The Da Vinci Code:
The Facts Behind the Fiction




 
 

The Da Vinci Code has sold almost 6 million hardback copies, and it's raised almost as many questions in readers' minds.

Did Leonardo Da Vinci really use his art to communicate secret knowledge about the Holy Grail?

Is it true that the Gospels don’t tell the true story of Jesus?

Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene married?

Did Jesus really designate Mary Magdalene as the leader of his movement, not Peter?

What seems to intrigue readers is that the characters in The Da Vinci Code have answers to these questions, and they are expressed in the book as factually based, supported by the work and opinions of historians and other researchers. Brown even cites real books as sources within the novel. Readers are naturally wondering why they’ve not heard these ideas before. They’re also wondering, if what Brown says is true, what the implications for their faith could be. After all, if the Gospels are false accounts, isn’t all of Christianity as we know it a lie?

This book is intended to help you unpack all of this and to explore the truth behind The Da Vinci Code. We’ll look at Dan Brown’s sources, and see if they’re really trustworthy witnesses to history. We’ll ask if his characterization of early Christian writings, teaching and disputes – events that are widely documented and have been studied for hundreds of years by intelligent, open-minded people – are accurate. We’ll look at Jesus and Mary Magdalene – the people at the center of this novel – and see if anything at all The Da Vinci Code has to say about them is based on the historical record. And along the way, we’ll find a startling number of blatant, glaring errors on matters great and small that should send up big red flags to anyone reading the novel as a source of facts, rather than just pure fiction.

Table of Contents
 
  • "Only a Novel?"
  • Secrets and Lies
  • Who picked the Gospels?
  • Divine Election
  • Toppled Kings?
  • Mary, Called Magdalene
  • The Age of the Goddess?
  • Stolen Gods? Christianity and the Mystery Religions
  • Surely, He Got Leonardo Da Vinci Right?
  • The Grail, the Priory and the Knights Templar
  • The Catholic Code

    The Da Vinci Code phenomenon continues to amaze. Its central allegations percolated for years in the pages of quack-history books, attracting little attention. Along came author Dan Brown, who slapped the label "fiction" on them and — presto! — millions of readers started asking, "Wow, is this true?" The short answer is, of course not. In her excellent new book De-coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of The Da Vinci Code (Our Sunday Visitor, 124 pp., $9.95), Amy Welborn gives a sprightly, detailed, and highly satisfying account of the truth behind the pseudo-history.

    Welborn is a renowned Catholic blogger with a knack for explaining complex issues clearly. The reader of this book will come away with a lucid account of Christian origins, and a strong sense that, even after 2,000 years, the New Testament remains the most accurate and reliable source for the thought and work of Christianity's founder. Other, later writings from heretical sects — and fanciful conspiracy theories about how they were "suppressed" — make for the stuff of entertaining thrillers; but if you want "the Real Story," writes Welborn, it's "as close as a book on your shelf. . . . Pick up that Bible."
    Mike Potemra, National Review

    Enter Amy Welborn, author of De-Coding Da Vinci, who fillets Brown's novel with the enthusiasm of a sushi chef on her first day of work at a waterfront restaurant.

    As a former high school teacher and a lay Catholic theologian with several books to her credit, Welborn is admirably suited for the task she undertakes, which is to make epistemology accessible to the general public by exposing the termite-ridden foundations of Dan Brown's unwitting Gnosticism. Keenly aware of the critics who say, "relax, it's only a novel," Welborn explains that culture matters, and that "in The Da Vinci Code, imaginative detail and false historical assertions are presented as facts and the fruit of serious historical research, which they simply are not." Every chapter in De-Coding Da Vinci ends with suggestions for further reading and lists of questions for review and discussion.
    The American Spectator


    Publication Date: April 1, 2004