FaithfulReader.com - THE DA VINCI CODE Author Roundtable

THE DA VINCI CODE Author Roundtable

1. FaithfulReader.com: What prompted you to write a book in response to THE DA VINCI CODE? How soon after reading THE DA VINCI CODE did you decide you wanted (or needed) to write about it?

James L. Garlow: The reason I co-authored CRACKING DA VINCI'S CODE is because I started discovering people actually believed that what Dan Brown wrote was historically and theologically accurate. When I first heard about the book and its claims, I didn't take it seriously. In fact, I told people that it was just fiction and everybody would surely regard it that way. But I was wrong. People started believing it. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from a Cook Publishing Company wondering if I'd be open to writing this book.

Peter Jones: I did not take it seriously at first.

Amy Welborn: I wrote a review of THE DA VINCI CODE for Our Sunday Visitor in June of 2003. That review, posted on various Internet sites, evoked both positive and negative responses from readers. Over the next few months, I wrote a couple more articles on issues raised by the book, and the reader questions just kept coming. It was obvious that some readers were not, indeed, looking at this book as "only a novel." Their faith was disturbed, their assumptions undercut. It was clear to the publisher and me that these questions deserved answers. Hence the book.

Steve Kellmeyer: I had been rather oblivious to the book until my brother pointed out the enormous impact it was having on friends of his. The father of one of his friends, a lifelong Catholic whose brother was a priest, had been reading the book. He put it down one night and asked, "Is everything I know about Christianity wrong?" At that point, we knew something had to be done. Before I finished the first fifty pages of Dan Brown's novel, I could see this book needed a thorough response.

Darrell L. Bock: The reason I wrote BREAKING THE DA VINCI CODE is stated in detail in the introduction to my book. The key was when I heard Dan Brown on national TV say that if he were writing nonfiction he would not change a thing about the history. Not only that, but he said he had heavily researched his work and had become a believer in these views. It was then I decided that this was not just a novel, but was being portrayed to the public as something more. I had heard about the novel for close to six months and did not pay attention to it because it was just a novel until I heard this. So when a publisher asked me to write on the topic in November, I agreed after having heard these interviews and statements and when I realized that millions had read the book, as my participation in an ABC special on the novel had made clear what its cultural impact was.

Sandra Miesel: I'd never heard of THE DA VINCI CODE until April 2003 when Crisis editor Brian Saint-Paul asked me to do an article about it. Once I started reading it, I was aghast at how ridiculous and error-ridden it was. My own copy is all scribbled over with "No!" While I was working on my essay, my younger daughter mentioned that she'd picked up a copy of THE DA VINCI CODE at the airport to read on a business trip and hated it. So I had the additional motivation of avenging my daughter's waste of time and money on the wretched novel. When my article came out in the September 2003 issue of Crisis, Carl Olson saw it, asked me to join forces and negotiated our deal with Ignatius Press.

Carl E. Olson: After being urged by a friend last summer to read THE DA VINCI CODE, I did so. Then, having read so many of the positive reviews of the novel by critics and readers, I thought I'd write some responses for Envoy, the magazine I was editing at the time. Then I read Sandra's review of the novel is Crisis and decided that she would be the perfect co-author for a thorough refutation, made more and more necessary by the growing adulation being heaped upon THE DA VINCI CODE. So, just a few weeks transpired from the time I read it until Sandra and I started writing THE DA VINCI HOAX.

Dan Burstein: I was one of those many DA VINCI CODE readers who stayed up all night reading the novel. It was June of 2003, a couple of months after THE DA VINCI CODE had been published. In the middle of the night, I had to go to our family library and take down the art books to follow the discussion about Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper and the Madonna of the Rocks. Before I had even finished the book that night, I was thinking that this novel could use a handy reader's guide. The next day I went to the nearest Barnes & Noble and left after several hours with an armful of books --- titles that were either mentioned explicitly in THE DA VINCI CODE or else that treated the same material Dan Brown did. Soon I had bought dozens more books on Amazon. By August, I was convinced that I could provide a real service by aggregating the best of all these books and the most relevant thinking of the experts into an independent guide to what was fact and what was fiction in this most intriguing novel.

Since I had written six prior nonfiction books, I could immediately imagine the challenges in terms of getting in touch with all these experts, getting rights to their material, organizing it in an interesting and readable way, and adding unique new content wherever I could. I knew it would be a big job and that it would have to be done quickly, but I also knew it would garner a lot of reader interest.

Erwin W. Lutzer: I was prompted to write the book when a woman in our church called me to say that people were reading the book, and even Christians were wondering whether at least some of it might be true. Then, when someone else told me that it was supposedly based on historical documents, I read the novel for myself with the intention of preaching a message on it. The positive interest in the sermon prompted me to write the book.

Ben Witherington III: It was suggested to me by various friends, including those at InterVarsity Press. I also wrote this book because there were things that needed a public correction. The Gospel must not be allowed to be perverted without correction.

Richard Abanes: I was approached by Harvest House and asked to write the book since my area of expertise involves current events dealing with fringe religious issues that affect society. I actually wrote my book and read THE DA VINCI CODE simultaneously, which was a very interesting way to research the novel. I read it through once to get the feel of the text. Then I read it again, taking notes. My third journey through Brown's novel was made while exploring each issue I had previously highlighted for further investigation. At this same time, I began writing my responses to Brown, which eventually formed the main text of my book.

Back to the Intro

Next Question