On May 19th, the film version of the wildly popular book by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (over 40 million copies in 25 languages sold), will be released to considerable fanfare and media hype. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, head of doctrinal orthodoxy for the Vatican, issued an official statement on behalf of the Catholic Church, calling the novel “a sack full of lies” and urging Christians not to read the book or see the movie. Even though the book is a novel, Brown claims that it is based on historical facts that, if true (and many people believe that they are true), would revolutionize not only all of the Christian religion, but much of history as well. The central claims is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and sired a royal bloodline that continues to this day, and that a secret society of some of history’s most famous scientists and artists has been dedicated to preserving these ancient secrets for almost a thousand years. If ever there were an extraordinary historical claim that requires extraordinary historical evidence, this is it. How good is the evidence?
Tim Callahan, Skeptic magazine religion editor and author of the books Bible Prophecy and The Secret Origins of the Bible, will explore these and other biblical mysteries recently in the news, such as the “Gospel of Judas” (in which Jesus’ disciple is not a traitor) and other extra-biblical gospels that portray Jesus in a different light. Callahan will review biblical scholarship and show how we know who wrote the Bible and why they wrote it.
