Re: Da Vinci code: Hoot!
C-Socrates Lewis@Narnia
> >: Transmission from USS Interrogation NCC-1968G
> >: Subject: Then how come you didn't know "Row, row, row, your boat?"
"Info Super Hwy Road Kill" <disciple.of...@acme.com> wrote in
message news:LTuag.24485$Sl4....@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
: http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1776405,00.html
:
: Damn those crazy muslims for rioting over a cartoon.
:
: But ban that Da Vinci code blasphemy!
:
: Come on its fiction.
:
: Who would believe that the Son of God, born of virgin birth, died for
all
: the worlds sin and was resurrected, would have married and had
children.
:
: How ludicrous would that be!
:
: Only 3 years ago it was the book of the month.
:
: It takes the illiterate and the uninformed years to catch up and be
told
: what to think.
:
:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dan-Brown-SIGNED-1st-Printing-DA-VINCI-CODE-Tom-Hanks_W0QQitemZ7030280044QQcategoryZ29223QQcmdZViewItem
:
: Signed 1st edition located in Nashville.
:
: Maybe Borgie Duck can find it and burn it.
:
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For a briefer answer to the DaVinci Code, try
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50116.
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 death 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 death 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:
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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 Identity 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
deaths 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
(http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm).
---------------
The next section in this article is titled "A Multitude 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 titled,
"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 prostitutes-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 sex 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 associations 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 heroine.
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
(http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm).
---------------
The author ends her article on this note titled "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 assault 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:
http://home.earthlink.net/~paradox3d/theology.htm
PS> My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of
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.
-----From THE SAVIORS OF GOD: SPIRITUAL EXERCISES by Nikos Kazantzakis