Conspiracy theory, not characters, made "The Da Vinci Code" the bestselling adult novel of all time. With that novel, Brown, previously a mediocre thriller author laboring in relative obscurity, hit upon the idea of a lifetime. Latching onto a popular but moderately difficult work of pseudohistory titled "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (more -- much more -- about that here), Brown streamlined the authors' argument that Jesus fathered a dynasty of French kings with Mary Magdalene into an airport page-turner easily understood by people who can barely read. "The Da Vinci Code" is "The Knights Templar for Dummies," with dashes of remedial art history, travelogues and digs at Christian orthodoxy tossed in to sweeten the brew.

But oh, how to follow it? Once you've undermined the doctrine of the world's largest religion and implied that most of the West's artistic and scientific geniuses were in on a vast plot, won't anything else seem a bit of a letdown? The formula has to be just right. Even people who don't ordinarily go for the obsessive complexities of conspiracy theory liked "The Da Vinci Code" because they saw it as anti-fundamentalist or pro-feminist or even just a way to make the obligatory sightseeing of a European vacation a little more exciting. Plus, as conspiracies go, the Holy Grail theory is easy for the masses to grasp: Light on the history, politics and theology, essentially it's a sex scandal in the Holy Family.

No wonder it took Brown so long to produce his follow-up, "The Lost Symbol." He had to find material as portentous, as purportedly earthshaking. It had to be "secret" -- otherwise there'd be nothing for Langdon to reveal -- and it had to be embedded in the iconography of fine art and architecture, so that the symbologist could triumphantly unmask the coded messages supposedly lurking in familiar masterpieces and monuments to his wondering companions. And lastly, it had to be locatable in a single place, since for all Brown's rhapsodizing about books as "the oldest and most precious of vessels" in "The Lost Symbol," his fiction is positively literophobic, frantically translating the quest for knowledge from a search through library stacks into a mad, inane race from statue to church to museum in search of clues. It's no surprise that Brown, pleading a "short attention span," delegated the research for "The Da Vinci Code" to his wife, who provided him with summaries of books like "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" so that he didn't have to actually read them.

Given this list of requirements, what else could Brown pick for his next book but the Freemasons and Washington, D.C.? Masonic rituals are deliberately shrouded in secrecy and esoterica, and Masons number significantly among our nation's founders (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and so on). Unlike the almost entirely mythical Priory of Sion (keepers of the Grail legacy in "The Da Vinci Code"), the Masons not only exist but are also genuinely fond of sprinkling their motifs (compasses, pyramids, double-headed eagles, the number 33, etc.) in paintings and architectural ornamentation. Washington is home to, among other things, the headquarters of the Scottish Rite, one of the more ritualistically elaborate Masonic bodies, housed in an impressive building complete with 33 pillars and two massive sphinxes.

But while Masonry helpfully supplies much of the necessary paraphernalia of a Dan Brown thriller, it's short on one key element -- a big secret. Yes, Masons must swear never to reveal the details of their rites to outsiders, but by now most sensible people realize these ceremonies consist of little more than grown men playacting with lambskin aprons and bones. Everyone knows Washington was a Mason, that he swore the first presidential oath of office on a Masonic Bible, that the pyramid on the back of the one-dollar bill has some Masonic significance, and so on. Big deal. Only paranoid kooks actually believe that the Masons are devil-worshippers or secretly run the world.

And Dan Brown is no paranoid kook. The Masons are the good guys in "The Lost Symbol," keepers of the flame, though as with the nonexistent Priory of Sion, you do have to wonder why they bother. It's hard to see what they have to lose, in this wide-open age, by going public. What they guard is something called "the Ancient Mysteries" and apparently they've been at it, in one form or another, for centuries. The Mysteries contain "the spiritual truths taught by the great sages," according to one aged Mason in "The Lost Symbol," yet by now even most Masons have forgotten these truths. Only a select inner circle, the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite, grasps their nature and importance.

I could tell you how Langdon winds up embroiled in a search for these mysteries, which are supposedly concealed someplace in D.C., or about the obligatory freakish and sexually compromised antagonist (a tattooed eunuch) who threatens Everything. I could tell you about the official (an internal affairs muckety-muck from the CIA) who hassles Langdon but is too flagrantly ominous to really be the bad guy, or the shocking climactic reveal about the antagonist's motivations that any intelligent reader will see coming a mile away. I could describe the various chase scenes, which do demonstrate considerable improvement in craft over "The Da Vinci Code." But why bother?

The allure of "The Da Vinci Code" lies not in these rudimentary thriller conventions, but in the gradual revelation of the Grail conspiracy theory as the chases and unmaskings and double-crossings play out. The earlier novel's core secret really is startling to those who haven't heard about it before. Brown proposes a provable alternative history in which the claims of religious authorities are entirely overthrown, and even if that proposal is based on poppycock, the very suggestion strikes many readers as a breath of fresh air.

By contrast, the same readers are likely to find the enigmas at the heart of "The Lost Symbol" disappointingly abstract and familiar. Brown does try to freshen them up by linking them to cutting-edge science. The academic babe Langdon teams up with this time around, Katherine Solomon, is a practitioner of "Noetics," a New Age field seeking to prove that thoughts can, in and of themselves, change the physical world. Supposedly she has "created beautifully symmetrical ice crystals by sending loving thoughts to a glass of water as it froze." These activities and the "shocking new data" supposedly resulting from them are, she hopes, illustrating "the missing link between modern science and ancient mysticism." Katherine's work, conducted surreptitiously in a deserted sector of the Smithsonian Institute, is on the verge of demonstrating that the Ancient Mysteries are scientifically sound -- a prospect the tattooed maniac (for reasons not entirely clear) regards as catastrophic.

