Call me a reactionary, authoritarian, conservative evangelical ostrich if you like (what a daft picture that conjures up - all feathery and black and white and completely un-fundamentalist!), but I am reading through the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. My first reaction was that it was a dumbed down Foucault's Pendulum. Now I am two thirds of the way through the book I realise what an insult that is to Eco's masterpiece. I mean, doesn't it annoy you when you can second guess the plot chapters inb advance. Brown does not go in for Dostoyevskian descriptions (thank God!) so when you get a bit more detail than you expect you are immediately made aware that that detail is going to feature in the novel some time up ahead. Look at the random mention of lorries queuing at lights below the toilet window...low and behold a couple of chapters later, they throw the GPS tracking device (or is it Langdon...ooohhh narrative suspense!) out onto a lorry! Oh, what a shock.
And as for the historiographical side. I was bemused by the frontispiece which lists two facts (honest!) - one about the completion of Opus Dei's New York HQ and the other about the existence of a secret society called the Priory of Sion. I am not sure why both of these are listed as fact. Is it a bit of narratorial deciet - they aren't facts? Is it an attempt by the implied author to hint at some accuracy behind the book? Is it just meant to wind up suspicious gits like me?
If it is to suggest that the book is well researched and has some credibility, then the chapters where Brown explores the development of Christology up to Nicaea has a little bit more re-writing to be done. I have never read such drivel in all my life. If one of my students handed that in as a level 1 assignment it would get a straight fail. I don't mind people suggesting Mary was married to Jesus. I don't mind the whole Schussler-Fiorenza female prophets idea, but what Brown expounds is a travesty...and to suggest that the Dead Sea Scrolls are Christian (even Gnostic Christian) texts is an insult of immense proportions to Second Temple Judaism. And if he thinks Jesus was venerated as a mortal prophet up to Constantine and only then turned into a divine figure...hasn't this guy read any theology - not even Unity and Diversity, not even Christology in the Making, how about Larry Hurtado's One Lord? I agree that a lot of what Langdon argues is actually up for grabs - but he so belittles the argument, trivialises the argument as to make it stupid. It actually cements the Catholic Church's reading as the most rational and undermines the academic credibility of hermetic/gnostic faiths. Eco would not have done that...Foucault's Pendulum does not do that.
I'm sorry for the rant. It really has got under my skin because I was told it was great...oh well. Perhaps the last third will help!
Pete
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