davinci (sp) code

jthomas666

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I picked it and Angels and Demons, the guy's first book, the other day. I'm flying up to New York next week, and plan to read them on the plane.

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"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." --Woody Allen
 

doctorcamel

Banned
Nov 19, 2003
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Tuscaloosa, Al, USA
The Davinci Code is quite possibly the best book that I have read in a long while. I am reading Deception Point now by the same author. I have about ten or so chapters left and it is also genius. I haven't read Angels and demons but I don't think that you necessarily have to read one before another. That was what I was told at least. So I suggest that you get started on the DVC.
 

GORILLA BALL

1st Team
Nov 6, 2000
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plan to start angels and demons this weekend.

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"OK Sooner fans, YOU tell Jason White where to throw the ball..." Brent Musberger during the Sugar Bowl game after showing LSU's defensive secondary coverage on a replay.
 

LTBF

1st Team
Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
News flash: Russel Crowe to star in film. Ron Howard to direct.

I sent for the Biography episode about Mary Magdalene, looking for clues as her real role. It was very interesting, and somewhat in line with TD/VC.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

ncbama

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Jun 1, 2003
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To round out your reading you need to go back and pick up "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" which is the precursor to these and other books on this theme (e.g. "Daughter of God").
The way The Da Vinci Code ended, look for a sequel.
 

LTBF

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Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
There is an interesting column in today's Birmingham News about TD/VC. The writer calls it "mind candy." She does say, however, that it has gotten her interested in reading more on the history of the Christian religion. Same for me.

I once mentioned reading the book dealing with Judas. Can't remember the exact title right now. I saw the movie "The Gospel of John" the other day, and it is wonderful, so faithful to the Bible. I ordered and watched the biography of Mary Magdalene produced by THC. There are several other things I have in mind along these lines.

I don't think you have to be a devoted Christian to enjoy this theme. Certainly the world we live in was formed as a result of the Christ experience.

Maybe we can get enough people reading some of these books to form a discussion group.

I'll post later some of the books she mentions in her column. One of them I had already read, and I will read the others.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!

[This message has been edited by LTBF (edited 01-26-2004).]
 

LTBF

1st Team
Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
The columnist is Susan Swagler, and she says that reading is especially good if it increases understanding.

She likes the plot and the details of TD/VC, but not the writing.

She says: 'The Da Vinci Code has been a jumping-off point for more indepth reading. It's led me to Bible-related books with much more substance.'

She also says that it is one of those books that has just enough facts thrown in to make you want to know more.

Some of the books she suggests are The Red Tent, by Anita Diamants, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Elaine Pagels, and The Gnostic Gospels by the same author.

She also mentions Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths. I read this one, and it is interesting and easy to read.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

Tsunami_RTR

1st Team
Jan 10, 2004
477
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Burns, TN, USA
This is from an Email from crosswalk.com:

The Da Vinci Conspiracy - Distinguishing Fact from Fiction

Several months ago, a friend came to me outraged over Dan Brown's thriller, The Da Vinci Code. He read the book, and while he found the story fascinating, it was filled, he said, with historical distortions and was nothing but an anti-Christian-specifically anti-Catholic-screed. Don't worry, I told him, it will blow over like all fads. Besides, no thinking person will take it seriously.

Well, I was wrong. Since then I've talked to a lot of people who have read the book. And for non-believers, it confirms their unbelief. It turns off honest seekers, and it has confused and disillusioned even many Christians.

That's because while Brown has a knack for creating suspense, breakneck pacing, and surprising twists, he also has a knack for playing fast and loose with the truth.

The Da Vinci Code begins with the murder of a museum curator. A Harvard professor and a French code breaker are called in to decipher a cryptic message that he wrote just before he died. They discover that he was protecting a powerful and dangerous secret.

So far, just your average thriller, right? We soon find out that the curator had evidence that could disprove the deity of Christ. Although the Church had tried for centuries to suppress the evidence, great thinkers and artists have planted clues everywhere: in paintings by Da Vinci, the architecture of cathedrals-even Disney cartoons.

That sounds like a loony conspiracy theory, except that Brown props up his flimsy edifice with impressive-sounding, supposedly historical "facts." One of his characters even states, "The historical evidence supporting this [story] is substantial."

But it's not. Brown uses a combination of lies and half-truths, founded on a skewed perspective of Church history. In Brown's view, the heretics in the early Church were the real truth-tellers, and the Church banned their doctrines because they threatened the Church's power base.

Just in case readers go back to their Bibles to check facts, Brown has his characters claim that the Gospels aren't historically accurate. Instead, it's the Gnostic gospels-books discarded by the early Church as unreliable-that tell the truth about Jesus.

As Dan Brown knows, an adventure story like The Da Vinci Code is an ideal way to get past people's guard. Between trying to guess who the real villains are and trying to decode the various clues scattered throughout the book, who's going to notice that Brown's religious theories are as phony as a three-dollar bill?

