It's kind of hard to know what to do with this book. It was very popular, though probably mostly for people wanting to see what all the controversy was about than the quality of the story itself. I don't read a whole lot of books like this, that is contemporary mystery kinds of books, but as far as this goes, it wasn't terribly interesting. The characters seemed only halfway developed and mainly there for the purposes of propelling the main draw of the book, the "Truth about Jesus part."
It's the truth part that is most controversial, because even though Dan Brown in interviews will say that it's just a work of fiction, the opening page in the book says something to effect that "All the buildings, paintings, and documents discussed in this book are real," leaving people slightly confused as to what to think.
As I was reading this book, I was actually in a course about the life of Jesus, and I reckon several people in that packed classroom were there solely because they wanted some answers to the question "How could what I believe about Jesus be true if everything in this book is true?" The answer of course being, if I wrote right now, "Jesus was nine feet tall," then indeed a document now exists saying that Jesus was nine feet tall. Of course the reliability of it is quite suspect. After all, it was written two thousand years after Jesus died by a non-Nazarene no less. And that's the fiction part. Sure a book called "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene" might exist, though it was probably written in the second century, at least, long after anyone who might have even been alive when Jesus walked was dead.
And that's the fiction part, taking in a lot of sources with dubious reliability and taking them as fact, or at least, partial fact. Like I said, as a story, this book isn't terribly interesting. The characters are kind of flat, and the twist at the end is kind of interesting, but the real story here is the controversy. The least you could say about it is that it got people talking.
It's the truth part that is most controversial, because even though Dan Brown in interviews will say that it's just a work of fiction, the opening page in the book says something to effect that "All the buildings, paintings, and documents discussed in this book are real," leaving people slightly confused as to what to think.
As I was reading this book, I was actually in a course about the life of Jesus, and I reckon several people in that packed classroom were there solely because they wanted some answers to the question "How could what I believe about Jesus be true if everything in this book is true?" The answer of course being, if I wrote right now, "Jesus was nine feet tall," then indeed a document now exists saying that Jesus was nine feet tall. Of course the reliability of it is quite suspect. After all, it was written two thousand years after Jesus died by a non-Nazarene no less. And that's the fiction part. Sure a book called "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene" might exist, though it was probably written in the second century, at least, long after anyone who might have even been alive when Jesus walked was dead.
And that's the fiction part, taking in a lot of sources with dubious reliability and taking them as fact, or at least, partial fact. Like I said, as a story, this book isn't terribly interesting. The characters are kind of flat, and the twist at the end is kind of interesting, but the real story here is the controversy. The least you could say about it is that it got people talking.
