DAN BROWN'S LITERARY OFFENCES

The Boston Globe says that The DaVinci Code is "a delightful display of erudition", while the Rocky Mountain News says it "manages to both entertain and educate simultaneously". This is such a glowing statement about Dan Brown's historical accuracy that we need to look for ourselves and obtain some of that "entertaining education".

Mr Brown's expert historian is named Leigh Teabing. On page 338 he has Teabing say (talking about the Knights Templar) "Many of them were burned at the stake and tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber River." It seems to me that the presence of decaying and charred corpses in the Tiber River might negatively impact the flavor of Italian food, so I want to know more.

On May 12, 1310, Philippe De Marigny, the Archbishop of Sens, executed 54 brothers of the Knights Templar by burning them at the stake. Now Sens is 600 miles from the Tiber River. In Teabing's scenario, we have Ecclesiastical Authorities ordering some poor cart driver to transport 54 charred and decaying bodies (no refrigeration in 1310) 600 miles to dump them in the Tiber River. At an average speed of 24 miles per day, 600 miles would take 25 days. By the time this ten thousand pounds of decaying flesh reaches the Tiber River, they wouldn't be able to be thrown into the stream, they would have to be scooped.

I'm a little puzzled as to why they would have to use the Tiber River in the first place. Wouldn't the French King prefer to see them floating down the Seine? Or if the Archbishop was appeasing the Pope, who since 1309 had lived in Avignon, wouldn't he have thrown them into the Loire? Maybe it was just the historical association of the Tiber with famous executions like those of Spartacus and St Peter. In fact one of the speculative and occult "histories" that Mr Brown lists in his bibliography declares that Jaques de Molay was probably crucified before being burned, so the comparison with Spartacus and St Peter might be particularly apt.

At any rate the only other Templars executed were Jaques de Molay, the Grand Master, and Geoffroy de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy. They were burned alive by the order of King Philip on March 18, 1314 on the Île de la Cité in Paris, some 680 miles from Rome. The Île is in the middle of the Seine directly in front of the Royal Gardens so Philip could watch the show.

Mr Teabing is unclear about whether or not these two bodies were tossed into the Tiber River, and about whether this time any ceremony was used.

Brown also screws up the entire arrest sequence, attributing it to the Pope instead of the French King. On page 159, Teabing pontificates: "the Pope (Clement V) devised an ingeniously planned sting operation to quash the Templars and steal their treasure" this is the "standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar history"

The actual standard "academic sketch" of the Templar's history is that they were quashed by King Philip IV. "On Friday, October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of King Philip, later to be tortured into admitting heresy in the Order…

"In 1312 (five years later), after the Council of Vienne , and under extreme pressure from King Philip IV, Pope Clement V issued an edict officially dissolving the Order. Many kings and nobles who had been supporting the Knights up until that time, finally acquiesced and dissolved the orders in their fiefs in accordance with the Papal command. Most, however, were not so brutal as the French. In England many Knights were arrested and tried, but not found guilty. And a few Templars had a relative safe haven in Scotland, since Robert the Bruce, the King of Scots, had already been excommunicated for other reasons, and was therefore not disposed to pay heed to Papal commands. The order continued to exist in Portugal, its name was changed to the Order of Christ, and was believed to have contributed to the first naval discoveries of the Portuguese. Prince Henry the Navigator led the Portuguese order for 20 years until the time of his death. In Spain, where the king of Aragon was also against giving the heritage of the Templars to Hospitallers (as commanded by Clement V), the Order of Montesa took Templar assets."
From Wikipedia article on "History of the Knights Templar".

It was actually France's King Philip who devised the "ingeniously planned sting operation" only it was so "ingeniously planned" that the Templars got word of it several days in advance and spirited all their valuables out of France. Since the Pope wasn't in on it, there were many, many other places in Europe where they and their money were perfectly safe, outside of the jurisdiction of the king of France.

Teabing continues on page 160, "On Friday, October 13, 1307 Clement's Machiavelian operation came off with clockwork precision" … "his soldiers all across Europe" captured countless Knights and the organization was "obliterated." Called "the Vatican purges".

The Roman Catholic Curia in 1307 was located in Perugia and not in the Vatican. Probably Teabing meant that they were called the "Perugian purges". Clement, however, between 1306 and 1309 lived at Bordeaux, Poitiers and then Toulouse before moving the entire Curia to Avignon in 1309, so maybe Teabing actually meant that they were called the "Bordeauxian purges".

Of course, either way Teabing (and of course Brown) is wrong because Clement V had nothing to do with the arrest of the Knights Templar. And in fact the Pope didn't have any soldiers who could have done the arresting, and in fact it wasn't done all across Europe because it was only in France, and years later when the French King pressured Edward II of England to arrest the English Templars (not hard to do as Edward wanted their money, too) a few were arrested in England, but acquitted, not convicted by the English courts. And Teabing (and Brown) is seriously wrong in saying the order was obliterated. There were some 2000 Templars in France, knights, sergeants, brothers and servants. Only about 138 were arrested and only 56 were ever executed.

It was Philip's "Machiavelian" operation, and was prompted by Philip's bankrupted treasury, and it went off with "clockwork precision" only in France, and the organization was "obliterated" only in France. And his "clockwork precision" failed to seize the Templar's treasury which had been spirited out of France two days before. As the Wikipedia quote shows, the Templars were welcomed in Scotland and became the backbone of the Scottish army. In Prussia, that portion of Germany which was beyond the Empire, the Knights Templar joined the Teutonic Knights en masse and carved out a home for themselves in the Baltic countries outside of the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. In Portugal they just changed their names (to the Knights of Christ) and continued on as before. It helped that the Portuguese king was a member… In Aragon where James II needed their money and fighting men for his reconquista, he ordered the Templar treasury turned over to the Knights of Montessa, and the Spanish Templars joined the Montessa order and became vassals of the Spanish kings.

It would be silly to footnote a novel, of course, but Mr Brown's website lists a bibliography and the first book listed is a history book, called The History of the Knights Templar by Charles G Addison. Now the trouble with relying on a history book which was written in 1842 is that it will fail to incorporate any archeological or archival findings of the last 160 years, and historians do not stand still. Every doctoral candidate is required to do research to add original contributions to the body of knowledge of history. Every year thousands of research papers are written and submitted; the state of knowledge changes constantly.

I don't think it was fair of the Chicago Tribune to say that the DaVinci Code is "several doctorates' worth of fascinating history" when Brown is using a 160 year old history book to get his "facts". Maybe the reviewer means "several really old doctorates worth of fascinating history".

