Ok this could be a big argument/discussion. If your religious then you may think this is aload of crap, which to be honest I think so too.

If De-vinci is/was right then religion to this day has been based on a lie.

Mind you De-vinci wasn't the most sane person to ever live!!

So what do you all think of this?

In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of Nicea, Brown claims that "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."

In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ."

The term used here—Lord, Kyrios—deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios.

The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord.

In addition, pre-Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church leaders, including Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church apologist, baptized in the name of the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—thereby acknowledging the equality of the one Lord's three distinct persons.

The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over Arius's teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation.

"Fax from Heaven"?
With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of Scripture's historic validity bears tremendous implications. Brown claims that Constantine commissioned and bankrolled a staff to manipulate existing texts and thereby divinize the human Christ.

Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's speculations fall flat. Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's composition and consolidation may appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.

Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult. Challenged by Marcion's threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments.

Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New Testament. During the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation from God about an impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide circulation and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but hadn't yet been collected in a single authoritative book. Montanus saw in this fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming authoritative status for his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and circulated a definitive list of apostolic writings that is today called the Muratorian Canon, after its modern discoverer. The Muratorian Canon bears striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books, Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from the canon.

By the time of Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only a few books that we accept today, chief among them Hebrews and Revelation, because their authorship remained in doubt. In fact, authorship was the most important consideration for those who worked to solidify the canon. Early church leaders considered letters and eyewitness accounts authoritative and binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple of an apostle. This way they could be assured of the documents' reliability. As pastors and preachers, they also observed which books did in fact build up the church—a good sign, they felt, that such books were inspired Scripture. The results speak for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to spread, flourish, and endure worldwide.

Though unoriginal in its allegations, The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away. They just reappear periodically in a different disguise. Brown's claims resemble those of Arius and his numerous heirs throughout history, who have contradicted the united testimony of the apostles and the early church they built. Those witnesses have always attested that Jesus Christ was and remains God himself. It didn't take an ancient council to make this true. And the pseudohistorical claims of a modern novel can't make it false.

brown is a smart man, hes mixes a few facts with some fiction and writes it in a way that seems plasible.
some is fake some is really
the books is good tho, i couldn't put it down

I think De-Vinci code is a load of rubbish myself.

Good read but not true.

If it was then it would of been solve way before now.

De-vinci was insane in th 1st place, do I need say more lol

just a little thie Da Vinci
and Leo Da Vinci was the real ead the book the da vinci code is well.. dubious

LDV was a brilliant man who was really ahead of his time. if they had read his papers on the human body our modicianal ideas would be way ahead. instead they were wasted as they were hidden and not uncovered for over 100 years, by which time "normal people" had discovered what he had found.
do you have any proof that LDV was insane? iv never heard of that before.
i heard he wrote his diary back to front so people couldn't read what he wrote!!!

There were claims to him being insane, not medically but just normal run of the mill.

He was a very intelligent man that invented alot of things that were advanced and he was very knowledgable.

da Vinci wrote very little about himself in his notebooks. Most of his scientific work was unknown until the 19th century when scholars finally figured out what was in the notebooks that he had written in mirror image, right to left, with various other devices which make them hard to decipher. His insights into much later developments in physics were remarkable. If he had published, he may well have shared with his contemporary Copernicus the distinction of being a major input to Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, and thus a source of the scientific revolution to follow.

He was so intense with his brain that common never really entered. Thats what people mean by insane.

But for him to claim that catholicism is based on a lie and that jesus's decents are walking this earth today, is not right.

Thats Jesus was married with children!

Many people will be against this book. But Brown has published alot of other books, which have been re-published as they did not do well the 1st tim round, that has to tell you something lol

If you look at LDV's painting of "John The Baptist" you will see a penis in the back ground.

Da Vinci wasn't there anymore than the rest of us. 2000 years is a damn long time and nobody does or will ever have the clear facts on what did or did not happen. I also think Brown makes a good read but I don't see what purpose it makes to throw a monkey wrench into a religion that's been so well established so long. Amending religion is fine and should be done whenever the greater good is the need, but to toss it on the trash heap serves nobody.

BTW, "kyrios" or "lord" is not the only Greek word applied to Jesus. "Christos" from which "Christ" comes means "the annointed one".

I watched Dan Browne's Da Vinci Code code last night on CH4.

Tony Robinson ripped apart that guys theory!

I mean the "Holy Grail" is said to be i 4 different places, then said to be not a cup but the blood line of Jesus and Mary magdeline's child. Which means that Jesus's decent's are on this earth today!

Tony Robinson did a good job at investigating this "Theory" and it was ripped apart. prved Dan Browne didn't do enough research into this!

I mean Knights Of Soin, that is proved to be a con. That french guy admitted it in the end!

So many people have been fooled or pulled in by this!

i think a lot of people are getting sucked in and are taking it waaaay to seriously, its a fiction book, he doesn't have to do research, hes free to make up what he wants

Originally Posted by Locke

i think a lot of people are getting sucked in and are taking it waaaay to seriously, its a fiction book, he doesn't have to do research, hes free to make up what he wants

I agree. Its a fiction guys and girl!
Tho he must be a good writer if so many of you think the book is mostly facts.

An amazing book, but as Anya said the theory was proved to be false by Tony Robinson here in the UK. Would be nice if it was true but it aint!