Reading about a book that became a movie

Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code has spawned not only a movie, but more books about the book than you can imagine. Some of the books try to debunk Brown's book (even though fiction usually doesn't need to be debunked), some try to support the theories presented in Brown's fiction, and some try to take the case even further.

I have stayed away from most of these books. However, when I saw that Bart Ehrman had release a book on the topic, I couldn't pass it up. Ehrman is an actual biblical scholar. He chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill.

Sometimes biblical scholars produce books that only other biblical scholars can understand, but this book is really accessible. Closer to the release of the book, Ehrman released a list of ten historical errors in The Da Vinci Code. The author continues Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code in this same vein. He is not arguing theologically and he is not critiquing the value of the work as a work of fiction. What seems to bother Ehrman is related to two things. First, Brown writes on page one of the book, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." Ehrman takes issues especially with the issue of documents. He finds critical factual errors in the author's description of documents. Had the author of this fiction book not made the statement as to their accuracy, this might not be a problem. What also seems to bother Ehrman is that some of the factual errors in the book didn't relate directly to the plot and could have been corrected with the tiniest bit of research.

What is really great about this book is that it addresses some really important issues of early Christianity in really understandable terms. If you are interested in learning a bit about Constantine in early Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, other non-canonical gospels, the formation of the New Testament canon and the historical Jesus, this book covers it all in a really entertaining way.

I am off to see the movie tomorrow. Don't forget, if you want to learn more, come to the class!

peace,

will