Bingo -
Not to mention woefully unaware of other publications - NON-fiction - that have been in the public domain for millenia about the same themes...and the many in current print, again NON- fiction that are the source of Brown's 'ideas' -
These writer's books of NON fiction are much more detailed and documented then Brown's fiction tale, and yet, you don't hear bleep about them.
Curious.
One of the most enduring contemporary authors on the Jesus/Mary marriage, for example - and one that inspired Brown - is Margaret Starbird, a lifelong Catholic who set out to disprove this age old story.
She has an impressive 'rap sheet':
Margaret Starbird holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Maryland where she concentrated in comparative literature, medieval studies and German language, studies she pursued on a Fulbright Student Grant at the Christian Albrechts Universitat in Kiel, Germany. She taught German language at the University of Maryland for four years and for one year at North Carolina State University. She later studied at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN. She has lived and traveled extensively in Europe including pilgrimages to Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene shrines and Cathar citadels in Provençe
Her web site:
http://www.margaretstarbird.net/
I would recommend starting with her first NON-fiction book about the Jesus/Mary connection: "The Woman With the Alabaster Jar."
Just for fun - here's a stained glass window in a European church - made looonnngg before Brown was born. (Brown is being vilified and credited with 'ideas' that have been written about for many centuries -
And here's another author that will drive many wild, - with years of research and access to ancient archives, including the Vatican's: - Sir Laurence Garner
