, that the Catholic Church burned 5 million women at the stake in the medieval era and that all of Christianity’s major beliefs have been stolen from pagan religions. Well, that just goes to prove his work really is only fiction, including his statement of “fact” that begins the confusion right at the start.

The Catholic Church is upset with this book and with the movie, wanting it banned. Dan Brown certainly does show an anti-Catholic bias, and many Christians of all denominations are protesting about the vilification of Jesus and the representation as fact of a great many lies that contradict Christian truth. Even Muslims in India are offering to help their Christian “brothers” protest this attack on their “common religious belief”. Although this sudden affinity sounds wonderful, I strongly suspect ulterior motives as Muslims definitely do not consider Christians to be their “brothers” any more than they share the Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah, nor many other things about Jesus. However, they certainly do have a loathing of prophets being maligned in any way - as witnessed by the furore over the Muhammad cartoons.

This brings up the whole freedom of speech issue again. If we want freedom of speech, then that includes the freedom to criticize personal belief systems - and if we allow criticism of one faith, then to be consistent we must be prepared to allow criticism of all faiths. Otherwise we allow criticism of no faiths, and that is our freedom fully curtailed in such matters. I personally do not want that to happen as it stops us being rational and sensible in seeking the truth. We must be able to critically examine all possible evidence and ask questions to verify facts. Not to do so puts ourselves at risk of confusing our entire reality.

So to ban the book or the movie is not the way I would want to go. As a Christian, I do not particularly like Jesus being subjected to such silly rumours, but then He is much bigger than rumours and they will eventually go the same way as all other deception - destroyed by the ultimate Truth (yep, a Christian belief). To ban the book or movie simply invites suspicion as though the Church really does have something to hide. And it treats us all paternalistically like children, not old enough to know things or think for ourselves, and keeps us at junior Sunday School level inhibiting intellectual and spiritual growth.

But I do have one message of warning. To read the book or see the movie, and not go on to examine the issues critically, but to believe as fact something without accurate reliable evidence, is plain foolish and silly. I am not one of those Christians who thinks that having faith means throwing intelligence and facts to the wind to believe just whatever. Having faith is far from contradictory to a critical examination of evidence with a rational mind. The only concern I have regarding this book or movie is that people are far too willing to believe something without checking it out, and in that way deceive themselves as to what is the truth.

Bart Ehrman, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC and author of “Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew” (which examines how and why certain texts did or didn’t make it into the New Testament) has written a rebuttal which is published as a book entitled “Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine“.

Here are some points that he makes in his book:

Some Factual Errors in The Da Vinci Code

1. Jesus’ life was decidedly not “recorded by thousands of followers across the land.” He didn’t even have thousands of followers, let alone literate ones (p. 231).

2. It’s not true that eighty Gospels “were considered for the New Testament” (p. 231). This makes it sound like there was a contest, entered by mail…

3. It’s absolutely not true that Jesus was not considered divine until the Council of Nicea, that before that he was considered merely as “a mortal prophet” (p. 233). The vast majority of Christians by the early fourth century acknowledged him as divine. (Some thought he was so divine he wasn’t even human!)

4. Constantine did not commission a “new Bible “that omitted references to Jesus’ human traits (p. 234). For one thing, he didn’t commission a new Bible at all. For another thing, the books that did get included are chock-full of references to his human traits (he gets hungry, tired, angry; he gets upset; he bleeds, he dies…).

5. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not “found in the 1950s” (p. 234). It was 1947. And the Nag Hammadi documents do not tell the Grail story at all, nor do they emphasize Jesus’ human traits. Quite the contrary.

6. “Jewish decorum” in no way forbade “a Jewish man to be unmarried” (p. 245). In fact, most of the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls were male unmarried celibates.

7. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not among “the earliest Christian records” (p. 245). They are Jewish, with nothing Christian in them.

8. We have no idea about the lineage of Mary Magdalene; nothing connects her with the “house of Benjamin.” And even if she were, this wouldn’t make her a descendant of David (p. 248).

9. Mary Magdalene was pregnant at the crucifixion? That’s a good one (p. 255).

10. The Q document is not a surviving source hid by the Vatican, nor is it a book allegedly written by Jesus himself. It’s a hypothetical document that scholars have posited as having been available to Matthew and Luke, principally a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Roman Catholic scholars think the same of it as non-Catholics there’s nothing secretive about it (p. 256).

An excellent website with information to debunk the Da Vinci Code myths is James Holding’s Tektonics Apologetics Ministries, in particular his paper here.

J.P. Holding offers the following notes for a flyer:

What's wrong with The Da Vinci Code?

It's only fiction. What's the big deal?
The author (Dan Brown) does not think he is reporting fiction. On a June 9, 2003 interview on the Today show Brown said that it was his goal to “challenge certain long-held beliefs or truths about religion.” So he is obviously interested in persuading readers to a certain point of view.

Works of fiction are very capable of changing people's minds about facts. In the Civil War era, the book Uncle Tom's Cabin was instrumental in getting Americans to reject slavery, even though it was a work of fiction. The author of that book, Harriet Beecher Stowe, defended her book's accuracy when critics attacked it. Why won't Dan Brown defend his book from critics, if he really thinks it is worthy of challenging “long-held beliefs or truths”?

