Excerpt from an article by J.P. Holding
“Is this not a work of fiction? Why worry about a few misplaced facts?” Why worry, indeed. While waiting in line to purchase The DaVinci Code at the local Borders bookstore, I scanned a primary chapter of concern, having been forewarned by Bob Passantino of its content. A woman behind me spoke up: “That’s a great book!” I looked back at her. “Not really,” I replied shortly. “It’s full of poor scholarship.”
The woman was shocked. “But it’s just fiction,” she said. Curious nevertheless, she asked for an example.
“Well, it has the date of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls wrong,” I told her, and pointed out specifics of the error. If the author cannot get something that elementary and fundamental right, what else is he wrong on? “Interesting,” she said, nodding. Very much so. The seed of doubt is important, as author Brown uses it to entice his prospective readers. One the first things a reader of The DaVinci Code will see, in prefatory material and under a heading in bolded, capital letters, reading “FACT”, is this statement:
All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.
In terms of documents and rituals, however – and even artwork and architecture -- The DaVinci Code contains few “facts” and what few it does contain require serious qualification. All of this might be excused, except that Brown baptizes such aspects of the book with the brand of FACT, and that he also puts many of these “facts” into the mouth of a character named Teabing who is described as a reputable historian. I rather think if any genuine, academic historian made certain statements attributed to Teabing, he would be promptly demoted to janitorial duties and remanded for training in History 101. Sadly, Brown’s sleight-of-hand under the cloak of fact has tricked others, including the Book Review Editor of the New York Daily News, who commented naively that “his research is impeccable.”
The work is fiction, yes, but it claims to be rooted in fact. Brown himself, it should be added, acknowledged on the television special that he “became a believer” in the theories The DaVinci Code espouses after allegedly trying to disprove them. We should no more let this pass than one would let pass a fictional work rooted in the premise that a particular race was inferior, and that put the claims of this premise into the mouth of someone cast as a trained anthropologist, and prefaced by a statement that, “All descriptions of cultures, biology, sociology, and genetics in this novel are accurate.” Would such a book stay long on the shelves of a Barnes and Noble? I think not. It is only because Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is considered “fair game” that this sort of work is received not with outrage, but with a Ho Hum.
Leaving aside questions of literary deficiencies and inaccuracies concerning other minor areas, our material of concern does not emerge until about halfway through the book, in Chapter 55. The statements that follow are all put in the mouth of our historian Teabing, answering some questions from the two lead characters about the nature and background of their quest. To begin:
…“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven….The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”
Even in this vague summary, a host of problems emerges:
The implied view being addressed – that “the Bible arrived by fax from heaven” or “dropped out of the clouds” – is a tendentious straw man. The Bible was composed by men, yes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is never claimed, however, that this inspiration involved the Spirit taking any kind of unnatural force over the Bible’s authors, much less that it fell from the clouds. Rather it is held that God chose specific instruments from men and that the Spirit guided them.
“Countless translations, etc.” is excessive hyperbole and vague generalization. Without a specific charge of what was translated, added, or revised, it is impossible to respond to this point specifically. Generally however, these considerations may be offered:
Translation issues for the Bible are not different than translation issues for any document, and cause no more difficulty. The statement implies that there is some great confusion over translation that is cause for concern. It is true that there are issues one may discuss in terms of translating the Bible from ancient Hebrew and Greek to any modern language, but this is a natural function of all translation processes, and in no way is this ever thought to detract from offering a “definitive,” reasonable account of what has been written. In fact, the transmission of the ancient texts, the voluminous quality of manuscript copies, the science of textual criticism, and the art of translation ensure that any reputable modern translation of the Bible is an accurate rendition of what was originally said. This subject has been covered so comprehensively and so well by so many scholars that Brown’s misrepresentation of the facts is inexcusable.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Saturday, April 22, 2006
The Da Vinci Deception: Excerpts #38 and #41
Book Excerpt:
38. Sometimes Langdon says that all these incredible secrets have been known for centuries by scholars, but at other times he insists that this "secret knowledge" has been cleverly covered up by the Church and nobody knows about it. How can both claims be true?
Logically, they cannot. But remember, The Da Vinci Code doesn’t have a burning interest in truth. If we read its claims not as attempts to tell truth, but as attempts to manipulate us into believing a lie, we can then understand the motivation for its many contradictions. Brown’s strategy is to intimidate the reader with his phony erudition. Then, he inflames the reader’s pride at discovering a blockbuster secret about Jesus and Christianity.
