Friday, April 21, 2006
Hi guys... As u all know, the Da vinci Code Movie is going to be screened soon... If I'm not wrong, it will be screened fron 19th of May... Well, here are some stuff i took from the RBC website... u can go dere to check it out...
The Storyline:
While in Paris on business, a Harvard professor named Robert Langdon receives an urgent call. The curator of the Louvre art museum has been found murdered. The police are baffled by an encoded message left by the dead man and written with his own blood. Langdon follows the trail of this mystery, which leads to clues left in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. He joins forces with cryptologist Sophie Neveu, the curator's granddaughter, and together they discover that the dead curator was part of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, whose members included Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Behind the scenes, a Catholic lay organization called Opus Dei is plotting to prevent the discovery of an ancient secret about the Holy Grail, kept hidden by the Priory of Sion for centuries. If discovered, the secret would shake the foundations of the church and the faith it has proclaimed for millennia.
Well, from the storyline u can't really tell wad is in it yea... But this are some of the author Dan Brown's claims...
1. Holy Grail
According to The Da Vinci Code, the legendary Holy Grail is not the chalice used at the Last Supper of Christ. Instead, Brown uses his fictional "experts" to suggest that the real Holy Grail is a person, Mary Magdalene, who carried the bloodline of Jesus Christ by having His child.
The book also treats as fact the existence of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, which for centuries has kept the secret of Jesus' relationship to Mary. Mary Magdalene, according to this bestselling novel, represents the feminine aspect of God (the "divine feminine")—loved by Jesus but denied by the church for hundreds of years. The Knights Templar are also included as protectors of the secret but were all but wiped out by the church.
The Holy Grail and the Priory of Sion are only two of the many "facts" that need to be subjected to a historical reality check.
The Holy Grail is a medieval legend about the cup of the Last Supper. The first appearance of the term Holy Grail was in 1170 in Perceval, a romantic writing about the legend of King Arthur and his kingdom of Camelot. When Brown suggests that the Holy Grail is not a cup but actually Mary Magdalene who carried on Jesus' bloodline, he alters an existing legend about the historical "cup of Christ" and uses it to advance fictional claims about Jesus and Mary.
The Priory of Sion also has a basis in fact, but not in the sense that Brown portrays it. The title has been used three different times. It was first a monastic order founded in Jerusalem in 1100 that was absorbed into the Jesuits in 1617.
The second and third versions of the Priory of Sion were each under the leadership of Pierre Plantard (1920-2000), an anti-Semitic Frenchman who went to jail in 1953 for fraud. In 1954, Plantard formed a group called the Priory of Sion to help those in need of low-cost housing. The group dissolved in 1957. Then in the 1960s and 70s, he created a series of forged documents to "prove" the existence of a bloodline descending from Jesus and Mary through the kings of France to himself (claiming to be the rightful heir to the throne). He and his associates called themselves the Priory of Sion and deposited these documents in libraries all over France, including the National Library.
In 1993, however, Plantard admitted under oath to a French judge that he had fabricated all the documents relating to the Priory of Sion. The judge issued him a severe warning and dismissed him as a harmless crank (www.priory-of-sion.com).
The Knights Templar are based in history but, once again, not as portrayed in The Da Vinci Code. They were founded in 1118 as a military religious order, but they did not become wealthy, as alleged in the novel, by discovering the secret of the Holy Grail. And there is no evidence that they were annihilated for having knowledge of it.
The significance of the Priory of Sion is bolstered in the plotline of The Da Vinci Code by claiming a little-known connection with such geniuses as Leonardo Da Vinci and Isaac Newton. Once again, however, Brown bases these assertions on one of Plantard's forged documents called Les Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau ("The Secret Records Of Henri Lobineau"). Even though a French judge got Plantard to admit his hoax, Dan Brown uses these "secret records" as if they were legitimate.
These facts are important to readers of The Da Vinci Code. If there is no credible evidence that Leonardo Da Vinci and Isaac Newton were secretly involved in the Priory of Sion, and if there is only fraudulent evidence that the Priory of Sion was formed to keep "the secret of Mary Magdalene," other factual claims of The Da Vinci Code also need to be questioned.
2. Goddess Worship
Goddess worship was a form of fertility religion practiced widely among ancient people. In the Mediterranean area alone, the "goddess" was represented by Astarte, Isis, Ishtar, Anat, Kybele, Demeter, Aphrodite, and many other local deities. We know more about later forms of goddess worship that existed in places about which there are historical records and where there are significant archeological remains.
Fertility religions were based on the passing of the seasons—alternating times of harvest and plenty, scarcity and hardship. Fertility was personified by a goddess, and her consort—often a young god—went through an annual cycle of death and rebirth. Worshipers of the goddess practiced a kind of "magic" that usually relied on sexual ritual and human sacrifice to ensure the continuing favor and fertility of the goddess and her consort (Leviticus 20:2 ; Deuteronomy 18:10 ; 2 Kings 21:6 ; Psalms 106:38 ; Jeremiah 7:31 ; Ezekiel 23:37 , etc.). The Old Testament and a broad range of other sources make it clear that such worship involved the use of both male and female "sacred prostitutes" ( Deuteronomy 23:18 ) and involved ecstatic frenzy, sometimes including self-laceration and self-emasculation ( 1 Kings 18:28 ). (See Why did ancient pagans practice blood sacrifices?; How can the Judeo-Christian tradition be defended, given its past intolerance of other religions? )
Well, dere are many other claims that Dan Brown wrote in his book... Do not be tricked becos the way he writes are convincing... I advice u to read more on the facts rather than in the fiction... The website is http://www.rbc.org/davinci/index.php
Well, I hope u all will pray for those who plan to watch the movie... This has enabled christians to talk about the truth and we can use it wisely to share Jesus Christ to our friends and family...
Darren =)
