Let’s talk The da Vinci Code<\/i> for a moment.<\/p>\n
I’m really<\/i> tired of hearing about it. Movie, book, what have you. No, I haven’t read the book. No, I’m not particularly interested in seeing the film. But it’s been inescapable for the past few months–television specials on the secrets the story reveals, huge freaking displays at bookstores, lengthy articles in the newspaper about what the film means for one’s Christian faith. One local review of the film said that some Christians, perhaps many, will be offended by the film’s assertion that Jesus was married and fathered children, with his descendents ultimately founding the Merovingian line of kings.<\/p>\n
I’m not a Christian. Am I, too, allowed to be offended by The da Vinci Code<\/i>?<\/p>\n
I’m offended by the assertion that Jesus was an historical personage. There’s no evidence that he existed at all<\/i>. The only contemporary reference to Jesus outside the New Testament in the writings of Josephus have been demolished by historians as interpolations and forgeries added to the texts by later Christian copyists.<\/p>\n
I’m offended by the misreading of history in The da Vinci Code<\/i>–the Merovingians were a line of pagan<\/i> kings, not becoming Christian until Clovis converted for political reasons in the sixth century. One would think that if the Merovingians were descended from Jesus that they would have a very sound reason not<\/i> to be pagan.<\/p>\n
I’m offended by Tom Hanks’ continued march down the path of serious drama. Whatever happened to the Tom Hanks that made nutty comedies like The Money Pit<\/i>, The ‘burbs<\/i>, and Joe Versus the Volcano<\/i>?<\/p>\n
I will say this for The da Vinci Code<\/i>. It’s put me in the mood to reread Preacher<\/i>, the Garth Ennis\/Steve Dillon comic book. What’s the connection? Both The da Vinci Code<\/i> and Preacher<\/i> feature descendents of Jesus, though in Preacher<\/i>‘s case they’re barely-verbal, inbred hicks rathan than Audrey Tautou. Perhaps some good has come of The da Vinci Code<\/i> after all.<\/p>\n
So, there. An uninformed rant on a film I’ve not seen, a book I’ve not read. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s talk The da Vinci Code for a moment. I’m really tired of hearing about it. Movie, book, what have you. No, I haven’t read the book. No, I’m not particularly interested in seeing the film. But it’s been inescapable for the past few months–television specials on the secrets the story reveals, huge freaking displaysContinue reading “On an Uninformed Rant”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92],"tags":[4104,1089,4110,623,868],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-film","tag-atheism","tag-da-vinci-code","tag-history","tag-jesus","tag-rant","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}