IIRC, most of the book was inspired by/borrowed from Baigent/Lincoln/Leigh's 1980's book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" - a work of speculative history, FWIW. I read it back in high school and as it was my first taste of an "alternative view" of the historical events surrounding the life of Jesus it had a huge impact - really made me think about religion in the historical context.
Over the years I've grown more skeptical about the book, but keep a battered copy on hand to loan to people, just because I think it's helpful to burst through the Christian mythology so many people are raised with.
I was confused as to why the authors of "HBHG" sued Dan Brown - theirs was a work of history (accurate or not) and "The Da Vinci Code" was a work of fiction - when did it get illegal to base fiction on history?
I did read the Da Vinci Code (or, rather, listened to the audio book) and .. well, it wasn't great, it wasn't awful, I figured DB had fun building a story around an old book. But I do think that for a lot of people the Da Vinci Code was an awakening of sorts, a new way to look at old stories. The controversy never hurts popularity ratings, either :P
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Date: 2006-05-26 02:41 am (UTC)Over the years I've grown more skeptical about the book, but keep a battered copy on hand to loan to people, just because I think it's helpful to burst through the Christian mythology so many people are raised with.
I was confused as to why the authors of "HBHG" sued Dan Brown - theirs was a work of history (accurate or not) and "The Da Vinci Code" was a work of fiction - when did it get illegal to base fiction on history?
I did read the Da Vinci Code (or, rather, listened to the audio book) and .. well, it wasn't great, it wasn't awful, I figured DB had fun building a story around an old book. But I do think that for a lot of people the Da Vinci Code was an awakening of sorts, a new way to look at old stories. The controversy never hurts popularity ratings, either :P