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The Da Vinci Code
- Thread starter Willow03
- Start date
ana8
Missing you....
I got it as one of birthday presents but didn't have time to start reading it yet. But as you say it's that good I might give it atry tonight🙂
ana8
Missing you....
momentary_grace
Obsessionist
if someone doesn't mind... what is it about? sorry if that sounds lame but i have no idea🙂 someone once told me to read it though I never did
-Groo-
Potential
My friend got it and she said it was very good, and she said it's about some mathematical code, but to be honest I'm not exactly sure what it is about.
Hold on, let me search online for a premise.
::searching::
Warning, I have not read the book therefore I do not know if the following articles will/may contain spoilers for all those who are planning/currently reading this book.
Hope I helped!
-Dennis 🙂
Hold on, let me search online for a premise.
::searching::
Warning, I have not read the book therefore I do not know if the following articles will/may contain spoilers for all those who are planning/currently reading this book.
Breaking The Da Vinci Code
So the divine Jesus and infallible Word emerged out of a fourth-century power-play? Get real.
By Collin Hansen | posted 11/07/2003
Perhaps you've heard of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. This fictional thriller has captured the coveted number one sales ranking at Amazon.com, camped out for 32 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List, and inspired a one-hour ABC News special. Along the way, it has sparked debates about the legitimacy of Western and Christian history.
While the ABC News feature focused on Brown's fascination with an alleged marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, The Da Vinci Code contains many more (equally dubious) claims about Christianity's historic origins and theological development. The central claim Brown's novel makes about Christianity is that "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." Why? Because of a single meeting of bishops in 325, at the city of Nicea in modern-day Turkey. There, argues Brown, church leaders who wanted to consolidate their power base (he calls this, anachronistically, "the Vatican" or "the Roman Catholic church") created a divine Christ and an infallible Scripture"”both of them novelties that had never before existed among Christians.
Watershed at Nicea
Brown is right about one thing (and not much more). In the course of Christian history, few events loom larger than the Council of Nicea in 325. When the newly converted Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day Turkey, the church had reached a theological crossroads.
Led by an Alexandrian theologian named Arius, one school of thought argued that Jesus had undoubtedly been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in flesh. Arius proved an expert logician and master of extracting biblical proof texts that seemingly illustrated differences between Jesus and God, such as John 14:28: "the Father is greater than I." In essence, Arius argued that Jesus of Nazareth could not possibly share God the Father's unique divinity.
In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of Nicea, Brown claims that "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet "¦ a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."
In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ."
The term used here"”Lord, Kyrios"”deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios.
The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord.
In addition, pre-Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church leaders, including Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church apologist, baptized in the name of the triune God"”Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"”thereby acknowledging the equality of the one Lord's three distinct persons.
The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over Arius's teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation.
"Fax from Heaven"?
With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of Scripture's historic validity bears tremendous implications. Brown claims that Constantine commissioned and bankrolled a staff to manipulate existing texts and thereby divinize the human Christ.
Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's speculations fall flat. Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's composition and consolidation may appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.
Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult. Challenged by Marcion's threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments.
Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New Testament. During the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation from God about an impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide circulation and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but hadn't yet been collected in a single authoritative book. Montanus saw in this fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming authoritative status for his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and circulated a definitive list of apostolic writings that is today called the Muratorian Canon, after its modern discoverer. The Muratorian Canon bears striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books, Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from the canon.
By the time of Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only a few books that we accept today, chief among them Hebrews and Revelation, because their authorship remained in doubt. In fact, authorship was the most important consideration for those who worked to solidify the canon. Early church leaders considered letters and eyewitness accounts authoritative and binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple of an apostle. This way they could be assured of the documents' reliability. As pastors and preachers, they also observed which books did in fact build up the church"”a good sign, they felt, that such books were inspired Scripture. The results speak for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to spread, flourish, and endure worldwide.
Though unoriginal in its allegations, The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away. They just reappear periodically in a different disguise. Brown's claims resemble those of Arius and his numerous heirs throughout history, who have contradicted the united testimony of the apostles and the early church they built. Those witnesses have always attested that Jesus Christ was and remains God himself. It didn't take an ancient council to make this true. And the pseudohistorical claims of a modern novel can't make it false.
When French police discover Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon's name hidden in a strange cipher found next to the body of a Louvre museum curator, he becomes their prime suspect for the brutal murder. The only person who believes that Robert is innocent is French cryptologist Sophie Neveu, who helps him escape from the police. While trying to elude capture, the two struggle to unravel the curator's mysterious message, only to find themselves caught between a centuries-old, secret European society and an extremely conservative, controversial branch of the Catholic Church, each of which is determined to possess the curator's secret, even if it means killing Robert and Sophie to get what they want. Brown's best-selling book, which features the hero from his earlier novel, Angels and Demons (Pocket Books, 2000), is an absolutely addictive thriller that blends fact and fiction with wonderfully creative results. The fascinating references in the plot to Da Vinci, the Knights Templar, the early history of the Catholic Church, and the Holy Grail might push some teens into researching these topics just to see what, if any, possible real historical basis there might be to Brown's story. Suspense-loving older teens, especially those with an interest in history or art, will definitely find this fast and furiously plotted thriller to be superior reading entertainment.
What if Jesus Christ had a tryst with Mary Magdalene, and the interlude produced a child? Such a possibility-yielding a so-called royal bloodline-provides the framework for Brown's latest thriller (after Angels and Demons), an exhaustively researched page-turner about secret religious societies, ancient coverups and savage vengeance. The action kicks off in modern-day Paris with the murder of the Louvre's chief curator, whose body is found laid out in symbolic repose at the foot of the Mona Lisa. Seizing control of the case are Sophie Neveu, a lovely French police cryptologist, and Harvard symbol expert Robert Langdon, reprising his role from Brown's last book. The two find several puzzling codes at the murder scene, all of which form a treasure map to the fabled Holy Grail, where proof of the Jesus bloodline supposedly can be found. As their search moves from France to England, Neveu and Langdon are confounded by two mysterious groups-the legendary Priory of Sion, a nearly 1,000-year-old secret society whose members have included Botticelli and Isaac Newton, and the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. Both have their own reasons for wanting to ensure that the Grail isn't found. Brown sometimes ladles out too much religious history at the expense of pacing, and Langdon is a hero in desperate need of more chutzpah. Still, Brown has assembled a whopper of a plot that will please both conspiracy buffs and thriller addicts.
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.
In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.
Evidently, Mona isn't quite the woman art historians thought she was. But only those who know the secret code can look at Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait and see the happy hermaphrodite that lurks within.
Dan Brown's latest novel, The Da Vinci Code, published by Doubleday Books, is about the famous Renaissance artist and the oblique references to the occult contained in his equally famous paintings. It's also about ancient secret societies, modern forensics, science and engineering, and the history of religion.
Most of all The Da Vinci Code is about the history of encryption -- the many methods developed over time to keep private information from prying eyes.
The novel begins with Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receiving an urgent late-night phone call: The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum.
Near the body, police have found a secret message. With the help of a gifted cryptologist, Langdon solves the enigmatic riddle. But it's only the first signpost along a tangled trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. If Langdon doesn't crack the code, an ancient secret will be lost forever.
Brown's characters are fictional, but he swears that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
The author provides detailed background on the novel's historic basis on his website, but he suggests readers finish the book before reviewing the site, which gives away some of the plot's twists.
The book's publicity hints darkly that the story lays bare "the greatest conspiracy of the past 2,000 years." Perhaps, but anyone who is interested in conspiracy theories won't find anything new here.
The basic thesis is that da Vinci was a member of a secret society charged with protecting the true history of Christianity until the world is ready to hear it. This theme has been explored in depth in other books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy, both written by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh.
Where The Da Vinci Code does shine -- brilliantly -- is in its exploration of cryptology, particularly the encoding methods developed by Leonardo da Vinci, whose art and manuscripts are packed with mystifying symbolism and quirky codes.
Brown, who specializes in writing readable books on privacy and technology, cites da Vinci as an unheralded privacy advocate and encryption pioneer. His descriptions of da Vinci's cryptology devices are fascinating.
Throughout history, entrusting a messenger with a private communication has been rife with problems. In da Vinci's time, a major concern was that the messenger might be paid more to sell the information to adversaries than to deliver it as promised.
To address that problem, Brown writes that da Vinci invented one of the first rudimentary forms of public-key encryption centuries ago: a portable container to safeguard documents.
Da Vinci's cryptography invention is a tube with lettered dials. The dials have to be rotated to a proper sequence, spelling out the password, for the cylinder to slide apart. Once a message was "encrypted" inside the container only an individual with the correct password could open it.
This encryption method was physically unhackable: If anyone tried to force the container open, the information inside would self-destruct.
Da Vinci rigged this by writing his message on a papyrus scroll, and rolling it around a delicate glass vial filled with vinegar. If someone attempted to force the container open, the vial would break, and the vinegar would dissolve the papyrus almost instantly.
Brown also brings readers deep into the Cathedral of Codes, a chapel in Great Britain with a ceiling from which hundreds of stone blocks protrude. Each block is carved with a symbol that, when combined, is thought to create the world's largest cipher.
"Modern cryptographers have never been able to break this code, and a generous reward is offered to anyone who can decipher the baffling message," Brown writes on his site.
"In recent years, geological ultrasounds have revealed the startling presence of an enormous subterranean vault hidden beneath the chapel. This vault appears to have no entrance and no exit. To this day, the curators of the chapel have permitted no excavation."
Brown specializes in literary excavation. His previous books have all involved secrets -- keeping them and breaking them -- and how personal privacy slams up against national security or institutional interests.
He's written about the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites. He's also written about the Vatican and the National Security Agency.
Brown's first novel, Digital Fortress, published in 1998, details a hack attack on the NSA's top-secret super computer, Transltr, which monitors and decodes e-mail between terrorists.
But the computer can also covertly intercept e-mail between private citizens. A hacker discovers the computer and takes it down, and demands that the NSA publicly admit Transltr's existence or he'll auction off access to the computer to the highest bidder.
"My interest in secret societies sparks from growing up in New England, surrounded by the clandestine clubs of Ivy League universities, the Masonic lodges of our Founding Fathers and the hidden hallways of early government power," Brown said. "New England has a long tradition of elite private clubs, fraternities and secrecy."
To encourage his readers to discover the joys of cracking code, Brown has created an Internet-based treasure hunt based on The Da Vinci Code that involves Google searches, code cracking, e-mail missives and low-level password hacking.
Winners will receive a prize that, Brown said, involves "something money can't buy." He declined to provide details, saying that he wants winners to be surprised.
Hope I helped!
-Dennis 🙂