Ready For A New Code?
While the usual expectation is that we are simple-minded enough to be caught up in the mass-media Tsunami created by The Da Vinci Code, now a movie starring Tom Hanks, so that we might all the better assist Hollywood in carting off its share of megabucks from this transient tempest for historical tots, let us explore how we might, instead, observe the refitted ancient frigate pass by on time’s wide and eternal river, as we lounge on the bank in supine placidity, or, as a generous gesture, consent to turn our eyes toward the flick just for the faux tension of it all.
Since we believe our readers wish us to address every issue that troubles us via the news without flinching, so that we may all find ease in seeing the sanely funny side of it, we assume you’ll allow this attempt to see the book cum movie as, in W. S. Gilbert’s bouncy phrase, “a source of innocent merriment.”
First, let’s consider the tooting of the ship’s horn in the light of history as it has actually come to be agreed on, to the extent that events 1,700 years or so ago can be rigorously sifted. As a soothing antidote in advance for our faithful readers, we advise that, as the council under consideration occurred in 325 AD, Christ had long since escaped to the realm where modification of his life, as the Gospels present it or as a paragraph in Roman history reputedly refers to it, was beyond the debates of ever-contentious humankind.
When our tidy history is over, we’ll also offer a few suggestions on which we may all pillow our world-thumped heads.
To provide historical solidity as a basis for our determinedly placid outlook, as much as a considerate paragraph or so can, let’s recount the facts as they have been