The Louisville Voice-Tribune said, "Readers with advanced degrees in … European history … will have a grand time." Considering the amount of recent research an advanced degree requires, I wonder why reading a book based on 160 year old research will cause a "grand time". Perhaps the reviewer in Louisville is thinking of the history of history, which of course would make a 160 year old history book of historical interest.

Like all good adventure writers, Brown tries to connect up his story with genuine historical possibilities, and throw out occasional facts and figures to demonstrate that the author knows what he's talking about. But unlike most good adventure writers, Brown gets all his "facts and figures" wrong.

A typical example is on page 157. The historical expert is talking again. "The brotherhood's (Priory of Sion's) history spanned more than a millennium … " "The Priory of Sion," he began, "was founded in 1099 by a French king named Godfroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city (Jerusalem)."

This is 2006. According to Brown's scenario, the Priory was begun by Geoffrey of Bouillon in 1099. It wouldn't be a millennium old until 2099. "More than a millennium" would require the date of the story to be 2099 plus at least one: 2100. Adding 1000 to a number, even a four-digit one, isn't rocket science. I think you could expect even a symbologist to be able to do it.

Godfrey of Bouillon was German, not French, he was raised in Antwerp, and made Duke of Lower Lorraine by the Holy Roman Emperor. And there was a France at that time, in 987 Hugh Capet became King of France and broke away from the Empire. There was a France, but Godfrey wasn't part of it, Lower Lorraine was part of the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire. He wasn't a French king, he was a German duke. And after conquering Jerusalem, he did not become King of Jerusalem—he refused that title. After his death his brother Baldwin became the first King of Jerusalem. Lorraine, or at least part of it, lies within the modern nation of France since World War I, but in 1099 it did not. This is not the first time nor the last that Mr Brown will confuse modern France with the medieval Kingdom of the Franks, and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire. And Brown seems to have very little clue that the nations of Europe are actually sovereign and independent of each other.

On page 16, he is not having his historian lecture Sophie, he is just sticking in a "historical tidbit" to demonstrate his erudition. "Symbologists often remarked that France—a country renowned for machismo, womanizing, and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon and Pippin the Short—could not have chosen a more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot phallus."

Of course the Eiffel tower is so much more phallic than, say, the Washington Monument or Cleopatra's Needle. Actually, I always sort of thought all those phallic light houses in New England were there because of diminutive and oversexed authors who live in the area.

If France is really renowned for diminutive leaders like Napoleon and Pippin the "Short"… Why do you suppose that it's not renowned for its TALL leaders like St Louis, Charlemagne or Charles DeGaulle? Oh, wait, it is. Only Brown couldn't make a smarmy insult to the French out of any of them. If Brown had actually read the books in his bibliography (given on his web page), such as, for example, The History of the Knights Templars, by Charles G. Addison, or The Knights Templar and their Myth by Peter Partner, he would have undoubtedly noticed that the Knights Templar were destroyed by King Philip the Fair of France (not Pope Clement as he states later in the book) who was called "the Fair" because he was so tall.

1000 years separate Pippin and Napoleon. In 1000 years of French history Dan Brown couldn't find one additional example of a short ruler. Pippin was not actually a leader of France, but "King of the Franks" which included present day Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of Italy. However I notice Dan Brown confuses the kingdom of the Franks with the modern day nation of France several more times before we come to the end of the book.

And Pippin wasn't actually short, his name "le Bref" means "the younger". This is not the last time Brown will demonstrate ignorance of the French language, either.

On page 92 Mr Brown dispays his extensive historical knowledge of the origins of Tarot. "They played Tarot? The medieval Italian card game was so replete with hidden heretical symbolism . . . The game's twenty-two cards bore names like The Female Pope, The Empress, and The Star. Originally, Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church. . . . "The Tarot indicator suit for feminine divinity is pentacles."

In fact, the suit of "pentacles" is usually called "coins" or "deniers" (the Latin word for penny). "Pentacles" is a variant used by occultists such as the Aleister Crowley deck. Coins actually represents the lowest or mundane sphere according to Dion Fortune and A E Waite (not "divinity"), with wands representing the world of divinity, cups representing the world of archetypes and swords representing the world of forms. Originally Tarot had been devised as a means to gamble and the banned ideologies became attached to them later. The game's "twenty-two cards" which bear names like those above are called the Major Arcana and have no suit at all because they are trumps. The deck including the four suits contains 78 cards, not 22. Since the word "medieval" represents the period from 476 (the fall of Rome) to 1453 (the fall of Constantinople and the beginning of the Renaissance) the truly Italian Tarot didn't come into existence until the Renaissance period and thus are not medieval. Precursors, playing cards with some trumps and some symbolic paintings, occur earlier than 1453, but in Spain, not Italy. So either they are not medieval, or they are not Italian, take your pick. Brown's renowned research makes 7 errors of historical fact in a single paragraph.

On page 105 he calls a gnomon "a pagan astronomical device like a sundial."

The dictionary defines "gnomon" as that part of a sundial which casts the shadow. No sundial can work without it, sort of like the hour hand of your watch. It is as "pagan" as anything which was in existence before Christianity like mathematics, philosophy, history, and humanity itself. To say that it is "like a sundial" demonstrates complete ignorance of exactly what a gnomon is. The implication that sundials are Christian while gnomons are pagan is asinine. Gnomons are integral parts of sundials.

Now let's talk about Brown's contention that the device is "astronomical". It uses the sun to cast a shadow. It tells time. Does that make it astronomical? It is actually a horological device since its purpose is to tell time, "astronomical" implies that it traces the course of the stars and planets like a planetarium or telescope. "Astronomical device" is used to describe things like Stonehenge which does have the function of observing stars and planets. There is obviously an overlap between astronomical functions and horological functions because early man used the heavenly bodies to tell time. But I think a more accurate writer would call the device a horological device. It's more of a horological device than it is of an astronomical device, and that's what I would call it. But Brown thinks more of being cutesy than he does of being accurate, and calling it a "pagan astronomical device" creates the atmosphere of forbidden mysteries so essential to getting you to swallow the premise that the Catholic Church goes around assassinating anyone who finds out that they have been lying all these years.

On pages 105 and 106 he pretends to be an authority on symbology by making up some symbolic meanings and giving them a pseudo-historical provenance. On 105 he maintains that the Saint-Sulpice meridian is called "The Rose Line" because roses symbolize direction. Actually it's called "rose" because the metal has oxidized and turned red. On page 106 Brown insists that theParis meridian is "the world's first prime meridian" and is identified as the meridian marked on the floor of Saint-Sulpice.

Actually the Paris meridian passes about 100 meters east of the local meridian which is marked on the floor of Saint-Sulpice. The Paris meridian was in use as a "prime" meridian as early as 1250-1300. The meridian through Alexandria, Egypt was used as prime around 300 BC, before Paris or Dan Brown were even a gleam in their daddys' eyes. So Paris doesn't qualify as the world's first by at least 1550 years. With Brown's complete lack of any kind of historical perspective, he probably doesn't think 300 BC and AD 1250 are significantly different.

