Da Vinci Code

antijoke

antijoke

antijoke

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So whats the take on this on the forums?

Does anyone believe it? Think it's hogwash? Anyone think it's possible the bloodline from jesus is still around today? After some good intellectual reading on this boring Sunday afternoon at work and interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

also can't wait for the film.
 
anticonscience said:
So whats the take on this on the forums?

Does anyone believe it? Think it's hogwash? Anyone think it's possible the bloodline from jesus is still around today? After some good intellectual reading on this boring Sunday afternoon at work and interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

also can't wait for the film.
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I think it's a cleverly researched and well put together piece of fiction, but that's all it is, fiction.

Great read though...
 
My housemate is very irish catholic and has done years of reading thinks it's a brilliant and an interesting read. The events/people/organisations at some point have existed but not in the way that Dan Brown describes.
 
Spike_UK said:
I think it's a cleverly researched and well put together piece of fiction, but that's all it is, fiction.

Great read though...
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Exactumundo!

Athough some of the supposed facts are actualy true and it does raise some interesting ideas, especially about mary magdelin, she was as real as jesus and there dead sea scrolls talking about her. She may have also possibly been jesus' wife and the covering up and pronouncing of her being a prostitute could well have been done by the church.
 
For what it's worth, I thought that in spite of being a little more far-fetched and fantastical, Angels and Demons was a better read. The pacing in particular is superior.

As for the content, part of Brown's success is probably down to the fact that he's building fiction on top of existing myths (and probably a little fact). People have some kind of base to work from, some familiar ground they are eager to learn more about. I mean, pretty much everyone who reads novels will know about Christianity, and will probably have heard of the Holy Grail.

The danger is that the huge popularity of this book could lead to some people taking what he talks about onboard as being fact, without conducting a little independent research for themselves.
 
It's an entertaining fictional book that isn't hugely memorable afterwards but fun at the time.
Nothing more than that imo.
 
It was an ok book, nothing amazingly great.

I don't think much of it is true. Even if it was, I really couldn't care less either :)
 
Fun book to read, I really enjoyed it, but to be honest I can't remember barely a bloody thing that happened in it anymore.

It's certainly a page-turner though, as is Angels & Demons, but the stupid ending of that sort of ruined it. So daft.
 
Dan Brown makes an excellent plot. It is fictional as has been said, but I don't think anyone really believed the whole story as being a work of non-fiction.

The only problem is the endings in all of his books seem "rushed". Like he desperately needed to end the book and came up with just about anything to do so.
 
The book is fiction, and even the original research he based his story on was tripe. (See the current High-Court case news for more detail)
Anyone thinking otherwise is incredibly gullible. Trouble is though, he's taken real places, features etc, and blended them into the sort of tale that people (Especially religious types) can all too easily fall for.

-Leezer-
 
Killerkebab said:
The only problem is the endings in all of his books seem "rushed". Like he desperately needed to end the book and came up with just about anything to do so.
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Seems to be a common trend these days. Grisham is the worst, he used to have a touch of class, but now it's almost as if he can't wait to finish each book so he can land another movie deal and start on his next one. Nearly all his books have a really lazy finish these days.... you get to maybe 50 pages from the end, the plot is seemingly still developing (or at least, you want to read a lot more of the same) and then all of a sudden he brings things to a close. Along with Tom Clancy he'll always be a 'must read' for me, he's still very readable, but I wish he'd recapture the form of his earlier works.

Currently I'm reading Digital Fortress, about 3/4 of the way through or so and that's slightly worrying, because it doesn't really feel like the book has expanded enough yet, everything is still on a fairly small scale. Brown seems to like fitting his stories into a very short timeframe (a couple of days at the most) with occasional flashbacks, sometimes I find myself wishing he had a bit more vision.
 
Killerkebab said:
Dan Brown makes an excellent plot. It is fictional as has been said, but I don't think anyone really believed the whole story as being a work of non-fiction.

The only problem is the endings in all of his books seem "rushed". Like he desperately needed to end the book and came up with just about anything to do so.
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wasnt really all his idea

i know a couple of people that thought it was based on real theorys .... some still do
 
Spike_UK said:
I think it's a cleverly researched and well put together piece of fiction, but that's all it is, fiction.

Great read though...
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yup cleverly researched and cleverly put together making a very addictive book that keeps you turning the pages. But honestly not as good as all the hype made it out to be. But im still looking forward to the film.
 
Mohinder said:
It's certainly a page-turner though, as is Angels & Demons, but the stupid ending of that sort of ruined it. So daft.
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I liked Angels and Demons. It starts off sceptical, then rather cleverly makes Christianity sound like a good code for life, and then within a few pages throws it all right back in your face. Good stuff.

Da Vinci Code seemed to be a common-or-garden "whodunnit?" with a load of dead interesting pseudo-history behind it... Thing is, they find out who did it and then it leaves you at a massive anti-climax ("What, no holy grail? No proof of Jesus' blood line? Arrgghh!").
 
Spend_day said:
wasnt really all his idea

i know a couple of people that thought it was based on real theorys .... some still do
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Well it is based on real theories. Albeit very loosely. Whether those theories are correct or not is another matter.

The problem is this...

Dan Brown based his book (which is pure fiction) on certain speculations which were made by people who researched said theories. It's not the theories that are wrong, it's the speculations that some people have made after hearing about the theories. The underlying theories themselves actually have plenty of evidence to support them and as such we cannot label them as pure nonsense. These theories are still heavily debated by biblical historians and actually go back as far as the dawn of Christianity itself but I won't go in to that here.

The whole "Jesus being married" thing is in all likelyhood correct, as is the fact that he probably had offspring. We don't know for sure but there is plenty of evidence in the Nag Hammadi texts, the dead sea scrolls and indeed the bible itself to support such conclusions.

However certain independent researchers (Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln) took these theories to another level and made some very wild speculations which were for the most part very flawed (Though they are not completely to blame since there was a third party involved who was feeding them misinformation for his own personal gain). Dan brown based his work of fiction on these speculations. Since it is a work of fiction I see nothing wrong with that. But just because the book itself is so obviously infactual (and was never intended to be otherwise) doesn't mean that all of the theories associated with it should also be considered outright falsities because quite simply, they aren't.

I should point out here that the theories I am talking about are ones which actually come from reputable biblical historians. People seem to be lumping the theories together with the speculations that have been made by non qualified people and since the speculations are so easily debunkable assume that the underlying theories are also. This is not so.
 
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Spike_UK said:
I think it's a cleverly researched and well put together piece of fiction, but that's all it is, fiction.

Great read though...
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Well, broadly yes. But it's intermingled with a fair bit of fact.

Personally, I loked it, both as a read and as an admirable bit of fictional construction. DB started out with a typical murder whodunnit premise - a murder in a very well known place. So far, standard stuff. Then he goes down the police investigation/single track policeman route. Still, standard stuff. The Langdon's background starts to play into the plot, i.e. the character's extensive knowledge of religious symbolism. Then he introduces more known facts ... the Knights Templarm Opus Dei, etc. But he then starts to weave the fabrication and fact together, bit at a time. All the while, he's gently hooking the reader further and further into the construct.

So you've got, for example, a fair bit of historical background that IS true, a fair bit more that probably is, and some wild speculation, all masking the joins in the sheer fabrication.

The Da Vinci code wouldn't be half as plausible or thought-provoking (of the could it possibly ..... nah ..... but .... erm...." variety if it didn't mask the sheer fiction with a thorough blend of known fact, plausible creation and tempting conspiracy theory.

A lot of people put DBs books down, but my assessment is that as fiction, they are superbly written, not least because he hardest part of writing a best-seller, that being the marketing, is built-in and damn-near self-financing. By any real assessment of a novel's success (that being sales, of course() it's a raging masterpiece.

After all, novels are commercial, not "art".
 
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