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DaVinci Code – the errors

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.

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 descendent of David.

9. Mary Magdalene was pregnant at the crucifixion? That’s a good one.

10. The Q document is not a surviving source being 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.


Click here to read “The Truth about Mary Magdalene”. Ehrman’s latest attempt to clear the waters muddied by The Da Vinci Code.

Ehrman’s newest book, Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, is now available!

Recent Comments

  1. Seven Star Hand

    Are you ready for the truth yet?

    Both sides of this argument are based on interpretations of a Roman fantasy purposely designed to hide the truth about the future Messiah and the true nature of the Creator.

    How do we finally solve these ages-old mysteries? To recast a common political adage, “It’s the symbology stupid!”

    Unlike most of you, I have a very personal interest in ancient wisdom symbology, false prophecy based on its misrepresentation, and deceptions imposed in the name of religion. You see, I’m the one all the lies were told about about the millennia. Now, I’ve written an extensive tome proving that Christianity is a purposeful deception.

    I know many readers of this site will want to scoff at this information before bothering to pay attention to the details. I have produced comprehensive and verifiable proof that the original pre-Christian Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) was a symbolically encrypted wisdom text that was stolen and modified by the founders of Christianity. I demonstrate a series of specific and undeniable proofs of verifiable fraud in the Christianized Book of Revelation, which also appear throughout the New Testament.

    Furthermore, I have produced stunning and comprehensive proof that the ancient symbology used to construct sealed Hebrew texts is an ancient philosophical technology.

    The ancient symbolism used in The Apocalypse and other Hebrew prophecies and wisdom texts predates Christianity, Judaism, modern secret societies, and mystery schools by thousands of years. While in the hands of Christianity, The Apocalypse and its symbology have been purposely misinterpreted, recast, and misrepresented. The original Hebrew document was a multi-purpose narrative constructed using layered and synchronized ancient wisdom symbolism. Its true purposes, features, and functionality are detailed in my book, further demonstrating that it was a symbolically encrypted Hebrew wisdom text encoding prophecy, philosophy, and scientific wisdom that was stolen and fraudulently modified by the founders of Christianity.

    If your goal is to seek the truth, then read my articles, download my FREE EBook and direct Christians to read it also. Challenge them to prove me wrong. The E-Book is a free download and I make no money from it or the paperback.

    Not only do I talk the talk, I walk the walk.

  2. Doug

    I notice this person claims himself the Messiah and challenges us to prove him wrong, yet he does not provide any means for responding to his blasphemies on his web site or in his post on this blog. If you truly are the Messiah, Lion of the Tribe of Juda, Teacher of Righteousness, and Melchizedek as your book description claims on lulu.com, then you should be able to provide us more proof than a downloadable pdf on a cheezy geocities website. How do expect anyone to prove you wrong if you don’t provide any means for them to respond. If Christianity is such a sham and deception, why did you, the self-proclaimed Messiah, not prevent it 2000 years ago. The truth is, Christianity has continued to survive over 2 millenia because it is TRUTH. The truth is, you are just one of the many Jesus spoke of in Matthew, Mark and Luke when he said “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many.”

  3. Stephen Weber

    Firstly, I believe that the DaVinci code, while perpetrating a fraud to the public, could, actually end up causing people to start “asking questions about Jesus.” Therefore, we purveyors of truth need to be ready. It is quite possible that our Lord is planning to take what the devil meant for harm and (through an increased hunger to know the truth about Jesus) turn it around for good.

    I’m just curious about what these DaVinci folks are going to do on the day the Lord comes storming in his white horse . . . interview him? :) :)

    Steve Weber

  4. Rodrigo

    A few comments:
    1) That 10 “errors” listed above are just faith declarations…there isn’t any historic proof in it.
    2) If you aren’t capable of separate faith from history, you’ll never be objective.
    3) Remember that on the begining of the christianity…people were Jewish.
    4) The Da Vinci Code isn’t a public fraud…it’s just a book, even more, it’s just a novel so don’t take it too seriously. It’s enough that you say if you like it or not…don’t make religious philosophy about the evil fighting the good. Grow up.
    5) The Church isn’t just a religious institution, it’s also a political one…do you remember the inquisition and the cruzades?
    6) The Church talk about blasphemy and the “attack” to The Christ, but indeed it’s a criticism to church itself.
    7) The vast majority of the people in the time when Jesus lived were illiterate, so the new testament wasn’t writen ’till many years after his death…therefore it can’t be used as a historically trusted source but as a faith declaration.

