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    Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine
    Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine
    Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine
    Audiobook7 hours

    Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine

    Written by Bart D. Ehrman

    Narrated by Bart D. Ehrman

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Dan Brown's immensely popular New York Times best-selling The Da Vinci Code is one of the most successful books of modern history. It has captivated millions the world over with its enthralling suspense and its provocative questions about the true nature of Jesus' life. But is there any truth to this clever work of fiction? Brown makes the extraordinary claim that all the historical information in his book is factually true. Historian Bart D. Ehrman, an authority on Jesus and the early Church, reveals that Brown's book is actually riddled with historical errors. In witty fashion, Ehrman separates fact from fiction, delivering the truth behind the code.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9781440796074
    Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine
    Author

    Bart D. Ehrman

    Bart D. Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity and a distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of six New York Times bestsellers, he has written or edited more than thirty books, including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, The Triumph of Christianity, and Heaven and Hell. Ehrman has also created nine popular audio and video courses for The Great Courses. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, with over two million copies and courses sold.

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    Reviews for Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code

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    • 5/5
      Artful use of historical errors to teach Christian history. Excellent tutorial!
    • 4/5
      In his usual somewhat repetitive but detailed fashion, Ehrman goes about demolishing Dan Brown's claim of the truth of all the documents he based The Da Vinci Code on. It turns out Brown had no understanding of the documents his "experts" in the novel talk about, totally misrepresenting their content and meaning. For example, he claims that the Dead Sea Scrolls contains gospels, which they do not. The contents are all Jewish documents. He claims the word "companion" used to describe Mary Magdalene's relationship to Jesus meant spouse in Aramaic, again showing his ignorance of the non-canonical gospel he was using as his source, which only survives in a Coptic translation from Greek--not Aramaic. And the Coptic translation borrows the Greek word, which is quite common and quite clearly does not mean "spouse". The truth, of course, is that Brown stole the whole idea for his book from one published a few years earlier: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Still, Ehrman's explanation is interesting and he does a good job as his own narrator in the audiobook version.
    • 3/5
      Substance: Ably confronts Brown's claims and debunks almost all of them. Brown is correct in only a few instances, mostly where non-specialist scholarship is irrelevant. Ehrman's point-by-point deconstruction (not quite a fisking) is illuminating. From a "practicing Christian" viewpoint, he falls into the camp of the symbologists rather than the literalists.Style: Not as straight-forward 1-2-3 as I prefer, but covers the territory.
    • 2/5
      interesting background info on the DA VINCI CODE, but too much repetition.
    • 4/5
      I read the Da Vinci COde and thoroughly enjoyed it as did the author however this short book taught me far more about early Christianity then did Brown's best seller. The author managed to do this without disparaging Dan Brown's novel (which is a great read). He explains some fascinating facts about Jesus, ary Magdalene and Constantine and their roles in the formation of modern Christianity. This book is a must read for anyone who has read Dan Brown's book (and who hasn't)
    • 5/5
      Having read a lot of ancient history, particularly early Christian history, most friends and family, after reading The Da Vinci Code, inevitably ask me how much of it is true. I always refer them to this book. Ehrman is eminently rational and respectful in his critique. He doesn't slam Dan Brown, he simply points out where his claims are historically accurate and where they are way off base.Not only is this an excellent assessment of the book, it is an amazingly accessible and interesting distillation of New Testament scholarship. Ehrman offers a brief history of Charlemagne and the Council of Nicea, discussions of many non-canonical gospels, and most importantly insight into how professional historians view and assess ancient texts as historical documents. This is the kind of information that EVERY member of the Christian religion should know, but most don't.
    • 5/5
      A really great answer to The DaVinci Code - not a religiously based answer, but one based on historical evidence. If the author is Christian or nonChristian, it is never revealed, but he does enlighten his readers on specifically the questions posed and the claimed "truths" in the popular fiction book. In short, I would take anything Dan Brown writes with a huge bag of salt, and despite his disclaimer that all the works of art, architechture, documents, etc are real and as he describes them, I would not trust one letter of it unless it was indpendantly verified. I would not believe his description of The Mona Lisa unless it jived with another independant source.The book also serves as a great introduction to early Christianity during Jesus's time through Constantine.