Cracking Da Vinci's Code by J. Garlow, Peter Jones (...

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These books all have one thing in common: they claim to present an "alternate history," one that has been suppressed by powerful forces of tyranny, usually for political reasons. The alternate history they present will enable readers to free themselves from tyrannies of their own times, be they religious, political, or social. Seeking to place themselves in a long line of freedom movements, they borrow the language of social and political liberation and misapply it to their topic at hand. I call these works fake history. They find an audience (sometimes incredibly large) because of two factors that plague our postmodern times: 1) nearly ubiquitous ignorance on the part ofaverage "educated" individuals in the West; and 2) the rise of a view that all narratives are equally valid.

Perhaps the worst of all these books is Dan Brown's wildly fantastical work posing as history, The Da Vinci Code. Let us be clear up front. Dan Brown has every right to write a novel that presents his understanding of Christian origins, the glories of paganism, the marvels of the sacred feminine, the horrors of Orthodox Christianity, and the liberating power of goddess religion. My objection to his work has nothing to do with whether or not he is free to express his opinion on such topics. My objection to him and his methods is that he claims to present a true, sustainable, historically accurate picture of what really has happened when in reality there is little or no evidence for his claims, although he acts as if there is, both throughout the book and in subsequent appearances on talk shows and in interviews. This is simply disreputable. He is nothing more than a somewhat higher class of snake-oil salesman, a shill for discredited ideas, a mouthpiece for historical inanity that cannot be supported at the most basic level of serious inquiry. Somehow, he has managed to pull of this shameful scam, due largely to massive ignorance on the part of his readers combined with a deep desire on their part to find an alibi for their own wayward impulses toward license which are celebrated and blessed in this scurrilous work.

Thank goodness for Messieurs Garlow and Jones. Men of no little standing in the world of thought and letters (one with a Ph.D. in historical theology from Drew University, the other with a Ph.D. from Princeton), authors of a baker's dozen of books, they have taken up the gauntlet thrown down by Dan Brown and produced a very readable response to--let's not mince words here--his idiotic book.

What I admire about Cracking Da Vinci's Code is the care the authors take in exposing this fraudulent work, all the while maintaining a cheerful good humor and writing in a very popular and approachable style. True, they have little time for Brown's fake history, but they have the good manners to engage it seriously and without rancor at the level of the adequacy of its presentation of facts (something I find impossible to do when faced with nonsense of this kind). This would hardly have been necessary if the book had been written in a different genre, such as alternate history science fiction--but then it would've lost its cache, its frisson, its stance (albeit false) as authentic history, wouldn't've it?

Along the way, they clearly show that there is absolutely no foundation for its appalling claims, such as the idea that the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus came about as the result of a politically motivated vote by the Council of Nicaea; that alternative, "Gnostic" gospels were written earlier than the four gospels in the New Testament and present a truer understanding of who Jesus was than the Christian gospels; that there is evidence that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a child; that the Church has suppressed this evidence because it would undermine its power and break the hold it has on the faithful; that the Church killed more than five million women in a brutal attempt at "reeducation"; and lots more similar idiocy.

I have only two quibbles, and these are entirely minor. First, I don't think the book are fairly describes the post-Constantine Church; and second, I'm not entirely taken with their running chapter-opening narrative concerning a young woman who is struggling to make up her mind about the value of The Da Vinci Code. Regarding the first quibble, it has become fairly standard for Protestant church historians to discredit the post-Constantine church, so it's not unexpected (although one might wish for a more nuanced approach). Regarding the second, I can see the usefulness to situate the dilemma Brown's book poses for the historically illiterate by creating a story to help readers find existential connecting points; for me, however, it was a little heavy-handed.

Nevertheless, this is quite a good book, certainly worth checking out, especially for those who, credulously, have taken the historicity of The Da Vinci Code at face value.