  5. VC

    It’s a book, it’s for fun. We all know a lot of things in it are wrong,

    Truth : We’ll never know 100% sure who or what Jezus was or what happened. We can only eliminate some possibilities. That’s history, it’s not possible to tell a story that happened so long ago 100 % accurate there just isn’t enough proof and far as I know, none of us were there.

    Like I said, It’s a book it’s for FUN. If everything that’s politically, religiously or historically incorrect should be rejected most writers would be out of bussines.

  6. Nick Divers

    I would still consider calling the Da Vinci Code a public fraud because even though it is a novel, and though it is touted as a work of fiction, it survives (and thrives) on the basis that the characters, and the plot itself, revolve around the uncovering of a “real myth.” Unfortunately, a lot of people I know aren’t too capable of separating truth from fiction.

    Besides the documentation on the life of Jesus and proof behind the resurrection (see Frank Morison’s “Who Moved The Stone?”), I do like what Doug said above. Christianity has been around for thousands of years, and believe it or not, was propogated by people other than Catholics (who may not be re-writing history, but can still be pretty corrupt, in my opinion). You can base your beliefs on a storyline involving documents that were found in 1947, written into a hip, exciting storyline by a modern-day author if you want to.

    As far as the whole “Christians were Jewish, too” thing, The term “Jewish” can either refer to the race, the religion, or the zionist political party in Israel. Sure, some of the early christians weren’t Gentiles, but that doesn’t change the fact that the dead sea scrolls were all written before the birth of Jesus, most of them around 335 BC.

    If your belief that the New Testament is a faith declaration is based on the idea that “the vast majority of the people in Jesus’ time were illiterate,” then how can you even believe any text written around that time or before? Forget about wether or not Jesus had any kids… did he even exist? Was the entire being of Jesus Christ completely “made up” by the church several hundred years later? Yes, every single person was illiterate and even for people that weren’t, there probably weren’t laptops around that they could write with.

    Of course, the Church can become political, and yes, there have been many questionable practices and some straight-up bad things have done by the church. That’s more of a “How great the sin of man” than a “How great the con of man.”

    The only reason you can buy books like “Decoding the Da Vinci Code” or “The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code” or “Uncovering The Da Vinci Code” or “Turning The Da Vinci Code On It’s Stomach And Giving It A Mean Spanking” is because there are a lot of people out there who know something went wrong here. Separating faith from history, in this case, is something that you, yourself, aren’t even doing. Sure, Christians have faith. They have faith in something that’s been around for a long time. Liberal- and open-minded thinkers have an alike faith, which is faith in the things that refute the creeds that they don’t understand or believe in themselves. The Da Vinci Code arguments aren’t Faith Vs. History, it’s two separate faiths that believe two separate histories! (Only one doesn’t have historical flaws.)

    But yeah, the movie sucks anyways.

  7. Cody Tillis

    People shouldn’t even bother to think about the DiVince code , its all just a false novel.The devil had to come back with something after the Passion of the Christ did so good in theaters.Its all just a host.The so called DiVince code is’nt at all it’s worked up to be.

  8. Vas

    The book reminds of one of those ‘crazy’ mannuscripts Eco was making fun of in “Foucault’s Pendulum”. Garbage like that cannot be entertaining and is an insult to any thinking person… religious or not.

