The truth at the heart of `The Da Vinci Code'

By Elaine Pagels

Archbishop Angelo Amato, a top Vatican official, recently railed against ``The Da Vinci Code'' as a work ``full of calumnies, offenses and historical and theological errors.'' As a historian, I would agree that no reputable scholar has ever found evidence of author Dan Brown's assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child, and no scholar would take seriously Brown's conspiracy theories about the Catholic group Opus Dei.

But what is compelling about Brown's work of fiction, and part of what may be worrying Catholic and evangelical leaders, is not the book's many falsehoods. What has kept Brown on the bestseller list for years and inspired a movie is, instead, what is true -- that some views of Christian history