"The Da Vinci Code" Book Club

[sweetnpetite]

Or Rover.

God spelled backwards is Revor.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I have a theory that there is a deeper meaning to the grail (according to dan brown's book) which I will go into later. Have you finished?

Sweet.

Yeah, I finished it. I'll even risk looking like a jerk by saying that I figured out the last clue as soon as I saw it. I mean, I knew who the knight was and what the orb was. I did a paper on him when I was in school. It's terribly frustrating to know the answer and have to wait for the characters to catch up with you.

I didn't like the book much, though. When you get right down to it, all it was was a big scavenger hunt with cute clues, more like a puzzle than a book, and very humorless. I don't mean that it should have been a laff riot, but an occasional flash of wit would have been nice. I've read worse thrillers and I've read better.

Brown presented some interesting stuff on iconography, but if you're interested in that there are books that are far, far better than this one and go into the subject in much more depth. I thought his religious history was very superficial and downright misleading.

But hey, it's a pot boiler, and as a pot boiler it was pretty good.

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

The exact story, no. Some of it, yes. Fun to find out which is which? Definatly.

I just didn't see why that particular point hurts the premis. (as a novel)

Also as a point, although the christians viewed the crusifiction as a big fat special event, the Roman's didn't. He was hardly the only person crusified that day, let alone that week month and year. Did they keep records of all those they killed, or was it enough that they were a threat to the Empire and that the threat was now eliminated -and an example to others who might challenge the government.?

People look for the Roman Records because that's the most likely place to look. In your analogy, if Alice had a big show trial and a miraculous crucification, you'd kind of expect some of the newspapers to pick up on it, yet the record shows nothing.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that the gospels were not even written in Aramaic, which was Jesus' language, but in Greek, which means that his story wasn't even written down until well after his death, a point almost all scholars agree on. It also shows that Jews were just not in the habit of chronicling things back then. They were writing, they weren't writing very much, and what they wrote were mainly religious and legal documents. I doubt very much people were keeping records of what Jesus did at the time.

I haven't read all of this thread, but I get the feeling that SnP is pulling for Brown's story to be true. I hope that's not the case.

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Well, I don't want to get into a discussion about Jesus' historicity. But to take the fact that there are no Roman records or records of any kind about Jesus and use that to argue that there might be other records of him that don't exist is kind of weak, don;t you think?

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Risking /showing my/ ignorance, what's a potboiler?

I did *not* get that orb clue, and I was really mad at myself after words, because it was the *only* thing I knew about Newton <more ignorance on parade, hey we can't all know everything about everybody, lol>

All the extra information he gave about the meaning about rosy flesh and so forth just threw me right off. I did notice that all the clues where the *most* obvious answer and they all didn't get them because -well basicly because they were all *too* educated. I got the backwards writing from the first glance. Those egg heads over thought everything, lol. I doubt that any real 'treasure hunt' regarding the grail ever would have had such obvous clues. If someone who didn't know half as much had found them and gone on there uneducated hunches, in many cases they would have stumbled on the grail quite easily. (OK, so there is my less flatering critiqe at last, lol. Yes, I did have a few problems with it, but nothing that really detracted.) I think the point was that Dan Brown wanted you to be able to figure out the clues if you really tried, and even sometimes to be 'ahead' of the characteres. It makes you feel smart, but it *is* frustrating, when it takes them 3 pages to catch up to what you know.

I guess I'm the only one who thought there was a deeper unspoken meaning. Maybe I'm just reading into it. (???) But for me all the clues were there. I've never heard any one express the idea in any way that they picked up on it.

Yeah, I finished it. I'll even risk looking like a jerk by saying that I figured out the last clue as soon as I saw it. I mean, I knew who the knight was and what the orb was. I did a paper on him when I was in school. It's terribly frustrating to know the answer and have to wait for the characters to catch up with you.

I didn't like the book much, though. When you get right down to it, all it was was a big scavenger hunt with cute clues, more like a puzzle than a book, and very humorless. I don't mean that it should have been a laff riot, but an occasional flash of wit would have been nice. I've read worse thrillers and I've read better.

Brown presented some interesting stuff on iconography, but if you're interested in that there are books that are far, far better than this one and go into the subject in much more depth. I thought his religious history was very superficial and downright misleading.

But hey, it's a pot boiler, and as a pot boiler it was pretty good.

