Dan Brown IS trying to educate people. He tries to pass off fiction as fact.
I find him blasphemous Read my review of the Da Vinci code:
The Dan Brown Code. Critique by Kevin Willimas
Dan Browns fast paced novel Da Vinci Code has been at the top of the book charts for many months, selling more than seven million hardback copies, translated into more than 40 languages and is being made into a blockbuster movie.
The book starts with a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris, of a Grand Master of an ancient society, guarding a secret that if revealed would threaten the very existence of the Christian Church. Police call main character Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor of religious symbology, who throughout the novel, in order to solve the mystery (and propagate Browns Pagan religion onto the reader) teaches Police cryptographer Sophie Neveu (and the unsuspecting reader) Browns secret code (I refer to it as Browns code as there is no evidence whatsoever that Leonardo Da Vinci has anything to do with it). Brown claims that Jesus was not divine and that He and Mary Magdalene were sexual partners and had a child together, then she emigrated to France with their child and there is documented proof which has been guarded by a secret organisation called the Priory of Zion since the Crusades and Da Vinci was also a Grand Master and clues are hidden in his paintings. While this is going on the sub plot promotes that the real way to God is through drug taking, sex orgies and homosexuality and thats the message the human Jesus was really telling people about, but this has all been suppressed by the early church.
These theories also promoted by the Jesus Seminar (*See Jesus Seminar Below) are not new, and have long been discredited which goes to show the wisdom of an old proverb: Bad and incorrect theories dont go away, they simply re-invent themselves. They have no credibility, but Brown uses the standard romance writing formula of over the top characters against exotic backgrounds and many cliff hangers to make an exciting read to promote his beliefs to his masses of readers. The book maybe a work of fiction, but Brown is trying to pass most of it off as fact and this has led to a lot of confused people and there are even Da Vinci code classes, were people learn this whole new religion and perform rituals worshipping the Sacred Feminine. When interviewed on NBCs Today show and asked: How much was based on reality? Brown declared: Absolutely all of it. Obviously, Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies-all of that is historical fact. Brown said to a US magazine: One of the aspects that I try very hard to incorporate is that of learning. When youve finished the book, like it or not, youve learned a ton.
Indeed, before I knew anything about Browns Code, I had met quite a few people who were quoting and trying to impose Browns beliefs on me. Whilst I already knew that what they were saying was full of holes and incorrect, I had no idea where they were getting their theories from as whilst they were naive enough to get their religious philosophy from a novel, apart from one person, they werent quite daft enough to admit it.
Brown says that the history we know of the church is false as history is written by winners, the societies and belief systems that conquered and survived. Regarding the Bible, this completely ignores the facts. The Bible is a true history document that comes with warts and all. If the winners who wrote the Bible wanted to change history to suite them; when writing of the great King David, they wouldnt have included the part were David gets another man killed so he could sleep with his wife. Nor would a women have been the first to see the risen Jesus (as women werent considered credible witnesses at that time, a women being first to see the risen Jesus must have been a bit of an embarrassment for the gospel writers, if you was making a story up, you would have picked a man, but the only reason they would have said that it was a women is simply because its true.) There are literally hundreds of warts and all parts of the Bible which would not have not been included if Browns winners theory about the Bible was true.
Browns code promotes that the Bible is anti-sex even in a loving marriage (completely ignoring the facts like the Song of Solomon) and that unlike in the Bible, sex should not be attached to love and that really free-love should be practiced. But the sex without strings part of Browns world just does not work. No honest women would want to be loved only erotically as Browns Mother Earth worshiping Paganism promotes, otherwise she would always feel vulnerable to the next better looking women. To quote from C.S Lewis The Four Loves: The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within ones own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he wants a women. Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a women happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after the fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).
Browns code also claims that the Church murdered over five million women over three centuries. It is referring to the witch trials, but even top pagan scholars accept the number of executions across Europe was around 50,000 and that the secular world was also to blame [still 50,000 too many].
The story claims that Jesus divinity was the result of a vote at the Council of Nicea in AD321 and it was a very close vote. This is far from the truth. The earliest writings showing Jesus as the divine and resurrected Son of God come from the pen of Paul from between 48 and 60 AD (for a full easy reading book on the historical reliability of the gospels I recommend reading Lee Strobels A Case For Christ. Strobel was an atheist and critique of religion until he studied the evidence from a legal point of view, and then became a Christian and eventually a minister. The book asks the toughest questions.) It is without doubt that the early Church viewed Jesus as divine as many early Christians, including those who were around at the time and saw the risen Jesus, were being tortured and killed for their beliefs (who would go through that if they knew it was a lie?). Also when our early writings of Jesus were being taught in the very villages where they happened, they would have been heard by people who were there when the events actually took place. If they werent true these people would have pointed out: No that didnt happen. And the early Church would have never have got off the ground. But they did happen. There are many early Church leaders we can quote like: Ignatius: God Himself was manifested in human form (A.D.105)
Justin Martyr: The father of the universe has a son. And He... is even God (A.D.160)
Tertullian: ...Christ our God (A.D.200). I could go on space permitting, but I think you get the point that divinity wasnt conjured up in 321AD.