To intimidate, few things work as well as making the reader feel ignorant. And so, we see Langdon and Teabing continually delivering lectures to a wide-eyed Sophie, who (like the reader) exclaims, "What? I had no idea!" as each alleged "revelation" is unfolded. They then pat her (and us) on the head and refer to her as "dear girl" while constantly reiterating the mantra that "scholars have known all this for ages." Since most readers don’t know much about Leonardo da Vinci, the Priory of Sion, Aramaic, Greek, the Council of Nicea, or the way in which the Bible was written and assembled by the Church, they feel stupid. People of faith may feel embarrassed because whatever they say to articulate their beliefs sounds like the protests of a child who has just been shown the Santa suit in the closet and informed that "it’s all a lie."
We can see this at the heart of the novel when Teabing bluntly declares that "Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers." In his patronizing way, Teabing makes clear Brown’s message: "What I mean," he says, "is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false."
Nobody likes to feel stupid, of course. And nobody likes the feeling of being a sucker. Brown plays on these aversions with the second part of his strategy. Having persuaded you that the Christian herd is just a bunch of suckers, he offers you the chance to escape suckerdom by buying into his newly revealed "truth." If you accept his claims that "scholars have known this for ages," he promises you liberation from the mental slavery you have lived in all your life. It’s an appealing sophistry and many people fall for it. Yet, in doing so, they are actually falling prey to the manipulation they think they are escaping.
41. But isn’t the essential thing about a religion its timeless truths rather than its historical claims?
Not always. If a religion is founded on some universal moral principle such as "Abandon the desires of the flesh," it does not require roots in history. Thus, Buddhism would not be harmed if it could be proven that Buddha (i.e, Siddhartha Gautama) never existed. Why? Because the point of Buddhism is not Buddha himself but the teachings of Buddha. But religions that are essentially rooted in history—such as Judaism or Christianity—do stand or fall on the validity of their historical claims, because they are about persons, not merely ideas.
Judaism, for instance, exists because it is rooted in an historical claim: that the One God of the Universe entered into a covenant with the Jewish people through the ministry of Moses. If that claim can be shown to be false, then Judaism itself is false. Imagine if somebody wrote a book about the "real" Moses and the "secret origins" of Judaism, claiming that the entire Jewish religion is based on a pack of lies. What if it said the "historical" Moses was really a Hindu-like mystic who believed in many deities and preached tolerance and free love? He did not lead the people out of Egypt in the Exodus, did not give the Ten Commandments, performed no miracles, and gave no moral rules.
Suppose this same book claimed that, centuries later, the Jewish priests who claimed to be Moses’ successors rewrote their nation’s history and decided to give Moses an "upgrade." They turned him into a prophet who saw the one true God and spoke with Him. They then made him into a great military leader who defeated Pharaoh and led his people out of slavery. In effect, the Jewish priests created Moses in their own image—a priest like themselves—leading the people in worship and animal sacrifice. And they recast Moses as a divinely appointed moral teacher who gave the people Ten Commandments from God Himself on Mount Sinai, thus establishing the covenant with God.
Then, imagine that the book argued that the Jewish priests did all this to strengthen their own positions of power. For the priests wanted to be recognized as the divinely appointed leaders of the people, the teachers of a God-given law, and the spokesmen for God—just like the Moses they invented. So in the end, many core Jewish beliefs are really based on lies told by these power-hungry priests who successfully duped the people in their efforts to solidify their political control over Israel. And many Jews have fallen for the "legend of Moses" ever since.
Such a book would be widely condemned as being anti-Semitic and a direct assault on Judaism—and rightly so. But when Dan Brown comes out with an anti-Catholic conspiracy theory novel, we are assured that "It’s just a story!" As Philip Jenkins, distinguished professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, has recently argued, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable American prejudice (see Phillip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, Oxford University Press, 2003). The phenomenal success of a book like The Da Vinci Code bears this out.
38. Sometimes Langdon says that all these incredible secrets have been known for centuries by scholars, but at other times he insists that this "secret knowledge" has been cleverly covered up by the Church and nobody knows about it. How can both claims be true?
