Is The Da Vinci Code thesis supported, as it claims, by well-accepted historical and art authorities?
Just the opposite. Brown, not a scholar or historian, cites no accepted historians or New Testament scholars to back him up. But a long line of scholars – Christian and non-Christian, conservative and liberal – has dismissed the book’s allegations. Brown does cite in his favor a handful of conspiracy theorists as if they were reputable sources, yet none is regarded as an expert or scholar in history. One of them has even written a book claiming that Egyptian culture was shaped by space aliens! Further, The Da Vinci Code bungles elementary facts, raising serious doubts about its overall reliability: • The famous Dead Sea Scrolls are said to have been discovered in the 1950s. They weren’t. • Brown says the Dead Sea Scrolls contained outlawed gospels that have shed new light on the truth about Jesus. In fact, it is well-known that the Scrolls contain no material about Jesus. Most date to about 200 years before Jesus lived, and their main significance is that they include Old Testament doc
