Mark Steyn: The Da Vinci Code: bad writing for Biblical illiterates

Maxleans ^ | 05/10/06 | Mark Steyn

[Billthedrill]

LOL! I kin run a metaphor through a laundry mangle with the best of 'em.

What really concerns me is that success of this nature and on this topic will inevitably result in an avalanche of imitators who are writers not more, but less skillful than Brown. You have a fellow strikes a motherlode like this and you're going to have a whole lot of other folks looking for their own poke.

For example, I recently uncovered a genuine letter from Saint Paul on an archeological dig in Boise wherein he admits that his "better marry than burn" thing was just a cover for a line of brothels he was establishing along the caravan routes near Tarsus. The whole thing was hushed up, of course, but as soon as I can get to a word processor that can translate from Yiddish I'm gonna be rich too. You can say you knew me when.

[Tax-chick]

Chortle! I do get careless with the articles.

[Phsstpok]

I actually read parabolic as "he starts out here, curves out there and then curves back around to where he makes his point." I bought it as a pretty good description of Steyn's style.

However, having seen your post, I think it could be that "parable like" is what the original poster was going for?

[Tax-chick]

I hope you hit the big time! My 15-year-old controls the weather. She lets Karl Rove think he's doing it, but that's just a coverup.

[khnyny]

Two of my favorites:

[As Dr. Simon Gathercole of the University of Aberdeen told my old pal Dalya Alberge in the London Times, the alleged Gospel of Judas "contains a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord Of The Rings and her CD collection."]

and

[And that would probably sell, too, if you put in a bit about how she was the love child of John the Baptist, but the Knights Templar covered it up until the manuscript was discovered at an Elks Lodge.]

Gotta love it.

[Rummyfan]

It was like reading a transcript of a pretentious Scooby Doo episode.

My impression too!

[N. Theknow]

Do the church leaders think Christians are such idiots or is it another example of American Christiandom's fascination with pop culture?

Christians can indeed be ignorant of Christianity. Surprising how many Christians think "God helps those who help themselves" is in the Bible.

[ops33]

In "Angels and Demons" Brown describes cell phones as having dial tones and being able to get a signal from deep underground in buried chambers.

[Rakkasan1]

"...and I would have fooled them into thinking it's a true
story if it hadn't been for those darn kids!"

(Scooby Doo ending)

[bondserv]

However, having seen your post, I think it could be that "parable like" is what the original poster was going for?

That is the correct terminology. "parable like"

[Disambiguator]

Dan Brown sounds like he might be a nom de guerre for Dan "fake but accurate" Rather.

[prairiebreeze]

bump to read later

[Miss Marple]

It's already started. I picked up a paperback last fall which was based on the Thrid Secret of Fatima, with a lot of cloak and dagger stuff. As someone who was then in RCIA (and am now a practicing Catholic) imagine how thrilled I was when the Virgin's message at Fatima boiled down to 1. Married priests are ok, 2. Homosexuality is all part of love, and 3. Since Mary chose her own destiny, it is the right of women to choose their own destiny, including whether or not to carry a baby to term.

If I had known what that book was going to be about, I would never have bought it.

[D-fendr]

I don't think that any passage in the New Testament unambiguously describes Jesus as God incarnate.

The first part of the Gospel of John is quite unambiguous.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Have you read Eric Voegelin's "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism"? He makes some interesting, though controversial, comparisons between Gnosticism and modern secular mass movements."

No, I haven't, but it sounds interesting. I might check it out.

[Albion Wilde]

Parabolic means that it is governed by a quadratic equation.

parabolic

adj 1: resembling or expressed by parables [syn: parabolical]
2: having the form of a parabola [syn: parabolical]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

[bondserv]

Thanks; I think.

Backpedaling can be embarrassing, especially when one is originally correct. ;-)

[Steve_Seattle]

"The first part of the Gospel of John is quite unambiguous."

In the common translation it seems to be unambiguous because of the use of capital letters (not warranted in the the original) and other translation issues, but I have read scholarly discussions of this passage which cast serious doubt on the accepted orthodox meaning. And there are other passages in John (I don't have a Bible with me, so can't quote them), that seem to make a clear distinction between Jesus and God.

But apart from haggling over these specific passages, there is the larger question of whether the Gospel of John is a reliable witness to the beliefs of Jesus and the first apostles. Many scholars claim that it isn't. I concede that there are passages in John and Paul that seem to support the divinity of Jesus, but there are perhaps more passages which contradict this idea, e.g., "Why do you call me good? Only the One (Father) is good." So I interpret the mostly-ambiguous pro-divinity passages in light of the passages that seem to contradict this.

[bt_dooftlook]

I went to boarding school with him - where his father also taught. Pretty certain he is protestant...

[Sabatier]

I also don't think the feminists understand how gnostic disgust with the physical life invariably hurts women, anymore than they comprehend the beliefs of Islam and what they mean to women.