ypsi~dixit

If you're interested in reading a better version of the same story (Templars, occult intrigue, and the like), I would enthusiastically recommend "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. One of my favorites.

Mystery Man: One of my favorites, too. I was dazzled when I first read Foucault's Pendulum. Haven't read it in years--I should revisit it. Thanks for the reminder.

I liked it much better than Name of the Rose, I must say, which I found a bit...leaden. It's probably just me.

I don't think I even finished NOTR. And I certainly refuse to read that Da Vinci Code. I did skim a copy at my folks' house and saw that it is tripe. As I suspected.

I liked NOTR, as much for its rendering of the medieval mindset as anything else. I haven't read Foucault's Pendulum - I'll have to pick it up.

I've read DVC and a couple of others by Dan Brown. All of them are mindless nonsense, but real page-turners. Good for long airplane trips.

Tom: That's a good point...it is always interesting to read a work that gives one a different perspective. Foucault's Pendulum is mesmerizing and memorable. Though if I remember right, the computer in the book is an old-fashioned word processor...I was wondering, if I were to reread it, if that would make this 1990 (?) book seem dated.

One main objection the Church has with DVC, from the articles I've read (all written by Catholics) is that the work has many factual errors--"the Church burned 5 million witches" etc.

Historians, religious and non-religious alike, have blown all kinds of holes in the Da Vinci Code. The basic premise of the book is that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and had children. The religion Jesus founded reflected the duality of humanity - Jesus the masculine and Mary Magdelene the "sacred feminine" as the book calls it. After Jesus was executed, Mary Magelene and the children fled Palestine and eventually ended up in what is now the south of France. The Merovingian line of kings were descended from them, and there are direct descendants of Jesus living among us even today. The church covered all this up in order to perpetuate a patriarchal hierarchy.

Historians point out that, while Jesus and Mary Magdelene were historical figures, there is no evidence anywhere that they married or had children. There is no evidence whatever that Mary Magdelene wound up in the south of what is now France after Jesus's crucifixion. There is no evidence whatever that the Merovingian kings had any relationship to Mary Magdelene or Jesus.

There are a number of other historical problems with the book and a number of people have taken whacks at it. However, if you read the book as fiction - which is what it is, after all - it's pretty fun.

It was a page turner for me. It is only a story, a compelling one, the thought that Jesus may have married, had sex, and children!! That is pretty revolutionary alone and is enough to send the church running into court. It serve them right for all the years of dissing Mary Magdelene.