Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mark Steyn: The Da Vinci Code: bad writing for Biblical illiterates
Maxleans ^ | 05/10/06 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 05/10/2006 8:05:29 AM PDT by Pokey78

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 181-188 next last
To: bondserv
Steyn uses a parabolic method of writing

Given my laziness with spell-check, I should be the last to criticize, but I think you want another word. Parabolic means that it is governed by a quadratic equation.

61 posted on 05/10/2006 9:13:08 AM PDT by AmishDude (AmishDude, servant of the dark lord Xenu.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78

Oh, golly, I adore this man more each time I read him! Since I'm normally pretty cool and reserved, it is hard for me to admit that I could be, in his case, a fanatical groupie. ("Smart men are sooo very sexy" bump)

Thanks for the ping!


62 posted on 05/10/2006 9:14:13 AM PDT by alwaysconservative (Friends don't let friends ride with a Kennedy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: dead

I made it a little longer than you, but your description of it being like a pretentious Scooby Doo episode is (ahem) dead-on accurate. John Case's "The Genesis Code" was much, much better, and didn't pretend to be anything other than fiction. Thanks so much for the smile!


63 posted on 05/10/2006 9:18:17 AM PDT by alwaysconservative (Friends don't let friends ride with a Kennedy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: dead
re: It was like reading a transcript of a pretentious Scooby Doo episode. )))

You do Scooby an injustice, since the Great Dane could construct a better sentence than Dan Brown.

I "respect a hit"--generally because I love a good story, something ripping and compelling. I expected DVC to at least entertain, but I thought the plotting shallow, utterly predictable and the writing style juvenile.

A big fat "I don't get it"--sort of like Katie Couric. I don't get why she's remotely popular.

64 posted on 05/10/2006 9:19:00 AM PDT by Mamzelle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: AmishDude

Schonfeld argues that Jesus realized his claim to messiahship was very vulnerable to misinterpretation by "the crowd," which is why he tried to keep it a secret for so long. He didn't want to die prematurely, before he could inaugurate the final drama in Jerusalem. He only came out in the open, so to speak, at the time of the entry into Jerusalem, when he rode into town in the ass, to fulfill prophesy. Then the cat was out of the bag, and he quickly met his fate - according to the Bible, on his own terms. Schonfeld largely agrees with that.


65 posted on 05/10/2006 9:19:12 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: AmishDude
Given my laziness with spell-check, I should be the last to criticize, but I think you want another word. Parabolic means that it is governed by a quadratic equation.

Truth is absolute, once you know the formula! :-)

66 posted on 05/10/2006 9:20:02 AM PDT by bondserv (God governs our universe and has seen fit to offer us a pardon. †)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Frank Sheed
"In that Schonfeld interviewed Jesus for the book and asked Him about His views."

Schonfeld makes interpretations based on his understanding of the Biblical texts, just as every other scholar does. He makes no special claims. I don't think your comment is fair.
67 posted on 05/10/2006 9:21:33 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: Big Guy and Rusty 99
"good writing about bad writing ping. (it's too early.)"

Shouldn't that be: good writing regarding poor writing?

On the other hand, perhaps you were intending to use poor grammar to make it more humorous? < /sarc>

68 posted on 05/10/2006 9:23:19 AM PDT by Go_Raiders ("Being able to catch well in a crowd just means you can't get open, that's all." -- James Lofton)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78

Gnosticism = knowledge. It started with Adam and Eve when they were promised "knowledge" that would enable them to be like God. We continue to see its influence in the New Age/Eastern Religion influences with their talk of "We are all gods if we could only tap into the God within each of us." We see it even in some Christian denominations in their emphasis on being guided by their "inner experiences" rather than the Word. Of course if we are all guided by our inner gods, we have little use for any external source of moral guidance.


69 posted on 05/10/2006 9:27:50 AM PDT by Drawsing (The fool shows his annoyance at once. The prudent man overlooks an insult. (Proverbs 12:16))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
The linguist Geoffrey Pullum...identifies this as the anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier...

Yeah...uh... < Slim Pickens voice > Ditto! < /voice >

It is, actually, a form of sentence structure popularized in newspapers, where the loss of the occasional article is a gain for the typesetter. Although it's a bit of a corruption I don't find it as objectionable as the use of footnotes to present the reader with synonyms instead of citations. That is essentially the author stating that the reader is an illiterate moron (who also happens to be reading his book, a most unhappy combination of messages).

