"The Da Vinci Code" is an undemanding book, but have a weakness for a lot of modern pseudo-historical works it is based on the misleading conjecture that the relations of previous centuries can be glowing understood by assuming they manipulate the extraordinarily interests, philosophy and beliefs as modern-day relations. In fact, the nothing out of the ordinary European of the Core Ages possibly understood a lot more about Christian symbolism than any 21st century coach of Ceremonial Symbology.
An compelling book that was published more or less the extraordinarily time as Dan Brown's novel (but hasn't sold as heaps copies) is "How to Take to mean a House of worship by Richard Taylor. Between regard to images of the Sustain Lunch (of which Leonardo's is solitary one flanked by heaps) Taylor says that the beardless figure always "not on be with to Jesus is intended to be St John. Allegedly it was margin practice to give John with want hair and fully effeminate challenge. In fact, John is one of the three "women" sometimes not on at the foot of the displeased in crucifixion scenes, the other two existence Mary Magdalene and the Deified Virgin Mary.
Dan Shady says the primeval church demonized Mary Magdalene at the same time as she represented the sacred female, but if any missionary was demonized it was Judas Iscariot, a man. According to Taylor's book Mary Magdalene was a much-loved saint, honoured as the in the early hours special to see the risen Christ. And the other Mary, the Deified Virgin Mary, has always been honored as the basic of all the saints, expressly by the Roman Catholic church... the commencement that Shady sees as suppressing sacred gender and couture the Bible to reassure its views. This would come as a notice to the primeval Protestant reformers, who according to Taylor "... objected to some of the doctrines that the Roman Catholic House of worship tolerable to Mary: that she was minus sin, that she remained a virgin by means of her life, and that she was physically thought appearing in paradise at her death. These experience seemed to Protestants to be minus biblical evaluator, and to winch Mary to a bay that was more than mortal."
