Yes it's just fictional entertainment but...

[dave_c]

...after reading The Da Vinci Code I would like to know a basic flaws of the story was including....

-Claims that (Pagan) Constantine simply made the Roman Empire Christian because of it's increasing popularity.

-But compromised with the original concept of christianity to please the pagans, by creating a 'go between' format that included integrating pagan symbols like Isis etc and pagan events to eventually turn out to be Christmas and Easter and most of all...

-Made Jesus a deity, the books claimed his original followers thought he was great and powerful man and the King of the Jews because of his lineage but a mortal none the less. He made Jesus divine to please to pagans and only used the MMLJ gospels because it pleased his 'edited' image of Jesus compared with dozens of earlier accounts of Jesus which Mary Magdeline was a more prominent figure.

-Da Vinci's The Last Supper showed Mary Magdeline on the right side of Jesus?

Thanks

[Pies]

There have been a few documentaries on Channel 4 discovery and National geographic One of which was presented by Tony Robinson

http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/decoded.htm

It pretty much said that the Priory Of Sion was invented by Pierre Plantard kind of blowing the truth part out of the window Still an excellent work of fiction can't wait for the film next year

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382625/

[charliebaps]

I have heard the mary Magdaline theory in the Last Supper before and don't believe it will ever be answered.

As for the the pagan rituals being 'blended'' with Christianity, i believe these are known facts.

the book is only fiction,, as you point out, so let the guy have some artistic freedom!! It's not even that well written in my opinion.

[RockOfVictor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code#Criticism s has a lot of good answers. Ehrman and Newman's books are two of the better rebuttal books I've found (see the Further reading section).

[einsteinsdog]

The romans always adopted local deities in the lands they conquered . Minerva was one . I have always thought Constantines conversion a little suspect . He is supposed to have had a vision of a cross in the sky and heard the words -in this sign you will conquer. Conquering is the last thing to do with christianity, so imho it was for convenience he adopted this religion, due to its growing popularity with slaves

[reportmonkey]

I thought he only got baptised on his deathbed.

Trust the Romans to take other peoples ideas and pass them off as their own. I wouldn't be surprised that stuff was left out of the bible. The roman catholic church had a habit of 'removing' its opponants. Arius in particular argued that the Father and Son were separate and conincidently he passed his guts out in a violent bowel movement....yuck!