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�Poor method�
Early on I asserted that Holy Blood, Holy Grail (HBHG) suffers from what I termed as �poor method.� This involves logical blunders. Once again, there are many examples of this in the book, but for our purposes, we�ll just examine one. On page 329 of HBHG the authors write the following:

�On the basis of our own research we, too, concluded that the Fourth
Gospel was the most reliable of books in the New Testament�even
though it, like the others, had been subjected to doctoring, editing,
expurgation, and revision. In our inquiry we had occasion to draw
upon all four gospels and much collateral material as well. But it
was in the Fourth Gospel that we found the most persuasive
evidence for our as yet tentative hypothesis.�

Did you catch the error? Prior to this admission, the authors spent 28 pages attempting to undermine the credibility of the gospels. They then go on to use the source material they claim is corrupted to argue for the veracity of their claims. This is circular reasoning and therefore without merit.

The authors go on to state on page 330 of HBHG:

�It was not our intention to discredit the gospels. We sought only to
locate certain fragments of possible or probable truth and extract
from the matrix of embroidery surrounding them�fragments that
might attest to a marriage between Jesus and a woman known as the
Magdalen. Such attestations would not be explicit. In order to find
them, we realized, we would be obliged to read between the lines,
fill in certain gaps�we would have to deal with omissions, with
innuendos, with references that were, at best, oblique.�

In other words, they would have to use their imaginations, get creative, be inventive� This hardly sounds like the work of solid scholarship.

Summary
My dilemma is that many people are accepting the Da Vinci Code claims (and by implication the research Brown�s book is based on) as authoritative. And so my approach was to investigate the Brown�s primary source material (HBHG).

The Question I heard over and over again was: �Why should I believe your sources and your experts are any more valid than Dan Brown�s?� Subsequently, the form my apologetic took was a critique of (HBHG).

I stated early on that the problem with the book as a literary form is not what it is, but what it pretends to be. It masquerades as a work of scholarly import. My contention is that it is not.

I then went on lay out some basic criteria for scholastic enquiry. I said that the work must be balanced, meaning it must invite testing of the explanation it is positing, and it must be logically consistent.

In both these areas (HBHG) fails miserably. The fact that the authors� were committed to presuppositionalism (or bias) was born out in their choice of scholars and their spiritual orientation. They only chose to show one side of the story, and that story was consistent with their agnosticism.

Finally, the methods that the authors used in expositing �proof texts� for their claims were logically inconsistent�embracing among other things, isogesis and circular reasoning. As proof of this I cited examples from their book in which they systematically attempt to undermine the validity of NT documents. Next they reason from verses they have pulled out of context from those same documents to make their case. But they never give us any reason why only the portions they chose are worthy of belief. Thus, HBHG (and by extension the book which popularized its ideas, DVC) fails the scholastic litmus test, and so no confidence can be placed in the truth claims either work.

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