Unraveling the Da Vinci 'con'

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, the movie, is an admittedly 'fun' murder mystery. Made with the skill of master movie makers, the sympathetic characters are immersed in a complicated and fanciful plot comparable to the movie National Treasure. Myths and legends and shadowy history are combined with secret codes and mysteries disguised in massive architecture, hidden in clever devices, and wrapped in intriguing riddles. The heroes' quest is to solve the puzzle and reveal the shattering secret of earth shaking proportions. Fun stuff! However, unlike National Treasure, Brown crosses the line by distorting documented history and purporting to make use of legitimate research to back up his hypotheses that Jesus was not divine but a mere mortal man who, by Mary Magdalene, sired a royal lineage that still exists today. Although he says his story is fiction, Brown makes every effort to convince his audience that his historical evidence is true and that only the murder mystery is fiction. The murder mystery is merely the vessel used to convey the real contents of his message which is "the big con" to which I object. [More]