The Davinci Code has some new pictures up and online for all the world to see.
Now, I’m not that big of a fan of the book, but I must admit that what I’ve seen of Davinci Code so far has impressed me and I’m actually quite looking forward to seeing this puppy. What? You still don’t really know what The Davinci Code is about? Well here’s a little synopsis:
Whilst in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) 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.
You can see much larger versions of the pictures thanks to our good friends over at Dark Horizons by going here.
Wasn’t this a similar storyline on Alias with Rambaldi?
May 19!!!
You know it was only a matter of time before someone starts complaining about this movie. I’m guessing I will be the first to do so on the movie blog. Now granted Christians are not afraid of using the big screen as a way to share their view point as of late. So it may be questionable that I would complain about the release of this movie. Now for some disclaimers;
*I am a big fan of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks
*I am a Christian that takes faith fairly seriously
*I am not a “right wing conservative”
*I also think as a Person faith I am absolutely in my rights to try to influence the world around me.
*That being said I never have the right to force my belief system on anyone else.
*I don’t think faith should ever turn into a political party but I acknowledge it’s sometimes hard not to when a group of people are liked mined on common issues.
Okay that list could go on and on and on. Really though most you guys reading this don’t care and some of you reading this already don’t like me and or think you know who I am purely on the fact that I said I am a Christian. That’s sad, that’s like me thinking I know who you are based on the fact that you are not Christian or to take it a step further may be a democrat or gay or any other group of people that are commonly associated as being in conflict with Christian America. Oh and I am not saying a Christian can’t be democratic or attracted to people of the same sex.
Now I said all that so I you may have a better understanding of where I am coming from in my view on this post. I personally am really not looking forward to this film at all even though it looks great. The Da Vinci Code is a story that completely undermines our faith and does so in a manor that misrepresent the past and takes a lot of truth and mixes it in with a lot of lies. For example Jesus was married and had kids. Thier is no credible evidence that happened and to state it as fact goes against probably all credible historic writings. Now does Ron Howard, Tom Hanks and Dan Brown have a vendetta against Jesus or Christianity? I don’t think so. What I don’t like is how they are using “TRUTH” in their marketing. That is just going to muddy up the water of the “REAL TRUTH” or at least how I see it. Here is an example a good friend of mine who is a 12 grade English teacher wrote about the The Da Vinci Code and said this:
Yesterday in my AP English class, I had a student, a bright girl who is a star on the basketball team, who said something that bothered me. I was talking about the purpose of literature, and how it’s never written so that students can later study it. It’s written because the author has something burning in his or her heart that needs to be told. A story. A theme. An idea. Authors want to say something about their world. And that’s why they write. And literature works best when we come away feeling as though we’ve learned something about our world. To which this girl said, “That’s the way I felt when I read The DaVinci Code.”
Now I am not an intellectual and could not make an intellectuals argument against this book/movie but my friend Missy Van Meter who just turned 21 and is a student in collage said this about the film:
During the previous semester, a class I took spent a couple days discussing Da Vinci Code (DVC) by Dan Brown. A group of students was responsible for researching and responding to the book, and after their presentation to the class, our prof gave us his scholarly input. Here’s a collaboration of all that info I took in.
Brown makes the following statements or assumptions in DVC:
-The Bible is a product of man, not God, and has evolved through translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book. (p231)
-More than 80 gospels were considered for the NT, but only a few were chosen for inclusion (p231)
-Constantine chose Christianity for political reasons, wanting to back the winning horse to unify Rome. (p232)
-Constantine initiated Council of Nicea, at which the divinity of Jesus was proposed, debated, and voted on. Jesus’ divine status was established by “a relatively close vote.” (p233)
-Constantine enforced the inclusion of the gospels that made Christ godlike, doing away with those that spoke of his human traits and deeming heretic anyone who chose the forbidden gospels. (p234)
-The Roman Catholic church has tried to suppress the release of Dead Sea Scrolls & Coptic Scrolls at Nag Hammadi, which confirm “that the modern Bible was… edited by men who possessed a political agenda – to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base.” (p234)
-Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene (p245) and intended to build his church upon her rather than Peter (p248). And “the greatest cover-up in human history” is that Jesus had a child through Mary, establishing a royal bloodline (249).
-The Crusades were partly about destroying evidence of Jesus’ marriage (254).
-This secret has been known and secretly told down through history in the works of Da Vinci, Mozart, Victor Hugo, Masonic symbolism, and Walt Disney (261-2).
To address these assumptions, let me first clarify that the gospels Brown refers to are those we call today “Gnostic Gospels.”
Problems with Brown’s understanding of the canon:
-There is no evidence of Gnosticism in the 1st century… as early as it would need to exist to support these claims.
-There’s no evidence of or reference to non-canonical gospels in the 1st century.
-NT books are quoted, referred to, written about, and preached on by church fathers as scriptural.
-No Gnostic writings are ever mentioned as authoritative by any church fathers.
-the Gnostic gospels do not present a “divine feminine” as Brown argues.
-The canonical gospels are consistent with the Hebrew Bible with hundreds of quotations and allusions.
-The Gnostic writings are so incongruous with the Hebrew Bible that they were rejected altogether.
-The canon was not established through a “vote” at Nicea, and Constantine did not weild the ecclesiastical authority Brown claims.
Those are issues with the canon itself. Essentially, to quote the conclusion of my prof, “For Brown’s thesis to work, some small, conspiratorial group would have had to remove dozens of canonical books from each of the manuscript copying centers, plus all the copies that had already been disseminated for the previous three centuries (including the other language groups that would have been translated), plus silence everyone who knew of their existence, eliminate every reference to them from the early [church fathers], and then keep this secret from the public, despite the best efforts of a core group of believers who wanted others to know their “Gnostic” truth, up until the manuscript discoveries at Nag Hammadi in 1945 (the only surviving trace of the “real” Bible.) Putting it mildly, this is a tremendous leap of credulity.”
For DVC’s portrayal of Jesus to stand up, the claims regarding the canon and other information supporting that portrayal have to be accurate. And they simply are not.
*End of quote*
Will I boycott this film? No. I might not see it but I am not going to make it a mission to have as few people as possible watch. This movie is going to be hit and my wife and I might go see it. Also I am still and will be a big Hanks and Howard fan unless all their movies turn to crap. Which that’s not going to happen.
Oh and one final thing, I hope Christian America does not stand up in arms about this movie. Of all the things to get worked up about this ranks last. How about homelessness, our environment, kids getting shot at school and all the not so PC things that if I even thought of bringing up here would get me a ration hate mail.
By the way John and other staff thanks for having this venue for people to add to the conversation.