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The Da Vinci Code Court Battles
14 April 2006
Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code recently won his British court battle against a charge of plagiarism.
Several authors of another work brought the charge stating that Brown had lifted ideas and plotlines from their work.
Shortly after the court ruled in favour of Brown, whose book has now made him one of the wealthiest writers in the world, another author, this time in Russia, announced that he would file suit with similar charges.
A spokesman for Brown said that he would not be commenting on as yet hypothetical law suits.
The decision of the British court is seen by writers as a victory for their cause. If the decision had been different, they say, it would have made it very difficult for authors.
After all, they point out, we are all surrounded by and abundance of ideas in the marketplace. At some point or other, an author is going to draw from an idea he or she has received elsewhere -- albeit unconsciously.
In a separate development, a Christian group in Korea has threatened to boycott the opening of the movie based on the book.
The Christian Council of Korea said that the film was 'an insult and defamation' of the holiness of Jesus Christ.
The real problem for the 41-year-old author, however, may be that his credibility is wide open to question on another front.
He has stated that the ideas he uses in the book are based on historical fact, while most reputable historians have claimed the opposite is true.
Writing in his Social Comment piece on this site, commentator May Fletcher says: 'Most historians who have spoken about his book have expressed annoyance and even anger that by flying in the face of historical evidence he is reshaping people’s perceptions about the past. And he’s doing it via a cheap, unscholarly piece of pop-fiction which he peddles as reflecting facts.'
Referring to the claims Brown makes on the Easter story, he adds: 'The author of The Da Vinci Code has deliberately chosen to overlook the witness of history, which reveals more extant documentary evidence for the existence, work and death of Christ than for the person of Julius Caesar.
'No reliable historian of any note has ever maintained that the death of Jesus by crucifixion is a myth. Even today, in the midst of an increasingly pluralistic and secular society, reputable historians might argue about what the crucifixion means, but they don’t deny that Jesus died on a cross.'
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