Product Description

Nationally recognized researcher Richard Abanes, author of Harry Potter and the Bible, looks at three of the most fascinating people in history: Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Based on his extensive research, Abanes explores the answers to many of the questions that Dan Brown’s fictional thriller, The Da Vinci Code, raises:

• Are Da Vinci’s paintings really full of clues about an alternative religion?
• Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene married?
• Has the church suppressed the truth about the “Lost Gospels”?
• What is the real nature of the Holy Grail?

Join Richard Abanes as he “de–codes” one of the most controversial novels of our time and goes behind the scenes to separate fact from fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #372369 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

From the Inside Flap
Through Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, you discover a lot of shocking facts about history and Christianity . . . or do you?

The Code: Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, whom he named leader of the church before his death.

The Truth: This claim has no support even from the Gnostic Gospels mentioned in Brown's book, let alone from historical data.

The Code: Since the year 1099, a supersecret society called "The Priory of Sion" has preserved knowledge of Jesus and Mary's descendants.

The Truth: Today's "Priory of Sion" was founded in the early 1960s by a French con man who falsified documents o support the story of Jesus' "bloodline."

The Code: As a "Priory" leader and pagan goddess-worshiper, leonardo Da Vinci coded secret knowledge about Jesus nad Mary into his paintings.

The Truth: Da Vinci had no known ties to any secret Societies. Any obscure images in his paintings likely reflect his personal creativity.

Probing, factual, and revealing. The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code gives you the straightforward information you need to dig through the fiction and unearth the facts.

About the Author
As a nationally recognized authority on cults and religions, Richard Abanes has spent more than ten years in the field as an author and journalist. In 1997 he received The Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for his "outstanding work on intolerance in North America." Among his dozen-plus books is the bestselling Harry Potter and the Bible, as well as One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, and Journey Into the Light: Exploring Near Death Experiences. Abanes has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television programs including those on BBC radio, MSNBC, Fox Television Network, and ABC. He has spoken at events held by numerous organizations including The Simon Wiesenthal Center, Mensa, and the Skeptic Society.

Customer Reviews

A Challenging Response.
It moves you along very quickly, and the quotes by Brown are in shaded boxes in order to help the reader know precisely where they are and helps with back-referencing. I've never really seen this approach. It actually provides a little bit of eye candy. The book is very visually oriented.

Some good points, but some complaints too
This book is a bit of mixed bag. I have listed what I liked/disliked about this book below.

What I liked:
1. This book is concise and to the point
2. It offers a fairly thorough critique of the Da Vinci Code
3. The author's arguments are generally pretty sound. This book does a good job refuting the DVC's arguments.
4. In many ways, this is a good book to hand to a friend who asks "what's wrong with the Da Vinci Code?" It's also a good book to equip yourself to defend the Bible against the false claims in the DVC.

If you were confused by the Da Vinci Code this is worth reading.

What I didn't like:
1. It didn't seem to shed much new light on the issue; I had already heard most of the stuff I had read in it. In all fairness, it is hard to be TOO original on the subject (given how many critiques of the book there are out there), but it seems like if you're going to publish a book you should at least have something to say that hasn't already been said a million times.
2. The writing and format of the book could have used quite a bit of help at times. The format was unimaginative and never varied from the format of a quote/claim from the Da Vinci Code in a gray box followed by a refutation of the claim. The book often read like a "laundry-list" of problems with the Da Vinci Code, which gives the book a "cranked-out" feel, like the author and publisher put little thought into it. The writing isn't always that much better to be honest. It provides a lot of information, but it could have been delivered better. Quite frankly, this book sometimes looks and reads like the author Googled the Da Vinci Code and he and the publishers threw this together in a hurry using Word and a desktop printer.
3. The most serious problem I found with it, though, was that it spends nearly all the time refuting the Da Vinci Code's claims in the negative sense but doesn't always present the truth. Showing that your opponent is wrong is not the same as showing that your position is right. Even if someone is convinced to reject the Da Vinci Code's claims, so what? Unless they are also pointed towards the real Jesus and the real truth contained in the Bible, I don't see how they're much better off than they were before.

In summary, this book is OK at very best, an extremely generous 3 stars. I would recommend "The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction" by Hank Hanegraaff and Paul Meier instead of this book. It is really a much better book. Not only do they refute the main points of the Da Vinci Code, they use this as an opportunity to defend the reliability of the Bible and historic Christianity, all the while pointing people to the real Jesus and challenging people to accept Him. They both refute the DVC in a negative sense and provide the accompanying truth; for example, they refuted the DVC's claims about Jesus' divinity and also defended the fact that Jesus really was who He claimed to be, whereas Albanes' book stops at refuting the DVC. It is also much better written, and the authors put much more thought into their book. Their book has more imagination and creativity, doesn't look like it was slapped together in a week like Albanes' book does, and probably covers more information. Hanegraaff's book is a great evangelistic tool as well; you can give it to your unbelieving friends to help them see that the Bible can indeed be trusted. As I mentioned before, I really wish that Albanes' book had been more clear about presenting the positive truth of the Bible; this would have made it more useful as a witnessing tool I think.

This book is, however, a handy reference tool. The one nice thing about the organization is that, if you can't remember how to refute a specific DVC claim, it makes it easier to find.

A Quick Response to the Da Vinci Code
This book was very well written and clearly lays out some of the flaws in The Da Vinci Code from both a historic and Biblical perspective. I highly recommend it for someone who wants a quick but accurate response to the Da Vinci Code.