Now he brings in his mistaken symbology of roses and direction and applies it to the rose meridian. "For centuries, the symbol of the Rose had been associated with maps and guiding souls in the proper direction."

The "compass rose" is an idiomatic reference to what is actually a 32 pointed star, and in fact roses have no connection to maps and no symbolic meaning which has anything to do with direction.

He has to justify the spurious rose symbolism by pretending to expertise in geometry: "(Compass rose) When diagrammed inside a circle, these thirty-two points of the compass perfectly resembled a traditional thirty-two petal rose bloom."

"Perfectly resemble a rose bloom"? When is the last time you saw a rose with pointed petals? A "compass rose" is a 32 pointed star, not a flower. Once again, Mr Brown likes to toss around the word "perfect" in the context of geometrical figures, without a clue of its meaning.

Brown's grasp of 14th century history is weak, but his knowledge of 12th and 13th century literature is even worse. On page 250 he claims that the "most ancient form of the word Sangreal was Sang Real."

The most ancient form of the word Sangreal is "Saint Graal". Actually Chrétien (1180) simply calls it the "graal" as in Li Conte del Graal. Perlesvaus (1190) calls it "the Graal". Wolfram (1202) calls it "Grâl". Borron calls it "the Graal", and the Queste del Seint Graal (1215) obviously calls it the "Seint Graal". The words "San Greal" don't appear until a couple of centuries later, and the one word "Sangreal" is later yet.

Sang Real is first used by John Hardyng in 1436 in his rhyming Chronicle of forged Scottish history, which he cribbed from Wace's Roman de Brut, about 200 years after the completion of the original Grail romances. Grail historian Richard Barber has decided that Hardyng misread the French through carelessness or ignorance. In Brown's novel, his character Teabing declares that this is the "earliest" form of the word. The version "sangreal" or actually Middle English "sangrayll" is used by Malory in his Morte D'Arthur, written in 1470. The version "Sank Ryal" and "Saint Graal" are used seemingly interchangeably in Henry Lovelich's The History of the Holy Grail from 1450. But Hardyng seem to have made up the spurious etymology ("royal blood") all by himself, much as he made up the forged documents "proving" that Scotland ought to belong to England. (He maintains that because Arthur conquered Scotland, therefore the Pope should give it to the English king.)

For the first 290 years of Grail literature (from Chrétien in 1180 until Mallory in 1470) the Grail was the Eucharistic container of Christ's body, the monstrance, not the chalice. Mallory is the first one to equate the Grail with the eucharistic chalice, calling it a reliquary for Jesus' actual blood, and then later a chalice in which the wine is transubstantiated into Jesus' blood newly, (as opposed to 1400 year old saved relic blood). In either case, the context makes clear that actual physical corpuscular blood is being referred to, not progeny.

It seems likely that, if Jesus' actual physical red corpuscular blood were specified when we are talking about the vessel which was used to catch the blood from the spear wound, that it would mean exactly that, the shed blood of the man himself saved in a cup or the Eucharistic blood changed from wine—not "bloodline" of descent. "Bloodline" is a symbolic and figurative word for descendents, whereas "blood" is a literal reference to the red stuff that leaks out when you cut someone. Three out of five of the original Grail stories make implicit reference to the Eucharist in connection with the Grail. (Although whenever these original sources refer to the eucharist, the Grail itself is always the container of the host, not the wine.) To maintain that "bloodline" is intended is far-fetched. However, within the spirit of the fiction, given that Brown's "historical" source, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, makes this linguistic connection first, I can't fault Brown for saying that the "Sang Real" means bloodline. I can fault him for his ignorance of history when he claims this is the "most ancient form of the word". Off by more than two centuries. If you were writing a book in which Grail literature figured this prominently, wouldn't you at least glance at some encyclopedia or internet or textbook reference to the Grail literature you are using? It would only take reading the titles of these stories to discover that "sangreal" is not the "oldest form of the word".

On page 261, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a Grail allegory. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a literary masterpiece, but it never mentions the Grail and has nothing to do with it. It only takes 20 or 30 minutes to read this gorgeous poem, and obviously Dan Brown didn't bother. This is actually no more stupid than US News and World Report who claim on their website that Goffrey of Monmouth's Historia is the source of the Grail stories.

Brown's erudition extends to the 5th century, too. On page 257 he maintains that in the fifth century Christ's bloodline "intermarried with the French royal blood and created a lineage known as the Merovingian bloodline."

In 481 Clovis became "King of the Franks" who were German, not French. There was no France until 987, five hundred and six years later. This is neither the first nor the last time that Brown will confuse the medieval kingdom of the Franks (or the Roman province of Gaul) with the nation of modern France. Since Clovis was the first Merovingian king and didn't die until 511, he was the only Merovingian king of any part of France (actually Gaul) in the fifth century. All subsequent Merovingians reigned in the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries. Clovis' father Childeric was leader of the Salian Franks who lived in the Dutch coastal area, near the mouth of the Rhine, and his grandfather was Merovech. Only the descendents of Merovech are called Merovingian. What "French royal blood" did the descendents of Jesus marry?

Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh theorize in Holy Blood, Holy Grail that the father of Merovech—according to legend his mother was raped by a quinotaur—was a descendent of Jesus. The quinotaur is a sea monster and they theorized that the fish symbolism which in the 20th century was destined to apply to Jesus must also apply in the 5th century and "raped by a quinotaur" is a euphemism for "married a descendent of Jesus", and specifically not "married a Christian, or follower or Jesus". Equating a stylized fish (actually a Pythagorean vesica piscis) with a sea monster is a stretch, but I guess they would have accepted anything that was related to water. Presumably this would also apply to King Minos of Crete (son of Europa who was carried off into the sea by a "sea-bull") and the decedents of the Babylonian Oannes, Philistine Dagon and any other half-sea beasts. The descendents of Jesus kept busy! However, Merovech's parents weren't "royal" because their great-grandson eventually became a king. To say Jesus' decendents married French royalty is assinine if you mean this incident, since Merovech's mother wasn't either French or royal. So, once again, what French royal line did Jesus' decendents marry into?

On page 254, Brown claims the church tried to bury the secret (of Jesus' marriage) in the 4th century and "that's what the Crusades were about."