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Well, I don't want to get into a discussion about Jesus' historicity. But to take the fact that there are no Roman records or records of any kind about Jesus and use that to argue that there might be other records of him that don't exist is kind of weak, don;t you think?

---dr.M.

I guess I just don't. the whole point is that the exsisting records have been kept secret.

PLus, reading between the lines a little (you can stretch some too, becuase the whole book is a conspiracy theory) no one knows *what all* records are being kept hidden in the Vatican. (that was mentioned in the book) so who knows, what records exist that haven't been *purposly hidden* from public view? (again, in terms of thenovel and it's premis not real life)

to me, no evidence found yet doesnt automatically mean no other evidence could exist.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

to me, no evidence found yet doesnt automatically mean no other evidence could exist.

No, and the fact that there aren't any blue monkeys flying out of my butt doesn't mean that there will never be blue monkeys flying out of my butt. I mean, sure, there could be all sorts of evidence we don't know about, but it's kind of silly to start building castles in the air. Maybe Jesus was an extraterrestrial, or maybe he had a drinking problem, or maybe he was high on ergot fungus and that's why he thought he was God on earth (that's someone else's theory). In other words, if all bets are off, then all bets are off and anything is possible.

In Tom Robbins' The Last Roadside Attraction, the secret is that the Vatican has Jesus' body down in the vault, which means that the whole resurrection was a fraud. Now that's a secret worth keeping!

---dr.M.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Lol, well, I think we see each other's points of view on this one.

And now back to the book....

 

[dee1124]

We know it's a novel. That doesn't mean the ideas presented in it aren't worth discusion. (or that they aren't worth getting worked up over either for that matter) That's what we are here for, to discuss the novel- what ever aspect of the novel that we feel compelled to discuss.

<sigh> I wish people would stop reminding us that it's a novel. We've actually grasped that elementary fact.

Okay, Sweet, okay. It's just that I've found a lot of folks have lost sight of that fact. And this thread's turned up a whole bunch of interesting stuff, so good on you for starting it.

By the way, Dr. M, Mark and Matthew probably were written in Aramaic.

 

[shereads]

Yeah, I finished it. I'll even risk looking like a jerk by saying that I figured out the last clue as soon as I saw it. I mean, I knew who the knight was and what the orb was. I did a paper on him when I was in school. It's terribly frustrating to know the answer and have to wait for the characters to catch up with you.

I didn't like the book much, though. When you get right down to it, all it was was a big scavenger hunt with cute clues, more like a puzzle than a book, and very humorless. I don't mean that it should have been a laff riot, but an occasional flash of wit would have been nice. I've read worse thrillers and I've read better.

Brown presented some interesting stuff on iconography, but if you're interested in that there are books that are far, far better than this one and go into the subject in much more depth. I thought his religious history was very superficial and downright misleading.

But hey, it's a pot boiler, and as a pot boiler it was pretty good.

---dr.M.

SPOILER ALERT





I also guessed what the orb was, and I'm lousy at riddles. I was really disappointed with the ending, though. I know he's going to do a sequel, but I hate it when there's all this build-up to a bunch of secret evidence that's worth centuries of murder and torture and mayhem because it's going to forever change the way the world views God and religion...and then nothing. Yes, I know whatshername is Jesus' great great great great great grand-daughter, but if there's no proof of that, then so what? Charles Manson says he's Jesus Christ, and that hasn't changed the world. What am I missing? DNA evidence that links Sophie and her brother to fingernail scrapings from the Shroud of Turin?

 

[shereads]

No, and the fact that there aren't any blue monkeys flying out of my butt doesn't mean that there will never be blue monkeys flying out of my butt. I mean, sure, there could be all sorts of evidence we don't know about, but it's kind of silly to start building castles in the air. Maybe Jesus was an extraterrestrial, or maybe he had a drinking problem, or maybe he was high on ergot fungus and that's why he thought he was God on earth (that's someone else's theory). In other words, if all bets are off, then all bets are off and anything is possible.

In Tom Robbins' The Last Roadside Attraction, the secret is that the Vatican has Jesus' body down in the vault, which means that the whole resurrection was a fraud. Now that's a secret worth keeping!

---dr.M.

The same problem: how does anybody know whose body it really is? Does he have an identifying tattoo?

