Truer words have never been spoken.
Oh gosh, I know which game you’re talking about with the last one but I can’t remember the title either! I never played it, just heard of it as one that used the Templars like Gabriel Knight III. Now that was a good computer game.
And it had vampires, too. I’ll bet The DaVinci Code doesn’t have any vampires.
Wow, I didn’t expect to see quite so much negativity in this thread, either. I always enjoy reading the debates around here for their diversity of opinion. The DVC came along for me just as I was beginning a kind of spiritual awakening of my own, having been raised extremely Fundamentalist Southern Baptist. I was raised to think that Pagans were horrible people who worshipped the Devil and ate babies, and that Jewish people were doomed to suffer more episodes like the Holocaust until they accepted Jesus as the Messiah, beleive it or not. I am not kidding, ya’ll. Narrow-mindedness at it’s worst.
Yes, I found Brown’s writing style grating at times, and yes, I knew that the facts about the Council of Nicea were wrong as soon as I read it, but I did make me want to know more. I was already reading alot of material about the Great Mother and feeling very betrayed by my Christian Fathers for lying to me about many of the orgins of my faith, so one could say it was a case of me being more than ready to hear Dan Brown’s tale. I sought out more books. I have been like a sponge, soaking up as much about Early Christianity, Catholism, Judiasm, Paganism, and Wicca as I can find time to read. My mother is sure I am going to Hell for having all this “alternative” material around my house. Whatever mom.
But having said all that, I was able to keep things in perspective while reading DVC. I read an interview with Brown where he said that he wasn’t trying to do anything more than tell an interesting story, and if his book got more people to do their own reasearch and discuss religion, then he felt he had done his job.
I really do admire that, as someone who never even met a Jewish or a Catholic person until I was in my twenties. In my small Southern town, you were Baptist or maaaaaaybe Methodist, (the Methodists were considered downright radical) and your whole social life revolved around your unquestioned loyalty to the church.
A few years ago I began to feel less and less fulfilled in my Baptist church, and I thought I just needed to pray harder, to study the Bible harder, and the answers would come. They didn’t. So I started reading and researching the orgins of the Bible and the early church myself, at times becoming so angry over what I was reading that I would hurl the book across the room, unable to believe things that had been ingrained in me as a child. How could my parents be wrong? I was raised to respect my elders and never question, but day-um… there it was in black and white. When I wanted to discuss these things at Bible study I was told, “No… we can’t talk about that.”
Fortunately for myself, I have now widened my horizons, and no, I no longer think Pagans eat babies. I know they don’t even acknowledge the Devil, and I think it is really a beautiful way to view life.
What I am really saying, and I am sorry this became so verbose, is that even though people shouldn’t be getting their religious philosophy from novels, books like DVC do spark some people to begin their own quests that they might not have done otherwise, and that is always a postive thing. I think the OP was just excited about a new idea, and she wound up feeling shot down. I have certainly been there myself, and it hurts. To the OP, DON’T swallow DVC hook, line, sinker, but DO keep reading those books!
You should look into The Pagan Christ, by Tom Harpur.
Did you mean me or the OP? At any rate, it’s funny you mention that book, because I was just off to bed to begin one of two books I just bought, “The Jesus Mysteries” with the subtitle of “Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?” and another one by the same authors (Freke & Gandy) “Jesus and the Lost Goddess”. The first person who reviewed Harpur’s book on your cite really chewed him up and spit him out. Thanks, I worte it down, and I’ll give it look-see next time I’m at the bookstore. 
If the OP hasn’t stopped reading the unwarranted attacks by nay-sayers, I’ll recommend the following book (which does present itself as historical fact, so fire away). I found it to be quite an interesting (if dry) read: Templars’ Legacy in Montreal,
the New Jerusalem.. Can’t say I’ve delved too much deeper into the subject, but it will get you started on some other related topics that you (as the “feminist” progressive may appreciate).
And I forgot to reccommend a book myself to the OP. You will really like “Th Woman With the Alabaster Jar”, by Margaret Starbird. It is actually mentioned as being one of the books in Teabing’s library in DVC. Starbird, a Catholic scholar, read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and was outraged, so she set about doing her own research, only to do a complete 180 and change her mind. Again, not a be all and end all on Mary Magdalene, but it really helped me establish a better time line in own mind. There’s a great chapter on “The Twelfth Century Awakening”.