Debunking the "Da Vinci Code"

I suppose there will always be a market for pseudohistory.  This is a good example of a careful debunking of one such strand that's making the rounds right now: The Da Vinci crock by Laura Miller Salon 12/29/04.

But what exactly is this "information"? The theories encompassed in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and its derivative, "The Da Vinci Code," have a certain invincible panache. They are proof of the adage that the hardest lie to refute is the Big Lie. Unlike, say, speculation about the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays, these theories span so many historical specialties -- ancient Hebrew customs, early Christian texts, regional French folklore, ancient and contemporary church history, medieval dynastic minutiae, Renaissance and neoclassical art, esoteric movements of the early modern age, and so on -- that no one person has the expertise to refute all of the fabrications.

In fact, as enormous crocks of nonsense go, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is a kind of masterpiece, certainly more so than its pipsqueak descendant. In "The Da Vinci Code" [Dan] Brown had one really good idea: to use a rudimentary thriller plot to spoon-feed readers the Grail theory concocted by ["Holy Blood, Holy Grail"  authors] Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. You get the impression Brown never expected "The Da Vinci Code" to take the world by storm or that it would invite the kind of scrutiny his novel cannot withstand. As a result, Brown makes several dumb, careless mistakes that put the lie to his pretensions of extensive research, such as having a "Grail expert" describe the Dead Sea Scrolls as being "among the earliest Christian records," when the documents are Jewish and do not mention Jesus Christ at all.

Her analysis combines a serious look at the pseudohistory behind The Da Vinci Code with some good humor, an effective combination for this kind of thing.