LONDON, November 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A U.S. news television has come under diatribe Sunday, November 2, for intention to broadcast a one-hour program on whether Jesus Christ had been a married man and a father.

ABC News channel's prominent reporter Elizabeth Vargas is to go on air with her controversial special, "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci," to explore the lives of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, partly based on the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown.

The mystery novel, claiming to be based partially on historical fact, alleges that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife, fled carrying their child and later showed up in France, where Jesus' descendants ultimately married into French royalty.

Ikram Lam'i, the head of Egypt's Evangelical Church, dismissed Brown's novel as "malicious fiction."

"Our reference is The Bible, but Brown's is his ill imagination. His novel has no historical or Biblical facts to back it up," he told IslamOnline.net Sunday, advising people to tune in to another channel.

"The novel is a sharp contrast to the tenets of both Islam and Christianity and comes as a part of other nasty works aimed at impairing the image of Jesus, such as the infamous movie 'The Last Temptation of Christ' by Nikos Kazantzakis (the author of Zorba the Greek)," Lam'i asserted.

The movie "alleged that Jesus could not help facing the temptation of Mary Magdalene to whom he got married and had children and after her death he got married to another woman. But he returned to the cross after he had realized he achieved nothing in his life," he elaborated.

"The notorious movie, in a nutshell, is thrown by the secular entertainment industry."

Asked whether Magdalene was a fictional character in Christianity as claimed by historians, Lam'i said she is a true character but was demonized by such wicked writers.

"She was a Christian woman who was possessed by seven demons; but when she met Jesus Christ he drove out the evil spirits. Then, she became a nun and accompanied Christ along with his 12 disciples," explained the clergyman.

The issue has also drawn criticism from the Catholic denomination, with a representative of the Catholic League dismissing Brown's novel as "crackpot theory."

"The majority of the people who spoke believed in either the plausibility or the outright truth of Dan Brown's claims. The facts themselves scream out that this is a crackpot theory," Joseph Feo told the BBC News Online.

Rev. Sam McPeek, Faith Lutheran Church pastor, said he has heard the rumor before, describing it "humorous."

"There are all sorts of theories and stories that have come out over the last 2,000 years. None have changed the basic message of Christianity. All have gone by the wayside," he told The Advertiser website.

Calling the theory "ridiculous," Rev. Rod Kirby, East Bayou Baptist Church associate pastor, said it comes from "scholars educated beyond the level of intelligence."

Vargas, a Catholic, told the BBC News Online Friday, October 31, that she was taking a risk with her special.

"(But) You can't talks about this subject without intriguing people or offending people," she said.

"For me, it's made religion more real and, ironically, much more interesting - which is what we're hoping to do for our viewers," she said.

Vargas traveled to the Holy Land (Palestine), Italy, Scotland, France and other locations around the world to investigate what evidence exists to support some of these thorny claims.