Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code, The worthwhile, after the movie, read – R. M. Williams – tucson, arizona USA
after watching the movie i went looking for more information about the issues. this was the first substantial book i encountered. a worthwhile place to start on learning more, the references on each entry are the next place to go.
This book was a good idea, but I wish it had been written by an historian – Ingrid Heyn – Melbourne, Australia
Sharan Newman is clearly a very entertaining writer. I appreciate the style here (although at times I was longing for less of the one-liners and more of an excitingly scholarly approach) and I appreciate enormously her intentions in writing this book. But ultimately this book failed to do more than give a brief snippet addressing each alphabetised topic.
Let me give a few examples. Freemasonry is treated in six short pages. (Each page, by the way, is VERY short, with considerable space between each line – we are not talking about a taxing amount to read!) The Fibonacci series gets two and a half pages. Les Dossiers Secrets, two pages. The Dead Sea Scrolls, three and a half pages. Leonardo da Vinci, six pages. Dagobert, three and a half pages (and Ms Newman spends most of that time explaining how confusing it is when there’s more than one Dagobert among the Merovingian kings, which is like writing a potted history of Queen Elizabeth II and spending half of that history telling one’s readers that this queen is not to be confused with Queen Elizabeth I). And so on… and so on…
My major feeling, on reading these short entries, was that Ms Newman had done a lot of secondary reading, and jotted down a few brief notes that pleased her as she was reading. I did not have the impression she knew in any degree of depth the topics mentioned. Without exception, Ms Newman appears to have read translations rather than originals, for instance – and it’s obvious she has not looked at the actual source material of the Gospel of Philip, for instance, for she falls into the trap of saying that this piece of writing said that Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene “presumably on the mouth”. The text does not say that, and the only presumption that the text says this is based upon translations that happily fill in with whatever suits the purpose of the translator, hardly a scholarly approach and certainly not one which can be used as a supporting argument.
I was taken aback to read that Ms Newman says “I read the sources fairly closely” when she discussed Gregory the Great. Read the sources FAIRLY CLOSELY? Good lord. When one is writing a book of this nature (i.e., a book focusing on correcting historical misinformation that is affecting so many people), one does not read “fairly closely”. An amateur reads “fairly closely – a professional historian spends (hopefully) years gaining in-depth and comparative information from the primary sources, and keeps up to date with other informed writing by scholars. (Or one reads the sources with the attention, depth and speed of a fiend.) Anything less is not doing justice to the purpose.
I would very much like to have given a higher rating than three. But three is fair in view of the lack of depth and in view of the occasional historical error here. I do recommend the book as a beginning point for further study, but the further study HAS to be undertaken by the reader in order to gain anything other than a Cliff’s Notes view of the topics.
: Millions have been enthralled by The Da Vinci Code’s fascinating historical speculations-and the blockbuster novel’s audience has also made bestsellers of several books offering to separate the facts from the fiction. This comprehensive, encyclopedic volume is written by an acclaimed medievalist-and takes an objective, history-based approach to the phenomenon and the questions it has raised. The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code gives easy-to-find, clear answers about the people, places, and events that play roles in Dan Brown’s tantalizing thriller in a lively, encyclopedic format-shedding new light on some of the deepest mysteries of the Dark Ages. Further, the author has visited all of the sites in France and England which are settings in The Da Vinci Code, offering unprecedented insight into these locations–for armchair travellers, or for fans who wish to go and visit these sites themselves. Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code caused a huge sensation when it came out in 2003. The book, a modern twist on the Holy Grail quest, has sold over 20 million copies in 42 languages. It claimed to reveal an extraordinary alternate history of the Western world, including the existence of Jesus Christ’s surviving bloodline, which was protected for 2,000 years by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. The question is: How much of the novel is true? Not a lot, according to Sharan Newman, a medieval novelist and scholar. Her book, The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code, investigates the historical figures, places, and events behind Brown’s thriller. While The Da Vinci Code is a great yarn, she writes, it makes numerous factual distortions and was largely inspired by another book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, that is far from credible.
The real Priory of Sion, Newman writes, was founded in the 1950s by a French far-right extremist named Pierre Plantard, who tried to pass himself off as a descendant of Dagobert II and, therefore, as the rightful king of France. Newman writes that French historians have discredited Plantard’s claims as a hoax. In The Da Vinci Code, the Priory is said to have been led by an illustrious line of grand masters, including Leonardo Da Vinci. Newman writes that Leonardo, while certainly a genius, was famously erratic, undependable, and easily distracted–far too flaky, she suggests, to be chosen to lead any group, let alone one supposedly as secret and important as the Priory. Newman says The Da Vinci Code also makes basic mistakes about Parisian geography, the layout of the Louvre museum, and important facts of French and biblical history. So did Jesus have children? Newman says there is no evidence for that either. Overall, her book is a salient reminder that fiction is sometimes just that. –Alex Roslin
Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code, The
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