Bart D. Ehrman wrote Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine and teaches religious studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Ehrman can place Mary of Nazareth in her historical and modern-day context.

Elaine Pagels is the author of the best-selling Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Random House, 2003) and a professor of religion at Princeton University. She has written a number of well-received books on gnosticism, an early Christian movement considered heretical, and early Christianity. Additionally, she is the author of  The Origin of Satan (1996).

Karen L. King is the author of The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003). A scholar of gnosticism, the body of nonorthodox early Christian teachings, and a professor of ecclesiastical history, she appeared on a Nov. 3, 2003, ABC television special exploring the claims of the novel about Jesus […]

The evangelical magazine Christianity Today has compiled a number of articles it has run that are critical of The Da Vinci Code‘s portrayal of early Christianity.

Read the text of the Gospel of Mary, posted by the Gnostic Society Library.

Beliefnet’s package of stories summarizes contrasting views expressed by scholars Ben Witherington III and Karen King about the role of Mary Magdalene.

Stories in Newsweek‘s Dec. 8, 2003, issue explore new scholarship on the role of women in Scripture and discuss what is fact and what is fiction in The Da Vinci Code.

The New York Times reported Aug. 6, 2005, that Sony Pictures asked those associated with the Da Vinci film to sign confidentiality agreements.

Read a Aug. 8, 2008, Christianity Today article that breaks down and identifies fact from fiction in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”