Here is part of an article entitled "Spiritual Novels" by Richard N. Ostling for the Associated Press, which appeared in today's (April 17, 2004) Birmingham Post Herald. (The rest of the article deals with the "Left Behind" series and is not quoted here.)
"Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' is a thriller whose characters malign traditional Christianity as fraudulent. But both liberal and conservative writers say it's rife with errors.
"Among inaccuracies they list: the characters' claims that belief in Jesus' divinity appeared in the fourth century rather than in the first century; that the four New Testament Gospels became authoratative in the fourth century rather than in the second century; and that the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic writings (deemed heretical by the church) contain the earliest christian records-though one Gnostic text does have some scholarly promoters.
" 'Da Vinci' also supposess that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and sired a royal Judeo-French bloodline that still exists- and that sinister Christians suppressed information about this. The scenario comes from a 1982 book titled 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail,' which a New York Times reviewer called 'rank nonsense.'
"At first, 'Da Vinci' drew little religious opposition because people 'didn't subject it to the same kind of scrutiny they would a nonfiction book,' Garett says. But when Brown told NBC that 'absolutely all of it' is true, the Rev. Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seinary decided the novelist wasn't just having fun but was undermining Christianity.
"Bock wrote the first of several Protestant attack books, 'Breaking the Da Vinci Code.'
"Roman Catholics will soon pile on with 'The Da Vinci Hoax.' In the foreward, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George says Brown's history is 'preposterous' but must be countered because it misleads credulous readers. Brown is declining interviews."
There are several books listed in the article that some (including me) might want to read.
ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
