more about the Gnostic gospel that was used by Brown to inprete that Jesus was a married man:

http://secretsbehindthedavincicode.we...ic+Gospels

The Gnostic Gospels were written more than a century after the gospels included in the New Testament. They do show a flavor of Christainity in the first few centuries of the Common Era, but they also show the influence of pre-Christain ideas being merged with the growing Christain relgion (Gnosticism predates Christainity in certain areas but was blended with Christainity after it gained popularity - similar to Voodoo in the Carribean today). The teachings of the Christain Gnostics were condemned during the Second and Third Centuries by Christian writters of the time and the Gnostic doctrine was never widely accepted outside of small pockets. Despite what the novel and Elain Pagels claim, the Gnostic texts were largely written in Egyptian and Coptic, with a smattering of Greek - not Aramaic (language spoken in Palestine during Biblical times).

They were found in 1945 in a place known as Nag Hammadi in Egypt. The novel claims that the Council of Nicea threw out these texts and altered the gospels that were included in the Bible. Yet experts know that the Gnostic Gospels were not read by mainstream Christains at all - not even enough to be thought about at Nicea. Additionally, pre-Nicea and post-Nicea copies of the Gospel of John (which details the divinity of Christ) are identical. In the novel Brown typically mentions the Dead Sea scrolls -- Jewish texts found in a cave not far from Jerusalem -- right next to the Gnostic Gospels. Despite what the novel claims the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the Essences) were not Christain and kept no record any gospel - Gnostic or otherwise. They have revealed some interesting insights into Jewish scripture, however - but nothing related to Christ, the Holy Grail, or beliefs outside of mainstream Judaism.

Gnostics believed in a multilayered world where the material was evil and the spiritual was good. They further believed that God as described in the Torah (Old Testmament) was the material (evil) god and that the good deity only revealed himself through Jesus who they believed to be a kind of flesh puppet for the spiritual Jesus and that the two were completely separate (i.e. Jesus the deity did not even feel pain during the crucifixtion because it wasn't him). Most Gnostics considered being female to be a detriment to gaining salvation (in direct contradiction with the claims in the novel and the work of Pagels). At the end of the Gospel of Thomas (a Gnostic text) Jesus tells the diciples that only after Mary becomes a male can she enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Gnostics still revered Magdalene -- however, the Gnostic text Brown cites where Jesus kisses Mary on the mouth actually reads: "And the companion of the […] Mary Madgalene. […loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her […]." The gaps in the manuscripts leave much room for the imagination, but fall short of telling us the two were married.