Leonardo
da Vinci is commonly referred to as "Da Vinci" and
produced hundreds of works of Christian art for Catholic patrons
only to finance a flamboyant, anti-Christian lifestyle.
Even Da Vincis enormous
output of breathtaking Christian art only furthered the
artists reputation for spiritual hypocrisy. Accepting
hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions, Da Vinci painted
Christian themes not as an expression of his own beliefs but
rather as a commercial venture a means of funding a lavish
lifestyle. (p. 45)
Leonardo da Vinci did not have a
prodigious output and had only one uncompleted commission from a
pope. Moreover, art historians refer to him as
"Leonardo," not "Da Vinci" (the latter
appelation was not his last name, but meant he was the
illigitimate son of Ser Piero of Vinci).
See ," by Bruce Bocher,
Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Art
Institute of Chicago. The article originally appeared in the
New York Times (and is now on a New Age website!).
Merovingians were French kings
descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene and, among other things,
founded the French capital, Paris.
Merovingian was a term learned by
every student in France. "The Merovingians founded
Paris." (p. 257)
The first of the Franks was Clovis I, who ruled from 481 to 511.
was inhabited since the 3rd century B.C.
Its name was changed to Paris in the 4th century A.D., and Clovis
I made Paris his capital in 508. The city already existed at
the time the Merovingians came to power.
The
Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1950's.
"Fortunately for
historians," Teabing said, "some of the gospels that
Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead
Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran
in the Judean desert." (p. 234)
were first discovered in
1947.
Between 1949 and 1956, in what
became a race between the Bedouin and the archaeologists, ten
additional caves were found in the hills around Qumran, caves
that yielded several more scrolls, as well as thousands of
fragments of scrolls: the remnants of approximately 800
manuscripts dating from approximately 200 B.C.E. to 68 C.E.
The
Dead Sea Scrolls contain records of early Christians, including
Gnostic gospels excluded from the Bible.
"Teabing located a huge book
and pulled it toward him (sic) across the table. The
leather-bound edition was poster sized, like a huge atlas. The
cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. . . ."
"These are photocopies of
the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned
earlier," Teabing said. "The earliest Christian
records. Troublingly, they do not match up with the gospels in
the Bible." (p. 245-6)
are exclusively Jewish,
not Christian, in content. They contain no mention of Jesus,
no Gnostic gospels at all, and most pre-date his life.
The manuscripts of the Qumran
caves include early copies of biblical books in Hebrew and
Aramaic, hymns, prayers, Jewish writings known as pseudepigrapha
(because they are attributed to ancient biblical characters such
as Enoch or the patriarchs), and texts that seem to represent
the beliefs of a particular Jewish group that may have lived at
the site of Qumran.
Even a feels it necessary to distinguish the Nag Hammadi
Library, which contains gospels, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which
do not.
Jehovah,
as a name for God, is the union of male and female mythic names
and reflects God's true nature as both masculine and feminine.
Jehovah is the source for Yahweh, the Hebrew name of
God.
The Jewish tretragrammaton YHWH
the sacred name of God in fact derived from Jehovah, and
androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and
the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah. (p. 309)
Jehovah is a erroneous conflation
of two Hebrew references to God: using the vowels from Adonai
(Lord) with the consonants from Yahweh ("I AM":
God's declaration to Moses in Ex 3:14). Ancient
Hebrew was normally written without vowel marks, and since the
name for God (YHWH) was not spoken by pious Jews, they wrote the
vowels for its substitute (Adonai) above it. Scholars
in the 16th century, not knowing this system, rendered the name
for God "JeHoVaH" [using J for Y and V for W]. Below are
some etymologies confirming this.
(Online Etymology
Dictionary)
(Merriam-Webster
Online)
(MSN Encarta
Dictionary)
Walt
Disney was engaged in Mickey Mouse theology. This explains
why the Little Mermaid has red hair.
Langdon held up his Mickey Mouse
watch and told her that Walt Disney had made it his quiet
lifes work to pass on the Grail story to future generations.
(p. 261ff)
Brown really expects us to take his
"history" and musings about the nature of the divine
seriously?! I guess anything is possible "When You Wish
upon Ishtar"! At this point it is apparent that Brown
in The Da Vinci Code is just making stuff up and calling it
a secret truth hidden by the Catholic Church.
The Da Vinci Con: