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Posted on 05/08/2006 5:08:09 PM PDT by wagglebee
With less than three weeks before the May 19 release of the Sony Pictures version of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, worries continue to mount among Christians about both the book’s and the movie’s impact. But should non-Christians be concerned, too?
Absolutely. Jews in particular need to be aware of the gift mega-selling Dan Brown has given, in all innocence, to anti-Semites.
As everyone knows by now, Brown uses a gripping suspense story set in the present to inform us that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that he has descendants living in Europe today. Furthermore, the members of this surviving Jesus family have been protected for centuries by an altruistic secret organization, the Priory of Sion, which is locked in combat with a sinister, violent Catholic group, Opus Dei. That latter seeks to keep the secret of Jesus’ paternity from getting out. Behind Opus Dei stands the Catholic Church. For millennia, the church has perpetrated what the film calls “the biggest cover up in human history.”
Opus Dei, the real-life Catholic lay order, asked Sony to place a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie admitting that the story is fictional—a request the studio has so far refused. Brown himself states at the outset of the novel that his tale is grounded in “fact”: “The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization,” and so on.
Scholars have done a solid job of pointing out the fictions that interweave Brown’s “facts.” Notably, the “Priory of Sion” is “real” only in the sense that it really is the modern invention of Pierre Plantard, a peculiar Frenchman with royalist and anti-Semitic views. It dates to the year 1956, not 1099. Plantard’s hoax merely took the name of a medieval monastic order that had ceased to exist by the 14th century and which had nothing to do with legends about Jesus’ fathering children.
You may wonder if Brown’s readers find his tale convincing, not as fiction but as truth. Seemingly they do. A Barna Group poll found that 53 percent of the book’s readers said The Da Vinci Code aided their “personal spiritual growth and understanding.”
But why should a non-Christian care?
Consider that the alleged conspiracy underlying the “biggest cover up in human history” bears a remarkable resemblance to another phony conspiracy, the famous hoax called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Apparently authored by Russian monarchist and anti-Semite Mathieu Golovinski in 1898, the Protocols tells of a secret society of Jewish elders that work to keep gentiles ignorant of a plot to rule the world through “Darwinism, Marxism, and Nietzscheism.”
In both conspiracy theories, an ancient world religion turns out to be a massive fraud perpetrated to gain or maintain power. In Dan Brown’s version, the “Priory of Sion” (“Sion” simply means “Zion” in French) is the good guys. They’ve been waiting for the right moment to reveal the secret about Jesus having children and to introduce the world to the worship of the “Goddess,” a.k.a. Mary Magdalene.
Meanwhile the Catholic Church plots to suppress forever the truth about the “sacred feminine.” Opus Dei is willing to go to any lengths, including murder, to keep the male church hierarchy in power.
Pierre Plantard (1920-2000), the French monarchist and anti-Semite who gave us the “Priory of Sion,” spent much of his life inventing minuscule esoteric organizations intended to “purify” France of the evil influences of modernity—and of Judaism. In 1940 he wrote of the “terrible Masonic and Jewish conspiracy” that threatened France.
The Priory of Sion was one group he started. The point of this occult order was to advance Plantard’s claim to be the surviving heir of the ancient Merovingian line of French kings, whose “holy blood” was guarded by the Priory. The idea that the Merovingians were the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene was added on later.
Besides highlighting the word “Zion” or “Sion,” the two conspiracy theories share an understanding of how to deal with ideas you disagree with. Rather than taking traditional Christian beliefs at face value and arguing with them (as I do in my current book by the way), Dan Brown portrays the religion itself as resting upon a conscious deception. That excuses him from having to make arguments at all.
Anti-Semites do the same thing. Rather than coming out honestly against Darwinism or Marxism or modernity in general, they concoct a story about Judaism as a lie and a conspiracy. The Protocols remains a global phenomenon of staggering popularity, especially in the Arab world.
I emphasize that Dan Brown never intended to foment bigotry. Yet to the cause of conspiracy theorizing, he has done a wonderful favor, training his readers in the habits of paranoia and gullibility. For people committed to finding the truth through investigation and argumentation, that’s depressing.
As for Jews, we haven’t fared well when the culture we live in turns to entertaining fantasies and delusions at the expense of an unfashionable religion. The success of Brown’s book, now transformed into a movie blockbuster, is bad news.
— David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author most recently of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.
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Exactly. Most of these despicable plots are somehow connected to the hatred of the Jewish people, as well as Christianity. The media has been on a roll lately to destroy Christians and Jews while promoting the "fact" that Islam is a religion of Peace!!!!
And what most people fail to recognize is that Opus Dei was founded in the early 20th century, so it's rather ludicrous to suggest that they have been involved in murderous conspiracy for nearly two thousand years.
Fine with me -- it means there will be a showdown between the real biblical scholars and the uncredentialed phonies the media give automatic credibility.
