{"id":4112,"date":"2006-03-14T09:53:54","date_gmt":"2006-03-14T09:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/the-trial.html"},"modified":"2006-03-14T09:53:54","modified_gmt":"2006-03-14T09:53:54","slug":"the-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/the-trial.html","title":{"rendered":"The Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The London trial pitting Dan Brown against the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail<\/em> continues. Brown issued a 69-page "witness statement" summarized here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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In the statement, Brown spends relatively little time denying the "astounding" claims of Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh that he stole the "architecture" of their book. He does not even mention the book by name it until the 39th page of his statement and later states that he has still not read of all of it because he finds it "extremely detailed and hard to read".<\/p>\n

Instead, the famously reclusive 41-year-old gives a potted autobiography, describing his early artistic endeavours as a musician and composer, his love of science, history and art, and the difficult genesis of his literary career. The message throughout is clear: I am a serious professional writer; I don’t steal other people’s ideas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere, Dan Brown, Defender of the Faith<\/a><\/p>\n

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Similarities there may be and some have been struck by them. But in response to media coverage, Brown took the opportunity to highlight at least one crucial difference: \u201cOne of the ideas in The Holy Blood<\/em> \u2014 perhaps even the central idea \u2014 is advertised on the back of my copy of the book: \u2018Is it possible Christ did not die on the Cross?\u2019 This is not an idea that I would ever have found appealing. Being raised Christian and having sung in my church choir for 15 years, I am well aware that Christ\u2019s Crucifixion (and ultimate Resurrection) serves as the very core of the Christian faith. It is the promise of life everlasting and that which makes Jesus \u2018the Christ\u2019. The Resurrection is perhaps the sole controversial Christian topic about which I would not desire to write; suggesting a married Jesus is one thing, but questioning the Resurrection undermines the very heart of Christian belief.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nice try, Dan. But since the gist of your book is that Jesus is "merely mortal" and that’s all "Christians" believed about him until Constantine forced them to do otherwise….forgive us if we’re not stunned by your razor-sharp intellect!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The London trial pitting Dan Brown against the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail continues. Brown issued a 69-page "witness statement" summarized here: In the statement, Brown spends relatively little time denying the "astounding" claims of Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh that he stole the "architecture" of their book. He does not even mention the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Trial - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/the-trial.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Trial - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The London trial pitting Dan Brown against the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail continues. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}