THE DA VINCI CODE: Just how much of the background story

[1monster]

is true (or accepted by those open to alternative histories)?

I finally got around to buying a copy of THE DAVINCI CODE and I'm slightly more than half way though it.

I love novels that build on known historica fact, but I like to know how much is based on accepted theory and how much is the novelist's invention.

I'm aware of the Gnostic books, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdeline, and that SHE was to be the Rock on which the Church was built before Peter forced her out.

But what about the rest of the story?

Anyone know where to start?

[WinkyDink]

1. Might as well start with the one in the lawsuit: "Holy Blood, Holy Grail".

[evermind]

5. It's worth noting that Da Vinci Code is published as fiction

and the Holy Blood guys are still sueing for plagiarism. That must say something about the credibility of HBHG!

[enlightenment]

25. I thought it was funny that the authors of HBHG

originally presented (and perhaps still do) their book as history - researched, verified, etc. -- not fiction.

By accusing Brown of plagiarism, they were admitting that their book was fiction -- since you can't steal facts. If they did research that proved (as they say in their book) their assertions, those assertions become part of the historical record. The "idea" is a fact, and as such can't be plagiarized.

It's a fun story -- and that's all it is.

on edit: I KNOW I fixed that "there" to "their" -- I know I did. -mutter, grumble-

[dipsydoodle]

37. Wouldn't worry too much about spelling mistakes.

They're just human error. Ending sentences with prepositions is a different matter - just plain old ignorance of the language.

Don't worry you didn't do so !

[0rganism]

44. No -- plagiarism applies equally to verbatim citations of fact or fiction

In particular, it means you copied the work of another without providing due credit.

If you were to use an unreferenced, entirely factual quotation, whether about religion or amino acids or songbirds or whatever, from an encyclopedia or trade journal or even a work of fiction, you'd be plagiarizing that source, whether or not the preponderance of material in that source was fictitious.

For example, when I post
plagiarism
n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
and neither delimit the quote nor cite the (probably obvious) source reference, I'm engaged in plagiarism.

[CTyankee]

50. In grad school, I always used the preliminary "According to..."

and then the definition. With a more descriptive quote, I would introduce the author as who she was and then proceed to quote her words, as it fit the portion of my text. We used the MLA handbook, which I loved.

I was a bibliography freak. I loved putting all of my sources in categories and doing the listing all according to the rules. It became one of those "things" that you get so proud of! Weird, I guess...

[evermind]

51. Sure, but if I'm writing a historical romance, and I research

the life of Nell Gwynn in your standard reference work on the subject, you're not going to take me to court for plagiarism, right?

One can't plagiarise facts, only inventions, so the HBHG authors claiming Brown's plot plagiarised their "history" indicates that even they, the authors, don't regard it as factual!

(Unless, of course, they were claiming actual passages (ie the particular words and sentences) from their book were stolen, but I don't think that's the case.)

[acmavm]

27. They lost that lawsuit last week or the week before. Dan Brown was

doesn't have to give them a dime.

[WinkyDink]

45. Suit is over. Brown won.

But it was over the IDEAS, not "facts".

[1monster]

6. The interesting thing about that lawsuit is that Dan Brown mentioned

HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL in the book (page 274 of the paperback edition).

Seems to me that rather than plagiarizing from the authors as they claimed, Brown gave them a potential boost in possible sales from people like me who might seek out the book...

Talk about biting the hand that potentially feeds you.

[dipsydoodle]

41. I read HBHG when it came out in the eighties.

I would seem to me that the research of those authors was used to provide the entire background to the later book. To me HBHG remains a better book.

[hippiechick]

2. www.grahamhancock.com

there are message boards chock full of scholars, academics, researchers, and plain old interested folks like me tossing around all kinds of info about alternative history, religions, etc.


:hi:

[1monster]

4. Thanks, I'm going to check that one out right now.

:hi: backatcha.

[arcane1]

20. I used to LOVE Graham when he wrote about Egypt, the Mayans, etc

in his first couple of books... he lost me with the face-on-Mars stuff, though :)

[silverweb]

3. Hard to say.

Especially since it's pretty much all legend, anyway.

:shrug:

[Zynx]

7. Virtually the entire thing is complete garbage.

The French found the whole concept rather unremarkable - after all they were home to the Merovingians.

