the book famous for inspiring "The DaVinci Code" with its central theory that the Merovingian dynasty in France was descended from Jesus Christ himself, and this truth was safeguarded through history by a vast network of secret societies masterminded by the Priory of Sion.
What this reminds me most of is "The Spear of Destiny", the British WWveteran Trevor Ravenscroft's book about the spear that supposedly pierced the side of Christ.
While "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is nowhere as crazy, it's got the same syndrome that its main thesis is not exactly very convincing but it's still full of useful information on the Grail legend's historical impact.
. . if the reader can sort the wheat from the chaff, that is,
Not only is this a treasuretrove of information about how the Grail mysteries shaped the cultural history of the Frenchspeaking part of Europe, which is even more than the legends surrounding the Holy Lance shaped that in the Germanspeaking part.
It's also quite informative about the secret history of Christianity, from how many of the Gnostic and Jewish elements of the religion were excised by the Roman Catholic Church to nowforgotten sectarian rivalries like the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars.
The attempts at actually "connecting the dots", though Well, that consists of half admitted conjecture for which not much in the way of hard evidence is available, half derived from sources that after the Holy Blood, Holy Grail's publication have been exposed as hoaxes.
While I'm even more skeptical of the "official" story about Christianity's beginings than before I read "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" I'm still far from convinced that there's much truth to the alternative history that the authors have constructed.
I originally approached the book with the idea that even if the "history" was wonky, it will be entertaining to read, I was sorely disappointed. It was uphill all the way, especially in the middle, when you get bogged down in all those dynasties,
However, I'm giving it two for the chapters towards the end, The speculations in there have given the mythlover in me have one more go at the Bible, and the enigmatic figure of the Christ,
Overall opinion A boring book with some entertaining speculations, While much of the evidence in this has been debunked since it's writing, and most of the research has been called into question, this is an interesting book nonetheless, with much more depth, twists and turns than The DaVinci code, which stole many of these author's ideas.
There are many concepts in this book, some are very dubious, and others seem downright plausible, If one approaches this with the right spirit which is to say, with an open mind, but with the desire to do lots of independent research, it can become a wonderful real life detective story.
At worst, you could take it as an interesting mockumentarystyle story, and still have a pretty gripping tale, there is a long stretch on geneology in the middle that lags quite a bit, but stick with it, it's worth the payoff, At best though, it is something that will make you question what you've been told, and try to do a little independent thinking on the matter.
Read this book, absolutely, if you have any interest in religious history, but take it with a grain of salt, I hope to see someone pick these ideas up again, dust them off, and do the work that the authors didn't, giving us a real chance at looking at some of these theories honestly I wasn't suprised at all that the authors of this book sued Dan Brown over the DaVinci Code.
He could have had this book open and used whole sections of it, The plot of this book actually follows the DaVinci Code in many aspects, What I enjoyed about this book is the research, It does take a few chances, and it clearly states that it is speculative history, but it made me see the Gospels in a whole other way.
I can't recommend it enough, This is possibly one of the most successful conspiracytheory books ever written, at least among those published and marketed as “nonfiction, ” There are reasons for this, It is wellwritten, engaging, relatively even in tone, and accessible to most readers, Unlike many, especially those which deal in “occult” theories of history, the authors do not carry an obvious commitment to one or another groups version of the “truth” that will drive away
readers who do not share their beliefs.
And, although they do make digs at mainstream scholarship and the Catholic Church, they avoid direct appeals to paranoia or fearmongering, In fact, in this narrative the “secret conspiracy” turns out to be the good guys,
None of which is to say that I found the argument presented here even remotely convincing, Most of the theory presented is based, as the authors readily admit, on an obscure collection of typewritten documents put into archives in France around, which claim to be the records of a group that has existed for centuries, combined with a series of speculations that werent even endorsed by the originator of those documents Pierre Plantard.
Each new speculation is based upon highly dubious assumptions and frequently ignores basic facts, even after these have been laid out in the text, Still, the tone of writing is so reasonable, and the chain of logic so seemingly inevitable, that one can miss the leaps or forget about them within a few pages and find oneself drawn along to say, up to a point, at least, “well, this seems possible even if its not certain.
”
Its only when they turn to something the reader is intimately familiar with that the inaccuracies and deliberate distortions become obvious, Since the text covers such a huge range of history, theology, philosophy, and other fields, it is unlikely that any one person will even be able to critique the whole thing adequately, but for me the structure collapsed when they tried to bring in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” claiming that it was not an intentionally antiSemitic text, but rather a genuine set of minutes of one of the conspiracys meetings.
