DA VINCI CODE REVIEW (THE MOVIE): I saw The Da Vinci Code last night. My expectations were low, but it was better than I'd anticipated. I didn't think it dragged and it was pretty entertaining throughout. The acting of Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou was wooden, although Ian McKellan's hamming it up helped to keep the pace moving. Most people will see the film already knowing who the Teacher is, so that element of surprise is lost.

My comments below contain a few minor spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and you care, stop here. I have reviewed the book here.

I thought it was interesting that the movie not only corrected some errors by omission (e.g., that the Dead Sea Scrolls were Christian documents), it also seemed to go out of its way to correct a few (by no means all!!) of the historical errors in the book. Langdon challenges Teabing's reference to the Priory of Sion and says that it's been discredited. (Teabing, of course, says ha ha that's what they want you to think.) And when Teabing spouts the nonsense about the idea of a divine Jesus only arising in Constantine's time, Langdon vigorously and correctly asserts that it had been around for a long time before that, and Teabing does not disagree [but see update, 3 June, below]. All in all, that awful bogus infodump in the middle of the book is made more bearable in the movie, mainly because it's shorter.

Also, the movie is very careful to make clear that neither the Vatican nor Opus Dei are part of the evil plot. The baddies are part of a secret faction within Opus Dei (I believe Langdon once refers to them as "fascist Opus Dei," although I'm not sure I heard this clearly.) Indeed, Captain Bezu Fache is made a member of the real Opus Dei and he pursues and captures the Teacher in righteous wrath once he figures out what's really going on.

So it's an okay movie that tries to undo a little of the damage of the book, although it probably does that much damage and more by spreading the rest of Brown's nonsense even more widely so that more gullible people will believe it. But the up side is that millions of people are now enthusiastically debating historical and theological issues that they were not even aware of a few years ago. It reminds me of what the fourth-century visitor to Constantinople wrote:

'This city,' says he, 'is full of mechanics and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians, and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told, by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing.'" (Gibbon)

Those of us who specialize in areas Dan Brown has made popular should find opportunities for some teachable moments and we should take advantage of them.

Meanwhile, if I want to watch a historical-nonsense thriller again, I'll be getting out Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Mummy, not this one.

UPDATE (1 June): Over the weekend AKMA e-mailed:

Wasn't the "visitor to Constantinople" to whom Gibbon adverted Gregory of Nyssa? My notes suggest that the quoted passage comes from "On the Deity of the Son and of the Spirit."

Could be. Anyone have the reference?

UPDATE: Robert S. Schwartz e-mails that Gibbon's footnote (which is not at the site I linked to, but can be found here) indicates that he himself did not have the reference:

Footnote 25: See Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv. p. 71. The thirty-third Oration of Gregory Nazianzen affords indeed some similar ideas, even some still more ridiculous; but I have not yet found the words of this remarkable passage, which I allege on the faith of a correct and liberal scholar.

Oh well, it's a good story. Does anyone have Gregory's quote handy?

UPDATE (3 June): Teabing does not dispute Langdon's correction that the idea of Jesus' divinity had been around for a long time, but he does reply with this howler: "Facts, for many Christians: Jesus was mortal one day and divine the next." Nonsense. The idea of Jesus as a divine being goes back to the first-generation Jesus movement and it's possible it even goes back to Jesus himself. Such ideas about people like Enoch and Melchizedek were circulating in the Judaism of Jesus' time. People in the time of Constantine who considered themselves to be "Christians" all believed in the divinity of Jesus, although they disagreed widely and violently about what exactly this meant. (I follow the transcript of Langdon and Teabing's conversation posted on Mark D. Roberts's blog. Scroll to the bottom of the page.)