Conspiracy novel is 'laughable'

2004-12-25 15:24

London - Best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, based around a supposed conspiracy at the top of the Christian church, is an entertaining read but historically "laughable", a senior British bishop said on Friday.

The multi-million selling book by US author Dan Brown, soon to be turned into a Hollywood film, was "great thriller, lousy history", said Bishop of Durham the Right Reverend Tom Wright in a Christmas address.

The book, set largely in Paris, marries art, mysticism and religion to claim that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and produced a line of heirs, something supposedly covered up by the church.

Writing his Christmas message in the Northern Echo newspaper, the bishop said that while such conspiracy theories were enjoyable, "anyone who knows anything about 1st Century history will see that this underlying material is laughable".

"The evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity is astonishingly good," he said.

"We have literally a 100 times more early manuscripts for the gospels and letters in the New Testament than we have for the main classical authors like Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus.

"Historical research shows that they present a coherent and thoroughly credible picture of Jesus, with all sorts of incidental details that fit the time when he lived, and don't fit the world of later legend."

The Da Vinci Code has spent 87 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. More than 20 million copies of the novel are in print worldwide, and the book has been translated into 42 languages.

- AFP