As an example of how slickly they twist the truth, they do this only a page or two after giving the true story of the “Protocols” that it was lifted from an antiSemitic novel and held up as a true document, but simply conveniently ignore the original source as they perform their bizarre intentional misreading of a document they know most of their audience is unfamiliar with.
In, novelist Dan Brown based “The Da Vinci Code” on this book, giving its thesis a new lease on life, and no doubt vastly boosting sales.
Still, the authors attempted to sue Brown for plagiarism, The beauty of this is that his defense that he had independently reached the same conclusions through examining the same original source documents could only have been countered had the authors been willing to admit that their book, also, was fiction.
Losing the case therefore was a brilliant moment of poetic justice for their fraud, What poetic justice Dan Brown will face for his lies has yet to be seen, The fact that I read horribly written books about templars, and things of that ilk, is one of my shameful secrets, I don't believe a word that I've read, but they suck me in,
That part in the Dan Brown book don't remember if it was DaVinci or Angels where he was listing off the books in that guy's library I have all those books.
. . Oh the shame :
This book, as all similar books, could be aboutpages shorter as they restate their theories in multiple ways, They also all seem to use the same source material, as the mostly contain the same info, This is one of the better written, however, I read this book and ate up every last bit of speculation, theory, and downright invention, The photos creeped me out, and I daydreamed about the possibility that the Knights Templar really had links to Jesus Christ, and that the Freemasons were more than just a bunch of weird old guys that did some boring, yet secret, junk in an old building downtown.
Years later, a Freemason mistakenly left a lengthy message on our answering machine in Palm Desert, California, He gave intricate, specific details about the intended receiver of the message's duties at an upcoming Freemason funeral, Wish I'd transcribed it. What I wish even more is that I went ahead and wrote a work of fiction largely based on it, Boy, would I be rich now, This is book is a great example of academic dishonesty, The first half of the book is very well documented, and sets the reader up for the idea that the two authors are dealing with hard facts.
When the conjectures and meat of the book begin though the sources stop getting cited, and assumptions are made which have no basis except for the authors fantastical logic.
Saying things like, of course this is well documented but where, or setting up as a premise something that they admit is unknown, and then turn the unknown into a truth later in the book, with no basis.
Not that I'm shocked by their more controversial conjectures, or find the ideas contained in this book as absurd, just that they do a grave misjustice to the readers trust in the way they present the information.
Probably the oldest surviving piece of hot gossip still in circulation: Jesus had an affair with Mary Magdalene, which resulted in a child,
Members of the postDanBrown generation may have trouble believing this, but I hadn't heard a single rumour before I read this book, Really!
Speculation, yes, But even the bible contains much speculation yes, that is my opinion and you don't need to agree with me, that is fine and I am perfectly ok with that.
The basis for my opinion is as follows, The new testament wasn't even written untilyrs after Jesus' death, by people who most likely never heard him speak, It is really difficult to guess what sort of motives they may have had or wether they were trying very hard to shape the New Testament stories according to the old testament prophecies.
Also, the council of Nicea picked and chose what documents could be a part of the New Testament inCE, Would we choose the same books today In addition, countless retranscribings of the sacred texts and translations have occurred resulting in uncountable mistranslations and errors.
Did you know:
Mary Magdalene was NOT ever called a prostitute in the bible
Inthe Catholic church issued a Papal Bull recanting the claim they had earlier made that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
That was news to me, And I was never even Catholic,
Jesus, as a rabbi, would have been EXPECTED to be married and have children according to Judaic custom, Of course this is by no means proof that he did marry and have children, but it is not outside the realm of possibility,
So of course this book is probablyspeculation, But I stand by my opinion, that lots of things are speculation,
I heard about this book from a friend in church during our Unitarian Universalist bible study group, When I get the time I look forward to reading it,
Excerpt from wikipedia article on Mary Magdalene:
Pope Gregory the Great's homily on Luke's gospel datedSeptemberfirst suggested that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute: "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.
And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices, . . It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts, "homily XXXIII
Inthe Vatican, without commenting on Pope Gregory's reasoning,implicitly rejected it by separating Luke's sinful woman, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdala via the Roman Missal.
This identification of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was followed by many writers and artists until theth century, Even today it is promulgated by some secular and occasional Christian groups, It is reflected in Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ, in José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, JeanClaude La Marre's Color of the Cross and Hal Hartley's The Book of Life.
It was because of this association of Mary as a prostitute that she became the patroness of "wayward women", and "Magdalene houses" became established to help save women from prostitution.
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