Brown may be a literary hack but he's a very wealthy literary hack with a story that sizzles if you can swim through the detritus of his writing. I'd as soon not, but I'd take his paycheck.

70 posted on 05/10/2006 9:29:08 AM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Evidently, National Geographic has fallen on hard times since the days when anthropological studies of remote tribes were a young man's only readily available source of pictures of naked women.

And the strongest motivational material for a mother to get her daughters to wear brassieres.

Those were rarely attractive photos of topless women.
71 posted on 05/10/2006 9:29:59 AM PDT by George W. Bush
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Billthedrill
with a story that sizzles if you can swim through the detritus of his writing

Some pretty interesting visualization with that ...

72 posted on 05/10/2006 9:32:39 AM PDT by Tax-chick (Dump the 1967 Outer Space Treaty! I'll weigh 50% less on Mars!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: Steve_Seattle
Have you read Eric Voegelin's "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism"? He makes some interesting, though controversial, comparisons between Gnosticism and modern secular mass movements.
73 posted on 05/10/2006 9:34:32 AM PDT by JGT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78

Steyn rules! The novel is pure fiction and poorly written at that. However, the writer has made millions and now is making even more with the movie and the pocket book sales.


74 posted on 05/10/2006 9:34:52 AM PDT by Paulus Invictus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Steve_Seattle

hey steve,

you give the leftist/libs way too much credit; they don't care what the historical foundations/premise is of anything... as it long is it fits in with their "let's deconstruct the hell out of everything NOW!" mentality.

Dostoefsky: "Anything is permissable if there is no God"

when people stop believing in God, they start believing in anything.

Mark Steyn is a treasure, one of our three Giants of the West (VDH & Thomas Sowell). God Bless & Keep him.

CGVet58


75 posted on 05/10/2006 9:34:58 AM PDT by CGVet58 (God has granted us Liberty, and we owe Him Courage in return)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Steve_Seattle
I grew up in a very Jewish community, though I am a Christian myself. I went to my first Seder at the home of some friends many years ago and they explained the traditions to me. They were just explaining why they left one seat empty and the door open, just in case the Messiah showed up, when someone knocked at the door. The looks we gave each other were priceless.

Oh, and I found the matzah.

And Jesus not only viewed Himself as the Jewish Messiah, He was and is the Jewish Messiah (at least for any believing Christian).  As with all discrepencies between beliefs held and God's Word, the problems are with people's interpretations and expectations, not with God.

Albert Einstein was arguing with Neil's Bohr about quantum theory and famously said "God does not play dice with the universe."  It is less well known that Bohr replied "Albert, stop telling God what to do."  If God wants to make a universie that can best be described by quantum physics, then I'm not going to try and tell Him that He's wrong.

76 posted on 05/10/2006 9:36:11 AM PDT by Phsstpok (There are lies, damned lies, statistics and presentation graphics, in descending order of truth)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: xsmommy

One, two, ping-a-roo.


77 posted on 05/10/2006 9:39:20 AM PDT by secret garden (Dubiety reigns here)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Steve_Seattle

Some gnostics weren'r necessarily against sex, just pro-creation. To make a baby was to imprison a soul in coarse flesh.


78 posted on 05/10/2006 9:40:50 AM PDT by RobbyS ( CHIRHO)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Steve_Seattle

"The peculiar thing about this trendy, liberal fascination with Gnosticism as that the Gnostics entertained beliefs utterly foreign to modern liberalism: they were contemptuous of the body, of sex, and of life in general, which they regarded as the misbegotten product of an inferior god. They entertained a bizarre mythology completely alien to the kind of scientific rationalism that liberals normally promote. I think that liberals are responding to a sanitized IDEA of Gnosticism, rather than to the real thing."

BINGO.

Maybe they are creating a "new" form of "spirituality" which is compatible with modern "values"./sarc.


79 posted on 05/10/2006 9:45:50 AM PDT by khnyny
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Tax-chick

Shouldn't that be "A note to self" ;-)


80 posted on 05/10/2006 9:46:45 AM PDT by vajimbo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 181-188 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson