When we last left Dan Brown’s novel, THE DA VINCI CODE, we thought Bart D. Ehrman had supplied us (see the November 2004 of THE TRUTH AND FICTION IN THE DA VINCI CODE review) with just about everything we needed to know as rebuttals to contentions of an un-godly, married, King of the Jews, Jesus Christ. We thought we had everything. Turns out, in reading Michael and Veronica Haag’s THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE DA VINCI CODE, we were right.
The ROUGH GUIDE is of course just that–a guide. On its own, it is good but redundant. How many times can you say Dan Brown exaggerates a point without yourself exaggerating? What makes THE ROUGH GUIDE worth reading is the travel guide to places mentioned in Brown’s novel and the detailed discussion of objects mentioned. Everything from the Da Vinci paintings (“John the Baptist was routinely depicted as an effeminate figure in Renaissance art”, solving the mystery of the “woman” sitting next to Christ in Da Vinci’s Last Supper), to the headquarters of Opus Dei (“…separate on-site parking for men and women….”).
Aside from the travelog, THE ROUGH GUIDE does one other service to Dan Brown’s book sales. . . Ah, that is to say, Dan’s Brown’s fictional treatment of history. It ferrets out (if that’s the correct phrase for this) the tradition of the sacred feminine. It does a good job, but is not thorough. The impression is given that the Egyptian Osiris cult was the starting point for the deitification of the death-life cycle as represented by Jesus the Son of God the Father and the Virgin Mary as Mother of God. In reading this in the first part of THE ROUGH GUIDE, you get the very distinct impression that something is missing. Even the missing is minor compared to what authors Haag are able to cover.
If you are looking for a quick read on the history and controversy of Brown’s novel, THE ROUGH GUIDE TO THE DA VINCI CODE is a good place to start, but by no means make it the final exploration.