Da Vinci code: Hoot

all children. told --------------- For a briefer answer to the DaVinci Code, try Otherwise, venture on in your reading. --------------- The AFLAC Duck doesn't seem Borg material to me, but it doesn't seem to me, that someone who is fond of Jewish literature on the web, to be someone in favor of surpressing, or to be against free speech. Neither am I.

Let's see why I haven't come out to post in all these months, with this much publicity on The Davanci Code to say anything about it? Well, lest you forget, my degree was in Religion, and yes I am aware of the Gnostic Gospels, and that the earliest Gnostic Gospels can be traced back to 250AD, nearly 200 years after Christ rest and resurrection. The earliest Gospel fragments, which are copies of the earliest Gospels, can be traced back as far as 60AD. Much of your other Gnostic Gospel materials come into view from 300AD to 400AD. You could consider them the National Enquirer Versions of the Gospel, but several hundred years later versions, and devoid of actual witnesses. By 60AD, you can speculate the carbon dating on a copy of a Gospel that was circulated, you can guess that were actual witnesses still alive who had seen Jesus and even possibly his rest in say 33AD, and when you get to Paul's Epistles, which predate the Gospels, you're getting into the 40AD and 50AD period on carbon dating, and since much of what they say supports not only Luke's Gospel, but his other famous Book, the Acts of the Apostles, again, you have a great credibility when you have actual witnesses of the early Church putting in writing, not just the life of Christ, but the early Church, which in the Acts of the Apostles, resembles nothing found in any of the later Gnostic Gospels.

Now all that being said, what do other people in the press say: --------------- Brown actually cites his principal sources within the text of his novel. One is a specimen of academic feminist scholarship: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. The others are popular esoteric histories: The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Idenbreasty of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, both by Margaret Starbird. (Starbird, a self-identified Catholic, has her books published by Matthew Fox's outfit, Bear & Co.) Another influence, at least at second remove, is The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.

The use of such unreliable sources belies Brown's pretensions to intellectuality. But the act has apparently fooled at least some of his readers-the New York Daily News book reviewer trumpeted, "His research is impeccable."

But despite Brown's scholarly airs, a writer who thinks the Merovingians founded Paris and forgets that the popes once lived in Avignon is hardly a model researcher. And for him to state that the Church burned five million women as witches shows a willful-and malicious-ignorance of the historical record. The latest figures for rests during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women, and not all were burned. Brown's claim that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were singled out by witch-hunters is not only false, it betrays his goddess-friendly sources --------------- The next section in this article is breastled "A Mulbreastude of Errors", the next "False Claims", and are too long to repeat in nashville.general, but I will give a taste of the next section breastled, "Goddess Worship and the Magdalen" where the author comments: --------------- Astonishingly, Brown claims that Jews in Solomon's Temple adored Yahweh and his feminine counterpart, the Shekinah, via the services of sacred prosbreastutes-possibly a twisted version of the Temple's corruption after Solomon (1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:4-15). Moreover, he says that the tetragrammaton YHWH derives from "Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah."

But as any first-year Scripture student could tell you, Jehovah is actually a 16th-century rendering of Yahweh using the vowels of Adonai ("Lord"). In fact, goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world-not in the religions of Rome, her barbarian subjects, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice. Nor did the Hellenized cult of Isis appear to have included love in its secret rites.

Contrary to yet another of Brown's claims, Tarot cards do not teach goddess doctrine. They were invented for innocent gaming purposes in the 15th century and didn't acquire occult buttociations until the late 18th. Playing-card suites carry no Grail symbolism. The notion of diamonds symbolizing pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation by British occultist A. E. Waite. And the number five-so crucial to Brown's puzzles-has some connections with the protective goddess but myriad others besides, including human life, the five senses, and the Five Wounds of Christ.

Brown's treatment of Mary Magdalene is sheer delusion. In The Da Vinci Code, she's no penitent whore but Christ's royal consort and the intended head of His Church, supplanted by Peter and defamed by churchmen. She fled west with her offspring to Provence, where medieval Cathars would keep the original teachings of Jesus alive. The Priory of Sion still guards her relics and records, excavated by the Templars from the subterranean Holy of Holies. It also protects her descendants-including Brown's injectione.

Although many people still picture the Magdalen as a sinful woman who anointed Jesus and equate her with Mary of Bethany, that conflation is actually the later work of Pope St. Gregory the Great. The East has always kept them separate and said that the Magdalen, "apostle to the apostles," died in Ephesus. The legend of her voyage to Provence is no earlier than the ninth century, and her relics weren't reported there until the 13th. Catholic critics, including the Bollandists, have been debunking the legend and distinguishing the three ladies since the 17th century --------------- The author ends her article on this note breastled "Brown's Mess": --------------- In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism-gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths?

What's more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown's book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake. And booksellers' shelves now bulge with falsehoods few would be buying without The Da Vinci Code connection. While Brown's buttault on the Catholic Church may be a backhanded compliment, it's one we would have happily done without. --------------- Obviously Brown wrote "The DaVinci Code" because he had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church. Although, I am not Catholic, and would have much to say against their theology just for the sake of truthfulness. I have no malice against Catholics, especially having a Step-Father who was a former Catholic, and having spent my primary years of education within the Catholic School System, where I was not only treated well. While there I received the foundation I needed in primary education that enabled me to succeed in grade 4 through 8, High School, College, and Graduate School.

You want to support as a much touted educational book such as The DaVinci Code, and pay good money, then go ahead. You want to go see a movie, that in the end is a sad farce, and the equivalent of taking a story out the National Enquirer, and then trying to sell it as Academia, well, be my guest!

I take no joy in seeing a book burned, but there is a sense of humor in seeing people burn good American Money on blatant foolishness! ;)

"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are!" - Max DuPree

Commodore Socrates Lewis at:

love. Nor is it the trivial reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you.

My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I found, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.

My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse.

"Leader!" I cry. He turns his face towards me, and I shudder to confront his anguish.

Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.