The Bible? It's on the ropes, if you believe Brown's legions of fans.

In "The Da Vinci Code," Brown argues that the Catholic Church has engaged in a centuries-old conspiracy to suppress the so-called Gnostic Gospels, which Brown touts as being just as authentic as the better-known canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

"The Da Vinci Code" also suggests that Catholic leaders have trivialized the role of women in early church history.

It's just a work of fiction, but many Christian writers have argued in a raft of rebuttals that Brown mangles both church teaching and what the Gnostic Gospels really say. These critics worry that people will believe "The Da Vinci Code" rather than trust more scholarly sources.

it with goddess worship," says Sandra Miesel, co-author of the "The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in 'The Da Vinci Code.' "

Brown's novel describes little-known or secret Catholic societies that Brown says are real, and the book is theologically rooted in those Gnostic Gospels.

Whereas the canonical Gospels purport to be a history of the life of Jesus on Earth, the Gnostic Gospels range from sayings attributed to Jesus to unusual, even occult, beliefs about existence. They also emphasize personal knowledge as the way to salvation.

The Gnostic Gospels were discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. Their existence was known before this time, however. The Gnostic Gospels are not considered true Gospels by any mainstream Christian church, but scholars say Gnosticism competed with more orthodox Christian beliefs for popularity in the first centuries of the first millennium.

"The Da Vinci Code" goes beyond the spiritualism and inner truths inherent in Gnosticism, though. It alleges that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, for example; that she was really the primary disciple; and that the divinity of Jesus was concocted at the important Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.

"That's the problem," says Miesel. "People go out to their pastors and priests and say, 'OK, you kept this from us and lied to us all these years.' "

Amy Welborn, author of "De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of 'The Da Vinci Code,' " says the most egregious error in the novel is that "Brown asserts that early Christians didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus."

Most scholars date the Gnostic Gospels from the middle second century A.D. or later, which is several generations after the canonical Gospels.

If the canonical Gospels contain historical details from the life and times of Jesus, and the Gnostic Gospels don't, and if the canonical Gospels appear to have been written earlier, then the canonical Gospels must be the authentic ones, or so the reasoning goes.

Some scholars are not so sure.

"That many of the parables in Thomas (one of the Gnostic Gospels) also are found in the canonical Gospels is one reason for dating it before the canonical Gospels," says Willis Barnstone, professor of comparative literature at the Institute of Biblical and Literary Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington. "That's proof because had the Thomas Gospel been written later, it would have included the 'historical' narrative. That it didn't means it predates them."