Much of this nonsense will be familiar to anyone who has seen the film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" or read the work of a journalist named Lynne Taggart. Both insist that recent discoveries in quantum mechanics somehow indicate that "consciousness" can effect changes in the material world -- claims that actual physicists indignantly dismiss. Katherine is supposed to have evidence proving the power of prayer and the existence of the soul, "Scientifically. Conclusively." (Brown is big on one-word sentences when he wants to be forceful.) But in this she is only playing catch-up with "the ancient mystics" whose works the Freemasons have hitherto concealed because their insights are "far too potent and dangerous for the uninitiated."

The exact nature of these insights and why nobody ever used them to make life in the ancient world a little less brief and brutal remains frustratingly vague. Where pseudohistory like "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" bombards readers with too much detail in order to spin an aura of credibility, pseudoscience prefers to throw some authoritative-sounding terms around and then quickly move on before you get suspicious. We're meant to think that Katherine or Robert or the various Masonic poohbahs they encounter could explain how to defy the laws of gravity and cure rabies with the power of positive thinking if they had a bit more time, but they're too busy being stalked by black helicopters or surviving an ordeal called Total Liquid Ventilation to get to that at the moment. In the meantime, surely the fact that Isaac Newton was "deep into numerology, prophecy and astrology" should suffice to prove how legitimate such studies are, right?

Still, it's not as if the preposterousness of "The Da Vinci Code" has put off many readers. If the mystery at the center of "The Lost Symbol" never quite gets solved, it's still surrounded with exactly the kind of feel-good folderol that readers love in a bestseller. From "The Celestine Prophecy" to "The Prayer of Jabez" to "The Secret," no one has ever gone broke telling Americans that they can have whatever they want if they only think sufficiently happy thoughts. In fact, pseudoscience could turn out to be even more profitable for Dan Brown than pseudohistory. It may not make for as good a story, but then again, that may be just one more thing that nobody cares about anymore.

In between shots of somber religious statuary and fake Vatican backdrops -- shut out of the Vatican, Howard and his crew instead decamped to the racetrack at Hollywood Park, where they re-created St. Peter's Square and Piazza Navona with a reasonable amount of verisimilitude -- there's lots and lots of talking as Langdon follows clue after clue after clue, hot on the Illuminati's trail. Luckily, he has a beautiful Italian scientist, Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer), around to assist him. This is important, because much of the plot of  "Angels & Demons" unfolds in the dialog. For instance, Langdon will hold up an ancient book whose cover might be emblazoned with a title like "Libri of Scientia" in fancy letters, and Vittoria will exclaim helpfully, "My God -- that's the Book of Knowledge!" Howard may be hoping that if every narrative detail is repeated for the hard of hearing, the plot will actually end up making sense.

Fat chance. The script, by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, wanders around listlessly -- no one seems to know where the story is ultimately headed, least of all the writers. They certainly have packed a lot of stuff into "Angels & Demons," and the whole crazy tapestry might come off as rich and complex if you didn't think too hard about it. There are plenty of possible bad guys floating around to keep us guessing: Armin Mueller-Stael shows up, scowling, in full-on cardinal garb -- you know he's just got to be up to no good. And Ewan McGregor plays the Camerlengo, a priest who's entrusted with very important duties at the Vatican, like flying a helicopter -- you never know when that's going to come in handy.

The action unfolds against constant narration: When a character indicates, in a parched whisper, that Langdon should get over to Castel Sant'Angelo fast, he hippity-hops on his way, but not before exclaiming, "The Castle of the Angel!" Every revelation in "Angels & Demons" has a "Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick" vibe. Whenever something bad is about to happen, Hans Zimmer's score flares up like a bad case of stigmata. On the plus side, cinematographer Salvatore Totino does give the movie an aura of ominous pageantry, which is probably pretty hard to pull off at Hollywood Park.

There are a number of grisly details in "Angels & Demons": As the movie opens, the pope has just died, and the cardinals have gathered to vote on his replacement. The most promising candidates, the top pope hopefuls, are known as the Preferati, and the Illuminati baddies have kidnapped them with the intention of sending each one to a gruesome end. If William Castle had made "Angels & Demons," he might have opened the movie with the disclaimer, "No one will be admitted during the terrifying Pope on a Rope scene!" Except there is no pope on a rope in "Angels & Demons" -- I made that up, with the help of Father Guido Sarducci, aka comedian Don Novello. Come to think of it, why wasn't he enlisted to adapt this hunk of hokum? That would be hunkus of hokumus in the original Latin.

"Fans" of the book who see it as a blow for women are, it seems to me, on a very wrong track. It is, as a friend observed, merely another version of male fantasy: A woman, be she Mary Magdalene or you or me, cannot simply be a person in her own right. She must be defined by some male, either as his whore or as his wife.

Alas, with a movie in the offing we are likely to be treated to still more of this guff in 2005.

-- Rev. Linda Maloney

Kudos to Laura Miller to debunking some of the serious bunk in "The Da Vinci Code." However, this notion bothered me -- she wrote: "To try to recast [writers of/characters in the New Testament] as people with egalitarian attitudes about the sexes is to imply that we can't improve our own society without some kind of precedent from them." I disagree on both points, as one of the women she's probably describing.

To allege that Jesus was married and that Mary Magdalene was important in his life doesn't necessarily imply equality in their relationship (indeed, the Son of God deal makes equality impossible). However, if Jesus was married, his status calls into question a great deal of the anti-sex history (and present teachings in some) of the Christian churches. While being able to soften the anti-sex bias would help women, it would not claim equality for them. Brown's amorphous "sacred feminine" was fun, and no doubt leaders of all stripes through history did their best to prop up their own patriarchal order.

As for Miller's point about it being silly to rely on precedent, though, it is not the female readers who cling to precedent to remake the churches. The churches and institutions themselves still cling to Jesus' celibacy as precedent, in the most clear case of the Catholic church, to require celibacy of its priests. I'd be all for Catholic priests being married men (and women too, for that matter), but the pope disagrees, based on the church-approved New Testament and the precedent it provides (which also works with the anti-sex bit above). For people to care about the precedents their churches use to make their rules isn't silly -- it's responsible participation -- and if the Catholic church is relying on precedents from texts manipulated long ago, it's responsible to question those precedents and how they're used.

