Friday, May 12, 2006
The Opus Dei Weigh in on da Vinci
Pepe, here is what the conservatives are saying. Not all of the controversy has to do with distortions of the historical record, though they seem serious. Some of the problem is that Brown distorts what the Catholic Church is saying now. Also, perhaps I am splitting hairs, but no one would call the Catholic Church "fundamentalist". The whole fundamentalist movement was for a return to first principles away from the filtered, academic theology of the Church.
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10 comments:
Good find, JJ. For a more down-to-earth analysis, try this one, from a Dallas prof.
opus-dei ? Aren't these guys the 7th-day adventist types? They're a bunch a fucking taleban-wackos, jj. If I am not mistaken, they had a very strong following in Spain during franco - Carols Saura & Bunuel made a bunch of movies about these guys. Do you remember "El", "Ana y los lobos" ?
ai
>>Now the facts are these. First, almost all scholars question whether these extra biblical gospels contain anything of value in terms of the historical Jesus. However, even if they did, the texts noted do not actually affirm that Jesus was married. In fact, the famous kiss on the lips text actually has a blank in the original manuscript right at the point where it describes where Mary was kissed. So it could be the lips or the cheek, which would simply refer to a kiss of fellowship. The term companion is debated as to its force. Most interpret the term as pointing to a spiritual relationship Jesus had with Mary because of the mystic character of the gospel in which it appears. So it does not allude to actual marriage at all, but to a fellowship that Jesus and Mary shared as believers.
So if i read this correctly, they are stating that there is no evidence that JC was married to mary, but there is nothing to refute it either. if i am not mistaken the statement that they were married is therefore a hypothesis, not a lie, just like the contention that they weren't.
ai -
it is also misleading to use passages from the bible (a work of fiction) to refute another work of fiction: the arguments from the Corinthians have no logical merit.
if i am not mistaken the statement that they were married is therefore a hypothesis, not a lie, just like the contention that they weren't.
When making such wacko assertions (that fly in the face of two thousand years of tradition and accumulated knowledge), the burden is on the guy stating such "hypothesis". And yes, the whole asinine thing is based on a big lie, as admitted under oath in a French court of law, see here.
But perhaps this is also debatable, and all assertions are a priori equally valid: 2+2=4, or 5, or 6, or whatever, truth is infintely malleable, and all that Lacan-Derrida deconstructivist mierda. Is that it?
ai-
tradition is indeed the only argument against the hypothesis that jc was married to mm, and it is absolutely irrelevant: tradition has been used to argue that the earth was flat, or couldhave been used to support the idea that virgins should be thrown in volcanoes to appease the gods for all i know.
Besides, the church has never been particularly interested in revisiting any of its canons to begin with. A perfect mechanism to carry misconceptions across the ages.
Why don't you sit back and enjoy watching that edifice of dogmatic pomposity squirm under iconoclastic
rhetoric ?
That the Earth is not flat was a hypothesis that could be verified empirically. Once that was convincingly done, the Church of course accepted it -- no big deal (well, there was a little nastiness along the way with Giordano Bruno, but hey, s__t happens, as we all know.)
On the other hand, the hypothesis you keep bringing up has absolutely no basis whatsoever -- in fact, it largely rests on a crude fake by a French charlatan, as I mentioned in another post (such plain facts do not seem to elicit a response, it's always easier to blow smoke, heh?) If anyone could bring the slightest piece of evidence that would challenge the orthodoxy in any meaningful way, I'll consider it. Until then, why bother?
Pepe: yes, I looked for the most conservative detractors of the da Vinci code. I don't think their objections are too unreasonable. The choice was deliberate.
also, Pepe, your objections wouldn't make it into a historical discussion outside of Oprah! Who kissed whom? Gimme a break! Who built a thousand churches? That's a historical question, not the shit about "waling on h20".
Waling on h2o study.
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