YOU ARE INVITED to comment on The Da Vinci Code
I am looking for the most interesting, unusual (but substantive), thought-provoking comments about either the Da Vinci Code novel or the film.Please post here, try to keep to 500 words or less, and I will edit a bunch of them to run over the next few weeks.
--Dan
I am looking for the most interesting, unusual (but substantive), thought-provoking comments about either the Da Vinci Code novel or the film.Please post here, try to keep to 500 words or less, and I will edit a bunch of them to run over the next few weeks.
--Dan
posted by Dan Burstein at 9:26 AM
6 Comments:
I have not read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I did go and see the movie and found it dull and way too long. It's redeeming feature comes at the end - when Sophia puts her foot on the water - and finds, bloodline or no bloodline, that she is just like the rest of us...
The bloodline theory of Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have worked as a story line in a book. When moved from the static page to the living 'reality' of the movie it fails - as do many of our ideas when we seek to harmonize them with our physical reality. Bloodlines might be useful for breeding horses. As a method for evaluating the worth of a human being they are valueless. We instinctively know this to be true - and yet many of us allow theology to spin a different tale: that one man's blood had that something extra!
Modern New Testament scholarship has debunked much of the Jesus story. From the virgin birth to the miracles - nothing is left for these scholars but a normal human man. A man that most likely would have married and had children. However, there is another possible side to this picture. Perhaps the New Testament Jesus, clothed as he is with mythology, is purely a mythological construct, a mythological man.
A book that has taken this approach is Freke and Gandy's 'The Jesus Mysteries'. This book takes the position that there was no historical New Testament Jesus. No historical Jesus of Nazareth means that the bloodline theory falls quite flat - there are no human descendants from a mythological man.
Ideas, like bloodlines, can be traced back from whence they came - or thereabouts! The paper trail of Christian ideas suggests that heresy and orthodoxy often battled it out for prominence - and that is as it should be - ideas are not static. People and places - whether in Palestine or in Gaul - contributed to what we know today as Christian thought. Who the historical people were may indeed be of interest - as interesting as is Leonardo Da Vinci or an Albert Einstein. But, ultimately, it is the ideas they generated that might contain something of lasting value - it is not our blood that defines who we are - it is our spirituality, our sense or awareness of our mutual humanity.
It's not unusual in tracing a bloodline to find some undesirables among one's ancestors! It's not inconceivable that such could be the case with any search into a Christian origins bloodline. Methinks one takes the bloodline route at ones peril - not for the faint of heart!
Biggest knee-jerk reaction/ overreaction I have ever seen. Shame on those Christians who are so up-in-arms. In mystery novels the CHARACTERS speak, not the author. Brown doesn't say this or that, Leigh Teabing does. Who is he? The bad guy. What do bad guys in mystery novels do? They lie,lie, lie to promote their own agenda. Any responsible reader will know this. Check the latest Barna report. Very, very few readers have been moved to change their pre-existing beliefs due to what they read. Why? NOVEL! FICTION! C'mon people, get a grip!
When I first read the Da Vinci code I was astounded by the "facts" presented by Dan Brown and was left feeling that I needed to know more. I did a little research of my own, reading material about the gnostic gospels, the priory of sion and anything else remotely related to the subject. Of course as soon as I saw "The Secrets of the Code" in the bookstore I immediately gobbled that up as well. I'm glad that I read "secrets" as it cast a different light on the Da Vinci code and helped me to take Dan Brown's book with a pinch of salt. I then went one further and read "the Templar Revelation" by Clive Prince and Lynn Picknett. I found this book to be far more shocking than the Da Vinci but it also made me realise than none of the material in the Da Vinci code is original by any means. Certainly Dan Brown has woven it into a good work of fiction but all of his ideas are based on "the Templar Revelation" and "Holy blood, holy grail". He obviously read these books at some stage and seized on the idea as a good foundation for a novel. My hat off to him though as he managed to sell many more million books than the previous authors. It shows all you need is a good idea.
Dear Dan,
I published a book in Portugal about a secret code inside the book "Da Vinci Code". It's the first book that goes far further than any other related work about Dan Brown's writings.
I'm an investigative journalist and I searched for an answer to the logical question: did Dan Brown - despite his book's description of "codes inside codes" and hidden messages in works of art - find himself lured by that obvious temptation to insert his own code and message inside the Da Vinci Code?
The answer is yes!
And I believe I have found it!
The result of my analysis into Dan Brown's bestseller is set out in fictional form in my book about two "Village Voice" journalists; they are contacted by a mysterious Portuguese teacher, who inspires them to discover the hidden message inside the Da Vinci Code...
Now, for some clues, just think about this:
Portugal is mentioned in chapter 5, during bishop Aringarosa's aeroplane journey from New York to Rome. Very few Portuguese know today that a possible origin for their country's name is "Port du Graal" - "The Port of the Grail"...
Being Portuguese, this was my first clue...
In chapter 10, there's a second reference to the bishop's aircraft journey, just telling us that his flight number is 1618, which is the "Divine Proportion" number (explained in chapter 20, double of 10).
Later, in chapter 22, there is a third and final mention of this plane trip, when the bishop arrives at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome - of course "Da Vinci" is the name of the code...
Now, what do you discover when you add these three chapter numbers together?
Chapter 37... Read the last word of this chapter and see where this plane journey has taken you to...
Read chapter 37 and look for the other alternative places where the Knights Templar might have sought refuge...
Check out what the authors of the "Holy Blood Holy Grail" said about this !!! ...
see more here:
http://amensagembrown.blogspot.com
or e-mail me: paramimtantofaz@gmail.com
all the best
frederico
Here we go Dan....a thought provoking comment regarding The Da Vinci Code. After reading the book (which I loved...probably because it was a sort of follow up on a subject that has been close to my heart for EVER). I did notice a little bad press(especially in Malta..WOW!!),however waited with baited breathe for the film. This is where it gets interesting in my opinion. I have never in all my life heard or read so much BAD press regarding any film. I actually waited until it came out on DVD to view it, simply because I was ready for such a great disappointment. I watched the film and was pleasantly surprised that it was an exact copy of the book and poor Tom Hanks did ok in my book :o))) Joking aside I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I began to understand what all the bad publicity was about. If you write a book these days, your audience is quite limited (especially if you live in England, nobody reads anymore!) However, if you make a film which is so true to the book, and your audience is potentially so much greater, then you are opening the story to people who have never given it one thought in their entire lives. Now lots more people are "thinking" and this unsettles certain people, including the Vatican. It is much better in their eyes that we "do as we are told" like good children and never question the rights and wrongs of this vaste organisation called the Roman Catholic Church. Just a thought! :o)))
P.S. What happened to Angels and Demons - the film???? and more importantly....what happened to the next book...Hurry before I die of old age!!!!! .... :o))) xx
Dan, was it you that asked why did
Sericini's article about Leonardo
show up in Da Vinci Code's synopsis, was the article after or before the dates and why was it in
the synopsis when the article had
not yet been shown and then
it turned up in his books synopsis
dated way before article or is that just a rumour?
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