Deconstructing 'Da Vinci'

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"The Da Vinci Code," the best-selling novel that asserts as fact that Jesus Christ had a daughter as well as a wife, has provoked fierce opposition from Protestants and Catholics alike.

From Dallas Theological Seminary, whose faculty and students have staged seminars debunking the novel, to "Christian History" magazine in Carol Stream, Ill., which established a Da Vinci section on its Web site (www.christianitytoday.com/history), Christians have denounced the fabrications.

"What caused the stir, at least in part, was the author's claim that the backdrop to his fictitious story is based on the truth," says professor Darrell Bock of the Dallas seminary, who calls the book's claims "ludicrous."

"Dan Brown's book isn't an innocent book," he said. "There is something else going on here. At its very core is an attempt to reshape our culture and Christian beliefs."

Mr. Bock's counterpunch book, "Breaking the Da Vinci Code," is due out in April.

A thriller purporting to combine art, cryptology and religion, "The Da Vinci Code" has sold 6.1 million copies to date and has topped the New York Times best-seller list for 45 weeks. A movie by Columbia Pictures is in the works.

America's religious elite ignored the book for months after it was released in March. Then it became clear that many Americans, particularly the unchurched, have taken the book as gospel according to Dan Brown.

He writes that the Emperor Constantine originated the New Testament during the fourth-century Council of Nicea, a large gathering of Christian leaders that rewrote Jesus into a divine figure, writing that the early church had venerated him merely as a mortal prophet.

Other "facts" recited by Mr. Brown include assertions that pre-Babylonian Judaism included temple prostitutes, that sex is a prime way to God that has been squelched mainly by the Roman Catholic Church for 2,000 years, that Gothic cathedrals are modeled after the female body, and that Noah was an albino.