Debunking "The Da Vinci Code"

With the movie version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code set to hit theaters later this month, I figured it that this would be a good time to link to some information about this novel. First, I should state that I haven't read the novel. However, I have read enough about it to know that it bashes Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, and that it does so by portraying a wildly inaccurate version of Christian history. It also appears that some readers of the novel are buying into Dan Brown's bizarre historical claims, and accepting them as an accurate portrayal of history. For this reason, I think that there is legitimate value in debunking the historical myths perpetuated by this novel. In fact, many entire books, web sites, and blogs have been devoted to this exact purpose.

Just to make sure that my words above are not misunderstood, the major problem I see with this book is not that its author disagrees with Christian ideas. Rather, the problem is that Brown claims to have based his book on extensive research, and yet he gets his facts (regarding history, art, religion, geography, etc.) hopelessly wrong, again and again. The following two-part essay by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel provides a well-researched and well-documented antidote to these errors in The Da Vinci Code:

"Planet Envoy" Critique of The Da Vinci Code, Part 1
"Planet Envoy" Critique of The Da Vinci Code, Part 2

These same authors have also written a book called The Da Vinci Hoax, which is basically an expansion of the above essay. You can read some lengthy excerpts from this book at the following link, though obviously it will have some overlap with the essay linked above:

Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code

Finally, for those who would say, "why make such a big deal about a novel, after all, it's just fiction!", Carl Olson has a great response in the following article:

The "It's Just Fiction!" Doctrine