Although there is much in Brown’s book that can be criticized, Ehrman focuses on ten specific items. They are summarized in this list that he originally created when he read the book and which is reproduced in his critique:
- 1. Jesus' life was decidedly not "recorded by thousands of followers across the land." He didn't even have thousands of followers, let alone literate ones.
- 2. It's not true that eighty Gospels "were considered for the New Testament." This makes it sound like there was a contest, entered by mail...
- 3. It's absolutely not true that Jesus was not considered divine until the Council of Nicea, that before that he was considered merely as "a mortal prophet." The vast majority of Christians by the early fourth century acknowledged him as divine. (Some thought he was so divine he wasn't even human!)
- 4. Constantine did not commission a "new Bible "that omitted references to Jesus' human traits. For one thing, he didn't commission a new Bible at all. For another thing, the books that did get included are chock-full of references to his human traits (he gets hungry, tired, angry; he gets upset; he bleeds, he dies...).
- 5. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not "found in the 1950s." It was 1947. And the Nag Hammadi documents do not tell the Grail story at all, nor do they emphasize Jesus' human traits. Quite the contrary.
- 6. "Jewish decorum" in no way forbade "a Jewish man to be unmarried." In fact, most of the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls were male unmarried celibates.
- 7. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not among "the earliest Christian records". They are Jewish, with nothing Christian in them.
- 8. We have no idea about the lineage of Mary Magdalene; nothing connects her with the "house of Benjamin." And even if she were, this wouldn't make her a descendant of David.
- 9. Mary Magdalene was pregnant at the crucifixion? That's a good one.
- 10. The Q document is not a surviving source hid by the Vatican, nor is it a book allegedly written by Jesus himself. It's a hypothetical document that scholars have posited as having been available to Matthew and Luke, principally a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Roman Catholic scholars think the same of it as non-Catholics — there's nothing secretive about it.
Particularly disappointing is the fact that many of the inaccuracies in Dan Brown’s book simply weren’t necessary. A bit more historical research and he would have been able to correct most of them without compromising the story a bit. At the same time, though, addressing these errors allows Bart Ehrman to explain the nature of doing historiography and what’s involved in historical research.
There have been a number of published responses to Brown’s book, but this the first of from a historian who specializes in the appropriate field and by someone who has spent a great deal of time writing about the beliefs of “alternative” Christianities from the first century. How much truth is there in The Da Vinci Code? Not much. If it stimulates people to learn more about early Christianity and learn the truth, then the popularity of the book will be a good thing. If people simply content themselves with the falsehoods they read in Brown’s book, then they will be far worse off for it.
The Bottom Line
The best thing people could probably do is read Ehrman’s response. It’s a scholarly work, but not one aimed at scholars. It’s aimed at the same people who read Brown’s book, and in fact often assumes that you are familiar with it. He presents both the difficulties of history generally and the difficulties of Christian history in a clear, understandable manner that should help most people. I doubt that it will achieve quite the popularity of *The Da Vinci Code, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve it.
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