Why "The Da Vinci Code" doesn't stand...

Chanced upon this while surfing aimlessly after finishing my article today... interesting...

With compliments of Lisashea.com:

"OK, the reason most people end up at these pages in the first place is that they're reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and want to find out more about the history. That of course is why I began making these pages in the first place, because I personally wanted to look at the painting and find out more about what was going on. However, as intriguing as the story is, there are many giant holes where he could have done a better job at making the story believable, if he wanted us to buy into it.

First as the links below show, there's a problem involving Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion. There are plenty of REAL mysterious groups out there he could have used, but he chose to use 2 that are incredibly bland. Maybe he did that on purpose so he wouldn't get sued or stalked :)

There IS no documentation linking Mary to ANYONE. The Merovingians claimed that they came from Mary's bloodline - but they also claimed they came from Atlantis and from sea creatures at other times. The earliest known Merovingian king was back in the 400s - nothing at all is known or documented about his parentage.

The Louvre pyramid does NOT have 666 panes! It has 118 rectangles and 675 diamonds for a total of 793 panes. That's just fakery.

There are not 80 non-canonical gospels! Sure, we just discovered a few more gospels in the last century which is rather amazing after 2000 years. But most researchers agree on a total gospel count of about 35.

The Olympics were held to honor Zeus, not Aphrodite or Venus :)

The Council of Nicaea in 325 is a well documented council that was trying to find common ground on the teachings of "Is Jesus Divine" or "Is Jesus Human". Both were being taught as true. The council decided 297 to 3 to sign a document that Jesus was indeed divine. And in fact, this wasn't the main purpose of the council - the main purpose was to determine if Father and Son were "equal" or if one was "higher" than the other. In any case, this wasn't a "revelation" or a "close call" as the book states. It was simply them settling on which of the two very popular beliefs to standardize on.

Brown says that Mary was abandoned by worshippers after her death - but on the contrary, women and Mary were much sought after during the days of chivalry. Chivalric love was of the highest order, and many priests of the time complained about the HUGE attention Mary was getting - far more than Jesus in many areas. Sure, women were not equal to men. But they were hardly ignored.

Sophie uses the "Madonna of the Rocks" as a canvas shield in the story. Note that some people say the painting is actually a wood base - but the wood base one is the copy that is in London. The version in the Louvre is canvas. In any case, Brown says it's 5' tall when really it's 6.5' tall and Sophie could hardly have moved it, never mind wielded it like a shield! In addition, Brown claims that "nuns" at the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception gave details on the work - but that organization is male-only :) See Madonna of the Rocks.

The Last Supper is a tempera painting on plaster - it's not a fresco. A fresco is a specific style of painting where water-based pigments are painted on wet plaster so they meld.

Brown claims that 5 million women were burned at the stake by the church. I'm female and very much in support of women's rights, but even so, only maybe 50,000 men AND women were slain during those times - and most weren't burned.

Brown says that YHWH in the Bible stands for "Jehovah" which comes from Jah for male and Havah for female. Actually Jehovah is a RECENT word from the 1534 by Martin Luther as the "speakable" version of YHWH :) It's hard to just keep saying the four letters. In any case, YHWH was the original "tetragrammaton" used in Hebrew because the Hebrews felt you could not actually write the name of God down. You could only refer to it obliquely. YHWH was said to have been chosen because it was similar to "HYH" which means "to become". This was combined with "HWH' meaning "he is". Jehovah as a word came much later FROM this initial Hebrew word."

Also, check out this article by Darrell Bock. Hmm... Yummy... hehehe...

And this...The Da Vinci Code: Secret hidden truth?...

Still, I got to give Dan Brown credit for his brilliance in his ability to craft a story...