Jesus was married? So what?

Dan, do you realise what you may have started?

Brown may be a theological midget but he is a great popular writer who probably had no inkling that his “reworked” ideas would spark such indignation and fear. If Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln got away with it then he could have reasonably thought that his popularising of the theories they promoted would cause little further offense. Not so.

Brown has managed to blunder into controversy that has led to embarrassing enquiry into generally accepted and previously unquestioned religious “facts”.

He has popularised doubt.