Da Vinci Code Lawsuit Baffles Readers of Graves’ King Jesus

Dan Brown’s best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, is a poorly told, virtually illiterate, tale of what would like to be intrigue. The tale hinges on a secret kept hidden by the Catholic Church, that Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene had a child, and she escaped Judea after the crucifixion. Mr. Brown’s publisher, Random House, is on the receiving end of a lawsuit in London charging that Mr. Brown took many ideas from the 1982 non-fiction work The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Could it be they are chasing a printing press and not an ambulance?

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who along with non-litigant Henry Lincoln, wrote the 1982 work, are claiming damages from Random House, which published their book as well as Mr. Brown’s. Their lawyer, Jonathan James stated in the High Court, “Dan Brown copied from The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail and therefore the publication of the result by the defendant is in infringement of the copyright of my client in the United Kingdom.”

Copyright in the UK is much like copyright in the US, save a few quirks of constitutional First Amendment stuff. Basically, the author of a later book can’t appropriate text, characters or plot ideas without some acknowledgement, payment or written release from the author of an earlier work. Thus, James Bond lives on because the estate of Ian Fleming licenses authors to write new novels and screenplays.

The question at hand in this case is just what did Mr. Brown “borrow.” The Baigent and Leigh book was sold as non-fiction (although the Catholic Church and a few other denominations would argue that it is absolute fiction). There were no French policemen, American academics or albino religious fanatic murderers in their piece, as there were in Mr. Brown’s (ah yes, the old albino religious fanatic murderer, a great device in high fiction). They claim he took their idea about Jesus as a Father and their interpretation of history that stems from that.

One expects the estate of Robert Graves to sue them in turn should they be successful. In his 1946 work King Jesus, the late poet challenged the Four Gospels recognized by the Church, suggesting Jesus of Nazareth was the child of Herod Antipater and Mary, his Gospel-recognized mother. Much of the Male versus Female piffle that showed up in both the 1982 work and the dreadful Brown tome are found here, written at a much earlier date. Of course, Mr. Graves’ work is far less accessible than Mr. Brown’s, and Ton Hanks isn’t appearing in the film version of King Jesus later this spring. Quite coincidentally with the lawsuit, Mr. Hanks is appearing in Ron Howard’s film of The Da Vinci Code. One can only hope it isn’t as bad as the book – if it is, it could finish two fine film careers.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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