Hat tip to gentle reader CLK for linking us to the inestimable Larry Hurtado's Slate article on the miserable historical inaccuracies of the DVC. Hurtado, professor at the University of Edinburgh (all-time favorite city of the SWNIDs) summarizes in accessible compass that the novel and movie make a mockery not just of details of early Christian history but the whole scope of it.
All this stuff raises a question for us: What are the essential differences between the DVC and Indiana Jones? We see it this way:
Indiana Jones movies were entertaining (except maybe for the second one) and everyone knew that they were complete fantasy.
The DVC is tedious and so relies on the notion that "it just might be true" in order to gain an audience.
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From Michael Novak's review of DVC:
"The one thing that really shocked me was the movie's underlying intention, stated several times with great clarity: the depth and passion of its anti-Christian, anti-monotheism craziness. To say the movie wishes actually to be the anti-Christ would only sound extravagant; still that is the constant and underlying message. The "heroes" of the film have to save the world from the oppression and injustice brought into it, not only by Christianity, but by all monotheistic religions. Wherever there is monotheism, the secular hero says, there is violence, or oppression, or something like that."
This movie is on the level of any M. Moore flick, and I simply refuse to dignify it by watching it.
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