Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code [antikvár]

Introduction The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown has been an enormous publishing success, dwarfing all competitors of recent memory. As I write these words (June 14, 2004), the book has been on the New York Times best-seller list for sixty-three weeks, where it is still number one. Earlier this year it was selling at an astronomical rate of 100,000 copies per week, according to the February 9, 2004, issue of Publishers Weekly. When the paperback version comes out, we can expect yet another huge avalanche of sales, topping the many millions of copies of the hardback already in print. Like many others, I first heard of The Da Vinci Code by word of mouth. I had just finished a book called Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew for Oxford University Press. This was a book about forms of early Christianity that never "made it," Christian beliefs and practices that came to be shunned, outlawed, and destroyed by the leaders of the early church, who were intent on establishing the orthodox way of understanding the religion. Included in my book were