What really happened at the council of Nicea is that the Gospels which were already being taught and believed to be true since day one of the Church were rubber stamped to stop any teaching of Gospels which had been written hundreds of years later and where legend had developed. Academics agree that the gospels in our Bible were written too close to the events for legend to develop (in all history, legends start to develop after about 200 years, which is far later than all of the New Testament). About 250 years later stories like Jesus playing as a kid and throwing mud which turned into birds and flew off started to appear. The Gnostic Gospels of Phillip and Thomas which Dan Brown and the Jesus Seminar rely on so much were written much later than even these. Even Gnostic priests of the Nicene time denied that the Phillip and Thomas gospels had any credibility.
The Nicene Creed (We believe in one God...) was merely what had been taught since the beginning of the Church and out of 300 bishops, only two voted against it. Hardly a close vote on Jesus divinity as Brown perverts the facts.
Browns Priory of Zion and the Da Vinci code theories come from a Hoax by Frenchman Pierre Plantard (jailed for fraud in 1953) who throughout the 70s provided a series of fake documents proving the bloodline of Mary Magdalene, through the Kings of France and to the present day to surprise, surprise, Pierre Plantard. Plantard also claimed to be the true King of France. Brown claims that in Leonardos Da Vincis painting the Last Supper that the disciple John on Jesus right is really Mary Magdalene and this is a clue left that they were married. As there are only Jesus and the 12 disciples in the painting, I presume Brown thinks that Johns nipped off for a brew or something.
The code promotes religious unity, a pagan and Satanist view, the circle of life that there is no right or wrong (Yes, the Disney film The Lion King is about teaching this philosophy to children). It teaches that God is really the Sacred Feminine or Mother Earth. That in the story of Genesis it was really the serpent who was the good guy and that God was jealous and possessive and then again that Satan and God dont really exist. They often contradict themselves and it may seem confusing, but thats okay because in the circle of life there is no right or wrong. Under their system it was right for Hitler to do what he did, because you have to respect Hitlers beliefs. The Gnostics believe that everyone is divine, we should worship ourselves.
But as we know God is righteous. God can not be both good and bad. The apostle Paul set out two opposing systems from Righteous to Wickedness, Light to Darkness, the Worship of the Creator to the Worship of the Creature. Jesus warned of praying like pagans (doing it for show) and also said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one will get to the Father except through me.
The world has many religions, but ultimately there are only two. As Bob Dylan sang, Youre gonna have to serve somebody, it maybe the devil or it maybe the Lord, but youre gonna have to serve somebody. Elijah put the same choice before Gods people in 1 Kings 18:21: How long will you waver between two options? If the Lord is God, follow Him.
*The JESUS SEMINAR is a small minority group of scholars who exist for the sole the purpose of undermining the gospels, but pass themselves off as the majority scholars opinion and the only experts qualified to speak about the Gospels. Almost every time you see a BBC or other channel religious history program or something in the newspapers about how something from the Bible isnt true, the Jesus Seminar is behind it. Through being controversial and also promoting the medias anti-God views they obtain masses of publicity. When they debate against great New Testament Scholars like Craig Bloomberg, the Jesus Seminar comes very easily unstuck and is left with no credibility, but that is why scholars like Bloomberg are never invited to speak on these programs. The result is that the JS scholars get to pass their unchallenged views off as fact to a largely unsuspecting public. They have published their own gospel with colour coded words: Red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it. Pink: Jesus probably or might have said something like this. Gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas are close to His own. Black: Jesus did not say this; it represents a later tradition. The way they came about their theories, is any thing said which mentions prophesy or miracles isnt true as theyre impossible, and if its in all four of the gospels its red, if its in three then its Pink and so on. But prominence is given to the fourth century Gnostic gospel of Thomas despite it being academically agreed that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas is a long way removed from the Gospels and is certainly very heavily influenced by pagan beliefs around the Nile of the fourth century. They also rely on a gospel referred to as Q, which no one has ever seen, largely because it doesnt exist. Using their method were anything that is only written once or twice is not true, 80% of Jesus words disappear. If they used this method on other history, nearly all history as we know it from that time and before would cease to exist. But the JS doesnt dispute any other historical events as theyd rightly get laughed away, only the New Testament. When the regular onslaught of attacks on Christianity via the BBC, C4, Discovery etc and press, comes this Easter, and your non-Christian or sceptical friends claim that this and that isnt true, you now know the source of the nonsense.