Maybe the precedents are still consistent with the whole history of the writings about Jesus' life, but asking the questions isn't silly at all. One need look no further than to see Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus in December to see that the Christian churches have not always replicated Jesus' life as religious historians believe it to have been. Hopefully more readers will look to more responsible sources than Brown's lightweight fiction when asking questions about Jesus' life; I appreciate Miller's work in pointing to one more.

-- Ellen Fulton

Ultimately, I don't really care if the Priory existed or if Leonardo was really from Australia. I'm just kind of happy to see the iron-bound, dogmatic religious people who regularly tell me I'm going to hell for this, that, or the other reason try to stammer around to explain why their unknowable, unprovable assumptions about Christ are any more valid than Dan Brown's unknowable, unprovable assumptions about Christ.

After all, if it puts a tiny crack of doubt in there, maybe then they will start to doubt other tenets of their faith (like, oh, that the rapture is coming so you don't have to ratify the Kyoto Protocol or worry about killing a few hundred thousand Muslims, etc.). Who knows, they might then read their Bibles, and start going around being nice to each other as Christ allegedly did.

-- Willow Grant

Thanks for the excellent exposé of the pseudohistory of "The Da Vinci Code."

Beyond the obvious anti-papal pap of the book, it has also resulted in a phenomenon remarked by many Parisians: the flood of "Code"-carrying Americans in the Louvre!

Several of my friends have remarked upon the upsurge in American tourists, all of whom seem to be following Dan Brown's clues. Each with the book in hand, and each carefully perusing La Joconde for evidence.

While we can condemn the literary poverty of the book, we can applaud its impact on notably insular Americans...

-- Kenneth Gorelick

Kudos to Laura Miller for her effective debunking of the pseudohistory in "The Da Vinci Code." However, let us give Dan Brown credit for one good result that his books have accomplished with their readers: to send them in search of some of the world's great works of art, and to give people who might not otherwise have found them interesting a reason to study them closely.

On a recent visit to Italy, I met another traveler who was reading "Angels and Demons" and confessed to me sheepishly that she couldn't resist visiting the churches and monuments where the murders in the novel took place. "You too?" I replied, thinking that I was the only person to despise myself for engaging in this guilty pleasure. I understand that there are now "Da Vinci Code" tours in Paris that introduce visitors to everything from the paintings of Leonardo to the architecture of I.M. Pei. And how can a professor of art history object to that?

-- Susan Wood (a professor of art history)

As a Parisian (now living in Montreal) and a geography professor, I would like to point out that Brown's sloppy research also extends to peripheral "facts," such as those pertaining to Paris, a city that serves as a backdrop to most of the novel. For instance: 1) Versailles is west-southwest of Paris, not northwest; 2) trains to Lille leave from Gare du Nord, not Gare St.-Lazare; 3) it is impossible to see St.-Lazare's glass roof as one drives up to it; 4) the Pompidou center cannot be seen from the Place du Carrousel; 5) there is no Highway 5 passing close to Versailles -- Highway 5, the A5, goes southeast toward Troye. And so on.

In fact, had I the time, I would probably be able to show that all of Dan Brown's Parisian geographic references are erroneous or mistaken. However, I have better things to do (such as settle down with a good book).

If Brown's geography reflects the accuracy of the rest of the book's purported facts -- which Miller suggests it does -- then I do not think that the Christian faith has anything to worry about from Dan Brown. Of more concern is how such a bad book, a book in which the main stylistic device seems to be hinting at facts and discoveries a few chapters before the reader is allowed into the secret, can have sold so many copies.

Fortunately, mine was borrowed.

-- Richard Shearmur

It was odd to see Laura Miller, an outstanding writer and critic, repeatedly resort to the word "bogus" and others of its ilk during her trouncing of Dan Brown's book. She was so angry at being cornered at parties by literary philistines who liked "The Da Vinci Code" that I wondered how she kept her nose low enough to type.

She is so keen on debunking the book's central conspiracy -- all too easy to do -- that she overlooks Brown's accomplishments. I don't think Brown was purporting to reveal a bona fide conspiracy. Rather, he was using it as a conceit to make the reader -- particularly the Christian reader -- reconsider all the truisms that have soaked Christian culture for thousands of years. Brown's Jesus/Magdalene bloodline conspiracy seemed "bogus" to me, but I knew I wasn't reading history. That said, I certainly don't think it is far-fetched to say that there has been a conspiracy against women, often perpetuated by Bible toters, for thousands of years. That argument is, I believe, what this reader, and others who enjoyed the book, responded to.

-- Tye Wolfe

While I fundamentally agree with Laura Miller's debunking of "The Da Vinci Code" and its antecedent "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," I was somewhat taken aback by the vitriol of the article. I am not ordinarily a fan of the genre, but in spite of Dan Brown's relatively awful writing, I found this story to be entertaining purely because of its purported "facts." There is a long history of creating fiction based on false history and presenting it as factual for use as a literary device, although it might be a bit charitable to use the word "literary" in this case.

Nevertheless, I found certain elements of the story to be clever and entertaining. In particular, and I can't be the only one who's noticed this, I think the story owes as much to a similar thriller concocted with far more art -- Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" -- as it does the pseudohistory of the Grail buffs and conspiracy theorists.

"Foucault's Pendulum" also swings around a conspiracy theory, patched together from diverse occult elements by a group of bored publishers, involving the Knights Templar and the search for a hidden secret, its touchstone idea being that at some level the line between truth and fiction becomes blurred and that fiction published as fact may end up becoming just that.

"The Da Vinci Code," this dime-store rendering of Eco's work, is entertaining fluff, but by channeling these ideas that are out of place in most potboilers, it rises above the genre to some degree. To argue with seeming anger that the book is promoting false history and is irresponsible to do so, is equally out of place in a discussion of fiction.

