THE LAST WORD; The Da Vinci Con
The New York Times By LAURA MILLER Published: February 22, 2004

Plantard's hoax was debunked by a series of (as yet untranslated) French books and a 1996 BBC documentary, but curiously enough, this set of shocking revelations hasn't proved as popular as the fantasia of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail,'' or, for that matter, as ''The Da Vinci Code.'' The only thing more powerful than a worldwide conspiracy, it seems, is our desire to believe in one.

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Exposing the Da Vinci Hoax

By Joe Nickell from the Skeptical Inquirer posted: 24 May 2005

Among the "revelations" of Picknett and Prince, adopted by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, is the claim that Leonardo’s fresco, Last Supper, contains hidden symbolism relating to the sang real secret. They claim, for instance, that St. John in the picture (seated at the right of Jesus) is actually a woman—Mary Magdalene!—and that the shape made by "Mary" and Jesus is "a giant, spreadeagled ‘M,’" supposedly confirming the interpretation. By repeating this silliness, Brown provokes critics to note that his characterizations reveal ignorance about his subject.

Alas, the whole basis of The Da Vinci Code—the "discovered" parchments of Rennes-le-Château, relating to the alleged Priory of Sion—were part of a hoax perpetrated by a man named Pierre Plantard. Plantard commissioned a friend to create fake parchments which he then used to concoct the bogus priory story in 1956. (See Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel, The Da Vinci Hoax, 2004.)

Of course, Dan Brown—with the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation—was also duped by the Priory of Sion hoax, which he in turn foisted onto his readers. But he is apparently unrepentant, and his apologists point out that The Da Vinci Code is, after all, fiction, although at the beginning of the novel, Brown claimed it was based on fact. Meanwhile, despite the devastatingly negative evidence, The Da Vinci Code mania continues. Perhaps Brown should go on his own quest—for the truth.

The Da Vinci Code Deception: Solving the 2000 Year Old Mystery

DVD available at AMAZON.COM

Beautiful artwork. Excellent response to the sloppy history and "theology" of the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Both Catholic and Protestant experts represented. Dan Brown declined to be interviewed for this film and forbade the use of footage from TV interviews in which he claimed the history and descriptions of art, etc. are accurate.

The main response is one hour but there is much more on the DVD. There are notes for a pastor's semon, and curriculum for a Bible study in response to the Da Vinci Code. Plus more interviews of experts and a tour of monasteries and chapels mentioned in the book. Excellent highly recommended.

Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Solves the 2000 Year Old Mystery

Based on three best-selling books - Breaking the DaVinci Code, The DaVinci Deception, and Cracking DaVinci's Code - this program solves a 2000 year old mystery. The DVD answers all the lingering questions and finally sets the record straight through interviews with book authors and world's leading experts in archeology, theology, art history, philosophy, and science. Bonuses include interviews, masters' artworks, code location tours, and scene selection.

THE DA VINCI CODE AT A GLANCE

Well known theologian and Bible teacher Erwin Lutzer examines the "facts" behind the fiction and provides clear and authoritative answers to the confusion surrounding the life of Jesus and the Christian faith. Whether or not you have read Brown's novel you will gain a new understanding of the issues presented and the historical basis of early Christianity.

When one presents history without consulting the sources, anything the mind can imagine can be written. As fabrications go, The Da Vinci Code is right up there with Elvis sightings.

The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin Lutzer book excerpts in PDF:
http://www.cyberbreezes.com/davinci.pdf

The Da Vinci Code Deception
by: Spotlight Ministries, Vincent McCann, 2005 www.spotlightministries.org.uk

Quite a bold statement for a book that claims to be fiction! On the one hand, it claims to be fiction, but then, on the other hand, right at the outset, the reader is seized with the statement that the book is really based on actual facts.

But the only fact we can point to about this book is that it is full of historical inaccuracies, twisting of truth, and deception, all of which would leave many readers with an extremely distorted and damaged idea of who Jesus is and what Christianity is all about.

Many of the things the Da Vinci Code says are actually not really new. For example, there was a book out in the 1980’s called Holy Blood Holy Grail which claimed similar things to The Da Vinci Code (Indeed, many writers have noticed that this was almost certainly one of the main sources that Dan Brown used for the material in his book). What is new though is that the errors that the Da Vinci Code contains seem to be reaching a previously untapped audience, those who enjoy fictional stories, films, novels and the like, rather than theological or academic material.

Please click this to read highlights of the errors and areas of concern in the book:
http://www.spotlightministries.org.uk/davincicodearticle.htm

More Clear Facts About Muddy Fiction

The Da Vinci Code states that over a three hundred period in the medieval era, the Catholic Church was responsible for burning a total of five million women at the stake. That’s quite a bit off of the best current estimate of 30,000 to 50,000 of men and women killed during the four hundred years from 1400 to 1800—certainly a significant number, but not comparable to the Holocaust or Stalin’s purges. Many of those deaths didn’t involve burning. Witches were hanged, strangled, and beheaded as well. In addition, witch-hunting was not woman-hunting: at least twenty percent of all suspected witches were male. Despite what the novel clams, midwives were not especially targeted; nor were witches liquidated as obstacles to professionalized medicine and mechanistic science.

Another glaring error is found in character Robert Langdon’s explanation of the origin of the tetragrammaton—YHWH (pronounced as Yahweh)— the sacred name of God, which observant Jews believe should not be uttered. Langdon claims that YHWH comes from the name Jehovah, which he insists is an androgynous union between “the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah”. A quick trip to the encyclopedia (or theological dictionary, if you prefer) shows that Langdon is wildly off the mark. The name “Jehovah” didn’t even exist until the thirteenth century at the earliest (and wasn’t common until the sixteenth century), and is an English word. It was created by artificially combining the consonants of YHWH (or JHVH) and the vowels of Adonai (which means “Lord”), the name substituted for YHWH in the Old Testament by Jews. The Hebrew—not “pre-Hebraic”—word for Eve is hawwâ, (pronounced “havah”), which means “mother of all living”. There is absolutely nothing androgynous about any of this, but that dubious assertion is in keeping with the neognostic flavor of the novel.

Possibly Brown’s silliest mistake about the Templars is charging that Pope Clement V not only burnt hundreds of Templars but had their ashes “tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber River”. That the statement is put in the mouth of his “Royal Historian” character, Teabing, only adds to its irony. The largest burnings of Templars actually took place in Paris, with smaller holocausts in three other French cities and possibly Cyprus. There’s no record of Knights burnt at Rome. In any event, the pope couldn’t have dumped any remains in the Tiber since he resided at Avignon in southern France and not in Rome. Also, the Templars had nothing to do with gothic architecture, despite Brown’s claims that they had everything to do with it.

The Code claims that the Merovingians founded Paris. Nope. This is a mistake no educated Parisian would make, inasmuch as Paris was originally a Gallic village called Lutetia Parisiorum that was expanded into a city by the Romans.

On and on it goes, with faulty and often blatantly incorrect statements about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Vatican, paganism, early Christianity, medieval Christianity, modern day Catholicism, the life and work of Leonardo, secret societies, the origins of the English language, Constantine, and much more. All of it is exposed in The Da Vinci Hoax, described by Francis Cardinal George as the “definitive debunking” of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel.