Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code

I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code a while back, maybe six months or a year ago. So my memory of what Brown purports to be true is shaky at best.

In any case, I never assumed that any of the supposed "facts" described in the book were true, because, you know, it's a novel, despite certain claims made by the author. But the claims made me curious about just how much of the story was supported by documented evidence. And then a discussion at 43things.com prompted me to look around for more info on the topic. I found just that in historian Bart D. Ehrman's "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code".

Ehrman does a good job of dissecting Dan Brown's novel. I won't go into detail, but according to Ehrman, most of Brown's "historical" claims are pulled out of a hat. I like Ehrman's book because he approaches the discussion from the view of a historian and is fairly scientific about it.

The book is definitely worth the read - I wish I'd read it directly after reading The Da Vinci Code. I was afraid it would be horribly dry and boring, but I went through it pretty quickly. Ehrman goes into some details about various gospels that didn't make it into the official Bible. I already knew that these existed, but not in any detail. So it was quite funny to read about the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" which makes Jesus look like a real terror as a boy, striking his playmates dead or aging them in an instant.

Then there's this description of Jesus' emergence from the tomb, taken from the Gospel of Peter, which reads like something straight out of a science fiction novel:

From the tomb there emerge three men; the heads of two of them reach up to the sky. They are supporting the third, whose head reaches up beyond the skies. Behind them emerges a cross. A voice then speaks from heaven: "Have you preached to those who are asleep?" The cross replies, "Yes"....

Yow, that's mind-blowing stuff!! This is interesting on its own, forget about The Da Vinci Code! So this book gets two thumbs up from me.

As a postscript, I have to note that some kind (??) person took the trouble of sticking a post-it note on p 183 with the message: "Suggestion from a previous reader: skip from the bottom of pg 181 to the bottom of pg 183. Context there will turn your stomach and is not necessary for comprehension of the import of this book" (followed by a smiley-face no less!). Despite the warning I went straight through that text, which described a slightly gory, apocryphal sex ritual which didn't phase me in the least; I guess I am jaded. (In contrast, the factual description of the events surrounding the discovery of the Nag Hammadi, on 36 ff, did sicken me just a little.)

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tag: books