It's a shame to see that some people are jealous of the Brown's succes. It is really necesarry to point out every little fault he made?

For, it was a great novel, which immediatly made me look up certyain facts on the net.

I heard nobody talk about the Priory of Sion. It is said to be an excisting orginazation. Can anyone provide a link for that?

As for the whole Holy Grail stuff: it's fiction! Fiction is not real! He makes it sound very convincing but it's not true. He never said it was true. The character in the book said it.

And conspiracy theories: I just love them!
There is said to be an orginazation just as big as the Priory: Skull&Bones. Founded at Yale University in 1832. Only 15 member each year can join. Invitations look like the cards you send when someone died. Their house has no windows and is called "The Tombe". The Tombe houses skulls, one of them is the skull of Geronimo, which was stolen by the grandfather of G.W Bush. Each US president joins that little club of very important people. (source: Daanspeak.com

Does anyone knows if this is true?



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Ohhhh!!! YOu Protestant are so sensitive. A lot of Catholics read it, but they're still faithful, and they're not turning into perverts.

Skull and Bones is true. It is a "secret" fraternity at Yale (College) University and it has been around for a very long time. If I remember correctly, George H.W. Bush was a member of Skull and Bones. I believe some of the qualifications for becoming a member have to do with family history and wealth.

@Wiz,

I don't know if you would call it jealousy over Brown's success. Some people just take great offense to anyone "impugning" the story of Christianity as it has been taught to them by their religious leaders.

I don't have a problem with someone taking pot shots at organized religion. I think that it is healthy when it is a SERIOUS and well researched pot shot. Brown, though, is messing up people's heads with fiction that too many who read it will believe it is MORE than ficiton. Which, of course, only confuses the discussion even more.

conspiracy theories? I just found out my MiL has got me this for my birthday - I've told her to take it back, thx.

..sign on you crazy diamond..

---

is messing up people's heads with fiction that too many who read it will believe it is MORE than ficiton.

---

That's where the logic fails in my opinion. Brown never tells people to believe his story (well.. I don't know nkow if he wanted to tell a story or that he wanted to write a pure novel), they believe that everything he writes is true. Off course, some parts will be true (the excistence of the Priory, the little eater-eggs implanted by Da Vinci, the extreme followers of Opus Dei) but any sane person will say that this is pure fiction, not some walkthrough on how to find the "Holy Grail and the Templar scrolls". Sure, some parts of the story are based on written literature but this is the same as critisicing a reality based PC game because it isn't all real.

It's the same story with Passion of The Christ, the same people who are negative about it are the religious people. Like they feel attacked. Only because someone else has a different opinion. If you take that idea a bit further, together with the more fundamentalistic members of a religion you have the "thriller" part of a book/novel (to commit murders to maintain a secret, or to find one), mix that up with a story that has been interesting for humanity for centuries (the Holy Grail), put in some of your own ideas (Holy Grail is a metaphor for Maria Magdalena) add somee extra exciting spices (the exicstence of the Priory) and you've got a brilliant novel.

Why do (religious) people tend to deny this? (that it is a good novel)

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Edited by - Wizard on 6/17/2004 2:01:54 PM

@Wiz,

Logic has very little do with religious belief. That's why you don't get my comment.... it isn't even an argument, really.

My Sister is religious. She WANTED to believe what Brown said. In the beginning she was scandalized. Most of her friends responded the same way.

THIS is what I mean by there should be a better way to make money selling books than to prey on these kinds of sensibilities.

It's to bad that not to many people (religous or not) here haven't read the book. I think that way we could discuss this much better.

My next question to you Indy is: why do you think he was taking pod shots at organised religion? Why wouldn't he just be telling a fictional story?
But it's to bad you haven't read the book

By the way, kudos for the way we're discussing this here! It IS possible

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Well, I don't know that Brown intended to take pot shots. That goes too far for me as well.

BUT, if he DID do the research, he would have come across the "official" teachings of the Christian faiths especially concerning whether Christ ever had knowledge of a woman, much less whether he ever he took a wife. Actually, I believe that the official record largely is silent on this issue. But I do not believe that any of the western church "leaders" interpret the silence to mean that Christ DID have knowledge of women or that he took a wife.

So the point would be, if he had that knowledge of the "official" thread, his choice in writing something that, while fictional in outward purpose, contradicts
that body of teachings. How should such a contradiction be interepreted? That he wanted to support the teachings of the faiths? That he just wanted to pique the interests in the reader?

If the former, then he doesn't know how to read. If the latter, then, as I said before, there have to be other ways to sell a book.

By the way he wrote the book he got the attenton of several Christian clubs, then the national newspapers got their hands on his books and it turned out to be a bestseller. Isn't that a great way to sell a book?
Being a bit controversial isn;t bad in my opinion. Why should you always follow the masses? If he wrote his book according to what Christians tell their followers then it wouldn't have gotten that much of attention.


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I fully agree with you. If he wrote his book solely based upon accepted teachings, it would not have given his book as much salable traction. And that would be his ultimate commercial purpose and my point.

Whenever I have the chance to talk to him, I will ask what the reason was to write his book the way it is

For now, time to go to bed for me

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but it's not really a controversy is it? it's nothing new, it's nearly all rehashed stuff that other twonks have passed of as revisionist/revaltional history. I've read most of the stuff this is based on, it will be appeal to a distinct element of religious types who rather than being scandalised, will seize on something thats more tangible and emotionally satisfying than ordinary religion. it allows them to maintain a faith even more deeply than their previously held orthodoxy. its actually the same mentality that drives the new age/alternative living crowd, a lot of harmless and not-so-harmless cults, and a lot of the fundamentalist worship of the ecstatic type. it's the same need for answers fuelled by a paranoiac belief in secret histories and mysteries that drives the readers of EvD and the Atlantis rot, the believers in alien abductions; a desire for fulfillment and knowledge as a reaction to the insecurities of reality. Common historically in urban populations of industrial economies. The eschatological and millenarial upsurge of the late medieval period is absolutely typical of this. it doesnt have to be original, just to repeat what's already done but in a populist way.

but his research is absolutley toss (and I haven't read it yet) I can assure you 100% cos I did High Renaissance aesthetic theory and philosophy as my MA disertation 18 yrs ago, that what he writes about da Vinci is totally wrong. which if i've predicted his narrative correctly udermines his entire argument. ok its fiction, but its being held up by elemnts of its readership and promoters as the bearer of a new tryuth, which is rather disturbing. Don't forget that novels that capture the popular imagination can be powerful catalysts for chnage and instability.

for the record i happen to think (from other sources not this) that Jesus did have girlfriends and may even have married one of them, that he was far more involved with the anti-Roman movement in Palestine esp Galilee than the Bible cracks on, and that his crucifixion was entirely Roman in origin, for revolt, and nothing to do with the Jews at all, except in as far as he'd been hailed Messiah. However i do believe that he died that day, the movement he left behind splintered into a jewish and increasingly non-jewish divide, made permanent and far-reaching by Paul of Tarsus. i don't believe Mary Magdalen sailed to Gaul for one second. when I read that in the HB, HG I burst out laughing.



..sign on you crazy diamond..

So the Holy Grail is a metaphor for Mary Magdalene? Yeah, right *spits*. I've studied Holy Grail myth at Uni, and I say that Brown has no idea what he's talkin' 'bout. Still, one wonders how serious he takes his "revelations"... The sad part is that people believe stuff like this, just because the data in question is in a book *shakes head*. It's just like the (many) people who believe everything that they hear on the news...

EDIT: I was just at the bookshop, and I saw a very interesting book called "Cracking the Da Vinci Code" by Simon Cox. The text is organised alphabetically, and explores the veracity of many of the themes in TDC. I just thought I'd mention it.

Edited by - esquilax on 6/18/2004 3:00:32 AM