DaVinci Don’t Live Here No Mo’

"Is Shaniqua there?"
Shaniqua don't live here no mo'.  
Little T

Instead of Shaniqua moving away, it should be DaVinci that packed up and moved his digs to places unknown. We need another 300 year breather from Leonardo. I notice that Catholics in Mumbai are protesting against the film. There is something about using religion for entertainment that makes me think of Broadway Danny Rose being turned to the dark side.
I never read the novel, but I did hear about its story. It seems to be a compendium of theories and storylines and plots I have come across over the years. Mary Magdalene was very close to Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis. ( The novel, that is. Under no circumstances let your eyes be afflicted by the film version. It is hard to find a film worse and more pretentious.)
I read that book in the 60’s. The Knights Templar are old hat. Everything in that book is old, old and hoary. Mr. Brown’s genius lay in putting it all together into a good read. I should look into doing something similar: a book about commonplace things (to me) which no one in America has paid any attention to (everyone else, apparently).

I have not heard whether there is a connection in The DaVinci Code between the Templars and the Ismailis. I could write about that at the risk of a Rushdie fatwa. For example, I am sure I have heard somewhere some sort of rumor or scuttlebutt - probably in the Café des Esseintes – that THE bloodline of Jesus was actually passed along by James, his brother! And so on. However, James was probably strict and orthodox, so he would not have been in flagrante cum meretrice, so to speak. He and his wife were faithful, no doubt. So there would be no chance for the taint of scandal with James.


What I do not quite comprehend is why we are so accepting of scandal with Jesus? Is it because he himself said his message was aimed at sinners, because the non-sinning portion of the population (according to polls, a whopping 92% of the populace) had no need of his message?
Now mark this closely: The greatest publishing phenomena of recent years treat our religion as if it were a street mime: The DaVinci Code and the Left Behind series. What fault do I find in Left Behind? The concept of Rapture is not scriptural to my mind. In Matthew 13:30, “ First collect the weeds and bundle them up to burn, then gather the wheat into my barn.”
Notice we do not first gather up the wheat, and then let the weeds wage a series of herbal wars with each other. No, simple old Day of Judgement. No innovative twists of theology. No new dispensational kinks and turns. Even though we may need to explicate a parable, we don't have to straighten the parables out.

Explaining a parable does not include saying, "This isn't what Jesus really meant to say." I like my religion simple, for my simple mind. I find that a religion that requires charts, graphs, and audio-visual aids to explicate the change of God’s covenants over time to be a bit like walking into a wall. It ignores the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, can’t you visualize Simon Peter (the go-to guy) yelling at James(the backpack guy) to get those charts, graphs, overhead transparencies, and display boards up the mountain before the sermon ends? If you emphasize the goal: salvation, but neglect the means to attain it: the Beatitudes, then I wouldn’t bet a nickel on the good outcome of that particular enterprise.