{"id":7267,"date":"2004-05-18T23:17:35","date_gmt":"2004-05-18T23:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dan_brown_speaks_2.html"},"modified":"2004-05-18T23:17:35","modified_gmt":"2004-05-18T23:17:35","slug":"dan_brown_speaks_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dan_brown_speaks_2.html","title":{"rendered":"Dan Brown speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Breaks his silence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(LRR)<\/p>\n

Dan Brown said that when he wrote the book that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion in his book.<\/p>\n

While speaking at a benefit for a New Hampshire writers’ group, Brown said the theory is backed by a number of “very credible sources,” but that he ultimately decided it was too flimsy. <\/p>\n

“For me, that was just three or four steps too far,” he told the crowd of more than 800 people. <\/p>\n

Brown’s discussion of his book, which included fielding questions from the audience, was a rare public appearance for him. He has declined most requests for media interviews this year, saying he is focusing on writing the sequel to his book. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Brown included several teasers about what that sequel would be about, including that it was set in Washington and would focus on the Free and Accepted Masons, a secretive fraternal organization. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um. I’m trying to figure out the logic of this. (Which I spent a lot of time doing when I was dissecting this novel. I gave up.) We’re supposed to be shocked<\/em> at this little factoid that Dan Brown hid from our delicate eyes? If you’ve read the novel, you know that this is one of the big unanswered, not to mention unasked, questions. What the heck happened to Jesus, anyway? Was he crucified? And what happened to the body? Suggesting that Jesus survived (Passover Plot, anyone?) would at least have filled in that hole. <\/p>\n

It’s all so pathetically stupid and self-aggrandizing, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

And yeah, everyone’s waiting for the next great Mason novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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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\/7267","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=7267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}