Logically, they cannot. But remember, The Da Vinci Code doesn’t have a burning interest in truth. If we read its claims not as attempts to tell truth, but as attempts to manipulate us into believing a lie, we can then understand the motivation for its many contradictions. Brown’s strategy is to intimidate the reader with his phony erudition. Then, he inflames the reader’s pride at discovering a blockbuster secret about Jesus and Christianity.
To intimidate, few things work as well as making the reader feel ignorant. And so, we see Langdon and Teabing continually delivering lectures to a wide-eyed Sophie, who (like the reader) exclaims, "What? I had no idea!" as each alleged "revelation" is unfolded. They then pat her (and us) on the head and refer to her as "dear girl" while constantly reiterating the mantra that "scholars have known all this for ages." Since most readers don’t know much about Leonardo da Vinci, the Priory of Sion, Aramaic, Greek, the Council of Nicea, or the way in which the Bible was written and assembled by the Church, they feel stupid. People of faith may feel embarrassed because whatever they say to articulate their beliefs sounds like the protests of a child who has just been shown the Santa suit in the closet and informed that "it’s all a lie."
We can see this at the heart of the novel when Teabing bluntly declares that "Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers." In his patronizing way, Teabing makes clear Brown’s message: "What I mean," he says, "is that almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false."
Nobody likes to feel stupid, of course. And nobody likes the feeling of being a sucker. Brown plays on these aversions with the second part of his strategy. Having persuaded you that the Christian herd is just a bunch of suckers, he offers you the chance to escape suckerdom by buying into his newly revealed "truth." If you accept his claims that "scholars have known this for ages," he promises you liberation from the mental slavery you have lived in all your life. It’s an appealing sophistry and many people fall for it. Yet, in doing so, they are actually falling prey to the manipulation they think they are escaping.
41. But isn’t the essential thing about a religion its timeless truths rather than its historical claims?
Not always. If a religion is founded on some universal moral principle such as "Abandon the desires of the flesh," it does not require roots in history. Thus, Buddhism would not be harmed if it could be proven that Buddha (i.e, Siddhartha Gautama) never existed. Why? Because the point of Buddhism is not Buddha himself but the teachings of Buddha. But religions that are essentially rooted in history—such as Judaism or Christianity—do stand or fall on the validity of their historical claims, because they are about persons, not merely ideas.
Judaism, for instance, exists because it is rooted in an historical claim: that the One God of the Universe entered into a covenant with the Jewish people through the ministry of Moses. If that claim can be shown to be false, then Judaism itself is false. Imagine if somebody wrote a book about the "real" Moses and the "secret origins" of Judaism, claiming that the entire Jewish religion is based on a pack of lies. What if it said the "historical" Moses was really a Hindu-like mystic who believed in many deities and preached tolerance and free love? He did not lead the people out of Egypt in the Exodus, did not give the Ten Commandments, performed no miracles, and gave no moral rules.
Suppose this same book claimed that, centuries later, the Jewish priests who claimed to be Moses’ successors rewrote their nation’s history and decided to give Moses an "upgrade." They turned him into a prophet who saw the one true God and spoke with Him. They then made him into a great military leader who defeated Pharaoh and led his people out of slavery. In effect, the Jewish priests created Moses in their own image—a priest like themselves—leading the people in worship and animal sacrifice. And they recast Moses as a divinely appointed moral teacher who gave the people Ten Commandments from God Himself on Mount Sinai, thus establishing the covenant with God.
Then, imagine that the book argued that the Jewish priests did all this to strengthen their own positions of power. For the priests wanted to be recognized as the divinely appointed leaders of the people, the teachers of a God-given law, and the spokesmen for God—just like the Moses they invented. So in the end, many core Jewish beliefs are really based on lies told by these power-hungry priests who successfully duped the people in their efforts to solidify their political control over Israel. And many Jews have fallen for the "legend of Moses" ever since.
Such a book would be widely condemned as being anti-Semitic and a direct assault on Judaism—and rightly so. But when Dan Brown comes out with an anti-Catholic conspiracy theory novel, we are assured that "It’s just a story!" As Philip Jenkins, distinguished professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, has recently argued, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable American prejudice (see Phillip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, Oxford University Press, 2003). The phenomenal success of a book like The Da Vinci Code bears this out.
