NG's recent "mysteries" have been quite good. Last night was some supposed tablet from King Solomon and the James Ossuary, which were both pretty convincingly shown to be fake.

Tonight was on The DaVinci Code and had a fair amount of Dan Brown. Very interesting. Most every claim he made, they could not verify and most other "experts" thought they were not true. Each time the host asked Brown why he believed a particular thing, he basically said, "it makes logical sense" and then they would go on to how it couldn't be backed up.

Interestingly, the thrust of the "Mary M. off to France" etc. theory comes from a theory developed by a guy who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail back in 1983. He basically says over and over, "I neither believe it nor disbelieve it, it is just a theory".

Then they go into the Knights of Templar and Priori deal. Very interesting. Based on what they present, it looks like the Priori didn't really exist (know the conspiracy guys can say, "just as they would have us believe" ). Browns contention was that the Knights brought back scrolls, etc. that were so damaging to the church, etc. All other experts said they brought back money, treasure, etc. and is how they became so wealthy. One expert even went on to say that the Knights were "boringly orthodox" in their beliefs. They then show that the King of France basically had them killed because he also owed them a lot of money.

Anyway, surely it will be on again since it is NG, so if you like this stuff, it is pretty interesting.

I remember watching Beyond the da Vinci code on the history channel and they pretty much made all the same points. They didn't have Dan Brown on though. They did have the Holy Blood, Holy Grail on writer though and he said the exact same thing. I remember they did say something about the priori existing, but not in the manner described in the book.

Even though nothing Dan Brown said could be backed up by facts (just like the bible, but that's a whole other discussion), everyone they interviewed did seem to think that Mary Magdalene played a more important role in Jesus' life than has been presented by the church in general in the past. So I guess the book has at least bought up some discussion about how some people are portrayed.

Yeah. There is a lot of historical evidence that this was the case. I can definately believe that the "powers that be" happened to be male dominated and Mary was moved out. Looking at the structure, it isn't really surprising. Many of the "new Christian Leaders" were originally Jews. Judiasm had a different view on women than most of Christianity did.