Mental health warning, indeed

[mdlbear]

I can't decide whether the organization described in this article from Ireland Online is misguided, stupid, or willfully ignorant, but they appear to be completely serious.

A group of Christians determined to address what they claim are the myths of The Da Vinci Code are to offer the Irish public a mental health warning on the film before it hits cinema screens.

Hope Ireland, made up of Catholics and Protestants, will run an information campaign in a bid to expose author Dan Brown\u2019s best-seller as nothing but cunning fiction.

The group, supported by Church of Ireland and Catholic clergy and members of the secretive Opus Dei organisation, claims The Da Vinci Code does not know where the boundaries between truth and invention lie.

Which part of "fiction" didn't they understand? (From Gary McGath.)

Comments

[mdlbear]

Sort of like the intro to The Lord of the Rings, in other words. "...the following is a true and accurate copy of the Red Book of Westmarch, ..."

Right.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Sort of, but not really. So far as I know, there is no Red Book of Westmarch, nor has there ever been. Brown talks about real-world documents, like the Dead Sea scrolls -- and makes false statements about both the date of their discovery (he says 1950s, reality is 1947) and their contents (he mention other gospels, or something like that; in reality, they contain only older manuscripts -- books of Jewish law and prophecy and historical records pre-dating Christ, as I recall -- I know there are no writings dealing with Christ.)

I'll note that I've neither read the book nor done extensive research on the matter, but the preacher at my church has been addressing some of these issues in his current Sunday morning sermon series. (Mainly so we know what to say if/when we run into folks that swallow the story.)