The Crusades began in the 11th century. Brown is only off by 700 years. Brown's source material (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) claims that the Vatican tried to keep the story buried in the time (AD 496) of Clovis' conversion to Roman Catholocism (previously all the Franks were Arian Christians) by striking a bargain with him to support his descendents in their dominion in Gaul. This is the bargain they broke when Pope Zachary declared Pippin the Younger (whom Brown mistranslates as "Pippin the Short") King of the Franks in 751, right before he (Pippin, not Zachary) deposed Childeric III the last Merovingian king. However Clovis is in the 5th century and Pippin is in the 8th so I don't know what event Brown is imagining is in the 4th unless he is referring to Emperor Theodosus' exile of the non-Nicene Christians in AD 380. But if so, how does that qualify as trying to bury the secret of Jesus' marriage, and how does that qualify as "what the Crusades were all about"? Of course, Brown has already proved that he has little or no conception of history and is full capable of thinking that the Crusades (1099-1291) were in the fourth century.

His historical errors extend to the entire history of Christianity, not just the medieval period. On page 125: "Their (the Church's) brutal crusade to 'reeducate' the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries." Then he talks about Malleus Maleficarium and witch trials implying that the Church waited until the 15th century to murder women and suppress paganism. Mind you his own source books on the Templars (especially The Knights Templar and their Myth by Peter Partner) point out that the Templars themselves had been accused of trafficking with demons and other forms of witchcraft way back in 1309, but he pretends that this didn't happen until the 15th century.

In reality, they began murdering and oppressing women immediately. Nicene Christianity became the legal state religion of the Roman Empire in AD 380. Hypatia of Alexandria was assassinated by the minions of Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria within 35 years, in 415. The Emperor (Theodosius II) was appealed to by the governor Orestes, but was bought off by the Patriarch (according to Gibbon). The Church, naturally, accused her of witchcraft to justify having murdered her:

And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honored her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom....A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate - now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ - and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a (lofty) chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her [till they brought her] through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him "the new Theophilus"; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city.
~written by John, bishop of Nikiu in the 7th century, as quoted in the Wikipedia article on Hypatia.

Objective histories will tell you that Peter was not a magistrate, but a functionary of Cyril, and the woman was not a witch, but a Math teacher, and the governor had never been a Christian or attended church. The murder of women in the 17th century is not the third consecutive century of murder, but the 12th. Christians always use witchcraft as an excuse whenever they want to kill someone. If they can't use witchcraft they will try to make "blasphemy" or "heresy" a crime. Blasphemy really means Freedom of Speech, something Christians only hate if they are the ones making the rules. Heresy means Freedom of Religion which they also advocate loudly unless they are the hand holding the sword.

On page 125: "Women … had been banished from the temples of the world" and then it goes on to specify rabbis, Catholic priests and Islamic clerics.

Can't blame this one on the Church—Orthodox Jews discriminated against women for 800 years before the Church existed. This is part of the theology that Christianity inherited from Judaism, and Islam inherited from Christianity. Any monotheism of a male deity will discriminate against women as a built-in matter of course. Even Zoroastrianism (from whom the Jews learned it). From the 4th century to the 17th Brown has the history of the Church wrong. Actually, as we will see, he has the first, second and third centuries wrong, too.

Brown's "extensive historical knowledge" shines out best of all when he's talking about recently discovered Christian and Jewish documents of the first two centuries. On page 234 he avers that the Dead Sea scrolls and Nag Hammadi "coptic scrolls" tell the true grail story and speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms—the Vatican tried very hard to stop the release of these scrolls.

Actually the Dead Sea Scrolls are neither Gnostic nor Coptic nor do they mention Christ or his ministry or refer in any way to the grail, but the Vatican did indeed try to stop their publication, keeping the contents secret for more than 40 years. Wikipedia says:

Allegations that the Vatican suppressed the publication of the scrolls were published in the 1990s. Notably, Michael Baigent's and Richard Leigh's book The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception claim that several key scrolls were deliberately kept under wraps for decades to suppress unwelcome theories about the early history of Christianity; in particular, Eisenman's speculation that the life of Jesus was deliberately mythicized by Paul, possibly a Roman agent who faked his "conversion" from Saul in order to undermine the influence of anti-Roman messianic cults in the region.

However, the complete publication and dissemination of translations and photographic records of the works in the late 1990s and early 2000s effectively undermined these ideas, since the 'new' Scroll material did not include anything which connected the Scrolls to early Christianity and certainly did not contain anything the Catholic Church or anything the church would want to 'suppress'. As a result, Baigent et al's conspiracy theory is not taken seriously by any credible scholars.

Once again, Mr Brown is taking his "history" from Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

The scrolls talk extensively about the Jewish Messiah in the first or second century BC, specifically naming the reign of Alexander Jannaeus as his lifetime.

The Nag Hammadi codices both are Coptic and do speak of Christ's ministry, but "very human terms" is a misnomer. Check out Hypostasis of the Archons or The Thunder, Perfect Mind. Most Gnostics believed that the Christ of faith was a spiritual being who either existed independent of the Jesus of history, or instead of the Jesus of history. Notably Sethians and Ophites did not believe that any historical Jesus ever existed at all. And Mandeans did not believe that he was Christ. The Vatican did not try to stop the publication of these codices in the 20th century. There is reason to believe that the Church in the person of the St Athenasius did try to prohibit their publication in AD 380 and that that is why they had been buried for 1500 years.

However no scrolls or codices or manuscripts of any kind written before 1180 even mention the Holy Grail. The first mention of the Grail in the entire history of the world was by Chrétien de Troyes in 1180 in the poem called Perceval ou Li Conte del Graal.

On page 245, Leigh Teabing opens a volume called The Gnostic Gospels and proceeds to open it to Dead Sea Scrolls (which are neither Gnostic nor gospels). He says, "these are the earliest Christian records."

The Dead Sea Scrolls do not mention Christ and are not Christian of any kind, let alone Gnostic. They do indeed date from the first century—the first century BC! Long before the supposed time of Christ. The Nag Hammadi documents, on the other hand, are not scrolls, but they are at least Christian Gnostic records. However they are hardly the oldest. The Gospel of Thomas alone among them might date from the first century, but it is not particularly complementary to Mary Magdalene. Most of the Nag Hammadi documents date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The oldest Christian records are the genuine Pauline Epistles (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon), the Epistle of Hebrews, Revelation, the Epistle of James, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the first Epistle of Clement. There is enough internal evidence to believe that these could date from the first century. None of these documents were found in the Nag Hammadi codices. One or two of the documents from Nag Hammadi can be dated from before the first century, for example the codices included a truncated copy of Plato's Republic which dates from the fifth century BC, along with the book of Melchizadek which could be from the 1st or 2nd century BC, when other Enochian literature was being written.

Oh, and if the volume was really titled The Gnostic Gospels, wouldn't the author have to pay Elaine Paigels for her copyright?