In either case - Jesus In A Vault or Mary Magdalene's Family Tree in a special boxed deluxe edition - the worst that would happen from the Church's POV would be a two-night episode of Dateline NBC and several years of cover articles in the Enquirer, alternating with Jon Benet stories. I wanted some EVIDENCE that the Pope himself would have destroyed to keep the flock from straying. Something supernatural, if no science could identify its value. I was left feeling kind of ripped-off, and a bit angry at grandpa for making Sophie follow all those clues.

 

[Match Made In Heaven]

Okay, Sweet, okay. It's just that I've found a lot of folks have lost sight of that fact. And this thread's turned up a whole bunch of interesting stuff, so good on you for starting it.

By the way, Dr. M, Mark and Matthew probably were written in Aramaic.

I forgive you.

Have you read the book? what did you think?

 

[dee1124]

I forgive you.

Have you read the book? what did you think?

I did, in about a sitting and a half. It was pretty and the author makes a number of excellent points about the treatment and status of women in Christianity. I think what got my back up was his reading so much into Da Vinci's art. I think anyone who has sufficiently studied the work of an artist could do pretty much the same thing. Think about the interpretations of The Lord of the Rings , a Christian allegory, Frodo as Christ, all that. Tolkien vehemently denied having any such intent in mind, but if you dig hard enough, you can make a case for it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

...I think what got my back up was his reading so much into Da Vinci's art. I think anyone who has sufficiently studied the work of an artist could do pretty much the same thing. Think about the interpretations of The Lord of the Rings , a Christian allegory, Frodo as Christ, all that. Tolkien vehemently denied having any such intent in mind, but if you dig hard enough, you can make a case for it.

That's exactly true, and a great case in point is all the mysteries of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, in which people have found all sorts of 'amazing correspondances' between the dimensions of the pyramid and other cosmic measurements.

For instance, the ratio of certain dimensions of the great pyramid gives you the number Pi. It seems amazing until you realize that the egyptians measured things two ways: with a liner measure that was based an a royal cubit or something, and then with a rotating wheel they could roll along the ground as they walked to measure long distances. The radius of this wheel was also the royal cubit, and so Pi is naturally built into all their measurements.

One of the things Brown missed (and I'm surprised he did), is that if you cut an apple horizontally, you'll see that the seeds are arranged in a pentagon. Connect the seeds and you have a pentagram. The apple was considered sacred to Venus.

This seems to be another case of cosmic correspondance, and maybe it is, but all flowering plants are divided into one of two groups: monocots and dicots ('cot' is short for 'cotyledon' and refers to how many baby leaves the embryo plant has). In dicots all the seeds and flower parts are arranged in groups of 4 or 5. In monocts they're arranged in 3's. So the five points formed from the apple seeds is nothing really special.

Anyhow, the closer you look at anything, the more you see. Eventually you see things everywhere, and we call that "paranoia". It's a kind of Attention Surfeit Disorder.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Eventually you see things everywhere, and we call that "paranoia". It's a kind of Attention Surfeit Disorder.

---dr.M.

I see...This is worth some thought, Dr. M. In fact, I'm focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else. It scares me. What if there are other people with ASD, so many of them that they're a majority of the world's population? They haven't understood their power yet, but if they could, and if they focus it on destroying the rest of us...

Aiaaaaiiiiiieeeeee!!!!!

 

[shereads]

But I still want to know why there's a twisted hand with a knife in The Last Supper, and why "John" looks so girlie and is dressed as Jesus' mirror-twin.

 

[sweetnpetite]

One of the things Brown missed (and I'm surprised he did), is that if you cut an apple horizontally, you'll see that the seeds are arranged in a pentagon. Connect the seeds and you have a pentagram. The apple was considered sacred to Venus.

This seems to be another case of cosmic correspondance, and maybe it is, but all flowering plants are divided into one of two groups: monocots and dicots ('cot' is short for 'cotyledon' and refers to how many baby leaves the embryo plant has). In dicots all the seeds and flower parts are arranged in groups of 4 or 5. In monocts they're arranged in 3's. So the five points formed from the apple seeds is nothing really special.


---dr.M.

Or maybe it is

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I see...This is worth some thought, Dr. M. In fact, I'm focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else. It scares me. What if there are other people with ASD, so many of them that they're a majority of the world's population? They haven't understood their power yet, but if they could, and if they focus it on destroying the rest of us...

Aiaaaaiiiiiieeeeee!!!!!

That's my own theory of paranoia. The human brain is designed to perceive patterns, whether in space or in time, and connect them together. In paranoids, I think this ability is out of control.

