In What’s the origin of “heretic”?, it says, “The notion that Constantine selectively edited the gospels to suit his personal beliefs is an ingenious piece of fiction, but fiction nonetheless.”
“Fiction” is too kind a description. What it actually is is the slovenly research that is typical of all of Dan Brown’s writing.
Nothing stated about the real world in any of his novels should ever be accepted at face value, whether the subject be history, theology, or computer security. The average comicbook writer does more fact checking.
This seems a little harsh, especially given that Brown wrote a potboiler rather than a scholarly exegesis on the history of early Christianity.
There will always be people who too easily accept the reality of a particular work of fiction: Some scholars are still trying to locate Plato’s Atlantis, people have been writing serious letters of inquiry to 221 B. Baker Street in London since Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories, and today–especially given the modern culture–folks will latch onto conspiracy theories regarding early Christianity.
If that’s what’s really bothering you, don’t take it out on Mr. Brown. I’m not a fan of his writing, but “slovenly research” is hardly a charge I’d level against him; that’s like complaining that a celebrated chef isn’t so great because he has poor handwriting.
There is a difference between a non-fact that is part of the story, and a non-fact that is presented as background. The state where the Simpsons live has a capital named “Capital City”, and there’s nothing wrong with that, even though none of the 50 real states have a capital by that name. But a novel (unless it is of the Alternative History genre) that says that New York City is the capital of New York State is a sign of an writer who is careless, at best, and, should the entire plot of the book turn on this “fact”, then it is a book fit for nothing but propping up the short leg of a bookcase that is home to worthier volumes.
My main problem with the book was just that the writing was so lousy. I made it maybe eighty pages into TDC before I threw it down. My wife didn’t even get that far. My sister, who had given me a copy for my birthday so that she could then borrow it, fared no better. Her take was something along the lines of, “All this stuff was happening, but none of it made sense and I found I didn’t care whether the protagonist lived or died.”
I could handle the tinfoil hat stuff if the writing were any better.
RR
It’d be valid if a major part of the chef’s schtick were his daily hand-lettered menus. And in the case of Dan Brown, his claims of writing historical fiction are significantly undercut by his casual grasp of, y’know, history. Deeper than that, of course, his supposed status as writer is undercut by the fact that his prose is a steaming sack of yak bile, but that’s beside the point.
Most of the claims I’ve seen against Brown’s scholarship–such as this site, this site, and this book, which someone once gave me as a Xmas gift even though I hadn’t read Brown’s book–clearly have an agenda beyond correcting the supposed historical facts in Brown’s work of fiction.
In may cases, the argument against some (do I need to repeat it again) fictional claims in the book (e.g. the vote on Christ’s divinity at the Council of Nicaea) are refuted by relying on interpretation of NT books which Brown fictionally claims were revised at Nicaea. Such an argument is like complaining that an author who wrote a fantasy book about a world where elephants lay eggs is obviously poorly researched because the book claims the eggs are colored plaid, and there are no examples of plaid eggs in nature (apologies to Mr. Dingle for appropriating his metaphor).
If a person claims the novel is “slovenly researched”, I’d appreciate him/her pointing out out actual historical errors–rather than a religious interpretation they either don’t agree with or find blasphemous. I’ll get you started: One of Brown’s characters claims the Priory of Sion was founded in 1099, but in the real world we have since learned that documents purportedly showing this priory was as old as that have been shown to be fakes, and that no such organization ever existed prior to the 20th century. Even this I’d argue is fictional license–he’s essentially assuming as part of the cover-up that the documents were declared fakes by paleographers paid off by the Vatican–but it is the kind of historical error one could fairly level against Brown’s book.
Finally, I’m not happy having to defend Brown’s book from criticism, mainly because like others on this thread I found the writing to be turgid and the plot to be a series of talky vignettes linked by quick chases. I think the criticism of its historical accuracy comes more from its premise (one that insults a certain religious sensibility) than its historical content. Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses suffers from similar criticism, one that resulted in a fatwa being pronounced against him; who in the West is criticizing the suppose historical inaccuracies in this work?
If I remember the controversy rightly, the most condemned passage in The Satanic Verses is a dream sequence.
Norris Lacy is America’s top expert on King Arthur (he led the team that produced the first full English translation of the Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate a few years ago). His Dan Brown and The Grail That Never Was is his official response anent Brown’s work. In private, his language is a good deal stronger.
And I must reiterate that Brown’s vandalism of history is often not presented as being in any way part of his fictional creation, but rather as “Things that scholars know, though little realized by laymen.”
Furthermore, in The DaVinci Code, Brown is not presenting his own fiction, but the very real paranoid conspiracy garbage put forward some years back by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. (The only reason they lost their plagiarism suit against Brown was their insistence that their book was non-fiction.) And, by the way, the Priory of Sion hoax had been exploded long before Brown started work on his book.
Well, here is a good article about the objective history Brown messed up in regard to paintings, the Louvre etc.
There are also some books by Biblical scholars that point out why Browns interpretation of e.g. the Apocrypha goes against anything known by scholars, or how tortured his interpretation that Mary of Magdalene and Jesus were a pair is when compared to the normal interpretation. I can’t give titles at the moment, because I’m on holiday now, and the books are at my work (the library of theology of the University of Munich, btw).
I have browsed one book (by some American Christian sect) that attacked Brown with an agenda, but I’ve also browsed several books by scholars with no agenda beyond correcting the scholarly mis-representation, mis-translation etc.
As a side point, from what I’ve seen and heard about Brown’s book, what bugs me is his agenda, the moral of the book, beyond the stupid Vatican-conspiracy theory (stupid because conspiracy theories are mostly stupid, but impossible to prove invalid; and because the Vatican did enough bad things in history that it’s dumb to invent further stuff). It’s the whole idea of divine blood that’s somehow better than other people that makes my spine crawl. I wonder why so many American entertainment - Hollywood movies and book bestsellers - are obsessed with the idea of a natural leader - one who is born and destined to become leader, instead of just electing a capable average joe. I mean, this is quite contrary to the idea of democracy, where heritage shouldn’t count, but capability, and where everybody is considered equal.
I also dislike his basic assertion that the “real” Bible (before the Vatican falsified it, sigh) is indeed divinely dictated - in the current atmosphere with all the fundies that take the Bible literally, and what Brown has said in interviews (that he started out his “research” as a skeptic, but found the light through the evidence and now firmly believes) gives the wrong side a tremendous leg-up, because too many people with too little background on actual Biblical scholarship (since there’s already a strong tradition among American christians to reject Bible science and take the Bible literally) will now believe his distortions and join up with the fundies.
A discussion of factual errors in Brown’s work doesn’t belong in this thread or this forum. While fierra made a passing reference, and thus some comment is reasonable regarding Constantine, I think we’ve got pretty far afield. How about back to topic?