The contention on pages 248-9 that Mary Magdalene is descended from the tribe of Benjamin and thus of "royal descent". . . "by marrying into the powerful House of Benjamin, Jesus fused two royal blood lines." is invented out of whole cloth. There is no evidence anywhere of Mary Magdalene's genealogy and the tribe of Benjamin did not survive until the first century, being swallowed up into Judah by the 4th or 5th century BC. The only "royal descent" that ever pertained to Benjamin was the lineage of Saul, and the book of 1st Kings tells us that Saul's entire family was killed and so no "royal bloodline of Benjamin" survived David's reign. The second messiah predicted by the Jewish canon was to have been of the tribe of Levi, not Benjamin. By the time of Christ the royal family of Judea was Hasmonean which was then married into by Herod the Great who then killed off all the remaining Hasmoneans. The Hasmoneans were Levites.

It is worth asking ourselves how Mr Brown could make so many historical mistakes and get so few historical facts right. His reviewers insist that he has "done his research"

(research noun,
diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc.)
and yet he makes stupid and obvious mistakes that five minutes with an encyclopedia or dictionary would correct.

A very real clue can be discerned in the text. At one point Langdon and Sophie are consulting Leigh Teabing who gestures to a shelf which contains "scores of histories".

On page 253, Teabing's "scores of histories" include The Templar Revelation, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; The Woman With the Alabaster Jar, and The Goddess in the Gospels, by Margaret Starbird; Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Notice that "Leigh Teabing" is Richard Leigh's unusually spelled last name coupled with an anagram of Baigent.

Lynn Picknett is a journalist.
Clive Prince is a systems analyst.
Margaret Starbird has degrees in literature, theology and German.
Michael Baigent is a photographer.
Richard Leigh is a journalist.
Henry Lincoln is an actor.

Not a single historian among them. None of the books referred to by Teabing could be called "histories" by the wildest flights of fantasy. They are speculative sensationalism. Could a Brown, a fiction writer, have invented a fictitious history to make his story work? Of course. "Jewish Survival in Fifth Century Gaul by Dr Lynn Picknett". How hard would that be?

Do you know why Brown lists the titles and authors of actual real books? Brown quotes real books by real authors because he actually believes this sensationalism to be real history—he doesn't even know the difference. These writers are found alongside antigravity physics and conspiracy theories involving the CIA and Roswell UFOs. Possible, interesting to think about, but far from proven. All these authors have one thing in common. They write things like, "Suppose 'A' was true. Then suppose 'B' was also true. Wouldn't that explain how 'C' could have happened?" Then they proceed with their agenda acting as if they have proven C to be a fact. Speculative and sensational.

And the moment I realized that Brown considers these books to be history is when it all fell into place. That's how he could get so much history wrong and still maintain that he had done extensive research—he doesn't actually know the difference. He read a bunch of speculative revisionism, and thought it was real. He really thinks these occult / UFO / New Age / Conspiracy Theory type books are real history.

Now these books have a place, and I personally enjoy reading conspiracy theory books. But I know the difference between speculation and real history. It is obvious that Brown doesn't. When this is factored in, all the historical blunders fall into place, because they all cluster around one theme. The occult history of the Knights Templar, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Holy Grail, secret Gnostics and evil Catholic conspiracies all have this in common. Conspiracy New Age UFO writers have linked them all into a scenario of occult history which is what Brown believes really happened.

This is how he can believe he is going to "expose the explosive history of the Holy Grail" (p. 217).

What explosive history? The real world history of the Holy Grail begins in 1180 with the publication of Chrétien de Troyes' amazing poem, Perceval ou Li Conte del Graal. The "history" of the Holy Grail is the history of poetic expression and the movement of troubadours in the 12th and 13th centuries. Maybe he is referring to the history of the Knights Templar, but even that isn't explosive. I guess he means the impact on YOU of finding out that the Church isn't all noble and stuff. Have any of you exploded? The fictional history of the Holy Grail was actually exposed by Robert de Borron in his 1200 manuscript called "History of the Holy Grail". (Estoire du Saint Graal). It involves Joseph of Aramathea who uses it to catch Jesus' blood falling from the cross, then carries it, with Jesus' actual physical blood in it (not his unknown and hypothetical "bloodline"), to England where it is guarded by a Fisher King in a Grail Castle, usually in Sidhe, Brittany, Loegres, or in one case somewhere in the Pyrenees. Some of the stories have it in Sarras, or moving to Sarras later in the story. Sarras is a mythical middle-eastern kingdom supposedly somewhere near Egypt. The Grail is guarded by an order of knighthood which in one account is called the templars, in one account is identified as wearing white with a red cross on the tunic, and in one account a part is played by a round shield with the same device. Three out of five of the original Grail stories imply the knights templar as the Grail keepers. And the story is fiction…

Now if Brown means the speculation that the real Grail is the female descendent of Jesus and Mary Magdalene instead of the chalice of the last supper, it might legitimately be called "explosive" within the fictional scenario of the Roman Church attempting to suppress it, but then why does the Church allow people like Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh to publish? Against them the Church doesn't raise a finger, but for Langdon they try to kill him. Teabing points to a shelf of historians who presumably published with no trouble or threats from Rome, but they pursue Langdon with murderous intent. The dichotomy is at the least startling and not satisfactorily explained in the novel. Actually that (the speculation that the real Grail is the female descendent of Jesus) is undoubtedly what he does mean, since Brown seems to think that new age mystical speculation about the Holy Grail is really history. If you re-read the novel with the understanding that Brown is deficient in critical sense, it all works.

Apparently Brown has no conception of what the Grail literature really is. Not only does he err in calling Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a grail allegory, he also seems to think Jesus referred to the Grail in the gospels, perhaps Brown thinks that King Arthur was one of the Old Testament prophets?

He says on page 243 that Christ himself claimed that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail. Unless "Christ himself" said it to Chrétien de Troyes in 1180, this is not a true statement. "Christ himself" never mentioned the Holy Grail, and neither did anyone else in the entire history of the world until 1180.

This (having no conception) applies to his silly attempts at symbology. Page 36 says "this pentacle is representative of the female half of all things—a concept religious historians call the 'sacred feminine' … "in its most specific interpretation, the pentacle symbolized Venus—the goddess of female sexual love and beauty" … "the goddess had a place in the nighttime sky and was known by many names—Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar, Astarte&mdashall of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature and Mother Earth." … "the planet Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the ecliptic every eight years."

The pentacle is a symbol of Mars, not Venus, thus the pentagon, home of the war-makers. The star shape which symbolizes Venus is the heptagon, or seven sided star, according to experts on Qabalah. Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah says the number of Mars is 5 and the number of Venus is 7. This is supported by experts in Qabalah from Eliphas Levi to Gershom Scholem.

