I have trouble with Hanks as the Robert Langdon figure; he seems much too much Forrest Gump to me whenever I see his soft puffy face. Why not someone suave like Pierce Brosnan? And Audrey Tautou as Sophie? - she's charming but way too much of a gamine for the role. She's supposed to be tough and worldly - easily the equal of Langdon's somewhat weak character. The role needs a stronger actor, in my opinion.

Good & measured commentary, and great point in the final paragraph to wrap it all up with. I couldn't agree more.

Browns 'Da Vinci Code' along with his others make for excellent and spell binding reading. But clear to me is the fact that they are novels, with some historical themes.

The Da Vinci Code does conjure pause, indeed, to even rush to maps, other historical references to seek information.

Whether the film version does this is another question. On the other hand likely good entertainment controversay aside.

Interesting take from the NYTimes, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/weekinreview/21goodstein.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Thanks for the link - good read.

There's something encouraging in the relative mildness of the reaction. Nobody's put a Fatwah on Ron Howard or Tom Hanks, and even Opus Dei seems to be lapping up the publicity & exploiting the the sudden public interest in order to make themselves understood.

Imagine if somebody made a movie about Muhammed really being a ...well ... take your pick. Who needs a fatwah anyway.

Dolphin:

Wait a minute! Aren't "significant" portions of the Bible taken from 4th century scribblings..........? In addition, when those who chose the tracts to be included in the Bible did so, what criteria did they use? Faith in the veracity of long-dead authors?

Truth is, the very existence of a man we call "Christ" cannot be authenticated outside of the realm of faith. Most of the references are based on heresay, long after the original authors either fled or died.....

However, there is no denying that the Roman Catholic Church and it's spinoffs, have been some of the more successful business ventures the world has seen.

No, most of the canonical texts originate from the 1st century (i.e. written by contemporaries of Jesus), although some of the accounts were written a few decades after his death. The same is true of the so-called "Gnostic Gospels" of those followers who didn't make it into the canonical anthology we now know as the New Testament.

Jesus' existence is referred to in other contemporary (and secular) sources. For example, the Roman historian Tacitus makes direct reference to him and the crucifixion. The historian Josephus also refers to to Jesus. Whoever Jesus may have been, we know that he was quite a phenomenon when he lived.

The really fascinating debate isn't whether Jesus existed or didn't (he did exist), but rather the dynamic use that was made of the story itself. How and why some versions and viewpoints lent themselves to the construction of a power-base and how others went to the margins (never quite disappearing) only to resurface in popular culture two millennia later.

nightbloom
The point is, did he rise from the dead?

Believing that is no less difficult than accepting Jos. Smith's golden tablets or whatever it is L Ron Hubbard and Tom Cruise believe in. But that's the crux of the matter. In my opinion.

...or no less difficult than accepting the liberal-Left mirage that humans can be perfected and "saved" by an ideological re-ordering of all society aimed at establishing the ultimate System and bringing about "the end of history" (as Marx articulated.....and subsequently reinvented by that recanting neo-conservative twit, Fukuyama). This secular "Salvation Narrative" goes right back to the roots of liberalism, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself ("Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains").

The Resurrection Narrative will mean different things to different people, depending on their needs. Most lay Catholics have always understood this, as do a variety of other service providers who make use of its potent imagery, for example the 12-step programs. Faiths have to be open to different gradients of belief, providing only that the core remains intact and true to the tradition's essential nature. Fundamentalist literalism is a cyclical phenemenon, the Gnostics being its first and earliest victims. We've seen Medieval, Reformation, and Modern varieties of the same phenomenon. Fundamentalist literalism is a human impulse that even has a secular wing among the ideological purists of the Left....

What I've demonstrated on other threads, Gwest, is that the ideological narrative of the secular liberal-Left is just as easily deconstructed and held up to ridicule as the latter seem to enjoy doing to the faith narrative of Christians. Secular liberal ideology is pure contingency, not rational truth, and falls apart when you shine a bright light on it. It ultimately can't deliver on its promise in the here-and-now any more than can literalist interpretations of scriptural prophecy. I'm afraid you've got nothing over the Christians, Gwest. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Western society has had some 2000 years to "re-arrange" history to fit more to it's liking. As they say, the winners write the history books. So, by the time a copy of a copy of a copy is made, white may well become black.
Here is a relatively simple example of fraud and deceit:
http://www.tiac.net/~cri_a/piltdown/piltdown.html
I would recommedn this reading:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765349647/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2a_3_txt/103-9093884-4947821?%5Fencoding=UTF8
for some insight as to how history can be (and is) manipulated.

RickW - What's interesting about the debate surrounding the Da Vinci Code (i.e. the place of the Gnostic Gospels and their alternative account) is that it has totally bypassed the 2000 years of historical "rearranging". We're dealing with a clash between original documents here - No creative re-writes.

You can't silence the dissenting voices....not even under tons of Egyptian sand. Every commercial bookstore is flooded with the Gnostic Gospels and analystical interpretations thereof, and now it's all over the internet too. Don't you see the irony?

Christian history just looped around. It did an end-run around entrenched interests that took root 2000 years ago, and picked up on a post-modern outlook on the faith that began two millennia ago, but which was way too far ahead of its time.

Now what both fundamentalist literalists and ideological nihilist secularists are both going to have difficulty swallowing is that, when it comes right down to it, all those texts are part of the same story and really don't actually change anything for the average believer or the garden variety agnostic.

sez nightbloom.

I thought you were going to give that stuff a rest.

The end of history is just Fukuyama's discredited update, for the neocon right wing, of Daniel Bell and Seymour Martin Lipsett's discredited 'end of ideology theory' from the 60s.

If any political faction believes in millenarianism these days, I don't think it's the left. As a matter of fact, I read a BBC story the other day about Bush’s last meeting with Abu Mazen and the Palestinians that left me pretty convinced the POTUS believes he’s been sent by God to save the world.

I also see someone is suing David Horowitz, by the way.

Coming from him, that’s pretty rich.

nightbloom
I see my New York Review of Books has another piece about the Gospel of Judas. Haven't had time to read it yet. I think it's probably on line, maybe for free, if you're interested.
Ta Da

nightbloom:

That about sums it up.

For me these last few decades, I was interested in finding a history that wasn't entangled in gods and miracles. I have great difficulty in wrapping my head around supernatural phenomena as everyday occurance.

Consequently, these "alternatives" show in part, that the world can be a secular place, and that miracles, while remaining miraculous, can be explained using the mundane rules we use to explain other things in this world.

some less-mild reaction to the film:
from the Ecumenical News International

Anto Akkara
New Delhi (ENI). Some Indian Christians are so incensed with the fictional blockbuster "The Da Vinci Code" they want the government to ban it and one Roman Catholic has offered a bounty of US$25 000 on the head of author Dan Brown, leaving other members of the faithful embarrassed by the reaction.

The Mumbai Catholic Council has threatened to stop the screening of the movie if the government fails to ban the recently released movie of the book. Another group called the Catholic Social Forum has said if the shows go ahead it will launch a death fast from 12 May.

Nicolas Almeida, a Catholic and former Mumbai municipal councillor, offered a reward of 1.1 million rupees ($25 000) for the head of author Brown, leading a Catholic journalist to compare Almeida to the Taliban.

Still, the autonomous Delhi Commission for Minorities joined Christian groups like the All India Christian Council calling for a ban on the movie.

The commission said the Da Vinci Code is "sheer blasphemy" and that it has "deeply upset Christian sentiments", in appealing on 10 May to the federal Censor Board to deny screening permission for the movie.

"In a country like ours where vicious propaganda is used against Christian minorities by Hindu bigots, the movie will be handy for them to tarnish our image," Arnold James, a Church of North India member and Christian representative in the Commission, told Ecumenical News International.

Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, said the fictional work "belittles what is at the heart of Christian faith and cherished in Christian life", in a statement objecting to the release of the movie.

"Every individual has a right to his religious beliefs and to enjoy the respect to them from the followers of other religions," said the bishops' conference in an 11 May statement.

Yeah, there's some scary people and scary places out there, Gwest. Believe it or not, books and movies get banned in Canada all the time, so it doesn't trouble me that a few literalists in India have sought this. You're always going to get that element. The only thing that's genuinely troubling is the alleged "bounty" - which the article clearly states has totally embarassed everyone else. I can assume the notion hasn't won widespread support...

All in all, the worldwide reaction to the phenemonon has demonstrated how - on the whole - modern Christians have become fairly adapted to the modern free-marketplace of ideas.

nightbloom
With the obvious exception of certain fundamentalist groups, (not a small factor either, in terms of their numbers) mainly in the United States, I'll agree with that description.

Those characters scare me every bit as much as the loony fringe of Islam.

I'm not the least bit concerned about the Apocalypse. I’m very concerned about those who think it's a relevant, not to say, good idea.

I just wish they’d look at the Jehovah’s Witnesses record of predicting the serial end of the world.

I think I follow your train of thought there, Alcibiades...

I think it's important to keep in mind that the clash of religious and secular values in the modern age is fundamentally as clash of belief systems. Secular humanists, particularly those motivated by ideology, are really pushing an alternative system of faith & belief which has no more grounding in objective reality than the most fantastic claims of fundamentalist apocalyptic Christianity. They're just a little more oblique about it, and often more educated (which, as as a fairly educated person, I can attest means very little at all on these types of questions).

The modern confrontation between organized religion and secularist fundamentalists is not a clash between rationality and irrationality, as it is often portrayed by secularists. It's a clash of competing belief systems. Neither actually has a corner on the "objective rationality" market.

Ultimately, each person must formulate their reality for themselves out of the conceptual tools around them, and whatever else they can patch together out of the flotsam of the Culture Wars. Developing a worldview we can each individually live with is a creative effort, now moreso than ever before. I question the motivations of those who self-consciously set out to destruct the belief-systems of others...which is why I often appear to be "sticking up" for moderate religious belief on these threads.

It is a real pleasure to read that review and most of the comments. Steve Burgess should be writing to NEW YOUR TIMES and getting good money for it, but I do not expect such a change from NYT, Their review of MAIN KAMPF by Hitler on 15th of October 1933, was very complementary; and recently in one year 1999 they mentioned Holocaust in 273 articles, but Africa 32 times. NightBloom is right about attempts of socialists to perfect humans. Their GULAGS were actually called "ispravitielniy lagier" CORRECTIONAL CAMP. I interviewed many survivers of them and they all remember long hours of indoctrination (brain washing) One example:
Jailer says:
Feudalism was there and is gone. Right?
Right answers the prisoner after 14 hours of hard labour.
Capitalism was here and is gone. Right?
RIGHT come the proper answer.
Now is thw time for socialism. Right?
AND THE SOCIALISM WILL GO TOO.
After that insolent comment prisoner recewives two kicks in a groin, one for each..
It is worth remebering that KGB, previously NKVD was the largest "employer" in the world. About 30 million "volunteers," all across Siberia to built great monuments to uncle Stalin. Most of them are in ruins now (monuments that is) prisoners are almost all dead — unperfected.

Great review, Steve! And Nightbloom, your comments are refreshing and thought provoking. As a Christian with a post-modernist bent, I believe the narrative surrounding Jesus is valuable and has profound applications to present social and cultural realities. If Brown et al. cause us to pause and think about that - then their efforts have some significant merit.