The Da Vinci Code

[Christy]

Hess, Dan Brown has always vehemently stated that the book is fiction and never intended for anyone to think any different. It's not really his fault if people are too stupid to grasp the concept of fiction.

[Nickel]

Originally Posted by Christy

Hess, Dan Brown has always vehemently stated that the book is fiction and never intended for anyone to think any different. It's not really his fault if people are too stupid to grasp the concept of fiction.

Exactly. My mother, the most Christian person I know, can't wait to see the movie and loved the book. Does she believe it's true? No. But that's because she has the mental capacity to separate real life from storybook tales.

[Bustem' Down]

Originally Posted by Hessian

previous books did not have the savvy marketing and the star appeal of a hyped movie.

Lets take O. Stone's JFK for example...it was a lot more fun to tie loose events together, create a paranoid aura around the underdog, and play fast & loose with the facts.
Good Movie...based on some factual events...Money maker and creates a surge of spin-offs.

Dan Brown has thrown even MORE fiction in with a smidgeon of fact. This age of viewers/readers are even more susceptible to buying into a forced/noncredible conspiracy theory---and only a minority will put out the effort to dig in and understand how much of Brown's work is contrived fiction.

Previous books have toyed with similar topics to only mediocre response--this work has the ability to confuse and cast aspersions on the Christian faith (Catholic & Protestant)

I think it will have little or no effect. Believers won't be swayed and non-believers think it's a good story. I seriously doubt that this movie will start a mass exodus from the christian faith. I actually see more of an alarmist reaction from christians than an "I knew it" reaction from anyone else.

[Tonio]

After reading "Da Vinci Code," I went back and read the books that Dan Brown's characters cited. As I see it, those books and the Bible represent two different sets of claims about Jesus, and people can make up their own minds.

[Hessian]

The mental jumps that Dan has to make are pretty astounding.
The Premise is to screw around with the dates of the original codex' and make far flung claims of 80 "gospels" of Christ. Then He reinterprets the goals of the council of Nicea claiming that this body decided to deify Christ: And that Constantine was crucial in pushing the agenda: All False.
He takes Opus Dei to become the mousaad of the Catholic church and claims it is run by priests...IT DID NOT EXIST UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY AND IT IS RUN BY LAY PEOPLE.

This is just off the top of my head but given some time I could keep going.
I do KNOW that he starts off with a deceptive disclaimer....All of the things depicted in this book actually exist...
yes...but in what context???????

Classical Historians are embarrassed at his random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot.
Creative yes...Damaging...absolutely!

A poll in Canada said about 20% believed the Book was mostly true. ARGH!!

[mAlice (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Hessian

The mental jumps that Dan has to make are pretty astounding.
The Premise is to screw around with the dates of the original codex' and make far flung claims of 80 "gospels" of Christ. Then He reinterprets the goals of the council of Nicea claiming that this body decided to deify Christ: And that Constantine was crucial in pushing the agenda: All False.
He takes Opus Dei to become the mousaad of the Catholic church and claims it is run by priests...IT DID NOT EXIST UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY AND IT IS RUN BY LAY PEOPLE.

This is just off the top of my head but given some time I could keep going.
I do KNOW that he starts off with a deceptive disclaimer....All of the things depicted in this book actually exist...
yes...but in what context???????

Classical Historians are embarrassed at his random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot.
Creative yes...Damaging...absolutely!

A poll in Canada said about 20% believed the Book was mostly true. ARGH!!

Paranoia will destroy ya'.

[MMDad]

Originally Posted by Hessian

The mental jumps that Dan has to make are pretty astounding.
The Premise is to screw around with the dates of the original codex' and make far flung claims of 80 "gospels" of Christ. Then He reinterprets the goals of the council of Nicea claiming that this body decided to deify Christ: And that Constantine was crucial in pushing the agenda: All False.
He takes Opus Dei to become the mousaad of the Catholic church and claims it is run by priests...IT DID NOT EXIST UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY AND IT IS RUN BY LAY PEOPLE.

This is just off the top of my head but given some time I could keep going.
I do KNOW that he starts off with a deceptive disclaimer....All of the things depicted in this book actually exist...
yes...but in what context???????

