The Da Vinci Con:
    Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code

It's Just a Novel (Movie)

2. Story of The Da Vinci Code: Historical Secret

3. Leonardo’s Last Supper 

4. Derivation of 'Holy Grail'

5. Mary Magdalene in the Bible

6. Priory of Sion

6a. Opus Dei

7. Questions of Jesus’s True Identity

8. Non-Christian Sources

9. Christian Sources: Biblical Texts

10. Other Apostolic Texts

11. St. Ignatius  of Antioch – AD 110

12. "Alternate" Gospels: Gospel of Peter (c. AD 130)

13. St. Justin, Martyr – AD 151

14. St. Irenaeus of Lyon – AD189

15. "Alternate" Christianities

16. Gnostic Scriptures

17. The ‘Muratorian’ Canon – c. AD 200

18. Constantine

19. Council of Nicaea - AD 325

20. St. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (c. AD 330)

21. Constantine’s Bibles

22. Codex Sinaiticus

23. Closing the Canon

24. Philosophical Issues: Diversity of Christianities

25. Philosophical Issues: Subjectivism of Belief

26. Theological Issue: Was Jesus married?

27. Other Historical Claims

Story of The Da Vinci Code: Murder mystery/suspense thriller (obviously fiction)

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is called by police to the scene of a murder in the Louvre Museum. The curator, Jacques Saunier had been shot and eventually died, but before he did, he arranged his body in an apparently symbolic manner and left strange signs drawn in his own blood. Langdon is called in to help decipher the symbols and because he had had an appointment with Saunier that afternoon. 

 Before Langdon can figure out the clues, Sophie Nevue, Saunier’s granddaughter and herself a police cryptologist (code breaker), arrives and secretly tells Langdon he is suspected of the murder. Together, Sophie and Robert discover that the signs point to other clues hidden in or behind the works of Leonardo da Vinci hanging in the Louvre. 

The pair then embark on breathless search for clues left by Saunier which lead to other clues, all the while being pursued at once by the police (who suspect Langdon of Saunier’s murder and believe Sophie is aiding his escape) and by Saunier’s actual murderer, an albino monk named Silas, who belongs to the secretive and powerful Roman Catholic group, Opus Dei. 

Robert and Sophie turn for assistance to Royal historian, Sir Leigh Teabing and together Langdon and Teabing explain that the clues Saunier left are supposed to lead Sophie to the Secret of the Holy Grail. Saunier had been the head of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, which has guarded the Holy Grail for centuries, and because of his murder and that of others in the Priory, he had been unable to pass the secret on to anyone else. He had left clues, therefore, so that his granddaughter could, with the help of Robert Langdon, discover the secret for herself and so continue to keep it safe.

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