-- Tony Casson

Most if not all of the biblical scholars and (mostly) right-wing evangelical ministers who have attacked "The Da Vinci Code" have missed the boat on why it has had such a huge following. The questions that it raises are far more intriguing and compelling than the "facts" that are debunked ad nauseam. The truths -- for example, that the Gospels were written 40 to 100 years after Jesus' death and most likely by followers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and that these parallel sources of early Christian thought even exist -- is news to the masses. Why this history is ignored by the conventional Christian church is the question that strikes many of us.

Yes, the secret societies, marriage and signs are necessary to make the book a compelling read, but ultimately their existence and accuracy are not the revelation of "The Da Vinci Code."

"The Da Vinci Code's" revelation is that if the Bible is a work that developed through hundreds and thousands of years, then it is a collaborative work of men and not the sole source for all that is holy and righteous. Christianity can be released from the stranglehold of the conventional church's creeds and controls.

Those of us who have always felt that the emphasis on the acts and miracles of Jesus' birth life and death was misplaced feel empowered by "The Da Vinci Code" and feel betrayed that the church has failed to discuss these matters until now.

-- John

OK, Laura Miller's article on "The Da Vinci Code" may certainly expose some of the factual issues with the novel. But let's make no mistake: "The Da Vinci Code" is fiction.

"The Da Vinci Code" is completely atypical of the type of novel I would read, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. It's fast-paced, it doesn't require a whole lot of brain power to process and, most importantly for me, it raises the heretical yet very believable notion that people have been swallowing a big lie for over 2,000 years.

I would suggest that Ms. Miller write about even less believable written texts. Such as those suggesting that there was a man who was the son of God and possessed supernatural powers. Come on. How ridiculous is that?

-- Brett Goldstock

Sheesh, get over it already!

I know it's become fashionable of late to slam Dan Brown's bestseller, but repeat after me: "The Da Vinci Code" is a work of fiction. A work of fiction that a lot of people enjoyed reading (I know I did). What's next, analyzing the historical veracity of the latest Danielle Steel bodice-ripper romance?

If you really have nothing better to do than pick apart Brown's novel, I have a bag of M&Ms that need alphabetizing.

-- Laura Haywood-Cory

Do you realize you just spent 4,000 words debunking a work of fiction? Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" was also a bestseller revolving around an essentially unconvincing conspiracy theory; will you be explaining why that was false, too? And how about "Charlotte's Web"? Surely people need to be told that spiders and pigs can't really talk to each other.

The book Laura Miller has an issue with is "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," which at least claims to be nonfiction. However angry she is that Brown's "Da Vinci Code" has "so outdistanced the work of his betters," it doesn't make any sense to shake her fist angrily that a novel contains things that aren't true. Because I don't know if you've heard, but I think there are some historical inaccuracies in "Macbeth," so maybe that can be the next subject of thousands of words of misplaced anger.

-- Monty Ashley

Although "The Da Vinci Code" is a pile of trash, that does not excuse Laura Miller from perpetuating naive ideas about the early history of Christianity. She says: "Early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament did not depict Jesus as human rather than divine; in fact, quite the opposite. The emperor Constantine was not involved in establishing the New Testament's canonical texts; it was a process that began before his reign and continued after his death." Those are only partial truths.

The question of Jesus' nature was hotly debated. According to Paul Johnson's "History of Christianity" (pp. 89-90), the Gnostics tended to regard Jesus as a manifestation of God. For instance, the Docetists held that the body of Jesus was a phantasm; his suffering and death were mere appearance. An extreme version of this, Patripassionism, held that God entered Mary and became Jesus. Others, such as the remnants of the Jerusalem Church (the Ebionites) stressed the manhood of Jesus. Arius believed that Jesus had a beginning, that he was neither part of God nor derived from any substance. Many other examples could be given.

Emperor Constantine did exert substantial influence on the development of Christianity. For instance, he presided at the Nicene Council in 325 and insisted on inserting the phrase "consubstantial with the Father" in the Nicene Creed, thereby putting an end (more or less) to the debates over the nature of Jesus.

The first 300 years after Christ were a time of great turmoil and dispute as to what Christianity was. Ms. Miller does no service to her readers by trying to simplify the origins of Christianity.

-- Richard Shekelle

Wow! I just read Laura Miller's nasty diatribe against Dan Brown and "The Da Vinci Code." Talk about having an ax to grind! I could have enjoyed her refutation of the novel better if her critique didn't exude so much disgust with the author. It seeps in every line and shows in the way she exclusively hangs on to one author to refute Brown. Miller needs to take a chill pill. Her critique of the novel borders on the histrionic.

I have to say I enjoyed Brown's novel, but I agree with her: The language was trite, the characters thin, and the action pure clichés lifted from the cheapest murder mysteries. I also agree that some of the theories and conspiracies displayed in the novel (let me repeat that again: novel, as in fiction) are quite far-fetched, most notably the Priory of Sion and the Merovingian line. Nevertheless, there are many points in Miller's angry article that she does not get right. I would even say she is dead wrong in some specific areas. The same can be said for Brown.

Miller hangs on blindly to the book by Bart Ehrman, "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code," and embraces all his theses without even considering the fact that some of Ehrman's points are contradicted by other historians. Laura Miller is simply wrong when she says that Ehrman does not have a bias, which is easy to see after reading his book. It may not be as obvious as that of the evangelical authors she cited, but it is a slight bias nonetheless.

Although deciding which books became part of the "official Bible" was a lengthy process that did not end with Constantine (it continued all the way into the 6th century), many other historians point to the historical fact that the politically savvy and certainly cynical emperor Constantine did in fact have a great deal to do with banning scriptures that didn't rub well with the powers of Rome. Furthermore, it's a historical fact that Constantine also modified Christian dogma to better fit the needs of Rome, as it became the new official faith of the empire. And yes, pagan rites were meshed with early Christian faith in the Nicene Council.

