TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

From New York Times:

"Jesus, Mary and da Vinci," tonight's ABC News special; the show is a woolly and underthought treatment of the religious sophistry in "The Da Vinci Code," . . .

The ABC special . . . bares Leonardo's so-called secret: Mary Magdalene, far from being a prostitute, was the rightful wife of Jesus; Mary and Jesus had a child and heirs; and finally, the heirs, whose existence threatened church dogma, were protected by a clandestine priory that counted Leonardo among its members.

Its logic is of an especially enervating kind. . . both amusingly audacious and profoundly irritating. If you're not freshly familiar with the invariably eclectic materials under discussion, you can express only general skepticism, which makes you a sucker. . . .

The juxtaposition of ivory-tower erudition and antic amateurism creates odd effects. . .

From WorldNetDaily

Tonight's ABC News' special, "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," which will examine whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene, is based on popular work of fiction that many see as virulently anti-Christian. . . turning what has been called "a crackpot theory" into a news story. . . .

Da Vinci left clues about the relationship in his art, the author thinks.

Sony Pictures picked up the rights to the book in June and has since announced that Ron Howard will direct the big-screen adaptation.

Brown contends Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child; Magdalene was chosen by Jesus to lead an early, heavily feminist Christian church; Roman Emperor Constantine invented Jesus' divinity and created the New Testament; and Leonardo Da Vinci left codes in his artwork to preserve the truth (which happens to be the Holy Grail).

TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS: When New York Times and WorldNetDaily both attack, it's a good bet someone is on to something. The New York Times review is particularly amusing, as the special challenges not only her contained realityspace and religion but her fragile little notions of intellectual classes.

The special was interesting and brought out information never before seen on network television.

I haven't read the Brown book, but the special definitely focused on the "feminist" issue and in many ways tried to reduce the debate to that framework -- that the Church might have covered up Mary Magdalene's role because the Church was/is anti-woman. The issue was then tied back into the issue of a male celibate priesthood. There is much more than sexual politics at play here, however real that issue may be, and framing the question so narrowly does the issue a disservice.

There are other angles here regarding both the bloodline and celibate priesthood issues, however, angles that were not brought to light in the broadcast. The denial of a Jesus bloodline gives the legitimacy of power over Christendom to an apostolic succession of popes rather than hereditary succession of kings. The first centuries of the Roman Church had every reason to deny the existence of a Jesus bloodline. If the leaders of Christianity were hereditary, there is no role for the Church established by Constantine which bases its legitimacy on a string of persons chosen by their predecessors, supposedly dating back to Jesus' decision to name Peter as the head of the Church. That is what gave (gives?) the Pope the legitimacy to choose who would be king ina Christian country.

As for the celibate male priesthood issue, the Church needs its people to have undivided loyalties. A married priest must split his labor and capital and returns on same between his family and the Church. The Church has had no use for such divided loyalties. It will not rewrite its rules until it thinks the net gain in priests would override the lost benefits to married priests who would otherwise be fully married the the Church (aka the "holy bride of Christ").

But what of the possibility that the Jesus bloodline stories were wholly contrived by European kings looking to build their own legitimacy among the people, a legitimacy outside the papacy? That is a possibility, but the weirdness at Rennes-le-Chateau suggests there is something to the story of Jesus' bloodline landing in the south of France. The short story there is a 19th -century monk discovered a great secret there and was paid off millions of dollars by the Vatican to shut up. What did he discover? Perhaps just about everything theorized in the ABC special. Perhaps even more. What if he discovered it was not merely a pregnant Mary Magdalene who traveled to the south of Gaul after the crucifixion, but Mary and her husband Jesus, who survived the ordeal? (He didn't stay up very long, there are indications the nails were placed in the wrong place, and the Shroud of Turin has tested positive for the kinds of healing oils now covered up by the pharma cartel.)

| Posted at 12:15 | PERMA-LINK |

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