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The Awfulness of The Da Vinci Codehttp://www.americanheritage.com/entertainment/articles/web/20060519-movies-da-vinci-code-catholic-dan-brown-religion-tom-hanks.shtml http://tinyurl.com/zsuuc Posted Friday May 19, 2006 12:30 PM EDT In art as in life there is nothing so powerful as a bad idea whose time has come. Every decade or so a craze comes out of nowhere that inexplicably grabs hold of a portion of the public’s imagination, whips it into a frenzy, and then dissipates, leaving future generations wondering what the fuss was all about. The first such craze of the twenty-first century is, as you can’t have avoided hearing, a silly novel by a writer named Dan Brown called The Da...

'Da Vinci Code' Misses the Mark for Critics http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/film_cannes_da_vinci_code By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer Wed May 17, 8:58 AM ET "The Da Vinci Code" drew lukewarm praise, shrugs of indifference, some jeering laughter and a few derisive jabs Tuesday from arguably the world's toughest movie crowd: critics at the Cannes Film Festival. The year's most anticipated movie, "The Da Vinci Code" was a generally faithful adaptation of Dan Brown's monster best seller, spinning a murder thriller that stems from a cover-up of secrets about Christianity's roots. While readers worldwide devoured the novel, reaction from Cannes critics ranged from mild...

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...

Since it was published three years ago, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" has become one of the most popular novels of all time, with more than 30 million copies in print worldwide. With a major movie based on the book due out soon, the book seems assured of a place on the bestseller lists for a considerable time to come. What has attracted readers to "The Da Vinci Code" is its central theme, which Dan Brown claims is not fiction but fact — that a mysterious European society, known as the Priory of Sion, has for centuries guarded a...

    RENNES-LE-CHÂTEAU DEBUNKED   No treasure at Rennes-le-Château!   Excavations conducted beneath the Tour Magdala at Rennes-le-Château on 20 August 2003 in search of treasure yielded negative results – involving Professors Eisenman and Baratollo, who have both been working on this project since April 2001. The negative results should not surprise informed researchers who have known for decades that no "treasure" at Rennes-le-Château ever existed and is merely the fantasy of confidence tricksters and catchpenny authors. That an archaeological dig in the first place should have been carried out at Rennes-le-Château during recent years is in itself a statement...

  Background Information   I first came across the subject matter of Rennes-le-Château in 1979, after watching one of Henry Lincoln’s documentaries. It was also during the late 1970s that I developed an interest in researching Christian origins, which touched upon matters like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Texts and the Gnostics, the latter sect being similar to the mediaeval dualist sect the Cathars, featured on Lincoln’s documentary – which was the main reason behind my watching it. I had to confine myself entirely upon English material relating to the subject matter of Rennes-le-Château between 1979-1982, believing this...

The year’s surprise “it” girl is the star of a mega best seller, a hot topic on campuses and rumored to be the “special friend” of a famous and powerful man. Yet she’s still very much a woman of mystery. For close to 2,000 years, Christians have known her as Mary Magdalene, but she was probably named Miriam, and came from the fishing village of Magdala. Most people today grew up believing she was a harlot saved by Jesus. But the Bible never says that. Scholars working with ancient texts now believe she was one of Christ’s most devoted followers,...

<p>Dec. 8 issue — Pity poor Mary Magdalene. For nearly two millenniums she was loved and honored by Christians as the archetypal reformed sinner. Then, a half-century ago, Biblical scholars recognized that she was a victim of mistaken identity: the “real” Mary of Magdala was not a prostitute. In truth, she was so faithful a follower of Jesus that she was chosen to be the first of his disciples to behold the risen Christ (Jn 20:11-18). Now, at the hands of some feminist revisionists, Mary is undergoing yet another cultural face-lift.</p>