by John-Peter Pham
Spurred on no doubt by The Da Vinci Code hoopla, Dan Brown’s fans continue to push his less intricately crafted Angels & Demons to the top of the bestseller lists. A “prequel” to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons chronicles Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon’s first foray into the world of the Vatican [...]

With the world-wide release of The DaVinci Code movie fast approaching, as a service to our readers, we post Bart Ehrman’s list of the 10 historical errors contained in the book.
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. [...]

by Anatoly Liberman
Martin Chuzzlewit spent some time in America and, following the lead of his creator, Charles Dickens, formed a most unfavorable
impression of the country. Soon after his arrival, he met the editors of the Watertoast
Gazette, who were sure that Queen Victoria “[would] shake in her royal
shoes” when she opened the fresh issue of [...]

The discovery of the Gospel of Judas has created quite a stir at OUP. Bart Ehrman, whose book on Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene was just released, wrote significant sections for both of the best-selling books (1, 2) brought out by National Geographic on the subject. Now, Philip Jenkins has written an essay at [...]

by Steven Lubet
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D. Ga.) might not be your idea of a model legislator, but she may have the makings of a poker player. She is obviously willing to try a high-stakes bluff. Rather than immediately apologize for hitting a Capitol Police security officer, McKinney launched a caustic campaign to [...]

At least that’s what Sony’s movie website says once you click through to it. Judging from the proliferation of websites and other promotional vehicles saturating the internet and television with DaVinciana, its probably more accurate to say that Sony is loaded, or will be by the time the cash registers stop ringing. Bookstores are cashing [...]

by Don Ritchie
It is richly ironic that during the same week the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting was awarded to Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post, for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, news reports also revealed that the FBI has been seeking to comb through [...]

Roger Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future, was interviewed by The American Prospect this week. Gottlieb argues that in recent years religious groups have begun to recognize the moral obbligation of preserving God’s creation and taken up a host of environmental causes.
How do you respond (or how would [...]

by David Brion Davis
I’m concerned with the erosion of interest in history — the view expressed by even some leading teachers and intellectuals that we should “let bygones be bygones,” “free” ourselves from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future.
I’m passionately committed to the cause that distinguishes us from [...]

by Anatoly Liberman
The shape of the word weather has changed little
since it was first attested in the year 795. In Old English, it had d
in place of th; the rest, if we ignore its present day spelling with ea,
is the same. But its range of application has narrowed down to “condition of
the [...]