There's nothing particularly new or innovated about this line of thinking.

[1monster]

10. That wasn't the part I was asking about.

The Knights Templar did exist, they were very powerful and wealthy, then suddenly they were taken down in a bloody massacre by the Vatican.

What is the back story on that?

[Kagemusha]

16. The King of France owed them too much money.

So with Vatican blessing he resolved that little problem by um, well, wiping them out on his end. Sort of like how some pogroms against Jews started but, well, obviously Jews were not stamped out of existence by those in power, who found them convenient in the long run. The Templars were viewed as competition in the long run by the Vatican. I don't know the story beyond that but, I'm sure other heads of state found the Templars rich, and suddenly easy prey, within their own borders, and quickly liquidated the Templars' assets while slaughtering their personnel.

Edit: And none of this makes the rest of the stuff in that book one bit more truthful, mind you :)

[Zynx]

18. Basically, the French king owed them a lot of money.

Phillip the Fair (French King) ordered the Order disbanded, and since a lot of it was based in France, didn't have a very hard time rounding up a lot of leadership and executing them. This got him out of debt.

The Templars also scared most monarchs in Europe because they were a very heavily armed and trained fighting force with nothing left to fight for with the end of the Crusades. This is largely why the pope disbanded the Templars in 1312 - not to mention that Phillip was pushing for it.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Wasn't the book published as fiction? What's the issue here?

[Zynx]

23. It's amazing the number of people who take the book as being historical

[ClintonTyree]

28. Same with the bible.........

I guess it depends to what level one is willing to suspend one's disbelief.

[Mr_Spock]

34. Exactly - which fiction to believe - the male dominated power broker

version or this one? I like Browns version better...

[Mr_Spock]

31. That's a rather neanderthal reaction to a proposed different history

than the one fed to us by the power brokers. I rather enjoyed it and will believe the conclusions as they are more palatable to me than the current fiction & hypothesis taught as fact in our brain-washing facilities.

[Zynx]

52. Neanderthal? It is a FICTIONAL book. What part of that is unclear?

Novel. Not history book, not thesis paper, not research paper. NOVEL, going off of some very old and repeatedly discredited ideas.

Good lord. It has nothing to do with "our powerbrokers" or anything else.

[madeline_con]

58. "... repeatedly discredited ideas ..."

Bear in mind that people can't even agree whether Jesus ever really existed. In that sort of atmosphere, how does one discredit something written concerning a religious belief?

[HereSince1628]

8. How much of it do you want to be true?

This is really all about a legend and you can spin it anyway you want to. You can find people who will swear whatever percentage truth you assign it is right (you can also find people who will swear you are wrong).

I should say, there really IS little disagreement on there being a nation called France, a city called Paris, a Catholic Church, and an Opus Dei. Even the concept of mortification of the flesh is real.

[1monster]

17. I don't have any vested need to "want" any of it to be true...

But I've always found that little piece of not generally known incident(s) can have a powerful effect on what comes next.

Recently, while helping my son research Yellow Fever for a school project, I learned that in 1801, Napoleon sent 25,000 soldiers to Haiti to help put down a slave uprising.

A Yellow Fever pandemic broke out on the Island while the French soldiers were there. Only 3,000 of the 25,000 survived to make it back to France. The vast number of them died of Yellow Fever, Malaria, and other diseases.

So when the flegling United States asked Napoleon to sell the Port City of New Orleasn, Nappy, in the need of some cold hard gold for his on going wars was also at the point of being totally disillusioned about the New World. He wanted out and thus sold the whole of Louisiana for just slightly above what the U.S. was offering for New Orleans alone.

Who knows how Bonapart would have reacted to the request to purchasee New Orleans had he not just lost 22,000 soldiers to disease in the New World?

Fascinating little tidbits of history that changed everything are a hobby of mine.

[HereSince1628]

21. The Da Vinci code probably won't lower the price of the Mona Lisa

I like the way Brown describes architecture, he usually is right on. His angels and demons was like going back to Rome.

[madeline_con]

59. A most excellent point, 1monster. n/t

[Jigarotta]

9. we start and end on power

Mary Magdeline has been portrayed as a prostitute, but that hasn't really been 'proven'. Uppity 'fallen' women can always be downgraded by her gonads and mysterious witchery that makes dicks rise in fear and conquest, to this day. Men have feet of clay, forgiven for their sins, but women are always sinners because of the attraction.

[regnaD kciN]

43. What a load of garbage!

I know that facts generally fly out the window when it comes to devotees of the DaVinci Code, but here they are.

Scripture never portrayed Mary of Magdala as a prostitute. She was described as a woman who had been "possessed by seven demons" (probably a form of mental illness or even epilepsy by today's standards) and who had been healed by Jesus and thereafter became one of his followers. According to Church tradition, she is honored as "the Apostle to the Apostles" because she was the first to bring them news of Christ's resurrection. Her Feast Day is celebrated on July 22nd, at least in the Western Church. (I don't currently have an Eastern Calendar handy.)

The notion of Mary as a prostitute originated, to be quite honest, in a mistake made in the late 6th Century by Pope Gregory the Great during one of his homilies. Not reading the Gospels too carefully, Pope Gregory (actually one of the most humanist and spiritual of pontiffs) confused the parallel stories of Mary of Bethany and the "fallen woman" who annointed Jesus's feet, and concluded they were one and the same and that, further, Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala were also the same person. It was a notably careless oversight, but certainly wasn't done in an attempt to degrade Mary of Magdala in particular or women in general; rather, the whole point (and whole reason the idea "caught on" in popular culture) was the notion that Jesus is able to turn around anyone's life and raise it to a high level of human dignity, no matter how they may be regarded as written-off by society.

In general, the supposed "history" of the DaVinci Code is something that even a basic course in Church History 101 taught at the most secular of universities would reveal to be utterly nonsensical.

[Jigarotta]

46. we agree on Mag.

so what's the garbage you assault me with?

[tammywammy]

11. There's no monks in Opus Dei n/t

[Orangepeel]

12. There are two parts to the story. One, both or none could be true

First, there's the idea that Jesus existed, married Mary Magdeline and that the church covered this up. Second, there's the idea that Da Vinci believed this, was part of the knights templar group that protected the secret, and hid clues in his artwork.

Either one of these ideas could be true without the other.

[evermind]

13. From what I've read about it, most of the background is lifted from

Baigent and Leigh's "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", and other books.

Whether you'd call their thesis "accepted" depends a lot on who's doing the accepting. Even some people who are comfortable with alternative views about history might well have problems. Despite that there are some interesting and true things in HBHG, when it talks about particular historic groupings, like the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar (ie, things which are not controversial in themselves) there's precious little other than heavy duty handwaving to support the particular linkages between the groups that the book argues for (or such is my memory of it - going back quite a few years) and basically nothing to support their overall thesis apart from some dubious and un-checkable modern sources to which they apparently have unique access.

If you like that kind of stuff, you should probably check out The Hiram Key, which looks like another attempt to cash in on the same market.

[DearAbby]

15. I know that throughout history people had believed...

that the wedding at Cana was Jesus and Mary Magdalene's, thus the reason a "simple servant" Mary, Jesus Mother was so concerned about the wine. That should have been the concern for the host. Not a servent.

I had always wondered about Jesus extended family, his siblings and uncles and aunts. You don't hear much about them, are there still relatives of the extended family of Jesus, and why has history been so silent about them?

If there was an effort to cover that aspect of the story, would it be that there were efforts to cover the marriage of Jesus, and offspring that may have been the product of this union?

I too have wondered why there was a concerted effort to keep BLOODLINE in royals throughout history, this could explain it.

Who knows, it is an interesting read. I enjoyed the book, and look forward to the movie.

[leftofthedial]

19. it's all true

jeesus was gay

mary magdalene was transgendered and pregnant with jeesus' baby

she moved to england, not to flee peter, but to shack up with the beatles. she, not yoko, was the reason they split up

eventually,after a troubled pregnancy, she actually had twins: one of them was dale earnhart and the other was george bush

all true

[LiberalPartisan]

22. I knew it!!!

Honestly folks, it helps to have a few credible references to support what you allege to be historical fact. Jesus married to Mary - suuuure he was. And let's not forget - the moon landings never happened but produced at a sound stage in California.

