The Da Vinci Code

I haven't read "for leisure" in a very long time.  Oh, I READ, but always handbooks or textbooks of late.  It's been SO LONG since I read a book just "for fun". 

One day last week at the building where I work there were boxes and boxes of beautiful books.  Book were very expensive growing up in Sri Lanka.  The fellow assured me "Help yourself!  I'm throwing these all out anyway!"  THROWING BOOKS AWAY????  I knelt down and started going through the boxes.  Mind you, the majority of the books were about nursing or mathematics (never my field!!).  But came across a book by Nicholas Sparks called "The Wedding" (knew our daughter would like that - she devours all books he's written).   Then came across one called "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown.  Had heard about this book (later made into a movie) and heard it was great, so - what the heck, for FREE, I decided to take it home.

I do notice that in USA books of "fiction" are not held in as high esteem as "non-fiction" - the trouble with that "prejudice" is that many, many works of fiction contain facts and if one "dismisses" them as "works of fiction" (ergo non-significant) one can miss out on some very interesting facts!  Don't you find it ABSURD that after all the authors who have passed before (Plato, Aristotle, Hugo, Dickens, Shakespeare) that somehow we MUST classify books as either "fiction" or "non-fiction" - so many fall in-between!!  How boring to classify books in only TWO sections.

Read "The Da Vinci Code" cover to cover (rather, DEVOURED it!).  Suddenly, I looked up each and every mention - the group "Opus Dei" exists in Europe and USA and there have been some contraversies about this group.  The group "Priory of Sion" also appears to exist.

Then there was the mention of Leonardo Da Vinci's painting "The Last Supper" which I studied in depth after reading this book - and YES the individual at Jesus' right side is most definitely a FEMALE (not one of the 12 male Apostles). 

So much of the book made common sense - in Christianity (specifically, the Catholic Church) - women are barred from being priests; in Islam it is same, in Orthodox Judaiam (although I'm happy to see that in Reformed Judaism women can become rabbis).....women are barred from most participations.  Hinduism is different - it sees God as both male and female (the yin, the yang that makes up life as we know it....one cannot have male without female).

Some of the book replicated real life - the Catholic Church does NOT want females to gain power within and would go to any length to destroy a belief that Jesus was possibly married and that his wife (Mary Magdalene, whom the "Church" has conveniently called a "prostitute" to belittle her) was possibly pregnant with his child when "The Last Supper" occurred.  I cannot truly say, as an outsider looking in.  But I will say that the book made a lot of sense.  

Anyway - it was and is a most interesting theory, part of which (at least the "Opus Dei" organization) is NON-FICTION.   Shop Amazon Home