Truth and Fiction in The DaVinci Code
By BART D. ERDMAN
What is it about The Da Vinci Code? It has been

on the fiction bestseller list for over 100 weeks, usually in the number one spot. Three years and 40 million copies later, it has been issued in paperback. The movie is to be released in May. Surely everyone who wants to read it has already read it, yet it continues to sell.

Bart D. Erdman is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and chairman of the Department of Religious Studies. He admits, as most of us do, that he enjoyed reading The Da Vinci Code, calling it "fast-paced, intricate, compelling, spell-binding."

However, as a historian, Erdman is troubled that author Dan Brown did not get his facts straight. He acknowledges that the book is a work of fiction, but Brown claims that his "descriptions of . . . documents . . . are accurate." Erdman sets out to prove that this is not the case.

Perhaps we cannot label Erdman's book "spell-binding," but it is certainly interesting. It is also vindicating for those of us who were aghast at the depictions of Jesus and the much-maligned Mary Magdalene, presented as fact by the characters in The Code.

Truth and Fiction begins with a brief summary of the plot of The Da Vinci Code. The assumption is that no one would be reading this book without having read the first one, but that we might need a refresher, and Erdman will be referring to specific instances and characters.

He begins by explaining that the Emperor Constantine did not commission a "new Bible" nor did he try to suppress indications of the humanity of Jesus. He goes on to summarize the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and an explanation of their content, none of which concerned Christianity. Further, the also recently-found Nag Hammadi documents do not tell the Grail story, nor do they emphasize Jesus' human traits.

Forget The Da Vinci Code. Truth and Fiction about it is full of fascinating information that will be unfamiliar to many of us lay readers. "There were many Jewish apocalypticists in all walks of life around the time of Jesus." (I don't know about you, but I had no idea what an apocalypitist was, and it's worth knowing.)

The character Teabing claims that there were 80 gospels from which our four were chosen, and that thousands of followers recorded accounts of Jesus. Erdman points out that there were never nearly that many gospels and that most of Jesus' followers were illiterate. He discusses a few of the early writings that did not become part of the Canon and why they probably did not. (There were no imperial book burnings.)

Erdman is concerned that most of Brown's readers will have no way of evaluating what he says, not only about the ancient history of the Church, but also about the historical Jesus. Thus he discusses the sources for our knowledge of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the role of women in the early church. He states that "whatever our situation and whatever our personal beliefs, we are more or less restricted to the Gospels of the New Testament in trying to learn what Jesus said and did."

For a clear and informative analysis, full of fascinating theory and fact, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code is available at the Mary Willis Library.