  9. Fugi

    The DaVinci Code novel is bullsh*t, and don’t even get me started with the movie

  10. soledad vidal

    i want to know the name of bart ehrman´s book mentioned in the paraghaph “are you ready for the truth?”,where can i download it? i´m always ready for the truth…all of them.
    soledad

  11. Raj

    Christanity & Islam only objective is to increase people of the same comunnity, for that they will spend money to convert or sleep with as many to produce as many.. finally when they have many of themself they start fighting among themself….
    Now how is it related to the current topic is.. people who are in this business find it difficult to accept what is truth or anything or anybody speaking against as they are worried of their bread and butter which they are getting from this business…
    Don’t try to contain.. you fools who think and try to add different colors and magics to religion needs to understand that they cannot create God by adding those colors…
    But as long as fools are around who don’t like to see the fact, so long intelligent people will be meeting their ends..

  12. Stephan Joseph

    The problem with saying “it’s just fiction” would be the same as if someone wrote a bestselling thriller in which main plot was a character “proving” the Holocaust didn’t happen.
    I don’t care how “good” the writing was anyone who would be well…sick or ignorant enough to go see it and say “It’s just fiction” would make the news the same way Neo-Nazis make the news. They are rightly portrayed as both criminal and idiotic.

    The point is when something called “historical fiction” departs this far from known accepted historical truth and purposely villainizes a group/ religion/ race etc. the specter of violence against that group of people is not far behind. Remember if what is purported by Brown is true then Christians are almost sub-humanly stupid in believing what they do.
    And here’s the rub, if we are sub-humanly stupid then we ought to be treated that way right? The theology for persecuting a people is developed to justify the practice. Want proof? Remember the Tuskegee experiments that “proved” that blacks were inferior to whites? The Nazis did the same thing to the Jews. Slave traders did the same thing to the Aboriginal people even making them side show freaks etc. So let me stress this, if what Brown is saying Is true then someone that were to remain a Christian after viewing the film or reading the book would be a self-deluded idiot on the order of a man who after looking in the mirror for 2 hours walks away hears someone tell him that he’s a poached egg and believes it.

    It’s hate speech but if History repeats itself, it’s also tragically prophetic. It’s a sign of the times. The message of this movie could be summarized in the quote of a very famous man who said “Religion is the opiate of the masses” it was Karl Marx the founder of Communism who said that, oh by the way, his “theology” was lived out very shortly after that by a man named Joseph Stalin and many others the result very soon after being 17 million dead Russians, 30 million dead Chinese, 1.6 million North Koreans etc. even to this day in China if you are a Christian and not a part of the “State Appoved Churches” you can be admitted to a mental institution solely on those grounds. Communist Russia was the same way, if you professed belief in God you were deemed mentally unfit to even graduate High School.

    The Communist Manifesto was a lot smaller (in size) book than the Da Vinci Code, and it never got made into an international movie in which MILLIONS of people were exposed to it’s message. The groundwork for bloodshed and massive persecution Worldwide is being laid the same way it always has been. “Innocent Propaganda”. And I say that this movie isn’t “just a movie” anymore than Hitler’s Youth was “Just a Boys Club.”
    You dont have to be a prophet to see where this is leading.
    He who has ears to hear let him hear…
    Stephan Joseph

  13. Darrell Abbott

    It never ceases to amaze me how a bunch of people who believe in myths, can get so worked up over a FICTION book. Christ, get a life people. I read the book in a day, and read it again the next. Great book. And as a man of the 21st century, the computer age, the age of science, this work of fiction seems more likely than all of Jesus “Son of God” B.S.. By the way, were is God when little kids are being tortured, raped, and murdered??? Oppps, must be his lunch break, my bad.

  14. ai-kin

    i wish i had a time machine which could travel in the past…^^
    AND PROVE TO HIM THAT HE IS WRONG!

