I just saw THE DAVINCI CODE!!!

[Jennifer Smith]

Asking who's side we're on because of a movie is a little over the top, in my opinion. Closing our eyes to it will not make the movie go away. I'd rather embrace it as an opportunity to share the TRUTH.

I actually agree that it is a good idea to be informed-- I've watched a few documentaries, and have had a couple good casual conversations with nonbelievers. There are plenty of opportunities to witness using the film/ book as a conversation starter!

My only concern is that people not get caught up in the hype and I mostly asked the question because of WhoNew's comment to the nuns, which was rude/ persecution or prejudice.

[Mole_J]

Da Vinci Code 2 and 3 on the way?

Sequel Fever: Sony Has Da Vinci II and III

I'm told it's absolutely true that Sony bought the rights to the Robert Langdon character. Not only is Harvard symbologist Langdon the protaganist in Dan Brown's already written novel, "Angels and Demons," but I know Langdon is also featured in a new book Brown is penning as we speak that takes off where Da Vinci Code leaves off. So that means Sony has the immediate prospect of not only one but two sequels. Wow, this town is really, really, gonna hate that studio now. (Just remember, Sony had that big bomb Bewitched last summer. They were due.) According to news reports, "Angels and Demons" was Brown's other book to feature Langdon: crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama, it thrusts Langdon together with an ancient and shadowy secret brotherhood, the Illuminati, the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. Their enemy is the Catholic Church and they're detemined to carry out the final phase of a legendary vendetta against it. There's a frantic quest through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals and a most secret vault to find the world's most powerful energy source (which I'm told is a bomb; I haven't read the book myself). The heroine is a beautiful Italian physicist whose father, a brilliant physicist, has been murdered. I'm told it's better than DVC.

No word yet on the plot of the book Brown is writing now. (Though rumor has it set in Washington D.C., about Freemasons, tentatively titled The Solomon Key. But the supposed plot makes it sound similar to 2004's pic, National Treasure). The author himself says this on his website: "Because my novels are so research-intensive, they take a couple of years to write. My next novel will be another Robert Langdon adventure (picking up, in fact, where The Da Vinci Code left off). Currently, there is no release date scheduled because the book is not yet near completion."

[dolfan]

I remember a movie with Antonio Banderas called "The Body". It revolves around a skeleton found in a tomb in Jerusalem, a male in his early 30's with evidence of crucifixion. It dates to the time of Jesus, and the location of the tomb is one believed (in the movie) to be a very possible location of Jesus' tomb. Antonio Banderas is a priest and an investigator. Faith gets shaken, a Catholic bishop leaps from a ledge to his death in despair over the consequences as the evidence mounts that the body is likely that of Jesus of Nazareth. The end of the movie leaves the question open, of course, but the real theme is what would happen to faith if Jesus' body was discovered buried somewhere.

The Da Vinci Code is like that, too. It draws from history enough to masquerade as factual, though; that's the difference between a story like this and "The Body". A lot of assumptions are made in the Banderas movie that are obviously the creation of one's imagination. In DVC, there are assumptions made from imagination, but the sources we say are fiction are posited by some as being trustworthy, reliable historical documents.

The Da Vinci Code book has been out for about 2 years now. We've had plenty of time to educate ourselves on aspects of what is the authority of Christian belief. We didn't do it, by and large. Although some ministries (i.e., John Ankerberg) did respond early and appropriately to the claims made in DVC, and warned churches --- I believe prophetically --- to be ready, we did what we always do: sit and wait for someone else to scare us into action. Instead, the money-makers waited until the movie was about to be released before an all out drive of anti-DVC "proof" projects were launched. Day late, even if not a dollar-short. The DVC 'cat' is out of the bag and now, we who say we believe the Bible and reject the Gnostic false-writings are playing catch up, just like we do with most other things in the culture.

What bothers me most about all of this is not that the DVC lies are being spread, or even that Christians are not prepared to answer them but for the published, formulaic rebuttals of good people and money-grubbing publishers alilke. I'm bothered most by the consistency with which we don't care about the culture, don't care to be countercultural, and don't have any response but to be "anti" something as opposed to being on the cutting edge in an affirmative way. We're reactionary, and that news is as old as the Gnostic writings themselves. So, an old lie becomes new news, and an old apathy gets re-exposed, exploited and warmed over by profiteers. There's nothing new under the sun.

[RamboPreacher]

...
The Da Vinci Code is like that, too. It draws from history enough to masquerade as factual, ...

What bothers me most about all of this is not that the DVC lies are being spread, or even that Christians are not prepared to answer them ...So, an old lie becomes new news, and an old apathy gets re-exposed, exploited and warmed over by profiteers. There's nothing new under the sun.

Haven't seen the movie, but I finaly did start reading the book...

“Fact” (as mentioned in the Acknowledgments, prior to the prologue, and beginning of the tale… of the book) - The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci...

If this one "fact" (it also mentions that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.", but I won't get into that in this post) is a foundation for the "facts" of this fiction, then it starts off with a very shaky foundation indeed (whether it is entertaining or not)

The real scoop (as I have studied and discovered):

Scholars have done a solid job of pointing out the fictions that interweave Brown’s “facts.” Notably, the “Priory of Sion” is “real” only in the sense that it really is the modern invention of Pierre Plantard, a peculiar Frenchman with royalist and anti-Semitic views. It dates to the year 1956, not 1099. Plantard’s hoax merely took the name of a medieval monastic order that had ceased to exist by the 14th century and which had nothing to do with legends about Jesus’ fathering children.

Pierre Plantard (1920-2000), the French monarchist and anti-Semite who gave us the “Priory of Sion,” spent much of his life inventing minuscule esoteric organizations intended to “purify” France of the evil influences of modernity—and of Judaism. In 1940 he wrote of the “terrible Masonic and Jewish conspiracy” that threatened France.

The Priory of Sion was one group he started. The point of this occult order was to advance Plantard’s claim to be the surviving heir of the ancient Merovingian line of French kings, whose “holy blood” was guarded by the Priory. The idea that the Merovingians were the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was added on later.

The Priory of Sion is a hoax.

“Brown relies on a 1982 publication, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, for his information on the Priory of Sion. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail relied on documents provided them by Pierre Plantard….Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, Plantard created a series of documents ‘proving’ the existence of a bloodline descending from Mary Magdalene, through the kings of France, down to the present day to include (surprise!) Pierre Plantard.

He began using the name Plantard de Saint-Clair, saying the Saint-Clairs were direct descendants of the line of Jesus and Mary. In 1993, Plantard’s name came up in light of a political scandal involving a close friend of the French president Francois Mitterand. When called up to testify, Plantard, under oath, admitted he had made up the whole Priory scheme.”

[Paully_44]

Well, I finally saw it. I am in Texas this week and needed to find a way to get out of the heat.

Anyway,
I don't see what all they hype is about. I just thought is was a decent Hollywood movie about the Catholic church and secret societies, in the same vein of genre as National Treasure. I didn't see anywhere where they tried to present the material as factual. Probably wont watch it again, didn't think it was all that great.

I did have to get up an change seats though. The guy 2 rows down from me was snoring so lound I had a hard time concentrating on the movie.

[DaJudge]

The guy 2 rows down from me was snoring so lound I had a hard time concentrating on the movie.

That speaks volumes about the movie!