It's better to read several authors and scholars when studying an ancient historical event, since records of it may be faint (as it is the case with Jesus and Christianity). You get a better idea of that event as you further study and contrast different theories and contextual studies. Here's a list of books that I have read and personally recommend on the subject of early Christianity. Mind you, these tomes are written by academic specialists on the subject:

"The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth," by Joel Carmichael

"The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus," by John Dominic Crossan

"When Jesus Became God," by Richard E. Rubinstein

"The Lost Books of the Bible"

"The Gospel of Thomas"

I suggest Miller spend some time reading these books (all of them pretty enjoyable) before going hysterical on Brown. Let me repeat again: While lots of elements of Brown's novel are fantasies or "novelized" pseudohistory, there are many elements he actually gets right, particularly those relating to how early Christianity turned out to be, and how it was molded into what it is today. And yes, the parts about Constantine are pretty fair.

-- Julius Civitatus

I'm sorry Laura Miller has taken such a virulent dislike to the popular bestseller, "The Da Vinci Code." Unfortunately for her and many critics like her, I am not an unsophisticated reader who needs educating by doctrinal traditionalists. I am quite capable of deciding for myself what is verifiable and what may be questionable, as are many other readers of this book. I believe that the reasons many of us found the book fascinating, and decided to talk about and research what was verifiable and what was not was a rational decision that does not qualify us as naive. To label people who choose to believe the ideas proposed with the empty phrase "conspiracy theorists" is in itself a naive attempt to quash debate. Miller's heavy-handed protests and vitriol in "debunking" the fictional claims of author Dan Brown makes me think there is something a bit personal about her attack.

A message to Miller: I know this is an editorial page, but I find your narrow-minded attack on one book of fiction to be troubling. Nothing holds complete truth, and history is no more accurate than the people who write it. And people are always fallible. Yet most history, especially religious history, is far too frequently presented as infallible truth. There will always be competing theories about what "really happened" in all areas of history. Why I should believe one theory over the other is contingent on the reliability of all sources, and that means the "experts" Miller points out as well as the sources Brown points out -- they all bear scrutiny. The small errors pointed out about the origins of specific texts does not reduce the ideas into complete nonsense. The Gnostic Gospels do exist, and what I have read of them point to Christ's overwhelming humanity. If another person's interpretation does not, so be it. But try to keep in mind that all scripture is open to interpretation; otherwise, why would there be so many denominations of Christianity?

So spare us the insults and patronizing remarks about the naiveté and unsophistication of readers and accept that a myth with more than a grain of truth to it has captured the imagination of millions everywhere. If nothing else, it's opened a much-needed dialogue about what our Christian history is really all about. And if you really want to know about Constantine's involvement in the establishment of canonical text and doctrine, Edward Gibbon, among many others, is a good start.

-- Elaine Guice

Laura Miller's attack piece on "The Da Vinci Code" is as much crock as the book and a lot less entertaining. Her bias and lack of knowledge on the subject is revealed when she puts the well-known spiritual concept of the sacred feminine in quote marks and calls it "a foggy spiritual principle with roots in 'paganism,'" again "paganism" in quotes. Apparently Miller uses quotes whenever she comes up against a concept with which she's unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Is the concept of "God the Father and God the Son" (the sacred masculine) a foggy spiritual principle for her?

Miller correctly points out that the main attraction of the book is probably its non-patriarchal take on early Christianity, but dismisses that viewpoint by stating, "While some of the early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament honor Mary Magdalene and Jesus' women followers, others emphatically do not." As a product of Catholic schools which taught that Mary Magdalene was an insignificant whore, I am fascinated that some early church leaders respected and honored her. But according to Miller's logic I should reject this view because it was not unanimous, which means I am free to accept that Jesus lived and died, about the only things early church leaders unanimously agreed on.

-- Mark Meredith

Miller's brilliant debunking of Dan Brown's Da Vinci crock doesn't mention -- perhaps intentionally -- that no number of fraudulent French fops brought to bay by investigative reporters for their parts in "Priory of Sion" shenanigans will sway the believer. Facing confessions, the conspiracy buff merely shrugs: "Of course they'd say they made it up. They're protecting the conspiracy!"

This is a basic logic error found throughout Dan Brown's novels and elsewhere. In a more familiar and easier-to-recognize version, it runs like this:

Inquisitor: "Are you a witch?"

Grandma: "I am not a witch."

Inquisitor: "Of course you'd say that! All witches deny being witches! Bring out the dunking chair -- if she drowns she's innocent!"

-- Shannon Roy

"The Da Vinci Code" is indeed a cheesy thriller, with all the familiar qualities of the genre at its worst: characters so thin they're practically transparent, ludicrous dialogue, and prose that's 100 percent cliché. Even by conventional thriller standards, the book isn't particularly good; the plot is simply one long chase sequence, and the "good guy who turns out to be evil" is obviously a ringer from the moment he's introduced. Dan Brown is no Robert Ludlum, so why has his thriller so outdistanced the work of his betters?

The answer is that what readers love about the novel has nothing to do with story, or character, or mood, or any of the qualities we admire in good fiction. They love it because of the nonfiction material the book supposedly contains, a complicated, centuries-spanning conspiracy theory. The people who buttonhole me at parties and barbecues to talk about "The Da Vinci Code" usually can't even remember the names of the novel's two main characters or anything that happens to them. What entrances these readers is the possibility that a secret society has protected a religious and historical secret for almost 2,000 years, a secret that could undermine Christianity as we know it. "It really makes you think," an earnest arts administrator told me last summer.

The story begins with the murder of a curator at the Louvre and follows his estranged granddaughter, a French cryptologist, as she and a handsome Harvard professor attempt to solve the crime while evading the police (who suspect them in the murder) and assorted bad guys. Little by little, various characters reveal to the cryptologist that her grandfather headed up a shadowy group called the Priory of Sion, whose past leaders included such luminaries as Isaac Newton and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci.