And the "Eastern Star" is a women's auxiliary to the Freemasons, not a name for Venus. How could a planet be called "Eastern" anything? It rises in the east and sets in the west just like everything else in the sky. Venus is actually called the "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" depending on whether it rises ahead of or behind the sun.

The pentacle traced by Venus across the sky (not the "ecliptic", the "ecliptic" is a line, not a sector) is a sort of squashed irregular pentacle. In geometry a "perfect" polygon means all sides and angles are equal. Mr Brown likes to throw around this word "perfect" in a mathematical context without any clue as to its meaning. (He's going to do it again.)

Page 92-3: "the number PHI" ("The Divine Proportion") Brown insists on capitalizing the entire word as if it were an acronym or abbreviation. Later on page 93 he treats "PI" the same way.

Page 105: "Saint-Sulpice, like most churches, had been built in the shape of a giant Roman cross."

"Most churches"? Has he counted up the total number of church buildings in the world, and noted all those which are in the "shape of a giant Roman cross"? Certainly the US alone has millions of church buildings and I have only ever seen three or four in the shape of a cross. The cruciform shape is more a feature of Gothic cathedrals than a feature of "most churches".

His repetition that only Roman crosses are Christian is one of my favorite from a viewpoint of hilarious faux pas. Ignoring 2000 years of European heraldry, he asserts on page 110 that a Greek cross is "not a normal cross. This was an even-armed one, like a plus sign. Embossed in the middle of the cross was a strange symbol—two letters intertwined with some kind of flowery design." (fleur-de-lis)

I'm sure all those countries like Switzerland and Greece (not to mention the International Red Cross) who use equal-armed crosses as national symbols would object to Brown characterizing them as "abnormal". Lest we all forget what Dan Brown hasn't seemed to grasp, Switzerland borders France and it would be virtually impossible for a French citizen to go through life without ever seeing a Swiss flag.

Equal-armed crosses are used on the national flags of Andorra, Georgia, Greece, Guernsey, Malta, St Pierre and Miquelon, Seborgia, Serbia, Switzerland, Tonga and if you include the Cross of St George (with the horizontal member longer than the vertical member) every member of the British commonwealth and every Scandinavian country would be included. "Abnormal", indeed!

I'm astonished by the naivety of an author who can blithely claim that a product of French schools would not recognize a symbol so important in the history of her own country as the fleur-de-lis, the royal emblem of the Bourbons. Calling it "some kind of flowery design" indicates that she didn't recognize it, and Langdon has to inform her that it is a fleur-de-lis, even though she is French. Sort of like the average American not knowing what the Stars and Stripes are.

Another example, page 111. (fleur-de-lis) "In English we call that kind of flower a lily."

This is a common misconception, perpetuated because "lis" is actually the French word for lily. However horticulturists everywhere will immediately recognize the fleur-de-lis as an iris. Of course that would take some actual research. He goes on to claim on page 113 that the fleur-de-lis is a symbol of Prieure de Sion.

The fleur-de-lis was a symbol of the French crown. A flag with three fleur-de-lis flew over New Orleans, Louisiana until Thomas Jefferson bought it from Napoleon, and one is used even today as a symbol of the New Orleans Saints football team, and in the seal of the cities of St Louis, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky. Even in Brown's weird fantasy, why would a "secret" organization started by a German prince in Palestine use a nationalistic French royal symbol? And why would he (Langdon) equate this symbol with an obscure and secret organization instead of the blatantly obvious symbolism of the French monarchy when he's in France at the time? If you were in America and you saw a representation of a bald eagle, would you immediately jump to the conclusion that it represented America? Or that it represented some secret society? Brown seem to think that France is some obscure small-town part of America which it just costs a lot to get to, and where nobody but him is bright enough to have ever heard of a fleur-de-lis.

On page 144 he states, "it was heavy and shaped like a cruciform"

What on earth is "a cruciform"? Cruciform is an adjective meaning "shaped like a cross". Brown is saying "it was heavy and shaped like a shaped like a cross".

More denigration of the Greek Cross which in fact has been used for 2000 years or so as a symbol of "Christ": Page 145, "The head of this key was not the traditional long-stemmed Christian cross but rather was a square cross-with four arms of equal length—which predated Christianity by fifteen hundred years."

While it is true that equal-armed crosses (or Greek crosses) predate Christianity by several hundred years, it is also true that Roman crosses (which Brown renames "Christian crosses") also predate Christianity by several hundred years. Sparticus, for example, was crucified on one 100 years before the supposed time of Christ. The cruciform dolmen of the Dagda dates to 1000 BC. And whether Brown likes it or not, the square cross along with the "X" (called a Saltire in heraldry) has been used from antiquity as a symbol of Christ, since it is the form of the Greek letter "chi" (χ) which is the first letter of the Greek word "Christos" (Χριστος).

More cross foolishness on page 145. "Langdon was always surprised by how few Christians who gazed upon 'the crucifix' realized their symbol's violent history was reflected in its very name: 'cross' and 'crucifix' came from the Latin verb cruciare —to torture." Yeah, looking at the representation of a man being crucified would never make anyone think of torture.

Then the capper of all stupid statements is on page 145. "(Langdon says) "equal-armed crosses like this one are considered peaceful crosses." "

Is Brown too young to have ever heard of the "Iron Cross"? I'm sure the Allies in WW II who saw it painted on the fuselage of German planes and the sides of German tanks thought of it as peaceful. So did the 11th century Arabs and sundry (Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, etc) whose last sight was the peaceful equal-armed cross on the tunics of the Crusaders who were slaughtering them. Actually the "equal-armed cross" is called a Greek cross or a solar cross, and any symbol dictionary will tell you that it represents death as well as boundary, north, coastline, shoals, addition and positive polarity. While north and addition are pretty peaceful, I doubt that most people would consider death peaceful and sailors would have doubts about shoals. In France the equal-armed cross is used for a military medal called "Croix de Guerre" or "Cross of War". The "Crusader's Cross" is an equal-armed cross with four other smaller equal-armed crosses, one in each quarter. Peaceful.

More symbols with a confused history appear on pages 237 and 238. A chevron (∧) is the "original" male symbol and a "V" is the original female symbol.

This is partly true. An equilateral triangle with the point upward is an ancient male symbol and it looks like a chevron if you remove the bottom line. And an equilateral triangle with the point downward is an ancient female symbol which looks like a "V" if you remove the top line. Far from "original", this symbolism developed after Empedocles (who died around 430 BC) first invented the idea of the four elements of fire, water, air and earth. A triangle pointing up represents "fire" which is masculine and the triangle pointing down represents "water" which is feminine. This symbolism evolved several centuries after Empedocles time—the early Greek symbolism was all triangles: equilateral for fire, isosceles for air, right for water, scalene for earth. However this says nothing about any "original symbolism" which predated the Greeks. There is a lot of history before 430 BC, but Dan Brown has no conception that it even exists.