Amphetamines are known to increase the powers of attention, and amphetamines are also known to induce paranoid symptoms when abused. People see plots and patterns where the rest of us don't.

Attention--how we think about what we want to think about--is one of the hardest things to understand about the mind. Memory's not that hard to understand, but we have no idea how attention works. Whatever it is, though, I think paranoids have too much of it.

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

But hey, you know who I didn't understand in the book? Bezu Fache, the police inspector.

First of all, isn't 'fache' another name for the female organ? And then, what kind of name is 'Bezu'?

And then, why was he so determined to get that guy? Why'd they mention his strong religious affiliation? He was just a red herring all along, wasn't he?

SnP, a 'potboiler' is any story that has a lot of fast, lurid action. They're usually very superficial stories without any great depth or insight. In other words, they're not 'literature'.

---dr.M.

 

[thenry]

Attention Surfeit Disorder

I think the property you are looking for is currently being called "information latency."

The idea is that the human brain is designed to find patterns in everything, it's the basis of learning, of finding your way around the house, everything. But very few of the world's patterns are significant so a mechanism for suppressing information (theoretically) evolved. The patterns are still all around us like the face of Jesus in the static of a television, they've just passed below a significance threshold and have become "latent."

In this theory, low information latency is a symptom or cause of schizophrenia, paranoia, and mania.

The theory is attractive because it puts a measurement on the spectrum between intelligent and creative and crazy. A little less information latency than the average person and you are quicker at grasping new concepts and making intuitive leaps, a lot less and you can't distinguish between reality and the proofs of fantasy.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think the property you are looking for is currently being called "information latency."

The idea is that the human brain is designed to find patterns in everything, it's the basis of learning, of finding your way around the house, everything. But very few of the world's patterns are significant so a mechanism for suppressing information (theoretically) evolved. The patterns are still all around us like the face of Jesus in the static of a television, they've just passed below a significance threshold and have become "latent."

In this theory, low information latency is a symptom or cause of schizophrenia, paranoia, and mania.

The theory is attractive because it puts a measurement on the spectrum between intelligent and creative and crazy. A little less information latency than the average person and you are quicker at grasping new concepts and making intuitive leaps, a lot less and you can't distinguish between reality and the proofs of fantasy.

That's really fascinating. I've always heard that a lot of what the brain does is inhibitory: suppressing and selecting information, and that happens low down in the limbic system. If we didn't do this we'd just be flooded with information all the time: always aware of the feel of our clothes, the pressure of the ground upon our feet, our physical posture.

I had a good example of this with my daughter, who I was afraid at one time was hyper-active. As a toddler we could tell when she was tired because suddenly her kinetic inhibitions would disappear and she'd get hyper-active, rolling around on the floor and kicking her feet. She's over that now, but with kids you can see how they learn to inhibit certain responses as they develop.

I've also had drug experiences that could be understood as lowering the latency bar. Most people who've taken mescaline report seeing all sorts of visual patterns on flat surfaces, things like mandalas and grids and very intricate, symmetrical 2-D shapes. It really feels like you're seeing something that's always there, but that you just never noticed before, as if your eye has a radar grid in front of it that you usually ignore.

Very cool theory. Thanks, thenry.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Amphetamines are known to increase the powers of attention, and amphetamines are also known to induce paranoid symptoms when abused. People see plots and patterns where the rest of us don't.

Oh, I see. So now I'm addicted to amphetemines! What kind of person are you, to accuse me of a thing like that? Was SnP in on it too? Is that why she started this thread?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Okay, Sweet, okay. It's just that I've found a lot of folks have lost sight of that fact. And this thread's turned up a whole bunch of interesting stuff, so good on you for starting it.

By the way, Dr. M, Mark and Matthew probably were written in Aramaic.

I did a search on this, and from what I gather the earliest known copies of the gospels that we have today are all written in Greek, but some scholars believe that the Greek shows evidence of having been translated from Aramaic, or show Aramaic influences.

http://www.srr.axbridge.org.uk/syriac_language.html

The author's argument in the site above is that the NT must have originally been written in Aramaic because we know that Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke, and so anyone writing about him would have used that language as well. Implicit in his argument is the assumption that the gospels were written contemporaneously by those who knew Jesus and spoke his language. We have no fragments of the gospels written in Aramaic though, so this is really conjecture.