With the Knights Templar (an order of medieval crusaders), the Priory has guarded proof of the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Furthermore, they have proof of the child produced by that marriage, who is said to have founded a dynasty of French kings. Clues to this secret can supposedly be found, among other places, in Leonardo's paintings (particularly "The Last Supper") and in early Christian scripture suppressed by the church. The legend of the Holy Grail really refers to Mary Magdalene (vessel of Jesus' blood), who also stands for the "sacred feminine," a principle Brown claims was purged from the faith by church fathers.

Fortunately for Brown, as the book has filtered into the awareness of people who are qualified to refute most of its claims, he's always been able to plead fiction; "The Da Vinci Code" is, after all, only a novel. Although he begins the book with a statement that it accurately describes real documents, and that the Priory of Sion really does exist, even this leaves him with plenty of wiggle room. The book's selling point is the impression that it contains large and provocative servings of historical fact; yet when challenged on the many fallacies in his novel, Brown can always assert that, as a work of fiction, "The Da Vinci Code" can't be held to any standard of accuracy.

A cozy situation for Brown, but it became somewhat less so recently when, in the U.K., a lawsuit was filed against him for "breach of copyright of ideas and research." The complainants, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, are the coauthors, with Henry Lincoln, of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," a bestseller from the early 1980s. Virtually all the bogus history in "The Da Vinci Code" -- nearly everything, in other words, that today's readers' find so electrifying in Brown's novel -- is lifted from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

This puts both Brown and the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," in a tricky position. Baigent et al. have always maintained that the "facts" supporting their theories are available to any dedicated scholar and that the theories themselves, while unconventional, have been seriously entertained by other "experts," (including some, they claim, in the "upper echelons" of the Roman Catholic Church).

Since "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" presents itself as nonfiction, it has been in its authors' interest to downplay how much of it is invented. However, if the "research" and ideas in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are not the original creations of the book's authors, they become harder to copyright, and the possible infringement suit against Brown might be weakened. No one, after all, has a copyright on the facts surrounding Abraham Lincoln's assassination or the Treaty of Versailles.

For Brown's part, it's to his advantage to insist that the farrago of lies and misrepresentations used to prop up the conspiracy theory in "The Da Vinci Code" (and, originally, in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail") is part of the historical record or at least in general circulation. Perhaps that's why Brown, who has avoided talking to the press about the accuracy of his book since "The Da Vinci Code" became a hit and drew fire from historians, granted a lengthy interview to the makers of "Unlocking da Vinci's Code: The Full Story." The documentary recently aired on the National Geographic Channel and earned the 5-year-old cable network its highest rating ever.

"That information has been out there for a long time," Brown told the filmmakers when asked about the historical "underpinnings" of his novel, "and there have been a lot of books about this theory. The interesting thing is that they're all history tomes that sit in the back corner of bookstores. 'The Da Vinci Code' has taken a lot of that information and put it in a different genre, and there's an enormous part of the population now that's hearing this for the first time. And it feels brand new."

But what exactly is this "information"? The theories encompassed in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and its derivative, "The Da Vinci Code," have a certain invincible panache. They are proof of the adage that the hardest lie to refute is the Big Lie. Unlike, say, speculation about the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays, these theories span so many historical specialties -- ancient Hebrew customs, early Christian texts, regional French folklore, ancient and contemporary church history, medieval dynastic minutiae, Renaissance and neoclassical art, esoteric movements of the early modern age, and so on -- that no one person has the expertise to refute all of the fabrications.

In fact, as enormous crocks of nonsense go, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is a kind of masterpiece, certainly more so than its pipsqueak descendant. In "The Da Vinci Code" Brown had one really good idea: to use a rudimentary thriller plot to spoon-feed readers the Grail theory concocted by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. You get the impression Brown never expected "The Da Vinci Code" to take the world by storm or that it would invite the kind of scrutiny his novel cannot withstand. As a result, Brown makes several dumb, careless mistakes that put the lie to his pretensions of extensive research, such as having a "Grail expert" describe the Dead Sea Scrolls as being "among the earliest Christian records," when the documents are Jewish and do not mention Jesus Christ at all.

The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," who girded their loins against attacks from legitimate historians from the very start, knew better than this (although they do erroneously refer to the collection of largely Gnostic texts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, as "scrolls" rather than books, and they include the Gospel of Mary among the texts in that collection, though it was found elsewhere). When it comes to spinning a masterful line of bull, they have few equals, and if we cannot admire them, we can at least respect their peculiar genius, much as Sherlock Holmes respected the Napoleon of crime, Professor Moriarty.

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln are the Moriartys of pseudohistory, and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is their great triumph. Their techniques include burying their readers in chin-high drifts of factoids -- some valid but irrelevant, some uncheckable (the untranslated diaries of obscure 17th century clerics, and so on), others, like the labyrinthine family trees of various medieval French noblemen, simply numbing, and if you trouble to figure them out, pretty inconclusive. A preposterous idea will first be floated as a guess (it is "not inconceivable" that the Knights Templar found documentation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's marriage in Jerusalem), then later presented as a tentative hypothesis, then still later treated as a fact that must be accounted for (the knights had to take those documents somewhere, so it must have been the south of France!).

Each detail requires extensive effort to track down and verify, but anyone who succeeds in proving it false comes across as a mere nitpicker -- and still has a blizzard of other pseudofacts to contend with. The miasma of bogus authenticity that the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" create becomes impenetrable; you might as well use a rifle to fight off a thick fog.

Nevertheless, the Grail theory touted in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and "The Da Vinci Code" can be broken down into two main parts: One concerns the historical details of Jesus' life and the establishment of orthodox Christian tenets in the three centuries after his death. The second part describes the survival of the suppressed, hidden and unorthodox "truth" about Jesus and his descendants via the Priory of Sion and its military arm, the Knights Templar. Clues to this truth are supposedly embedded in the art, architecture and literature produced by the intellectual superstars who, with the occasional aristocrat, are said to have run the Priory of Sion. (Why people who are sworn to keep this secret would go around planting all these clues is never explained.)