Christians need to notice, that's who. And we need to do our research so that we can respond to the fabrications in The Da Vinci Code. (See the links at the end of this commentary to get started.)

Even though Dan Brown knows the techniques of writing a best-selling thriller, he uses them to reach the most banal conclusions. He apparently thinks it's exciting to show Jesus as an ordinary human being with strong leanings toward goddess worship. But the biblical story of Jesus-God the Son coming to earth as a man to die and rise again for our salvation-is infinitely more exciting. If you know Christians who are reading the book, tell them, "Throw it away." And if you have non-Christian friends who have read it, debunk The Da Vinci Code. Then tell them a much better story: one that has the added advantage of being true.
 

jthomas666

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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by LTBF:
The columnist is Susan Swagler, and she says that reading is especially good if it increases understanding.

She likes the plot and the details of TD/VC, but not the writing. </font>
I would agree with her. The backstory underlying the plot is fascinating (and, to an extent, makes a certain amount of sense), but the plot of the novel was pretty sloppy and the writing style rather pedestrian. Hell, I figured out the passwords for the cryptex almost immediately.

The same is true of his earlier book, Angels and Demons.

I may re-read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, since it has a lot of information on the Templars.



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"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." --Woody Allen
 

doctorcamel

Banned
Nov 19, 2003
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Tsunami: Do you agree with the websites views? I personally interested in the story of the grail and religion. I am also curious as to whether the author(who sounded extremely biased) has considered the numerous contradictions and fallacies that are contained in the bible? Your thoughts.
 

LTBF

1st Team
Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
Tsunami and jtthomas, good posts. I was very interested in the ideas presented in TD/VC, and want to learn more, but I found some of it extremely biased.

I don't think it will hurt Christians to read it. I took it all with a grain of salt.

I have not visited Dan Brown's website, but I saw him on ABC on their special dealing with this book and its premise, and I think he really believes what he is presenting as fact.

One interesting thing: I do believe that Mary Magdalene was "blotted out" by the early Church, as it was specifically male-dominated. I looked at Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" (a print of it, anyway) and saw something I had never noticed before. That IS a woman at Christ's left hand (to his right in the picture). That has to be Mary Magdalene. That doesn't mean she was his wife, and that they had children who became heirs to the French throne. I think that is absurd.

But it is surprising to me how many otherwise rational people seem to believe this.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

LTBF

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Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
There is an interesting column in today's Birmingham News about TD/VC. One point made by the author, Alyson Ward, who writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers, is that calling Leonardo Da Vinci "Da Vinci" is like calling Jesus of Nazareth "Of Nazareth."

The column is in the form and Q and A.
Here is the first set:
Q Was Jesus married?

A What "The Da Vinci Code" says: Not only was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene-they had a daughter. Her name was Sarah. And their descendents are living in France today, their identity protected by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. 'It's "the greatest cover-up in human history"!'

REALITY: We don't know for sure whether Jesus married, but most scholars don't think so. There's no biblical edidence that Jesus had a wife. But there's also nothng to prove that he didn't marry. (In fact, the Bible's silence on the issue is the best evidence for either side of the argument.)

Those who belive Jesus was married point out that during Jesus' lifetime, it was unusual for a Jewish man to be single-surely, they say, the Scriptures would mention the anomaly if Jesus were a single Jewish man.

On the other hand, some point out, there are places where the Bible would logically mention a wife-but it doesn't. There's no mention of a wife being present at the Crucifixion.

Early Christian literature doesn't mention a wife. And in all the writing Paul did about marriage, he never made a reference to Jesus' marriage or held it up as an example.


MORE Q AND A TO FOLLOW.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

LTBF

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Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
QWho was Mary Magdalene, really?
AWHAT "THE Da VINCI CODE" says:

Mary Magdalene's importance in religious history has been buried under stories that she was a prostitute It was a "smear campaign" launched by the early church, which wanted to hide her true identitiy. She was the wife of Jesus and the mother of his child. And because she bore his descendents, she is the Holy Grail-"the chalice that held the blood of Christ."

REALITY: The Bible doesn't say a lot about MM. Brown is right, though, that she isn't the fallen woman that history has made her out to be. MM's trampy reputation is one that was assigned to her, a misconception that eclipsed evidence to the contrary. See, in A.D. 591, Pope Gregory the Great delivered a sermon that combined MM with a few other women in the NT, inluding a sinful woman mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Why? Nobody's sure. But after centuries of promoting MM as the repentant sinner, the Vatican officially retracted Gregory's statement, in 1969. In fact, now scholars are examining her story and theorizing tha MM was an apostle-and that other women had leadership roles in the second century.

There's no evidence that MM married Jesus or carried his child. And though Brown believes her value has been purposely hidden by a male-chauvinist church, Younger points out that she comes off pretty well in the NT. After all, she's the one to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection; she's charged with telling the news.

"Woman hae been mistreated by the church," Younger says. "But it's an extremely important position she holds. If the church could have put down woman by editing scripture, that would have been the first story to go."

