The Da Vinci Code is Filled with Egregious Historical Errors

Da Vinci Code Errors

The Da Vinci Code is Filled with Egregious Historical Errors. There are so many basic “desktop reference” inaccuracies—i.e., facts that can easily be checked in an encyclopedia or on the Internet—in The Da Vinci Code that it is difficult to know where to begin.

    • For example, Dan Brown consistently refers to Leonardo da Vinci as “Da Vinci” throughout the novel.
Historians and art scholars refer to him as “Leonardo.” “Da Vinci” simply refers to Leonardo’s home town. This would be akin to referring to Jesus as “of Nazareth,” St. Francis as “of Assisi,” or Mother Teresa as “of Calcutta.”

    • He claims that title of Leonardo’s famous painting the Mona Lisa is an anagram for the gods Amon and Isis.
Leonardo da Vinci never called the painting by this name. He called it La Giaconda, a reference to its subject, the wife of wealthy Florentine businessman, Francesco da Giacondo. The painting only came to be known as the Mona Lisa hundreds of years after Leonardo’s death. (Mona is a common Italian contraction for madonna; Lisa was the name of Francesco da Giacondo’s wife).

       • He laughably refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls as some of the earliest Christian documents.
They are, in fact, Jewish documents that make no reference to Jesus or Christianity whatsoever.

    • Da Vinci Code claims that The the person sitting next to Jesus’ right in Leonardo’s painting The Last Supper is Mary Magdalene. This is the “code” behind the book’s assertions, supposedly proof that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, among other absurd claims.
Every reputable art historian, however, acknowledges that this figure is actually the apostle John.

    • Throughout the work, Brown refers to “the Vatican” as the location of corrupt Church power. For example, according to Brown, it was “the Vatican” who ordered the suppression of women and the “sacred feminine” in the early centuries of the Church.
This would be difficult to accomplish given that “the Vatican” (i.e., the Vatican hill in Rome, the site of present-day Vatican City) would not become the seat of Church power until the 12th century. In the early centuries of the Church, it simply did not exist.

There are also many that are more in the religious realm. For example:

    • Dan Brown refers to Silas, the book’s assassin, as an Opus Dei monk.
Opus Dei is not a monastic order. It has no monks.

    • He claims that originally there were over 80 Gospels, but the others were suppressed.
There were some (but not 80) other “Gospels” written in addition to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, these were written much later than the 4 Gospels — in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. These other Gospels contain many beliefs, particularly Gnostic views, that are not from the first century of Christianity. An example in the “Gospel of Judas” which has recently gotten publicity.

   • Da Vinci Code claims that Constantine put together the present New Testament. Teabing (the “expert” in the book) even says that the Emperor Constantine "omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike." Actually, Constantine merely arranged for putting together bound copies of the books already accepted by Christians as Scripture. These Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, show much more of Jesus’ human characteristics than the Gnostic gospels.

   • Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had children. This marriage is “a matter of historical record.”
There is no such record. In the thousands of pages written by the early Christians, there is not a single text that says Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene…Not even in the Gnostic Gospels!

    • Brown claims that the early Church suppressed women and replaced worship of the “sacred feminine” with a “male God.”
This suppression of women is, of course, hard to square with the Church’s obvious veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the unique exaltation she enjoys above all the saints.

• Another claim is that no one believed Jesus was divine until the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.). In a “relatively close vote,” the Council gave the human Jesus an upgrade, declaring him divine.
The earliest Christians believed in Christ’s divinity from the very beginning—centuries before the Council of Nicea. This is seen in both the New Testament and writings of the Church Fathers by the year 200 A.D. The Council just affirmed this belief in opposition to the Arian heresy. The vote was 218 – 2.

This page was adapted largely from materials from http://www.davinciantidote.com/