Product Description

De-Coding Da Vinci is a handy, thorough, yet easy-to-read resource that can help readers understand the difference between fact and fiction in the best-selling novel by Dan Brown.

De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts behind the Fiction of The Da Vinci Code addresses the misrepresentation of history, religion and art in The Da Vinci Code. Did Leonardo actually build these codes into his paintings? Was the Priory of Sion a real organization? Is the Holy Grail really, as he says, Mary Magdalene's womb and now her bones, and not the Last Supper cup? Is Opus Dei really what The Da Vinci Code says it is? What was Constantine's true role in early Christianity? Was Jesus human or divine or both? Was He married to Mary Magdalene? Do secret writings not in the Bible really contain truths about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine?

Complete with discussion questions and suggestions for further reading in every chapter, this is the perfect book to accurately answer questions as well as inspire further conversation. It can be used either as a personal resource to expand one's knowledge of the issues raised by The Da Vinci Code or to lead a discussion for a book club, a church group or to discuss with friends who've read the book and have questions that need to be answered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #619733 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 124 pages

Review
Amy Welborn gives a sprightly, detailed, and highly satisfying account of the truth behind the pseudo-history. -- Mike Potemra, National Review, May 3, 2004

Amy Welborn’s De-Coding Da-Vinci is a strong effort. -- Mark Gauvreau Judge, Breakpoint, May 6, 2004

Even people who haven't already read the novel that it trounces would profit from reading De-Coding Da Vinci. -- Patrick O'Hannigan, Spectator Online, April 28, 2004

Ms. Welborn's book...destroys the hokum and commits it to the ashcan reserved for phony attacks on the Church. -- Fr. Andrew Greeley

About the Author
Amy Welborn holds an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University. She is the author of several other books, including the "Prove It" series for youth (Our Sunday Visitor) , "The Loyola Kids' Book of Saints" (Loyola Press) and the forthcoming "The Words We Pray: Discovering the Richness of Traditional Catholic Prayer." (Loyola Press, October 2004).

Customer Reviews

Even More Fun Than the Novel
I greatly enjoyed Dan Brown's *Da Vinci Code* but I have to admit that Amy Welborn's book was even more fun. With a delightful style and large doses of irony she analyzes Brown's claims:

--That Constantine selected the books of the New Testament and invented the divinity of Christ.

--That the early Church covered up Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene.

--That Jesus originally designated her as the leader of his movement and that she in fact is the Holy Grail.

While these claims seem quite exciting, Amy shows that the truth is even more startling. The controversy over *The Da Vinci Code* provides an opportunity to learn the facts about Christian origins. Skepticism is good both for Christians and non-Christians. Amy's book will help any honest inquirer. Read it and decide for yourself.

Death By A Thousand Cuts
Unless my aging memory deceives me, I recall a story from Catholic school days about an ancient Christian teacher who suffered a peculiarly painful martyr's death: he was pierced hundreds of times by the styluses or pens of his hostile pagan students. In this work we get the martyr's revenge: from an articulate, scholarly, and dismayed author who administers a death by a thousand cuts to the premises and biases of the best selling "Da Vinci Code."

There are many ways this antidote to DVC could have been mishandled: the author could have written an ad hoc attack upon Dan Brown, or a cosmic wail against the anti-Catholic bias of the work, or a "preaching to the choir" methodology of uncritical defense of those areas of Catholic life and history that Brown played upon so well. The author successfully avoided these pitfalls, for the most part, with a terse but thorough dismantling of the major historical and theological flaws. Welborn, who did her graduate history studies at Vanderbilt University, clearly holds the upper hand.

The author addresses about a dozen topics that DVC manhandles with distressing consistency: the identity of Mary Magdalene, the determination of the canon or texts of the New Testament, the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Holy Grail, Leonardo Da Vinci, feminism in the Church, mystery religions, and Opus Dei. Each separate critique is deadly to a novel which depends upon an intricately developed puzzle. It would require only a few threads to unravel before the plot line becomes irrational. Welborn works with a tailor's shears. To cite just one area of critique, Welborn devotes a chapter to Brown's depiction of Da Vinci himself, and discovers that the moniker "Da Vinci" is not the artist's name. He was known then, and to experts today, as Leonardo. For those familiar with the story line of DVC, such a corrective makes quite a mess out of the intricate maze of word clues that Sophie Neveu seems to revel in.

I cannot find the exact word to describe the author's literary style, but it is distinctive. At this point in her career I get the sense that her avocation is the communication of "Catholic common sense." It does help the reader to know that Welborn is the author of a successful series of religious works for Catholic high school students, traditionally a notoriously difficult audience; and her blog site, "Open Book," is a daily watering hole for Catholics across the country that rivals Chris Matthews for hardball repartee. Welborn's avowed literary inspiration has long been the take-no-prisoners Flannery O'Connor, who would probably have weighed in herself on DVC, were she alive today.

At times I felt the author was almost annoyed that she had to do this book, disconcerted that basic tenets of Catholic history were unknown to so many readers of her faith, or that a best seller with such historical and theological flaws could go unchallenged. But in the final analysis, Welborn wrote this work because, in her own words, "culture matters," [p. 20] and she is correct. To pretend that music, art, literature, and film do not have agendas and influence is naive. Recently it has come to light that much of the technology employed by investigators on the popular television series CSI [Las Vegas and Miami, presumably] does not exist in real crime labs. Real life prosecutors are having difficulty making cases because juries expect levels of technical evidence they have come to expect on television. And I trusted Gil Grissom and Horatio Cane. Mon Dieu!

Provides the big picture
Very readable book that should appeal to believers and agnostics alike - anyone honestly interested in the truth. Early church history is something most know little about, and the author (who has a BA in honors history and MA in Church History) has done an excellent job helping to fill that vacuum. She explores the sources of information Dan Brown used for his book and seeks to unravel fact from fiction in an fair-minded way.