On the one hand, they're screaming that it's anti-religious and then quote a poll that says: "poll found that 53 percent of the book’s readers said The Da Vinci Code aided their “personal spiritual growth and understanding.”
And your point is what -- that the people who love vague spiritualism that makes no real demands of them and generally tells them what they want to hear have more credibility than people who take religion seriously?
I suspect it's the old 'ox gored' thing. Added to the very real, documented facts of the cover-ups, purges, book burnings, re-writings, additions, subtractions, and 100's of thousands slaughtered in the name of.... /i>
...'communism'? (except make it millions slaughtered)
...and the more recent discoveries unearthed added to the accessibility of research and information to any and all = and there are a lot of long kept secrets and deceptions coming to light. (Some crawling out from under rocks.)
Got bad news for you. NONE of these things -- not the "Gospel of Judas", of Thomas, or any of these other "gospels" written by Gnostics two, three and four centuries after Jesus died and which are not biographies but collections of "sayings" in which to the extent Jesus talks, he sounds more like a Scientologist than a Jew -- are anything new. Time magazine et al just recycle them every year counting on the general public to be so ignorant about them that they seem new every time.
It is making some folk very nervous and they are attacking. What they don't, however, seem to yet fathom is that the old tactics that worked so well for millennia, no longer do.
BTW, does this mean you're nervous and attacking the attackers because your ox was gored?
There's another analogy to all the screaming: "Methinks they doth protest to much." - which means people will, should, look at the finger pointer to see what they don't want looked at...
So stop screaming already so we can't see what you don't want looked at.
And the leftists don't seem to understand that Islam's view of Judaism and Christianity are "favorable" compared to how they feel about atheists.
I think Brown is most interested in symbols and codes and so on. That is the part of it that does it for him more than the rest of the story.
Opus Dei was very forward looking, very engaged in planning for the future of Spain (which is why they still run a big business school and university in Northern Spain), and Franco found them threatening.
particularly after its brush with Communism under Allende. Why do you think Chile is doing relatively well now?
Opus Dei was responsible for much of the education that produced a stable, modern political class.
And the practice of wearing a chain or belt, or using a discipline, is quite ancient in Christianity. It was simply to remind yourself of your sinfulness, and to train yourself not to seek comfort but to unite your sufferings with those of Christ and learn patience and humility. Hardly something I would consider sinister.
???"Pinochet was probably a good thing to happen to Chile," ???
but to Opus Dei - an organization actively operating as a clandestine shadow gov't - and oh, yes the do use the self-torture contraptions, etc etc ---but when Brown writes about - he's lying...
hoooh - kay
wagglebee answered:
"Prior to this book, very few non-Catholics had ever even HEARD of Opus Dei."
*********
but but but - Brown is lying! there is no such thing as Opus Dei - and if there is, it's not a 'secret' organization...
Shame on Brown - /s
No you can't. But I'm really not interested, and I doubt too many other people on this thread are interested, in another silly Jews For Jesus debate. I'm not sure why you feel the need to push your product at every possible venue.
Oh, please, it's not a "shadow government" of anything. Opus Dei operates openly; it runs schools and training programs for everything from economists and bureaucrats to hotel maids. The idea is that people will learn, grow in their faith and their knowledge of both their religion and their secular skill or area of knowledge, and will use this to create a better life for themselves, their families and their society. Hardly ominous.
And yes, Pinochet (like Franco, in Spain) left his country much better prepared to join the modern world than any Communist has ever done, however dear the Communists may be to your heart.
Brown is taking legitimate things that Opus Dei does and making them sound sick and twisted, which I assume is your point of view, too. In fact, it hardly sounds as if you needed Brown to convince you. But there are other people who know nothing about Opus Dei and very little about the Church, and their first contact with this is through Brown's manipulative lies. Brown's fantasy is being promoted everywhere, in the press and on the radio, as the truth. But it's not, and those of us who know that have the obligation to speak out.
I understand that that's his schtick, but I'm skeptical. I've read a number of his writings, and his beliefs, which range from attacking evolution to arguing that Christianity is a gift from God, seem frankly indistinguishable from those held of evangelical Christians. Again -- I'm not necessarily attacking him for that, but at best Klinghoffer departs rather significantly from mainstream Judaism.
IT'S PROPAGANDA .......... IT'S PROPAGANDA......
Am I correct that it s a NOVEL - as in, a work of FICTION? I don't know - I've never read it
If so, then why are everyone's panties in a wad over it?
I mean, we've got cardinals screaming for laws abridging the First Amendment in the name of protecting religion from criticism over this! (In other words, the cardinals saw that the mullahs could get away with it, and decided to give it a try themselves.)
It's just a stupid book. Get over it, I say.
No kidding!
Three words:
You neolibs don't like Christians fighting back, do you?
The book and movie are blasphemous.
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