  15. John G

    “The Da Vinci Code” is merely a fictious book where the author has put together fragments of various baseless & unproved theories to bring out a story without a concrete ending.
    “His word is a light unto my path” -As Christians we need to understand that The Bible is what we need to base our faith upon. There are various things which are not mentioned in the Bible which we will not be able to understand. Let us stand by His word only.
    The ‘Last Supper’ was a mere work of art by a multi-specialist & genius Leonardo. We should not be disturbed by what it portrays as there is no indication anywhere that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to paint it unlike the Bible where the saints & disciples were.
    There are many references to history in this book where till now no one can give a concrete answer as to why that event took place – be it the Kemplar, Holy Grail etc.
    Let us put our trust in God and not the works of man – Leonardo, Dan Brown, Newton – whoever for that matter.

  16. Connor Hoell

    You know whats funny? This was a fiction book and people acualy took it seriously, relize people im 14, and i did my homework. Now i grew up, or is growing up, on long island, home of the liberal, and let me tell you it’s the epidemy of heresy. First off, in order to agree or dis-agree you must either thuraly(sorry can’t spell for my life) study both sides of the story, or be educated in theology, or church history. Now i hate to say this, but the person who said these are just religous declerations is an idiot. Now, lets see, if we HAVE the documents and can READ the documents, then how is edvidence a religous decleration? Next, don’t say you people are stupid it’s JUST a novel, because this is true, but most people take it seriously, and some are using it to attack the church . Also im sick of liberal intellectuals going on and on about how great and perfect they are and how God is just a way to do this and that, and after a while you just don’t wanna listen anymore, it’s like just saying this is against my values but please SHUT UP!!!! it’s obvious who you worship…. and stop trying to seperate history and religon cause they r one in the same. Everyone knows that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, the controversial part is, is he realy the son of God and is does God exsist. Thats up to you to deside, but don’t try to re-write history, plus we have proven all libral statements wrong so far so…yeah. We win on the Da-vinci code heretics.

  17. Sarah

    ITS SEMIOTICS NOT SYMBOLOGY and Dan brown taught English, he should be ashamed of himself

  18. Rodrigo

    To the little kid Connor:
    By reading your post I can be positive you are just 14 years old. You have a lot to learn still, so when you have developed your intelligence enough then come back to post. You can’t discuss anything if you start attacking and insulting the one who doesn’t think like you.

    P.S.: And maybe you should know that I was raised as a catholic, so I know exactly what I’m talking about…

  19. Phil

    “The Da Vinci Code” is merely a fictious book where the author has put together fragments of various baseless & unproved theories to bring out a story without a concrete ending.

    Funny. That’s exactly how I would describe the Bible. LOL!!

  20. wilson

    i agree with phil they r both just books beleave wot u want. the fact is that no one cares wot other people think make your choice and stop trying 2 make your self
    sound smart

    ps connor your the man keep it up

  21. Kev

    No matter what your religion or faith is, nothing can be proved as either for or against what is being discussed here. I found the book and film very entertaining and took it as that, but it did ruffle the feathers of the church somewhat so an element of the book no matter how small must be scraping the truth. It has to be mentioned that the church is very powerful and indeed the Bible could have been written to suit their needs, who knows,(unless you get that Time Machine Darrell) but one things for sure, there are those who believe and those who dont so leave it at that, Barts list dosent convince me.

  22. D

    Lets come back down to earth. “The DaVinci Code” is taken way to seriously.
    This is an author who has succeeded on playing off of the fact that people have a natural curiousity towards Mysticism and religion.
    The author has also succeeded in using the “shock” factor right where it would have the most effect. And lets face it, even if your not religious, this book still effects the non believers in many ways I won’t get into here.
    This DaVinci Code thing boils down to one thing and one thing only. MONEY! The author did exactly what he set out to do. Write a book that would sell as many copies as possible. And for that, I give him a lot of credit. Because that is true genious not only inteluctually, but to be that in tune with what is going on in the world at this time is pure genious.

  23. Sarah M.

    The basic point of this conversation I believe is that this movie was made to make money. All of you people here have probably seen the movie. You either bought it, paid to see it in the theater, or paid to rent it. Either way, by being controversial, it drew attention and made sales. It’s just business, people. Whether you like it or not, that’s what it comes down to. None one give’s a rat’s a$$ if you like it or you don’t.

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