Almost all the furor "The Da Vinci Code" has caused in America surrounds the first part of this theory. In the past year, numerous books have been published refuting the novel's depiction of Jesus' life and Christianity's early years, but most of these have been written by defensive evangelicals. They aren't particularly interesting to a secular reader -- or reliable, since their authors are deeply invested in a particular view of Jesus. They don't apply standards of proof (or, to be precise, plausibility) of much use to nonbelievers.

Fortunately, Bart D. Ehrman, who chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has just published "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code" (Oxford University Press), a book-length expansion of his list of 10 errors in Brown's novel, first circulated widely on the Internet. Ehrman's specialty is the ancient history of the Christian church, and he is the author of two books, "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew," and "Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament" (both Oxford University Press), so he can hardly be accused of participating in a coverup of the unorthodox and heretical early Christian texts that the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and Brown claim support their theories.

"Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code" is written in eminently clear, basic English (a pleasant surprise, because Ehrman's previous books can be pretty heavy sledding), and its tolerant, "more in sorrow than in anger" tone is probably more effective than the annoyance to which most of the novel's critics (including this one) succumb. It's a little repetitive, but given the many relatively unsophisticated readers Ehrman is addressing, that's probably justified.

Ehrman methodically demolishes a sizable chunk of the conspiratorial claims in "The Da Vinci Code," which are mostly cribbed from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." To hit some of the high spots: Early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament did not depict Jesus as human rather than divine; in fact, quite the opposite. The emperor Constantine was not involved in establishing the New Testament's canonical texts; it was a process that began before his reign and continued after his death. Jesus' experiences and teachings were not recorded by "thousands" of his followers during his lifetime, as nearly all of them were almost certainly illiterate. It was not unheard-of for a Jewish man of Jesus' time to be either single or celibate, particularly if he was part of the apocalyptic prophetic movement of the day, as Jesus most likely was.

Some of Brown's mistakes are minor but telling. For example, his "Grail expert," Leigh Teabing, smugly declares that "any Aramaic scholar will tell you" that the word "companion" used in the uncanonical Gospel of Philip in describing Mary Magdalene's relationship to Jesus, "in those days, literally meant spouse." But, as Ehrman explains, the Gospel of Philip is written in Coptic, not Aramaic, and the word in question is borrowed from yet another language, which is also not Aramaic, but Greek. And it does not mean "spouse" or "lover," but "companion," and is "commonly used of friends and associates."

Brown picked up this bit of bogus "proof" from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." (In a lumbering stab at playfulness, Leigh Teabing is named after the coauthors, "Teabing" being an anagram of "Baigent.") The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" in turn got it from the Protestant theologian, William E. Phipps, who, in an admirable effort to liberalize church attitudes toward women and sex, made the claim in "Was Jesus Married?" a "theological potboiler" published in the early '70s. The mistranslation of the Gospel of Philip has been kicked around for a while (it turns up in the National Geographic documentary, for example), but not, seemingly, by anyone who can read the languages in question.

Ehrman does not concern himself with the modern component of the Grail conspiracy theory. In fact, the Priory of Sion element of the theory has received little attention in America, which is surprising when you consider that this organization is supposedly still extant, possesses proof positive of Jesus' bloodline, and could settle the matter once and for all. The fundamentalist vein in American culture makes a fetish out of scriptural legitimacy and, as a result, quarrels over the exact nature of Jesus and his ministry attract all the heat.

But the latter-day aspects of this conspiracy theory are important. After all, both "The Da Vinci Code" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" begin with a contemporary puzzle that leads investigators down a long, twisted path to the biblical past and the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In Brown's novel, the murder of a Priory of Sion master draws his granddaughter and the hero, Robert Langdon (a professor of "symbology" -- a nonexistent discipline -- at Harvard), into the story. In "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," the question of how a priest in a provincial French town suddenly acquired a lot of cash and posh social connections sets the authors on the trail.

So, in both the novel and the "nonfiction" work, there is a mystery that, when pursued, leads to evidence of a secret society dedicated to protecting yet another secret. Unless the secret society actually does exist, the persuasive litany of "clues" ostensibly alluding to its existence and the nature of its closely guarded secret is meaningless. If Leonard da Vinci had not been privy to the secret that Mary Magdalene stood foremost among Jesus' disciples and bore his child, he would not have planted "codes" in his paintings intimating as much. And then there would be no reason to read great significance into the fact that the figure Leonardo painted to right of Jesus in "The Last Supper" is pretty and beardless with long flowing hair and that this figure's left arm, with Jesus' right arm, forms a V shape, symbol of "the sacred feminine"!

If you point out to a "Da Vinci Code" buff that there's plenty of artistic precedent for depicting the disciple John as young and beardless, he will talk about the Gnostic gospels that supposedly hint at intimate relations between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And if you point out that other suppressed scripture suggests exactly the opposite, he can point to the weird and ominous carvings in a church in a tiny town in southern France, which surely support the idea that a terrible secret was buried there. This is how conspiracy theory works: Build a big enough pile of suggestions and to some people it will look like truth. "Evidence" of a secret society in turn becomes "evidence" of a secret that the society protects; each phony scenario props up the next.

The Priory of Sion did exist -- sort of -- but not in any form even remotely resembling the fantastical claims of the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" or Brown. (In one of his few unqualified claims to nonfiction, Brown includes the sentence "The Priory of Sion -- a European secret society founded in 1099 -- is a real organization" on a page labeled "Fact" placed before the prologue of "The Da Vinci Code.") In reality, the Priory of Sion was the invention, in the 1950s, of a man named Pierre Plantard who had a history of fraud, embezzlement and membership in ultra-conservative, quasi-mystical and virulently anti-Semitic Catholic groups. These tiny extremist groups sought the reunification of Europe under the dual leadership of an orthodox Roman Catholic Church and a divinely ordained monarch, somewhat like the Holy Roman Emperor and preferably French.