I really love his egregious misuse of the word "literally". On page 246 Teabing pompously claims, "As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse." Teabing is saying this about the Gospel of Philip.

First of all, the word companion doesn't "literally" mean anything but companion. That is exactly what is meant by the word "literally".

literally adv.
1. In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally.
2. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally.

It could possibly have been a euphemism, but that would be a figurative meaning, not a literal meaning. This makes Teabing a "symbologist" who doesn't know the difference between literal and figurative meanings. Secondly, the Gospel of Philip is written in Coptic, so I don't know how an Aramaic scholar could pretend to have expertise on the meaning of Coptic words. If the Gospel of Philip was originally written in Aramaic, neither Teabing nor I know which "literal" word was actually used because the speculative Aramaic original is unknown. Because the "literal" word would be the actual word which is actually written in the text, and since only translations exist, nobody knows what actual original word it would have been. You could speculate about which Aramaic word was translated by this certain Coptic word, but you wouldn't know without having ever seen the actual original text.

Page 303: "The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan."

In exactly the same way and no more or less than the roots of poetry itself are deeply pagan. The muse of poetry is named "Erato", after all. Does this include all those hymns and Christian poetry written in Iambic pentameter? Like Milton's Paradise Lost, or Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus? Of course, in this sense, language itself, including reading and writing is deeply pagan since it existed long before the advent of Christ.

Page 308: "Heiros Gamos had nothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act." He claims it is 2000 years old and Greek.

In Greece of 2000 years ago, eroticism was deeply spiritual. Eros was a god, after all. The distinction between spirituality and eroticism is a Christian invention. And the separation of sex and eroticism is a Dan Brown invention. The statement that they are having sex, but it's not erotic, is idiotic enough to have only been written by Dan Brown.

Another bit of linguistic foolishness, page 321: "In ancient Greek, wisdom is spelled S-O-F-I-A."

No, in ancient Greek, wisdom is spelled Σοφια (sigma, omicron, phi, iota, alpha) just like it is now. "phi" is not an "f", it is the very same phi that Brown spells with all capitals as if it were an acronym ("PHI"), and it is always transliterated as "ph" as in "philosophy". In very ancient Greek there was a letter that looked like an "F" which was called "digamma", but it was pronounced "w", not "f", and its pre-Homeric existence is attested only in a few inscriptions, in none of which is the word "Sophia" spelled with a digamma. So in ancient Greek, Sophia was spelled exactly the same way as it is spelled in modern Greek.

And even Brown spells the letter "phi", not "fi".

p.339 " "The architecture is pagan to the core … The church is round." "

Take a look at the architecture of the second largest church in the world (St Sophia in Istanbul). Round. Take a look at the architecture of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Round.

All of Christianity's symbolism is based on paganism and always was. Here is Pope Gregory telling his missionaries to turn pagan practices into Christian rituals:

norms on enculturation given by Pope St Gregory the Great in a letter to priests written in 601:

It is said that the men of this nation are accustomed to sacrificing oxen. It is necessary that this custom be converted into a Christian rite. On the day of the dedication of the [pagan] temples thus changed into churches, and similarly for the festivals of the saints, whose relics will be placed there, you should allow them, as in the past, to build structures of foliage around these same churches. They shall bring to the churches their animals, and kill them, no longer as offerings to the devil, but for Christian banquets in name and honor of God, to whom after satiating themselves, they will give thanks. Only thus, by preserving for men some of the worldly joys, will you lead them thus more easily to relish the joys of the spirit.

Roman Catholocism deliberately and consciously copied paganism. Roundness is no more pagan than cruciform (a shape based on the hammer of Thor). If a church were to be based on Old Testament temple architecture, it would be rectangular and divided into two parts with a veil in between them, and an outer courtyard. Of course the only time in the book that he mentions the twin pillars Boaz and Jakim (which are identified by the Bible as being in the temple of Solomon) he calls them pagan, too. I somehow doubt that Mr Brown has a real good grasp on exactly what is pagan and what is not.

On the banks of the river Boyne in Ireland is a structure called New Grange. It's a dolmen with an entrance hallway some sixty feet long, then you come to a beehive-shaped round chamber from which three niches go off at right angles, making it cross-shaped. This structure was the castle of the Dagda, the supreme god of the Irish pantheon, and was built at least 1000 years before the supposed time of Christ, but (per Brown) all cruciform shapes are uniquely Christian. Maybe he considers Christ to be a reincarnation of the Dagda, or maybe he thinks the Dagda was a Christian, just 1000 years early.

Mr Brown also has a talent for mathematical naivity. His abysmal ignorance of mathematics is nowhere more apparent than his idiotic contention that imaginary numbers have no real existence just because they have the word "imaginary" in the name. Page 342: Religious "reality is false". "Langdon chuckled. 'No more false than that of a mathematical cryptographer who believes in the imaginary number "i" because it helps her break codes.' "

Because "i" is named "imaginary" don't be naïve enough (like Brown is) to believe it does not really exist. The word "imaginary" in mathematics has a specialized meaning which has more to do with its history than with its reality. If Mr Brown doesn't believe imaginary numbers have actual existence I challenge him to stick his tongue into a light socket and feel the current which is created by the "imaginary" reactance in an AC generator. Imaginary numbers measure very real phase shift, not some mythical non-existence like Brown implies. I suppose he thinks only insane ("irrational") people could use irrational numbers, and only frozen ones (below zero?) use negatives.

One of the three greatest mathematicians in the history of mankind was Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), who wrote:

That this subject [imaginary numbers] has hitherto been surrounded by mysterious obscurity is to be attributed largely to an ill adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.

The existence of imaginary numbers is much more substantive than a "matter of faith". In my opinion this entire discussion is beyond Mr Brown's comprehension. His most likely reaction is to try to prove linguistically that imaginary numbers are indeed faith-based, rather than trying to understand what mathematical proof actually involves.

Additional mathematical naivety can be observed in his treatment of the Fibonacci series. On page 188 he claims: "Earlier, Sophie had rearranged this account number to the Fibonacci sequence. What were the odds of being able to do that?"

Why not just try to put them in ascending numerical order? What are the odds of being able to do that? The first two numbers in the sequence are ones, but every number beyond the second is the sum of the two preceding, so each one has to be greater than the previous one, because it is the previous one plus the addition of the one before that. It only takes thirty seconds of research to figure this, but Mr Brown was so busy reading sensational speculation that he didn't have any time to do any real research. And naturally a cryptologist (mathematician) like Sophie couldn't possibly have the first few numbers of the Fibonacci series memorized. Or maybe understand the algorithm for constructing them and be able to add up to two-digit numbers in her head.