More to follow.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

BamaFlum

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Beware of wolves in sheep clothing. This book is being billed as fiction interlaced with truth. It is completely fiction. Without evidence (real evidence) to back up not only his claims, but those that preceded him, this is just another attack on basic Christianity.

A better book to read (suspense, thrilling) is Three by Ted Dekker.
 

LTBF

1st Team
Oct 13, 1999
871
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B'ham,
Q: Did Leonardo really include Mary Magdalene in The Last Supper?

A: What TD/VC says: The truth of the Holy Grail is all hidden in The Last Supper. Though we've overlooked her all these years, MM is seated next to Jesus at the table. And there's no chalice in the painting-which means the Holy Grail isn't a cup after all, but a person-"the very person sitting next to Jesus."

REALITY: That's probably not MM. Plenty of people have puzzled over this, because the figure to Jesus' right looks like it could be a woman. Most art historians have concluded, though, that the figure must be the disciple John. John is often portrayed as young and clean-shaven. And if he's not sitting next to Jesus, where is John, anyway? He was Jesus' beloved disciple-he wouldn't be left out of a depiction of the Last Supper.

Furthermore, the fact that Leonard didn't include a chalice in the scene is somewhat irrelevant, Younger points out. The painting isn't "about" the Holy Grail-in fact, really it's not even about the Eucharist. The painting is about Jesus telling his disciples that one of them will betray him. Which makes the glassware and table dressing seem pretty unimportant.

BTW, I went to see the movie, "The Gospel of John." I thought it was wonderfully done. I came home and reread John, and they have it word for word, which does make for a little redundancy. However, it will make John come alive for you in a way that you might not expect.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!
 

redbaysartin

BamaNation Citizen
Oct 17, 1999
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Red Bay, AL, USA
I realize this is an old thread, however, as I have just finished reading this book I thought I would add to the discussion (maybe even rekindle it a bit).

I found the book wonderful as a spell binding thriller. I literally had to make myself put it down. So in that regard I considered it a wonderful book.

I should also tell you all that I am a Christan, but I'm not what I would call a dogmatic one. The book in all likelihood played fast and loose with some "truth", but it is after all a novel. This thread however has produced some frustration in me in that it reveals yet again what I see in much of Christiandom (at least in the rural churches I'm familiar with - and the postings above) a steadfast refusal to think or to allow anyone else to do so. While I didn't swallow "hook, line, and sinker" everything in the book, it did in fact stir in me a desire to do considerably more research in the topic than I've ever done before. Would that all of us wanted to LEARN more. . .
 

LTBF

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Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
Q: What about this secret society, the Priorary of Sion? Is that real?

A: WHAT THE DA VINCI CODE SAYS:

The Priory of Sion was founded in 1099 by a French king with a secret. The members know about the Holy Grail and protect Jesus' descendants. Some of the group's famous members were Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci.

REALITY: There may have been a group called the Priory of Sion. Some sources say the organization was real but disbanded in the 17th century; other sources say the Priory of Sion was nothing more than a social group founded in France in 1956. At any rate, there's no evidence that the Priory of Sion-whatever it is- has ever been involved in the kind of cover-up described in "The Da Vinci Code."

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!

[This message has been edited by LTBF (edited 03-21-2004).]
 

LTBF

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Oct 13, 1999
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B'ham,
Same for me, redbaysartin. That's why I was so interested in the article from the Birmingham News that I have quoted in several posts. Also why I ordered (from A&E) and watched the Biography episode about Mary Magdelene.

I was recently reading a book about maps and clocks (a very scholarly one, about Einstein and a French physicist whose name I can't remember) that dealt mainly with the correct establishment of longitude around the world and the corresponding establishment of a uniform system of time.

The French badly wanted the Prime Meridian to go through the Paris Observatory, and I think that is the "Rose Line" that is mentioned over and over in TD/VC.

I also remember watching on TV, on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, or A&E, a program that had a section dealing with the castle in Scotland called, I think, Rosslyn Castle, and featured in the book. I have tried to find and order this program, but have not been able to locate it. I believe this castle was built by the Knights Templars, and is thought to have hidden in it their accumulated treasure.

I would be interested in reading and discussing books dealing directly or indirectly with this subject. If you know of anything in particular, let me know.

I have a curiosity about things like this.

BTW, I enjoyed the book very much, as a thriller. I just didn't take it too seriously as history.

ROLL TIDE FOREVER!

[This message has been edited by LTBF (edited 03-21-2004).]
 

NYBamaFan

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Feb 2, 2002
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BTW, the novel does not argue with the premise for Christianity. It does not claim that Jesus is anything other than the son of God. In fact, MM would be unimportant if Jesus were any less than the son of God. To follow the story line, she would just be another wife and another mother during a tumultuous time in our history. How would that make her the Holy Grail?

Very good writing - but very light. Brown is no Tolkien...
 

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