A Recommended Book List

On The Da Vinci Code

Darrell L. Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Questions Everyone’s Asking. Thomas Nelson. Comprehensive treatment by a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary.

Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, Oxford, 2004. A respected ‘liberal’ scholar gives the facts from the perspective of a mainstream academic consensus—and exposes the lack of scholarly support for the claims of the DVC.

Greg Jones, Beyond Da Vinci. Seabury Books, 2004. An articulate and informed critique of the DVC by a moderate to liberal Episcopal priest who encourages readers to explore elements of the “sacred feminine” in the canonical scriptures and Christian tradition.

Carl E. Olson & Sandra Meisal, The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in the Da Vinci Code. Ignatius Press, 2004. Written by two Roman Catholic journalists with some academic background. It is thorough, well-researched, and culturally savvy.

Amy Welborn, De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Da Vinci Code. Our Sunday Visitor, 2004. An accessible, concise but thorough analysis of the DVC by a Roman Catholic journalist.

Ben Witherington III, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci. Intervarsity, 2004. A much published author and respected evangelical scholar who teaches New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, Witherington focuses on the historical, biblical and theological issues behind the DVC.

Dan Brown’s Sources

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982. The basis for the DVC. A work of pseudo-history that is the first book to bring to the English speaking world an elaborate hoax concocted in France during the mid-twentieth century by Noel Corbu and Pierre Plantard.

Lynn Pickett & Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation, Touchstone, 1997. More along the line of Holy Blood, Holy Grail with some novel features—Jesus taught a form of Egyptian magic in which Mary Magdalene embodied the Goddess Isis and functioned as his sacred consort.

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels. Unlike the other authors to whom Brown refers, Pagels is legitimate scholar who offers a sympathetic (and somewhat anachronistic) reading of the Gnostic literature. While not all will agree with Pagel’s interpretation, this is respectable study of the Gnostic writings without the glaring historical errors of the authors listed immediately above.

Background Information

Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, Oxford University Press, 2003. While the author’s claim that “the Early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs” is overstated, this book is a sober and articulate study of early Christian texts with lots of information.

Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, Blackwell Press, 1990. A serious and sober study of Gnosticism that does not try to score points on one side or another of the contemporary religious culture war.

Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels, How the Search for the Jesus Lost Its Way, Oxford University Press, 2001. Philip Jenkins writes about the point of intersection between Christian thought and practice, and the developments in today’s culture. Written before the Da Vinci Code, Jenkins book provides both the historical background as well as an analysis of modern scholarship, media and cultural currents that are invaluable in any assessment of the DVC.

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus, Harper, 1996. An incisive critique of the Jesus Seminar and others who set their versions of the “historical” Jesus over against the Jesus of scripture and creed.