Coalition of Catholics Offer Antidote to The Da Vinci Code
"The Da Vinci Code is the epitome of the old saying that if you’re going to tell a lie, make it really big one. The book has wooed and intimidated more than 30 million readers by skillfully tapping into what many have identified as America’s last acceptable prejudice – anti-Catholicism".– Tom Allen, President & Editor-in-Chief, CatholicExchange.com.
Encinitas, CA, February 21, 2006 – The Da Vinci Code, the Dan Brown novel and forthcoming (May 19th) Ron Howard/Tom Hanks motion picture urges audiences in its marketing literature to "Seek the Truth." Ironically, the book begins with a list of "facts" that apparently neither the author nor the filmmakers ever actually fact-checked.
A coalition of Catholics, including Ascension Press, Catholic Exchange, and Catholic Outreach, has formed an initiative called DaVinci Outreach to help readers and moviegoers navigate their way through the web of bogus history and outright lies conjured up by Dan Brown and brought to life by Imagine Entertainment and Sony Pictures.
"A simple Google search would have revealed to Academy Award-Winning director Ron Howard the myriad of factual errors in The Da Vinci Code. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls are identified in the novel as Christian documents, not Jewish, and Brown cites the Vatican eleven centuries before it even existed," said Matthew Pinto, president of Ascension Press, which is spearheading this outreach. "
These examples merely scratch the surface. What it boils down to is that 30 million readers have been duped by a deceptively good piece of fiction. Da Vinci Outreach has been launched to counter these claims and provide Catholics with the resources they need to effectively defend Christ and the Catholic Church."
The Da Vinci Outreach campaign hopes to clear up the historical and theological confusion that surrounds The Da Vinci Code. The outreach effort provides concerned individuals with the resources they need to seek the real truth and equip themselves for the inevitable watercooler conversations that will attack the principles of Christianity, the Catholic Church, and the Person of Jesus Christ.
"The Da Vinci Code is a frontal assault on Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church," continues Matthew Pinto. "DavinciOutreach.com, a Web site that offers resources, study guides, local speaker information, and other free materials, is the much-needed antidote to the spiritual and intellectual poison that permeates Dan Brown’s novel and that will undoubtedly be depicted in the forthcoming film."
Encinitas, CA, February 21, 2006 – The Da Vinci Code, the Dan Brown novel and forthcoming (May 19th) Ron Howard/Tom Hanks motion picture urges audiences in its marketing literature to "Seek the Truth." Ironically, the book begins with a list of "facts" that apparently neither the author nor the filmmakers ever actually fact-checked.
A coalition of Catholics, including Ascension Press, Catholic Exchange, and Catholic Outreach, has formed an initiative called DaVinci Outreach to help readers and moviegoers navigate their way through the web of bogus history and outright lies conjured up by Dan Brown and brought to life by Imagine Entertainment and Sony Pictures.
"A simple Google search would have revealed to Academy Award-Winning director Ron Howard the myriad of factual errors in The Da Vinci Code. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls are identified in the novel as Christian documents, not Jewish, and Brown cites the Vatican eleven centuries before it even existed," said Matthew Pinto, president of Ascension Press, which is spearheading this outreach. "
These examples merely scratch the surface. What it boils down to is that 30 million readers have been duped by a deceptively good piece of fiction. Da Vinci Outreach has been launched to counter these claims and provide Catholics with the resources they need to effectively defend Christ and the Catholic Church."
The Da Vinci Outreach campaign hopes to clear up the historical and theological confusion that surrounds The Da Vinci Code. The outreach effort provides concerned individuals with the resources they need to seek the real truth and equip themselves for the inevitable watercooler conversations that will attack the principles of Christianity, the Catholic Church, and the Person of Jesus Christ.
"The Da Vinci Code is a frontal assault on Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church," continues Matthew Pinto. "DavinciOutreach.com, a Web site that offers resources, study guides, local speaker information, and other free materials, is the much-needed antidote to the spiritual and intellectual poison that permeates Dan Brown’s novel and that will undoubtedly be depicted in the forthcoming film."
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Jesus Decoded
Introduction
By Msgr. Francis J. Maniscalco
Causing people to see something they never saw before in a five-hundred-year-old work of art which is among the most famous and reproduced of all time is an accomplishment of genius, if that “something” is a valid new insight. If it is not, then this kind of achievement usually goes by other names.
