Pointless? This book is a very good book and has some points in there that need to be brought to the attention of the mainstream. I said "discuss." If someone has read the book, then that is all that needs to be said. You are a cynic with a negative attitude, no better than trader jorge.I recommend you read the Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you. If you want to waste your time talking bad to others than do so. If you have nothing decent to say please keep quiet and let the intellectuals discuss the topic, you might learn something.
Well now you are getting just plain silly. JV, I agree with you on Eco. Name of the Rose is the only book where I really felt as if it is a novel. Regardless, his writing is generally outstanding.
I agree, it would be ridiculous to consider anything by Dan Brown intellectual. Harry Potter is much better written though.
please exbound on your opinion? What do you like about this book? what facts need to be brought out? don't be vague. . . put it out there dude tell us YOUR opinions and commentary and we will respond I think that is what ole boy is trying to say Rocket River
I didn't say the book was pointless. I said your thread was pointless. I've read the book and thought it was very entertaining. However, it is was published over 2 years ago and has been debated in depth from the mainstream media to the Vatican. There have been several threads on this very BBS on the topic and there was a great PBS special discussing some of the theories. So if you have something in particular you'd like to disucss, I'd be more than happy to contribute...in a positive manor.
What I think is, if the stuff about Constantine and the holy vote and the story of Mary Magdalene is true, than the entire Christian religion is a fraud. I have heard stories of the Bible being a very political pissing contest, but not to this extent. Why when it comes to religion do normally intelligent people stop thinking? No human can walk on water or turn water into wine, those are metaphors to show the God in man, in my opinion. Shouldn't there be some outrage? Shouldn't people start thinking for themselves and open their eyes after reading this book???? I would not be surprised if the allegations made about the Vatican are true, and I feel bad that Mary Magdalene's name was trashed in the annals of time. If Jesus's bloodline lives to this day, that would be shocking...
The Gnostic Library Online There's also a pretty good collection at comparative-religion.com Most of the gnostic stuff can be fairly well traced as crossover with things like Zoroastrianism and while quite a bit of the stuff is "secret knowledge" stuff some of it I find to be of a kind of beautiful spiritually focused, and some of them are just plain silly. They're interesting to read, at least those fragments which remain.
Relax, You're already thinking for yourself. The things you are concerned about don't really matter too much as long as you are alive and kicking. Your life on earth is very short, just like the rest of us you will die one day. Death is the great equalizer. Your soul is very valuable. Welcome to reality, once you breathe your final breath and life is ripped from your hands against your most powerful efforts to hold on, you will learn an important lesson. Concerning these things you better be absolutely right, relax.
I think there are many very very smart people that are deaply religous. I am not a religious person, in the traditional sense, but even I can see that the connections made in the book are thin, at best. It is a compelling story but it's historical accuracies have a lot of liberties. If you have TiVo, see if you can find the PBS special. It is facinating because they go to many of the places described in the book. In some cases, they find supporting evidence. In other cases, they clearly rule out some of the premises. It is pretty good. One thing I haven't heard debated much are the missing books of the bible. Why are those books missing and what was in them? They have found some of the books (Dead Sea Scrolls?), I beleive, but not all. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this turned out to be one of histories greatest conspirocy theories.
1. The notion of "missing books of the Bible" is somewhat fallacy. It wasn't "the Bible" until the Council at Nicea came together and determined which letters/books should be canonized. As for the extra-Biblical texts...I've read nearly all of them that are in existence, still. You can google them and find them. I don't think you'll be all that shocked by what's there, though. I read the Gospel of Thomas which is supposed to be this incredibly gnostic gospel that "blows the lid off Christianity." guess what...it doesn't. I find a picutre of Jesus very much like what we see in the Bible. 2. The Dead Sea Scrolls predate Jesus. They are really nothing more than Bible study notes from a Jewish group that isolated itself from society. The real significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls is in countering then notion that all of the prophecy about Jesus was added to the Book of Isaiah after Jesus was crucified. Not the case. The transcriptions of Isaiah which they dated PRIOR to Christ read word for word to the Bible that it's been in church pews for the last 2000 years. 3. The DaVinci Code is interesting. Interesting in an Oliver Stone sort of way...piecing together bits of history with bits of fantasy and presenting it with unclear lines between the two. JFK was brilliant in that way. The only thing I find offensive...and not merely as a Christian...is the liberty it takes with translating those extra-Biblical texts. And to be fair, the author isn't alone there. I can't remember what extra-Biblical gospel it is...but in one account it talks about Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the mouth. But the truth is, we don't have a full copy of that account. There are holes in it. Specifically, there are holes in that sentence which make impossible the idea of knowing WHO he kissed and WHERE he kissed him/her. But it's far more interesting if you make it a "Choose Your Own Adventure" text and add in words and names to spice it up, I guess.
Re: presenting Da Vinci Code as fact unless I missed something, isnt this book supposed to be fiction? It is a story rooted in real places and with references to history...some real and some imagined. nothing more, nothing less it is entertainment...a story about a guy and secret societies and his pusuit of the secrets of a secret society. why do so many take it so seriously?
the problem is that it's not all presented as fiction. i agree with you...i don't see what the big deal is. but you can clearly see by the origins of this thread that many take it as truth and wonder about this grand conspiracy that's been holding us down.
But isn't it true that there are still some texts out there that have yet to be found? Da Vinci Code speculates that these "missing" texts were intentially hidden so the general public would not read them. If that is true, what were the motives behind hiding the texts? We do know that many religious figures have been highly manipulative because absolute power corrupts (as much a universal law as gravity). I find it completely conceivable that there is information out there about christianity they "they" didn't want you to know. These missing texts probably doesn't cast much of a shadow on Christianity itself but more a shadow on some of the early people claiming to be Christians. What were there motives? Doesn't the entire Old Testiment predate Jesus? The PBS special talks specifically about this subject. They describe that we have a translation problem. Of the top of my head, some interpretations say the phrsse "kiss" could mean "hug." It could also mean kiss as one would kiss a friend. Think of Europeans kiss instead of shaking hands. Or it could mean kiss as you would your mother. Or it could mean a passionate kiss. There is really no way to know for sure how to translate that sentence. And that doesn't even go to the part about a hole in the text itself. So its all just speculation.
I think part of the appeal comes from the idea of "this is another way to translate the Bible". Historically, the Church has always used quotes and phrases from the Bible to argue various things or to set policy or whatnot. Many people have felt that those were misrepresentations of what God really wanted (for an example today, using the Bible to challenge gay rights and picking the anti-gay statements over the ones about acceptance and judgement, etc). The Roman Church also has a history of being a political organization rather than a religously pure organization. So when this kind of story comes up with a plausible alternative to religious history, using the Bible as is its source but translating differently from the Church, and one that fits more with what people would like to believe, it makes people start to wonder, and I think that's what there the appeal comes from. That said, I wonder how much of it was really Dan Brown's intent. He had written three other books before this, with nowhere near the same type of appeal. When he wrote it, I wonder if he thought he was just writing another regular ol' fiction book and then things just blew up.
