Witherington's new book, "The Bible Code," will be released this summer, with the first three chapters dealing specifically with "The Da Vinci Code." While he is aware of the scholarly work by Pagels and King on the "sacred feminine" in relationship to Gnostic texts, Witherington said he thinks such notions "are nonsense. . . . Jesus and the earliest Christians were very progressive about the role of women for the context of their time. Jesus Christ was the first early Jew I know of with women disciples.

"The big conspiracy theory idea that (early Christian leaders) were busy suppressing goddess worship is not historically verifiable. It's true in the Middle Ages there was a repression of women's roles, but I'm not talking about that. During the time the New Testament documents were written, women were there in abundance and doing a lot of things."

General public knowledge about Christian history is slim, he said, making Brown's book seem scholarly when it's merely clever fiction sprinkled with fact.

"We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that's biblically illiterate. Anything can look like it's possible."

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com