What's wrong with it? The Da Vinci Code is filled with errors of fact on nearly every subject it touches. Here are some samples:

Jesus:
The book says that Jesus had “thousands” of followers who recorded his life's story, and that more than eighty gospels were produced. This is a practically an impossibility to begin with, because some 90 to 95 percent of people who lived at the time of Jesus could not read or write. However, the number of Gospels written over time by various parties (80) is inflated. No more than 50 such documents are known, many of them just by a title, and those otherwise known as full documents are often not properly “gospels” in form (in other words, they are not in the format of biographies as they were written in the first century, which the Gospels of the New Testament are). They are also certifiably written much later than the canonical four Gospels, and are not regarded as credible sources for the life of Jesus.

Constantine:
The book says that Constantine “collated” the New Testament collection of books. Constantine in fact had nothing to do with the canon; the formal declaration of the canon occurred at a council that took place after Constantine's death, and prior to this, consensus among the leaders in the church was the determining factor in what books were considered authoritative.

Mithra:
The book claims that this ancient deity was a mirror image of the figure of Jesus: That he had been called the Son of God and the Light of the World — was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days. All of these claims are false, and are unknown to scholars who study Mithra. Mithra never died himself but was acclaimed for killing a cosmic bull (of the constellation Taurus).

The Council of Nicea:
Contrary to the book, this Council did not decide that Jesus was divinity and not a mortal man. Both sides in this Council agreed that Jesus was divinity. The question at hand was whether Jesus was a created deity or an eternal deity.

Leonardo da Vinci:
There is no evidence that da Vinci was a “nature worshipper” as Brown claims; he did many sketches of nature, but none of them had religious elements. Brown depicts Leonardo as being into the “darker arts”; in fact Leonardo was severely critical of the occult and pseudo-sciences and only gave some respect to alchemy where it came closer to being chemistry. He did not, contrary to Brown, believe he could turn lead into gold. He did not design torture devices as Brown says, though he did design some weapons of war.

The Mona Lisa:
Brown claims that the painting was named by da Vinci to indicate a secret code made of an anagram for the Egyptian deities Amon and Isis. But the painting was not called “Mona Lisa” by da Vinci. In his time it was called “La Gioconda”. It is also not, as Brown indicates, a version of da Vinci dressed as a women, but the wife of a local merchant, as records of the time indicate.

Everything Else:
It would take several pages to list all of Brown's errors, but here are a few others:

Brown often refers to the “Vatican” as though it were synonymous with the Catholic Church. He refers to Constantine creating a “new Vatican power base.” The Vatican as such did not exist until the 14th century as the Pope's residence; in Constantine's time it was still a swamp.

Brown says that Pope Clement V burned Templar knights and threw their ashes into the Tiber River. It was King Philip who burned the knights, and Clement could not have had their ashes tossed in the Tiber River (in Rome) even if he had burned them, because the Popes resided in Avignon (France) at the time; either the Tiber was diverted hundreds of miles, or Clement had a good throwing arm.

Brown applies the “Divine Proportion” to the population of beehives. The author of this commentary spoke with several beekeepers, all of whom scoffed at this idea. The ratio of male to female bees in a hive is not 1.618 to 1. A hive is usually at least 95% female. One beekeeper said that a hive with the proportions Brown describes would be dead within a few days, since females do all the real hive work. Perhaps some species of bee comes close to having the proportions Brown describes at some time, but it is clearly not a bee universal.

I personally enjoyed Dan Brown’s book and I intend to see the movie as well. But I do recommend that folks also read a scholarly rebuttal or two - or else simply regard it as fiction and take nothing more out of it than they would any other cracking good novel.

Added 20 May…

Some more resources for those interested in facts more so than fiction:

Dismantling The Da Vinci Code by Sandra Miesel.

The Da Vinci crock by Laura Miller ~ “A fascinating conspiracy about Jesus transformed the cheesy thriller, “The Da Vinci Code,” into a phenomenal bestseller. Too bad it comes from “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” a masterpiece of bogus history”.

The Da Vinci Code: Of Magdalene, Gnostics, the Goddess and the Grail by Leadership University Editor/Webmaster, Byron Barlowe.

The Da Vinci Code: The facts behind the fiction by Amy Welborn.

The Da Vinci Code - Fiction Based On Fiction by Jennifer Rast of Contender Ministries.

THE DA VINCI CODE Author Roundtable ~ Question: Which historical errors concern you the most?

The Da Vinci Code Cracks by Greg Koukl

Jesus Christ as God and the Trinity Was Not Invented Until the Fourth Century? by Rich Deem ~ “One of the most commonly held atheistic myths is that Christianity as we know it today was not invented until the fourth century, after the council of Nicea in 325 A.D. The book, and soon to be released movie, The Da Vinci Code, makes this very claim (among other very bizarre assertions).”
This website provides authoritative information to debunk this myth and others.

The Da Vinci Dialogue ~ News Tracker
A chronological list of news links related to reactions regarding the book and movie.