Classical Historians are embarrassed at his random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot.
Creative yes...Damaging...absolutely!

A poll in Canada said about 20% believed the Book was mostly true. ARGH!!

Do you get upset when you watch old Western movies? All six shooters hold 30 rounds, pistols are accurate at two miles, Indians are all baby eating savages, etc. These are embellishments and "random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot."

If it's O.K. in war movies, westerns, and drama, why is it so wrong when there are religious figures involved?

The last Indiana Jones movie took liberties with the historical accuracy of the Holy Grail. Where is the outrage over that?

80% of Canadians realizing that a book you buy in the fiction section is actually fiction sounds pretty good to me. There are people who believe 9/11 never happened, there were no moon missions, and the government somehow created hurricane Katrina. There is no way you will ever stop stupid people from believing fiction.

[Tonio]

Originally Posted by MMDad

Do you get upset when you watch old Western movies? All six shooters hold 30 rounds, pistols are accurate at two miles, Indians are all baby eating savages, etc. These are embellishments and "random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot."

Great point. The Westerns have endured to become part of our national mythology, despite the historical inaccuracies. Judging by the reaction to "Brokeback Mountain," many Americans still view the cowboy as a semi-sacred icon. There is something to the Western mythology that has a deep appeal for us, maybe on a subconscious level. I believe that the appeal of "Da Vinci Code" may go beyond the plot or the theories.

[Bustem' Down]

Originally Posted by Hessian

The mental jumps that Dan has to make are pretty astounding.
The Premise is to screw around with the dates of the original codex' and make far flung claims of 80 "gospels" of Christ. Then He reinterprets the goals of the council of Nicea claiming that this body decided to deify Christ: And that Constantine was crucial in pushing the agenda: All False.
He takes Opus Dei to become the mousaad of the Catholic church and claims it is run by priests...IT DID NOT EXIST UNTIL THE 19TH CENTURY AND IT IS RUN BY LAY PEOPLE.

This is just off the top of my head but given some time I could keep going.
I do KNOW that he starts off with a deceptive disclaimer....All of the things depicted in this book actually exist...
yes...but in what context???????

Classical Historians are embarrassed at his random remix and reinterpretation just to creat a wild plot.
Creative yes...Damaging...absolutely!

A poll in Canada said about 20% believed the Book was mostly true. ARGH!!

Dan Brown did not make those mental jumps. Those ideas have been around for a couple hundred years Hessian.

At the council of Nicea, they did deify Christ. It was voted on by popular majority. Read your history, at the time there were literally hundreds of different sects of Christianity and not all of them believed in the divinity of Christ, the Council of Nicea was held to unify these different sects into one body and the issue of the divinity of Christ was one of the issues taken up by that body. Weather or not YOU believe in Christs divinity does not change the fact that that is what they did. Any christian philosophy that did not accept Christs divinity after this aggrement was considered heresy. Constantine more than likely was just worshiping a "Sun God" in general which was a montheistic religious and Christianity fit the bill, this is something historians accept over the "firey cross in the sky" theory.

[Bustem' Down]

Originally Posted by Catholic Encyclopedia

"We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Those who say: There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten; and that He was made our of nothing (ex ouk onton); or who maintain that He is of another hypostasis or another substance [than the Father], or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, [them] the Catholic Church anathematizes."
The adhesion was general and enthusiastic. All the bishops save five declared themselves ready to subscribe to this formula, convince that it contained the ancient faith of the Apostolic Church. The opponents were soon reduced to two, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, who were exiled and anathematized. Arius and his writings were also branded with anathema, his books were cast into the fire, and he was exiled to Illyria. The lists of the signers have reached us in a mutilated condition, disfigured by faults of the copyists. Nevertheless, these lists may be regarded as authentic. Their study is a problem which has been repeatedly dealt with in modern times, in Germany and England, in the critical editions of H. Gelzer, H. Hilgenfeld, and O. Contz on the one hand, and C. H. Turner on the other. The lists thus constructed give respectively 220 and 218 names. With information derived from one source or another, a list of 232 or 237 fathers known to have been present may be constructed.

The whole thing here. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm