The Davinci Code

[Avicenna]

There's hardly a good book out there that isn't better than Harry Potter.

Anyway, as before, it's just a story, no need to take it seriously. Believe it or not, I still think it's a good read.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

There's hardly a good book out there that isn't better than Harry Potter.

Wait, were you actually serious?

[Csargo]

I started reading The DaVinci Code it isnt bad so far but I havent gotten into it really yet. I read a good by Stephen King The Eyes of the Dragon pretty good I finished it last night stayed up from like 11 til 3 in the morning finishing it up pretty good book.

[The Wizard]

The book is of course propagandistic, arrogantly toned and needlessly hurtful.

To Opus Dei, the wonderful new-spangled foot-soldiers of the Pope, I mean.

[Incongruous]

Tom Clancy is such a funny guy.

The Hero a forty something hercules or some mucular hunk scientist trained in the art of Super Saiyan BS. His plot lines are just... well I mean deos he have only like three or something?
It just seem s silly, its like having Rincewind from Discworld save t5he world from ex-KGB fascist or soming and actually taking it seriuosly.

[Enoch]

A Ron’s rod. When is this crap going to end? So much to read and this is what you can show? Of all the good literature out there, the mould infested piece of, where is toilet paper when you need some, brownish refuse with clear reference to someone’s last name. To drag the beautiful Magdalen’s reputation as a devoted disciple down and insinuate marriage and sexual behaviour with the GOD of all mankind, shows gross disrespect for Christianity and its devoted members. To break healed wounds, to reopen the tomb of Him that lies not there just to say there are old bones there, the God was merely a man who died; is scorn in a believer’s ears. This just shows how the angel of sin rules this world and gives wicked men power and riches. Soon there will be a reckoning, the righteous is the ones that will inherit this world not the wicked.

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

[Aenlic]

A poorly written work of fiction upsetting some people's belief in another even more poorly written work of fiction. I don't see what the big deal is.

[Steppe Merc]

It a fictional book. It has some historical facts, but more distortions and not true things. But it is an excellent book. Angels and Demons is good too.

[Kralizec]

In fact, A&D is better.

I read (NOT in Browns books) that the whole aversion to friday the 13th came specificly from the Templar persecutions. Can anybody confirm/dismiss this?

[Degtyarev14.5]

In one word:

Formulaic.

A.

[Redleg]

Most fiction writers now adays are very formulatic with their books. Once they find a basic plot and a genra that they can sell, they normally stick with it.

There are some expections - but they are not the norm.

[IrishArmenian]

I read it, because I felt bad for judging it. At the most, a semi-fun story. Bad writing, mostly fabrications, and to say the Catholic Church is anti-women is absurd at best, and I have three words to prove it: The Virgin Mary. She is almost worshipped. I thought that a good writer could have made it a fun book, but sadly, not true.

[Puzz3D]

The DaVinci Code is only the second mystery novel I've read as far as I can remember. The other one was Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. I think Mystic River is the better novel. Dan Brown does a lot of handholding of the reader as though he doesn't want to loose anyone. It's definitely written for people below my level of reading comprehension which is no doubt intentional to capture the widest possible audience. I didn't have to expend any effort figuring it out since the author explains everything; sometimes more than once. He must tell you that Sophie is a cryptographer about twenty times which was starting to get to me. Some of the characters were very convoluted, and sometimes the logic of their thinking didn't make sense. I suppose convoluted characters and red herrings that aren't what they seem is what makes a mystery story. However, it all gets wrapped up far too easily as far as I'm concerned. Just the same, I did like the symbolic ending.

The puzzles, the weaving together of the historical claims and existant physical sites, and the linking of symbolism is intriguing and clever, and cause for further investigation. When you do investigate you find that a lot of things are obscure, and it's often difficult to get a truthful grasp of the historical events and cross influences. At the same time you can see how easily fallacies can be propagated and become accepted as actual events.

Regardless of whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, she did go everywhere with him. Sometime after Jesus died, Peter the apostle was outraged at her because she claimed to have information given to her by Jesus that he hadn't told the 12 men. She may well have left the group at that point. It's possible she went to Ephesus in Asia Minor and died there.

The gnostics believe that Jesus and Sophia were the lowest Aeon pair eminated by God, and that the world was created in its imperfect state by a demigurge that she eminated after becoming separated from Jesus her male counterpart. Jesus then found Sophia and brought her back into the pleroma, and then came to Earth to show men the way back to spirituality via gnosis.

St. Paul wrote of pneumatics which were people who could achieve gnosis. "I long to see you, so that I may share with you a certain pneumatic charisma." (Romans 1:11-12); pneumatic is the gnostic term for the class of people who were governed by their spiritual side and thus saved. (wikipedia) "As for himself, in 1 Corinthians, Paul considers he is a Steward of the mysteries of God, which was also the technical term for a priest in the Egyptian version of the mystery religions where the central figure is the god Serapis. Paul also claims to know someone who ascended as far as the third heaven, a principle which in mystery religions represented the degree of initiation achieved (for example, in the Mithras version there were 7 heavens, one for each of the 5 known planets, the sun, and the moon)." "He grew up in Tarsus, which was a centre (and possibly the origin, as suggested by Plutarch) of the Mithras version of Mystery Religions." (wikipedia)

"The terms Paul uses for perfected Christianity, such as (in the standard translation) Mature and to the level of maturity and the perfect man, actually use the Greek word Teleioi, which means initiated, a principle also used in the hellenic mystery religions. In particular, in 1 Corinthians, we speak wisdom amongst the perfected also translates we speak of Sophia amongst the initiated (Sophia being a spiritual entity to the gnostics as well as the usual Greek word for "wisdom"), something which the gnostic Valentinians quoted as proof that Paul initiated Christians into the gnostic ideas of Sophia." (wikipedia)

St. Paul writings are also one of the sources of the minimization of women's role in the church. However, the latest issue of St. Anthony's magazine has an article that disputes the authenticity of the passage in which Paul says, women should be silent in church and do what their husbands tell them to do, which they say most historians now consider to be an interpolation inserted by someone else. So, Dan Brown is on the mark about the supression of the sacred feminine in christianity (although motherhood is held in high regard), but it also extends to Judaism so it must have an older tradition than the New Testament. Contrary to what Dan Brown states, Jehovah is not a male/female dualistic god. Jehovah is a warrior god which may have been based on Baal (The Israelites were captive in Babylon from 586 BC to 539 BC.) and wholly patriarchal, and the name Jehovah is a translation of YHWH from the Masoretic Text which was made between the seventh and tenth centuries CE. "Most modern scholars believe that when the Masoretes added vowel points to the consonantal Hebrew text, they had not placed the correct vowel points of God's name above and below the consonants of YHWH." (wikipedia)

[Sensei Warrior]

I will say this. I read The DaVinci Code, and I liked it. It was a very reasonably, well made fictional work, geared to pop-culture. I didn't particularly enjoy the hand holding, but that is to be expected from work that is designed to garner the widest audience possible.

I did not know much about the Templars before reading the book. The book however did encourage me to find out more about them. Thus, I found out about the different theories Dan Brown wove together to make his book.

Being at least a little more knowledgeable about the subject, I think if I read the book for the first time, knowing what I know now, then I might not think the book was good as I originally did. Does that make sense?

I think the book was an acceptable read. Like going to the movies or watching TV. As long as you walk into it knowing the book is going to try to entertain you at the most base possible level (like TV) then it will. I think sometimes people expect to much out of book because it is the same media that gives you Shakespeare or War and Peace or whatever books people are thinking are intellectual classics now-a-days.