[PetraPooh]

24. I'm still waiting for proof Jesus even existed, much less all of this.

And I don't mean any ol' Jesus, I mean THE Jesus. Seems there is no scientific proof of it at all. And since the first gospels weren't written till something like 7 decades later, and then some are not recognized if they are not in support of the churches teachings, I find the whole business to be fiction, including the Bible, old and new testaments. Interesting and sometimes good lessons, but so do most of the current and recent SciFi and Fantasy novels have good "moral" lessons. Fiction, its all fiction!

[leftofthedial]

53. no shit.

[1monster]

33. Okay, I misphrased my opening thread. According to the

Gnostic gospels, Jesus and Mary Magdeline were very tight. Not according to the New Testament gospels.

Much of history is just conjecture anyway. Some of accepted history is more fiction than other unaccepted theories.

But the Legend that is Jesus, whatever one believes, had to come from somewhere. The story has been told from many different viewpoints, so one can assume that someone, somewhere was the model for him. If a literary tradition existed like modern day fantasy where there are sometimes twenty or thirty books about a single make-believe world, often with different authors commissioned by the creator (WITCH WORLD, created by Andre Norton comes to mind), then we might have a starting point.

Sans that, I assume that there was someone behind the Jesus legend. As to whether he was a diety... well, I don't plan on going there because I'm not looking for a religious discussion.

[leftofthedial]

54. it seems way more likely that Jesus had a relationship with some

woman. Not to have would have been certain cause for speculation in his culture.

[CJCRANE]

26. Actually there is a legend that Jesus had a twin..nt

[Mr_Spock]

35. Sounds good to me

One fiction upsets people view of another. It's all fiction folks!

[Mr_Spock]

29. It's a novel. It's left to the reader to decide.

That's what it's all about - and I mean ALL (as in everything in life) about.

[Taxloss]

30. It is FICTION. The book is FICTION.

Most of the Bible is FICTION, made up. A good deal of it can be verified against the historic record, but the Gospel account of the life of Jesus is cobbled together from dozens of sources hundreds of years after the events described. Dan Brown's book just picks over the more interesting nuggets from the reject pile and adds a layer of speculation. I can't believe that people would take it seriously.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. Skip the low-brow, Oprah level stuff, and go straight to Robert A. Wilson:

http://www.rawilson.com/illuminatus.html

Or, if you're not ready for the real-real-extra real truth, you can start with Umberto Eco-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345368754/102-3008504-1485759?v=glance&n=283155

[1monster]

38. Maybe it is in the translation, but Umberto Eco is one of the most

incomprehensible authors I have ever read. The man uses fifty words to do the job that two or three words would do.

The only other author that even came close to that kind of verbosity that I have read was Arthur M. Slesinger, Jr.'s AGE OF JACKSON. And that book wasn't half as bad as Eco.

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Point is, lots of folks were talking about this stuff a long time ago.

I thought Foucault's Pendulum was interesting- but like the Amazon reviewer, I found the end kind of weak.

Robert Anton Wilson, however, is always a treat IMHO.

[xray s]

The Priory of Sion is a hoax

Created by a con man in 1956. So, I guess the book is fiction after all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Yeah, well, some of us think all of Western Religion is a hoax, too.

And a very profitable one, at that.

[Jigarotta]

48. the users use.

is it a surprise?
got nothing to do with religion or spiritual matters.

[xray s]

36. dupe delete

[HamDon]

39. It's fiction about Mythology

Just sayin'

[Jigarotta]

47. forgiveness and acceptance

is not mythology.

[Robeson]

57. Agreed.

[Jigarotta]

49. this is now Lounge where 'post your personal pics' reside?

and what's your favorite nail clipper?

huh?

[1monster]

56. Hey, I thought this was a GD type thread... I guess I was wrong cause

it got moved.

As for nail clippers... I have brittle nails; it is a very rare thing indeed for me to need nail clippers. (A fingernail file or an emory board now and then, but no clippers.) :)

[Yavin4]

55. I'd Like To Know How An Old Man Who Is Gut Shot....

can run around a huge museum leaving clues like it's an Easter egg hunt.

[Hissyspit]

60. It really is silly. Much of the interpretations of da Vinci's work are

laughable to most art historians. I have no idea how serious Brown takes it since the work is meant to be pop fiction, but take EVERYTHING with a boulder of salt.