The Da Vinci Code novel contains a claim that in Leonardo’s mural The Last Supper, which portrays Jesus and his twelve apostles at the meal he took with them on the night before he died, one of the twelve is not the apostle John but actually a woman who is Mary Magdalene.
Forget the Gospel narratives through which Leonardo, like every other Christian, would have known about the Last Supper and which contain no mention of Mary Magdalene; forget the fact that this mural seems to have caused no sensation among the monks whose refectory it decorated and who would have been as likely to recognize a female form then as we are today; forget the many paintings of the Last Supper which show a handsome youth often leaning on Christ’s shoulder or on his chest following the tradition that identified John with the unnamed “beloved disciple” of the fourth Gospel. If such a claim is put between the covers of a book, apparently it merits respectful consideration no matter how absurd.
What this novel does to Leonardo’s Last Supper, it does to Christianity as such. It asks people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition quite a few odd claims. Some are merely distortions of hypotheses advanced by serious scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or false.
By Msgr. Francis J. Maniscalco
Causing people to see something they never saw before in a five-hundred-year-old work of art which is among the most famous and reproduced of all time is an accomplishment of genius, if that “something” is a valid new insight. If it is not, then this kind of achievement usually goes by other names.
The Da Vinci Code novel contains a claim that in Leonardo’s mural The Last Supper, which portrays Jesus and his twelve apostles at the meal he took with them on the night before he died, one of the twelve is not the apostle John but actually a woman who is Mary Magdalene.
Forget the Gospel narratives through which Leonardo, like every other Christian, would have known about the Last Supper and which contain no mention of Mary Magdalene; forget the fact that this mural seems to have caused no sensation among the monks whose refectory it decorated and who would have been as likely to recognize a female form then as we are today; forget the many paintings of the Last Supper which show a handsome youth often leaning on Christ’s shoulder or on his chest following the tradition that identified John with the unnamed “beloved disciple” of the fourth Gospel. If such a claim is put between the covers of a book, apparently it merits respectful consideration no matter how absurd.
What this novel does to Leonardo’s Last Supper, it does to Christianity as such. It asks people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition quite a few odd claims. Some are merely distortions of hypotheses advanced by serious scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or false.
The DaVinci Code Deception
About The Da Vinci Deception:
Why has The Da Vinci Code sold tens of millions of copies worldwide?
Is the book’s phenomenal success due to its compelling characters, thrilling plot points, or impeccable research?
No. The Da Vinci Code has become an international hit because of its lurid prose and its sensationalistic—even blasphemous—claims regarding the “true” history of Christianity.
In the end, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled assault on the person of Jesus Christ and His Church. Millions of people, who are not experts in history, art, theology, or archeology, are being led astray by The Da Vinci Code’s fraudulent assertions and invented history.
On May 19th, The DaVinci Code will be released as a major motion picture. Film critics have predicted it will be one of the year’s biggest blockbusters.
The Da Vinci Deception is a powerful antidote to the spiritual poison found in The DaVinci Code. This easy-to-read, question-and-answer book tackles the key errors in this devastating cultural phenomenon. It is the perfect giveaway to family, friends, parishioners, and anyone you think may be in danger of having their faith in Christ and His Church eroded by the mockery of Truth that is The Da Vinci Code.
Why has The Da Vinci Code sold tens of millions of copies worldwide?
Is the book’s phenomenal success due to its compelling characters, thrilling plot points, or impeccable research?
No. The Da Vinci Code has become an international hit because of its lurid prose and its sensationalistic—even blasphemous—claims regarding the “true” history of Christianity.
In the end, it is nothing more than a thinly veiled assault on the person of Jesus Christ and His Church. Millions of people, who are not experts in history, art, theology, or archeology, are being led astray by The Da Vinci Code’s fraudulent assertions and invented history.
On May 19th, The DaVinci Code will be released as a major motion picture. Film critics have predicted it will be one of the year’s biggest blockbusters.
The Da Vinci Deception is a powerful antidote to the spiritual poison found in The DaVinci Code. This easy-to-read, question-and-answer book tackles the key errors in this devastating cultural phenomenon. It is the perfect giveaway to family, friends, parishioners, and anyone you think may be in danger of having their faith in Christ and His Church eroded by the mockery of Truth that is The Da Vinci Code.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)