Mr Brown's execrable ignorance of the French language goes beyond mistranslating Pippin le Bref as Pippin the "short". On page 19 the French policeman says Langdon must speak pretty good French because he recognizes the spoken word "taureau" as bull. Taureau is pronounced "toro". Langdon only recognized it because the astrological symbol of Taurus means "bull".

Anyone else in the world would recognize the spoken word "toro" as bull even if they had never heard of Taurus. Obviously Brown is working from the written word where the initial "t-a-u-r" is the same in taureau and Taurus, but he has no clue how the French word is pronounced.

But Brown's hero is a "symbologist" and therefore must take the most complicated possible route to deduction. Anybody else in the western world would recognize the sounds "toro" as the Spanish "torro", Italian "torello", Portuguese "touro", Greek "ταυρος" (tau alpha upsilon rho omicron sigma) or Danish "tyr" (pronounced "tor"). But Langdon is a symbologist and therefore must have an astrological symbol named Taurus in order to recognize the sound of "toro".

On page 161 Sophie has no idea what the "Sangreal" is until Langdon translates it into English as "Holy Grail".

Isn't she supposed to be a native French speaker? What language is Brown pretending "sangreal" is? Once again, Brown seem to think France is some small-town part of America, French speakers will not understand French words until an "expert" like Langdon translates them into English. In fact all the original Grail stories except Wolfram's are in French, and Brown displays as much ignorance of them as he does of other aspects of French language and literature. Chrétien de Troyes wrote Perceval ou Li Conte del Graal in 1180. The anonymous Perlesvaus or Le Houte Estoire du Graal was being circulated before 1200. Robert de Borron wrote Joseph, Merlin and Perceval around 1202. The Vulgate version of Estoire del Seint Graal, and Queste del Seint Graal were completed by 1230 or so. Even the pseudo-Borron Roman du Graal was completed before 1240. But even though the word "Graal" appears in the actual title of all but Borron's work, Brown still thinks the earliest spelling is "sangreal". Of course, he thinks it's some esoteric or surreal French, which an ordinary French speaker like Sophie wouldn't understand until Langdon translates it into English for her. This is the "everyone in the world will understand English if you only speak it loud enough" school of writing.

Brown's grasp of geography is unique: on page 54, Andorra is "barren and forsaken".

If you search Google for "Andorra + photograph" it will take you only a minute or two to judge for yourself if this verdant country is barren. As for forsaken, I notice that Andorra has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world and their largest chunk of income comes from tourism. Not a lot of tourists go to the center of the Sahara Desert, for example.

On pages 55-6 Silas steals a ham in a "port town" and is sent to prison in Andorra.

Do you suppose Mr Brown even has a clue of the meaning of the word "jurisdiction"? Andorra is landlocked and has no ports so any crime Silas committed in a port town happened in some other country. Several times in this book, Mr Brown seems to have difficulty with the idea that European countries are actually separate and distinct nations, not federated states.

Brown's knowledge of pseudepigraphic and extra-canonical literature is also garnered exclusively from Picknet and Prince or Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh. On page 199 we note that Brown thinks a scroll is a codex.

codex (plural codices ) Noun
1. an early manuscript book
2. a book bound in the modern manner, by joining pages, as opposed to a rolled scroll

A scroll is a single length of paper rolled up. A codex is a bound book. Hardly the same thing. Every publication I have seen of English translations of the Nag Hammadi works call them "Codices" and the word is in the dictionary.

On page 244, Brown's historical expert, Teabing claims Mary Magdalene's marriage to Jesus keeps " "recurring in the gospels" and "it's a matter of Historical record," Teabing said."

In fact it is never mentioned in any gospel ever written, although it is vaguely hinted at in two non-canonical Gnostic gospels. (Philip and Mary) And Pistis Sophia calls Mary the "Pleroma of the Pleroma". Far from "recurring" and a long way from being a matter of "historical record". There are enigmatic hints and fascinating clues throughout history of a possible marriage between Jesus and Mary of Bethany who could possibly be the same person as Mary Magdalene. But then, Mr Brown has already made it clear that he is confused about exactly what a "historical record" really is. What does keep "recurring in the gospels", at least in the Gnostic and extra-canonical ones, is the divine feminine in the person of Sophia, Barbelos, the Thunder, Eve, and several others who had no need to be married to a mythical Jesus to become God.

Other idiocies occur to me: on page 65, the GPS tracking dot used by the French police is "accurate to within two feet anywhere on the globe."

The GPS satellites were put in orbit by the US Department of Defence who doesn't want anyone else to have access to the same accuracy they have. So all GPS systems have a built-in scrambler which randomly gives the wrong position and can be off by as much as 30 or 40 yards. Without access to US DoD computers, the French police cannot ever be more accurate than that using GPS.

On page 217-8, Leigh Teabing, a descendent of Britain's first Duke of Lancaster was knighted by the Queen several years back. Do you suppose Brown is even aware that knights are lower rank than nobility? The Lancaster family includes several English monarchs.

On page 220 he says "the right hand side of the truck--the passenger side everywhere in Europe except England." Does Dan Brown think Ireland is not in Europe or that it is part of England? Presumably he thinks Gibraltar is part of England and that Malta is in Africa instead of Europe. Or perhaps vice versa.

Other plot fumbles:

Page 154 they ask taxi driver where the address is
Page 164 they steal the taxi
Page 176 they then drive the stolen taxi directly to the address they asked him about
Page 177 they park the stolen taxi at the bank with a gun under the seat
Page 181 but the police would never have found them unless the bank tipped them off

Page 184 Sophie is told the account number is 10 digits. She is told, "didn't your grandfather leave you any message with a 10 digit number in it?" Her grandfather did leave her a message with a 10 digit number in it, but she still has to have an art historian point it out to her. Because, of course, mathematicians are not aware of numbers.

Page 237 the holy grail is a woman. Eventually it's going to turn out to be Sophie. Langdon has toted the Grail around with him for the entire book, but in the last scene he has to return to the Louvre to "find" it.

Page 311 in which it is revealed that a French girl will shun her grandfather for 10 years when she discovers that he has sex. Where did she think her mother came from?

Many of Dan Brown's literary offences are insults to the reader's intelligence. He neglects to do the required research because he thinks the reading public is too stupid to know the difference. Judging from the reviews, I guess newspaper reviewers are, in fact, too stupid to know the difference.

But the vast amount of Dan Brown's literary offences are not in fact Dan Brown's fault, as it appears that he honestly thinks that occult, sensational, speculative, conspiracy theory books are legitimate history. The poor fool just doesn't know any better. And I guess, neither do most book reviewers.