serene,
after reading the book, i think i wanna go back to Lourve see the original painting again, especially the one about the last supper... as for "monalisa" being made up of "amon" and "isis" its true lor, when i was touring egypt, the guide mentioned a lot about the 2 gods... no wonder the secretive smile, and the "bu nan bu nu" look of monalisa
i'm impressed by dan brown's perspectif of the motivation behind the doings of the early church... although historically it is well-known how the early churches exterminate the "pagans" worshipper, it never occurred to me the simple motivation behind is to maintain the status n power of the priests who were all men, therefore they cannot allow any belief that elevates women status, thus the suppression of "pagans" whose belief centre around worshipping of nature, goddesses of fertility, etc
i like the part abt "the truth" as propagated by the believers could well be the greatest lie of all times... then again he wisely conclude that, so what if its a lie? if it betters human life, let the lie continue...
actually much of what he said is true lor... like Christians always say the bible is the word of god... but it is obviously the word of men... and the early church specifically select the writings that describe Jesus as son of god rather than human to be included in the bible, thus disregarding other writings... the obvious example is, the Catholic Bible has seven extra chapters which the Protestant Chuch omits, similarly, the Al'Quran shares the same chapters of the "Old Testament" portion of the Christian Bible... these are not mere coincidence
That's why the saying that "history" is written by the winners... that's what Chen Shui Bian is trying to do lor, he's trying to get US support in his power struggle against China, same thing in Japan, they are undergoing a massive overhaul in rewriting the Japanese history... wa lieu... sibeh academic