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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Synopsis: Famed American symbologist Robert Langdon finds himself accused of the murder of Jaques Sauniere, the elderly curator of the Louvre museum in Paris. Trying to escape the police who are tailing him, Langdon teams up with cryptologist Sophie Neveau, in trying to solve the murder and unravel the odd clues that Sophie's uncle Jaques left them. As they work through the puzzles left behind by the curator, who worshipped Da Vinci and was a part of an ancient pagan cult, which celebrated the divine in the female and tried to experience it through sexual intercourse, they find that Sauniere was a part of the Priory of Sion, a not-so-secret secret society that holds the secret to the Holy Grail, the “Cup of Christ”, which turns out to be Mary Magdalene and the child she bore Jesus. Through the investigation Langdon and Neveau find out not only that various famous western characters (including Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton) were part of the Priory of Sion, but that there are two opposing forces, the first trying to hide the supposed secrets about Mary Magdalene and the second trying to reveal them. The one trying to reveal the secret is an elderly English knight who has spent his entire life working on the Grail question. According to the legends propounded by this man, Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus of Nazareth and bore him a daughter, from whom Jaques Sauniere and thus Sophie Neveau are descended.
By the end of the book, the murder of Jaques Sauniere is firmly planted upon a follower of Opus Dei, an extremely rich society of Roman Catholic extremists, the knight who has masterminded the whole operation is caught, and Langdon reunites Sophie with her grandmother and brother, both of whom she thought dead. Langdon then returns to the Louvre and finally figures out where Mary Magdalene's body was supposedly buried.
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Singles at the Crossroads
by Albert Y. Hsu
Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997.
Synopsis: In Singles at the Crossroads, Albert Hsu attempts to create a “practical theology of singleness.” He examines the trends of singleness in the western hemisphere in general and the United States in particular before going on to sketching a history of singleness as he understands it. Following this he takes a very careful look at the key “singleness” passages in the New Testament: 1. Corinthians 7 and 12. He gives insight into what the will of God is and debunks some of the myths that have grown up in the church about it. He also severely criticizes Christian marrieds for not treating singles as equal humans. Then he attempts to sketch the opportunities, freedoms and challenges that each single must face. He offers an alternate perspective on what romance means and concludes with a section on some of the unique temptations singles face. The final part of the book is a transcript of an interview that Hsu had with John Stott, famous English theologian and life-long bachelor.
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