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THE DA VINCI CODE Author Roundtable
9.
FaithfulReader.com: Which historical errors concern you the most?
Erwin W. Lutzer: Again, I'm most concerned about the notion that Constantine invented the deity of Jesus and that he rejected the Gnostic Gospels and chose Matthew, Mark Luke and John because they were most favorable to male leadership. In point of fact, the issue of the Canon was not even discussed at Nicea. Also, the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene is a "matter of historical record." There are other errors --- numerous ones, but they do not strike at the heart of the Christian faith.
Amy Welborn: The point I previously made, first of all. I spend a lot of time dissecting sources in my book. Brown's sources range from the misinterpreted to the ridiculous. He never once cites the New Testament for any of his assertions about Jesus. He never once cites any patristic writer or early Church liturgy for what he says about early Christian belief. My primary goal is to point that out to people and, in the process, point them back to the Gospels if they're interested in learning about Jesus.
Secondly, the assertion that Christianity, as we know it, is the product of Constantine's power plays and that he basically invented Jesus' divinity in order to coalesce his power. That's just silly and easily disproved, but very important to address.
Third, the whole concept of the Church as a patriarchal monster intent on suppressing women's spirituality. What is most striking about THE DA VINCI CODE is that in this invective against the Church's suppression of the "sacred feminine," he completely ignores devotion to Mary. Of course, he must, since that would undercut his entire argument.
Dan Burstein: The historical errors don't "concern" me per se because, as I have said earlier in this discussion, I read THE DA VINCI CODE as a novel. Throughout this novel, the author combines fact and fiction in interesting ways. He frequently plays fast and loose with history (as well as religion) as many novels do. THE DA VINCI CODE engages in this methodology to accomplish its central goals of entertaining at the same time that it causes people to think critically about many issues. Having said that, there are many obvious errors of fact, which we point out in SECRETS OF THE CODE.
For example, after researching what Dan Brown says about the Priory of Sion, I am convinced almost everything in THE DA VINCI CODE about the Priory of Sion in modern times is a product of a hoax perpetrated by Pierre Plantard and his cohorts in France the 1950s. I think Leonardo da Vinci is a fascinating figure in history, with many free thinking, heretical, non-traditional ideas --- and indeed, coded messages and in-jokes in his paintings. But I do not think he was a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, nor do I think he was trying to pass the great secrets of the Priory down through the Last Supper painting.
THE DA VINCI CODE gets tripped up sometimes in its own efforts to merge different cover-ups and conspiracies together. For example, the Knights Templar, who are certainly a real, documentable, historical force in the era of the Crusades, may have had some special interest in Mary Magdalene, who was a much more prominent saint and folk hero in France during the middle ages than elsewhere. However, it strains my credulity to think of these very macho, warrior knights as being devoted to a religious, spiritual belief system that held the "sacred feminine" thesis at its heart. THE DA VINCI CODE 's "facts" are actually riddled with errors: Alexander Pope did not speak at Isaac Newton's funeral, as THE DA VINCI CODE says, but rather, wrote the epitaph that appeared on a monument to Newton in Westminster Abbey erected years after his burial.
THE DA VINCI CODE says the French government banned Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. The truth is that when this film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel came out in 1988, it was the subject of protests and a firebombing of a Paris theater, but it was not banned in France. Dan Brown says tarot cards come in decks of 22; actually, one subset of the tarot, the Major Arcana, number 22, while the whole deck is usually counted at 78.
In SECRETS OF THE CODE, we point out dozens of these kinds of errors. But I am not critical of the novel because it has these mistakes; rather, I see it as a kind of intellectual sport to wrestle some of these things to the ground and find real answers. I congratulate Dan Brown. His storytelling has sufficiently stirred my interest, and that of many readers like me, to go out and find the facts and form opinions for ourselves.
Ben Witherington III: Statements about how the canon was formed, and which are the earliest and most authentic Christian documents.
Steve Kellmeyer: His representation of historical goddess worship and his representation of the development of the Gospels are the two major errors in his novels. In particular, his reliance on the long-debunked Q theory is simply heinous.
Sandra Miesel: How to make a short list? Brown grossly misrepresents: ancient religions (including Jewish Temple worship) and early Christianity; the work of the Council of Nicea; the formation of the New Testament canon; the functions of the Priory of Sion; the nature of the Holy Grail and its legends; everything about the Templars, Leonardo Da Vinci, gothic architecture and witch-hunting. He even gets simple individual facts wrong, such as the linguistic origins of English and the identity of those who founded Paris.
Richard Abanes: It is almost impossible to answer this question because Brown's book is filled with so many errors. One can barely open his book to a random page and not find an error of some kind. I suppose the historical mistake that is most disconcerting to me is how he inaccurately describes the manner in which the Bible came to be. Brown mistakenly says that the Gnostic gospels pre-date the gospels now included in the Bible. He erroneously states that Constantine collated the Bible and destroyed earlier gospels. He falsely claims that earthly and human elements of Jesus' life were edited out of today's gospels. All of these things, although historically false, undermine the credibility of the Bible and its relevance to the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
James L. Garlow: Number 1) his views regarding the church's teaching on sex shows his complete ignorance of biblical data. Number 2) his statements about what the church believes concerning the role of women show an equal level of ignorance regarding biblical and church history. Number 3) as mentioned previously, he is completely in error in his understanding of the Council of Nicene in the year AD 325. Number 4), he obviously does not understand how the New Testament canon was formed. I am not a student of art, but art historians who I have read are contending that Dan Brown is as ignorant of art as he seems to be of history.
Peter Jones: Jesus made divine in 325; the orthodox Gospel a secondary overlay.
Carl E. Olson: The claims about the person of Jesus, early Christianity, Emperor Constantine, and the nature of the Catholic Church.
Darrell L. Bock: Please read my response to Question #8.
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