Plantard learned of rumors surrounding a town in southern France, where the late priest's unexplained affluence led to talk of buried treasure in the local church. (The priest's wealth actually came from charging superstitious Catholics to have Mass said on their behalf, and he was censured for it by the church.) Plantard capitalized on the "mystery" of Rennes-le-Château by insinuating into the grapevine further rumors: that the priest had discovered evidence of an explosive secret and was being bribed to keep it under wraps.

Plantard wanted to pass himself off as the descendant of the Merovingian dynasty, a family of medieval French kings and, ultimately, of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. (In reality, he was the son of a butler and a cook.) With his accomplice, a genuine but dissolute aristocrat and expert forger, Phillipe de Chérisey, he produced a set of fabricated parchments full of encoded and suggestively prophetic verse alluding to this Merovingian fantasy. With a restaurateur interested in drumming up tourist business for his establishment (located in the priest's former villa), they disseminated a story that the priest had discovered these parchments in the church, inside a hollowed-out pillar of Visigoth origins. (The pillar was later determined to be solid.)

The parchments and a variety of other faked documents pertaining to the Priory of Sion and the Merovingians -- including that list of past Grand Masters, featuring Leonardo and Newton -- were planted in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This institution, alas, cannot be said to run a tight ship, and there are apparently no records indicating who exactly deposited the infamous "dossiers secrets" in their collection. However, investigators eventually determined that the printing press used to produce them was the same press used by Plantard to print his right-wing newsletters and broadsides.

The entire case for the existence of the Priory of Sion and the bloodline of Jesus extending into the French monarchy rests on this cache of bogus documents. There is no other "proof" anywhere that the Priory of Sion ever existed. A third confederate of Plantard and de Chérisey's, Gérard de Sède, who seems to have bought the story initially, published a lurid bestseller about the "mystery" of Rennes-le-Château. At this point, once a truly interesting sum of money entered the picture following the book's success, the three men fell out, quarreling over who deserved how much of the proceeds.

They began to tell outsiders of the scheme and eventually, de Chérisey confessed on camera, displaying the forged parchments and explaining the methods used to produce them to the French journalist Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has devoted himself to exposing the hoax. Plantard tried intermittently to sustain the fable, but in the 1980s, he got into trouble with French authorities when a financier who Plantard had claimed was a member of the Priory of Sion committed suicide. In the subsequent police investigation, Plantard was forced to admit he'd invented the whole thing.

Although the Priory of Sion hoax had been debunked within France, the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" were still able to pass it off as authentic in their book and in subsequent media appearances. (Insiders swear the authors knew all along that the story was phony.) Even today, with "The Da Vinci Code" and its preposterous conspiracy theories on the lips of 8 million American readers (and more worldwide, now that translations are appearing), the truth about the Priory of Sion -- a major component of the novel -- isn't widely known. (An excellent summary of the case by Amy Bernstein, based on French sources, can be found in "Secrets of the Code," a collection of writings of varying degrees of gullibility, edited by Dan Burstein. Exhaustive documentation of the multifarious frauds of Pierre Plantard can be found at the Web site maintained by Paul Smith.)

Without the Priory of Sion to hold the Grail conspiracy theory together, most of the provocative "evidence" Brown presents in "The Da Vinci Code" crumbles. Take that supposedly ambiguous figure to the right of Jesus in Leonardo's "Last Supper." If there's no real reason to suspect Leonardo of believing in a special relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, why should we see that figure as a woman? Yes, the figure looks somewhat feminine but, in addition to following established conventions in representing the disciple John, Leonardo was quite fond of painting androgynous-looking young men. His reason for doing this was the same one that Michelangelo had for painting lots of muscular male nudes and Botticelli had for depicting long-limbed, ivory-skinned lovelies. You don't need a degree in symbology to figure that one out.

This emphasis on Leonardo is one of the few original additions Brown has made to the Grail conspiracy theory. (Plantard and the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" focused on Nicolas Poussin, an important French painter who is relatively little known to Americans, but whose "Bergers d'Arcadie" is a node of significant kook fascination elsewhere.) Brown's other contribution is the introduction of the idea that the Priory of Sion is a champion of "the sacred feminine," a foggy spiritual principle with roots in "paganism," supposedly purged from early Christianity by the dastardly Constantine.

Although this notion is so vaguely conceived that it approaches stupidity -- What "pagans"? People who have worshipped multiple gods range from the ancient Greeks to Hindus to the Norse and the Aztecs, and their religions have little in common and are certainly not free from patriarchal values -- the intention is hard to argue with. A significant portion of the fan base for "The Da Vinci Code" consists of women who are uncomfortable with the male-dominated, slightly to very misogynistic nature of the Christianities they were raised in and who see Brown's version of early Christian history as a corrective.

As Ehrman points out, it does appear that women had a more prominent role in Jesus' ministry than might be expected of a religious movement at that time and place. Some of that status is apparent in the canonical texts. The New Testament, most notably, holds that women, particularly Mary Magdalene, were the first witnesses to the Resurrection. Yet Ehrman also concludes that while some of the early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament honor Mary Magdalene and Jesus' women followers, others emphatically do not.

The early Christian scriptures -- the earliest having been transcribed from oral accounts 30 years after Jesus' death, and some a century or more later -- were written by people who were the product of a patriarchal culture that subscribed to many values we abhor today -- slavery, for one. Most of Jesus' followers assumed the world as they knew it was about to end very soon, to be replaced by an earthly kingdom of heaven. They were wrong about that and a lot of other things. To try to recast them as people with egalitarian attitudes about the sexes is to imply that we can't improve our own society without some kind of precedent from them. This idea could be even sillier than anything in "The Da Vinci Code."