Da Vinci Code - Fish in a Barrel!

One of my commenters can sometimes be a real bonehead. Here is one example -

"I believe Dan Brown simply because he writes better fiction than radar(fewer contradictions aswell)."

This is stupid, in part because he has yet to read any of my works of fiction and therefore has no idea if there would be contradictions found within. But the stupid multiplies when anyone says, 'I believe Dan Brown.' This is because Dan Brown's best-selling work of fiction is so full of mistakes and bad research and impossible claims it is hard to know where to start.

Fiction, not fact

Dan Brown's works are listed as fiction and found in the fiction sections of bookstores and best-seller lists. However, within the Da Vinci Code he claims to include all sorts of truth. So let us take a look, using DVC as the abbreviation for the work going forward to save time and space.

How The Da Vinci Code Doesn't Work

The above is a great and thorough post about various glaring errors in DVC. How could Brown be so careless as to not even know that the restrooms in the Louvre don't even HAVE windows? Among other errors about the painting that Sophie uses to ward off the police (besides the fact that it is actually found in a different gallery) is that it is too tall for her to see over and also weighs more than 300 pounds so that she could not just pick it up and wave it around. The DVC is full of such careless errors.

But this kind of error is classified as a plot mistake/blooper. The dozens of such mistakes show us that quality control is not part of Brown's methodology. But what about the great truths he is purporting to uncover?

The Last Supper

First of all, it is actually a tempura rather than a fresco. Secondly, it doesn't depict the scene in which Jesus offers up the wine as his blood. It depicts the moment where he reveals that there is a traitor among the 12. Leonardo's notes and the style of painting of that era help us to understand that the person to Jesus' right was intended by Leonardo to represent John, not a woman at all. The "disembodied hand" actually belongs to Peter.

Brown gets a lot of things wrong about Leonardo, calling him Da Vinci when he was not known in that way during his lifetime. That would be like calling Ben Franklin "Of Philadelphia" or Jesus "Of Nazareth." Leonardo was not the prolific painter Brown claims, most often abandoning paintings before completion. He was apparently most interested in inventing things rather than producing them and probably spent more time as an itenerant machine-and-weapons designer than he did a painter during the time he was an adult. He was a genius but quite mercurial, not the kind of man chosen to lead a secret organization for one minute. The Mona Lisa was actually never named by Leonardo himself and since chroniclers believed that the painting was of a Lisa Gherardini, and since the Italian for 'my lady' is mona, they named the painting Mona Lisa.

The Priory of Sion

The Priory of Sion was a fictional organization, intended perhaps to be a political force but later becoming a hoax perpetrated by Pierre Plantard. Invented in 1956, the documents used by Brown to promote their existence are obvious fakes made in the 20th century on two different typewriters. Plantard later admitted under oath that he had made up the whole thing.

Brown does bring in two actual organizations, the Knights Templar and Opus Dei. The Knights were actually crusaders who defended the pilgrims in Jerusalem and in journeys to and from Jerusalem and fought against the Muslim invaders who for a time threatened to overrun Europe. His assertions about their chapels and cathedrals and continued existence are full of errors. Opus Dei is an organization that in some ways resembles a cult and is concerned with adherence to holiness and their view of scripture with absolutely no apparent connections to Mary Magdalene, the Knights Templar or any searches for Holy Grails.

The Bloodline

It is asserted that Mary Magdalene came to France, with the daughter of Jesus, to escape being hunted down and killed by the pro-Peter camp of Christianity. There they married into a French line known as the Merovingians, who ruled in France from 476-751 AD. The Merovingians supposedly were now the descendants of Mary and Jesus' daughter.

In fact, DNA testing was done on the remains of one of the last Merovingians recently and compared to the DNA of people who were descendants of the Magdalenes. The Merovingian DNA was typical of European stock, with no resemblance to the Mediterranean code that would have indicated at least some Semetic blood.

But of course, the assertions that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and produced a child are completely fictional with no basis in fact at all. None. Any assertions made by Brown on this matter are false (such as the idea that there is a record of the marriage of Jesus).

Bible and Bible-related claims

This will probably require another post, since:

A) The Suns-Clipper game is now in the 4th quarter and I want to go back and watch.
B) They didn't give me enough anti-biotics, my illness returned full-force and I am exhausted. I have new pills, so there is hope.
C) I want to check out the feedback to this post to see if there are actually any DVC true believers out there.