INTERLUDE (My apologies, I cannot resist)

I saw someone mention the infamous Da Vinci Code. Infamous, because it perpetrated several crimes on the history of culture.

First and unforgivable, it caused people to believe that da Vinci is Leonardo's last name. What horror.

Leonardo has always been Leonardo and nothing else. "Da Vinci" means "from the town of Vinci," the village where he was born. He was the out-of-wedlock son of Messer Piero da Vinci, a wealthy merchant, and one of his servants (name unknown.) This was not a rare event in those days. Leonardo, since he was "illegitimate" did not inherit his father's name, therefore he was only known as "Leonardo di Messer Piero da Vinci."  Whenever I see Leonardo mentioned simply as Da Vinci, my blood boils. I must have written half a million messages to newspapers and other publications to correct their mistakes. Waste of time. The sad, sad thing is that even in Italy now, I keep seeing the use of the spurious last name instead of the only correct name.

Amen.

 

Two: As someone acutely wrote, the Code is inarguably the most profitable novel ever written by a semi-literate author. The entire background story (Jesus, Mary Magdalene etc.) is stolen from a kooky book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by two British researchers/ authors.

The whole story, and its correlates with the history of the Knight Templars etc. is my favorite mental chewing gum. I roam used book stores looking for books about this subject. I have an impressive collection and I keep adding to it, although I don't have the time to read them all.

In the same vein, I am a rather serious semi-scholar of the period of the early Christianity, and in particular the process that led a branch of Judaism into transforming into a new religion.

I know some of the most reputable scholars in this area. One of them Elaine Pagels, at Princeton, worked very closely with a friend of mine, Marvin Mayer (died of skin cancer,) one of the world's greatest scholars of ancient Coptic language and texts. If you are interested in this subject, Elaine's books are the perfect starting point.

 

An aside: In Rose, the topic of the debate may appear superficial and vapid: dispute whether Jesus owned his clothes or not.

Yet, I remember years ago when, to show patriotism after one of our frequent military ventures, all college basketball teams started wearing an American-flag pin on their uniform (it was in the spring, no football) to show "support for our troops." A foreign student playing for some New Jersey team refused to do it. In short order, he could not stand the heat and packed his bag to go home.

 

I don't know how many hours of TV were wasted discussing this case in its most intricate symbolic significance. Wearing or not wearing a pin? It sounded like the foundation of the Republic itself depended on this existential question.