The blurb reads “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”
Which means he must be smoking some weird **** to think he's accurate about A) Gnosticism, B) Constantine, C) The Last Supper, D) The Priory of Sion. I could go on but those are some of the more important points I get thrown in my face after somebody reads that book.
A) Gnosticism. Widely called the first Christian heresy. To use a very stretched summation, Gnosticism holds that there is a divine triumvirate of God, a male, a female, and their lesser and ignorant Son. To Gnostics, the Son who was ignorant even of his own parents is the "Cruel and Petty" God of the Old Testament who created the world and humans. Jesus was sent by the male and female aspects to bring the world back to knowledge of the higher, wiser God/s and out of the oppressiveness of the OT God. All three of these aspects may even be the same being (Gnosticism is highly fragmented and dependent upon individual Revelation, so there's little consensus). It's probably based upon this that Brown gets his idea of a "sacred feminine," but the sort he describes is bullfeathers.
Brown also can't seem to get his facts straight concerning what "Gnostic Gospels" are. He cites the Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea Scrolls! While the Nag Hammadi (written in the latter half of the fourth century AD) does figure into Gnostic theology, the Dead Sea Scrolls ARE NOT EVEN CHRISTIAN, despite Brown's citing them as the "earliest Christian records." In the same passage, Brown says that the word used in reference to Mary Magdelene, translated as "companion," is actually used to mean "spouse." This is bullfeathers whose lineage of falsehood has been traced back to a game of "Telephone" with several unscrupulous sources over several different religious treatments, each of which taking something from the other and adding something unsupported to it. In fact, "companion" just means "companion." Also, Brown says the texts in the Gospel of Philip say Jesus kissed her on the mouth. That's bullfeathers. The word connected to "kissed" is missing from the document because it's damaged! Brown can't even get the original language of the document straight, claiming that the word "spouse" was written in the original Aramaic as "companion," but the Gospel of Philip is written in Greek, and only now survives in one Coptic script!
Accuracy my left nostril.
B) Constantine. I bet you all have heard that "Oh, the modern canon of the bible was all chosen at the Council of Nicea under Constantine, and by the way, they voted Jesus into Godhood then." bullfeathers. I bet some of you have read that Constantine set the new holy day to Sunday because Sun-Day is the day Gonstatine, supposedly Christian, worshipped the sun god Sol Invictus, thus sabotaging the Christian religion. bullfeathers again. But Brown claims it as a fact!
In truth, there is no mention at all of the decision of canon in the Council of Nicea, there was not controversy over the by then already established idea that Jesus was divine, and Constantine was Christian at the time and Christianity had already moved the Sabbath to Sunday. There are clear and unambiguous historical records which predate the Nicean Council describing, for the same reasons given today, why Sunday is the new Sabbath.
By the way, Brown also says that Constantine was only baptized on his deathbed, and against his will. Well, that's half true. Constantine was baptized on his deathbed. But the reason for that was the tradition at the time among Christians that baptism washes away all one's sins, so the best time to be baptized is when you don't have much time left on this world to sin.
C) Brown's wacky interpretation of the Last Supper by Leonardo is ludicrous, and I object strongly to the claim that all his descriptions of art and architecture were accurate if they included this work.
There is no disembodied hand in the painting. There are exactly as many hands as one would expect from two-armed people sitting at a table. The knife is in Peter's right hand. There is no dagger. There is a knife, a blunt-tipped knife not suitable to call a dagger at all.
That really is the apostle John, not Mary Magdalene. Compare the so-called "femine" face of John to those of both Jesus and Philip. Compare it to other works of Leonardo, especially the similarly beardless and long-haired St. John the Baptist. There is no breast, there is no smudge were a breast should be, and his hands are not any more slender than the other disciples' at the table. Leonardo rendered young, beardless men in an effeminate way.
There is no cut-throat gesture. That's Peter leaning towards John, speaking the line "Who is it of whom he [Jesus] speaketh?" John then asks Jesus. It's a reference to the bread and the betrayal. Read your bibles, people.
D) The Priory of Sion could have existed at one time. If it did, it was phased out after a matter of years. If it didn't, it was an hoax started in 1956. This is the decision of most scholars, as it has the most supporting evidence. There is nothing that suggests a link between the Prior and the bloodline of Christ. It probably did not even exist.
So yes, let's all be amazed at what we can learn from Dan Brown's books. It's okay to lie and ignore relevant scholarship and promote conspiracy theories as fact!
You just stole my idea 