Another site:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorigin.html

catalogs the oldest known NT texts. The following is copied & pasted from that site:
--------------------------------
The New Testament
Autographs
45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.

Manuscripts
There are over 5,600 early Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament that are still in existence. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus and the later manuscripts were written on leather called parchment.

125 A.D. The New Testament manuscript which dates most closely to the original autograph was copied around 125 A.D, within 35 years of the original. It is designated "p 52" and contains a small portion of John 18. (The "p" stands for papyrus.)
200 A.D. Bodmer p 66 a papyrus manuscript which contains a large part of the Gospel of John.
200 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 46 contains the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews.
225 A.D. Bodmer Papyrus p 75 contains the Gospels of Luke and John.
250-300 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 45 contains portions of the four Gospels and Acts.
350 A.D. Codex Sinaiticus contains the entire New Testament and almost the entire Old Testament in Greek. It was discovered by a German scholar Tisendorf in 1856 at an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Sinai.
350 A.D. Codex Vaticanus: {B} is an almost complete New Testament. It was cataloged as being in the Vatican Library since 1475.
-----------------------------

Fascinating stuff, and it shows how unlikely it is that there's a big stack of material that hasn't been discovered. If this is the best we can come up with something as important as the NT, what are the chances that other supposed material has survived?

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

But hey, you know who I didn't understand in the book? Bezu Fache, the police inspector.

First of all, isn't 'fache' another name for the female organ? And then, what kind of name is 'Bezu'?

French.

SnP, a 'potboiler' is any story that has a lot of fast, lurid action.

I think the term derives from the author's need to put food on the table (get the pot boiling) by getting something written and published a.s.a.p. Not sure that would apply here, because Brown clearly did a lot of research. I did love the premise, I just wish the ending had been awe-inspiring and not "aw, that' sweet" inspiring.

 

[shereads]

I did a search on this, and from what I gather the earliest known copies of the gospels that we have today are all written in Greek, but some scholars believe that the Greek shows evidence of having been translated from Aramaic, or show Aramaic influences.

http://www.srr.axbridge.org.uk/syriac_language.html

The author's argument in the site above is that the NT must have originally been written in Aramaic because we know that Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke, and so anyone writing about him would have used that language as well. Implicit in his argument is the assumption that the gospels were written contemporaneously by those who knew Jesus and spoke his language. We have no fragments of the gospels written in Aramaic though, so this is really conjecture.

Another site:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorigin.html

catalogs the oldest known NT texts. The following is copied & pasted from that site:
--------------------------------
The New Testament
Autographs
45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.

Manuscripts
There are over 5,600 early Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament that are still in existence. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus and the later manuscripts were written on leather called parchment.

125 A.D. The New Testament manuscript which dates most closely to the original autograph was copied around 125 A.D, within 35 years of the original. It is designated "p 52" and contains a small portion of John 18. (The "p" stands for papyrus.)
200 A.D. Bodmer p 66 a papyrus manuscript which contains a large part of the Gospel of John.
200 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 46 contains the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews.
225 A.D. Bodmer Papyrus p 75 contains the Gospels of Luke and John.
250-300 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 45 contains portions of the four Gospels and Acts.
350 A.D. Codex Sinaiticus contains the entire New Testament and almost the entire Old Testament in Greek. It was discovered by a German scholar Tisendorf in 1856 at an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Sinai.
350 A.D. Codex Vaticanus: {B} is an almost complete New Testament. It was cataloged as being in the Vatican Library since 1475.
-----------------------------

Fascinating stuff, and it shows how unlikely it is that there's a big stack of material that hasn't been discovered. If this is the best we can come up with something as important as the NT, what are the chances that other supposed material has survived?

---dr.M.

The lack of historic evidence of Jesus' life could have provided Brown with a simple, but credible twist: the Grail is historic, 3rd-party (Roman) contemporareneous proof of Jesus' existence - maybe a record of the trial and crucifiction - but the Church can't reveal it because it also contains evidence of his marriage.

Not that it's hurt the book's sales, or anything; I was just bothered throughout by the nagging need to know what kind of evidence of Mary Magdalene could exist that was incontrovertible - considering that the existence of other "gospels" has not threatened the church, and neither has the lack of a historic Jesus record.

A Jesus history from a source that has no agenda would in itself have been enough to get the church pitted against outsiders. Brown skipped a step in asking his audience to accept that Jesus' life is an unquestioned historical reality.