I sat down to watch the guy who is better known for playing the dense and daft Baldrick in the various Blackadder series, to see if he would enlighten me. Tony Robinson, a raving mad historian and trendy leftie devoted to the Pope (Can you be a Catholic and a socialist? Apparently so), went on search for evidence to debunk the Dan Brown novel about the Da Vinci Code.
To explain Da Vinci Codes in a single sentence, I have to explain a number of complex conspiracy theories surrounding the real truth around who Jesus Christ actually was and what happened after his pretend ‘death’. I can’t be arsed to go into the whole lot, but suffice to say there aren’t many academics, including those in the Christian church itself, who actually believe the doctored story that worshippers believe. The centre of the obsession is the search for the ‘Holy Grail’. Erm, you’re falling asleep, so more of that another time.
At this point it’s worth pointing to the word ‘novel’. ‘Novel’ usually means the story is not real. A bit like the ‘novels’ about the great detective Sherlock Holmes. This of course, doesn’t stop people wanting to believe in Sherlock Holmes or going on pilgrimages to places his adventures played out, or writing to the Abbey Bank that inhabits the address Sherlock Holmes never lived at because he didn’t exist.
Anyway, the Da Vinci Code is a ‘novel’ and follows the adventures of a pretend bloke trying to work out the meaning behind this and that relating to ‘codes’ left in pictures painted by Da Vinci as to where the ‘Holy Grail’ actually is. Not unsurprisingly, our top investigator Tony Robinson trying to follow the steps of an imaginary character in a novel turns up quite a few blind alleys. How unexpected.
So, this two hour programme on Channel Four with a budget to fly Robinson around the world 15 times in search of this or that (am I starting to get close to some reality here?), basically looks at different parts of the ‘novel’ and brings flimsy and confusing evidence to ‘debunk’ the ‘novel’. The viewer is left in no doubt that everything being brought to the fore as ‘fact’ is really ‘opinion’. Confused and twisted opinion, usually sitting comfortably with whatever ‘faith’ or internal beliefs the holder of the opinion actually has driving them.
Interestingly, Robinson was unable to debunk fairly extensive evidence about Jesus Christ’s secret life after the whole crucifixion malarkey (More of that another time). What did also come up was extensive evidence about the removing of the Gospel according to Mary, who instead of being his girlfriend and later wife, got repainted as some evil prostitute, and her writings removed from history.
Indeed, the Bible (or at least the New Testament), which Christians hold as the centre of their beliefs, appears to have been randomly put together from altered and changed and censored texts, and so at the most benevolent is quite obviously extremely ‘faulty’ in its nature. Yet, over the last 2,000 years people have hung on its every word. This is very very frightening. I’m not sure if it says more about Christianity than any other of the ‘faulty’ religions people blindly follow, but it certainly says a lot about the mind manipulators who re-write history to change the way people think.
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