Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking

>How is this substanitally differnt from the view of antiquity presented by
>Robert >Graves, Maria Gimbutas, Carl Jung, or Joseph Campbell?   What it
>seems to that all of >this stems from is a misundertanding of the Romatic
>fantasy of a bucolic golden age >(in Keats, Goethe, etc. which served as
>an ideological basis for the criticism of the >enlightenment) confused
>with fact.   Bradley Skeen

The main difference from "Goddess" theory seems to be that "Goddess" theory
had the original I-E invaders wiping out the matriarchy, while the DVC has
Constantine doing it. (I am of course a firm defender of the view that
women were relatively well off, among the Romans at least, and that
Christianity represented a substantial step backwards for their material
lives especially, but the Hieros Gamos stuff that's been cited here from
DVC sounds utterly ludicrous.)

>The book, I understand, made great use of a book called "Holy Blood, Holy
>Grail," one >of a series out of which the BBC has made special programs.
>I have HBHG, though I >haven't picked it up for 10+ years.  It was a hoot.
>Very sincere.

DW

And I read it one sunny summer ca 1981; a hoot for sure, but quite useful
-- as DVC might be -- for introducing students to the concept of evaluating
evidence and weighing probabilities. As the Roman governor with the speech
defect once asked, "What is proof?" Whatever it is, it ain't what's in that
book, though the idea of Jean Cocteau as a descendant of Jesus and Mary
Maudlin is kind of cute. Michael Baigent, I think, is one of the authors; I
believe that he also has "found" the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia.

>Yes, it's fiction. But unfortunately it comes with an opening page headed,
>bluntly, FACT. As the NYTimes article today said:
>Unfortunately, the students I've talked to who read it (and the people I
>overheard discussing it in a restaurant recently) are VEHEMENTLY certain
>that Brown wouldn't have said these things were FACT if they weren't; that,
>therefore, while the characters may be fictional the overall premise--that
>Constantine overthrew an idyllic matriarchal paganism worshipping "The
>Goddess"--is true.  In other words, they're not taking it as an amusingly
>alternate-but-known-to-be-fantastic reality along the lines of, say, Harry
>Potter. They think it reflects genuine history.
EV

The presentation of "fiction" as "fact," or at least as apparent fact, has
a long classical history; DVC is just following in the tradition of Dictys
the Cretan (obviously I believe that the same is true of the Passio
Perpetuae, whose author writes of carrying out a clause in Perpetua's
will). And this brings us back to the "claps of civilization" thread, since
educational systems don't seem to be preparing students to deal with
distinguishing fact from conjecture -- a situation whose dangers in
politics especially are all too evident.


James L. P. Butrica
St. John's NL  A1C 5S7
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