Rating: 
Summary: "Hydra Heads of Heresy" - a limerick
Review: If you are into the theory
That JC was married to Mary
and begat a few Franks
who sequestered some francs
then add this one to your library.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many liberties with religious history...
Review: Theories based on weak deductions...for a religious thriller based on biblical theory of the Holy Grail, I would suggest a new novel titled THE GOAT WITHOUT HORNS..
Rating: 
Summary: the book for years to come
Review: This book will be the book for years to come.
I was born into an abusive situation. Lived early on in my adulthood in a domestic abuse situation. Lost my oldest daughter to a traffic accident. The Bible was of no comfort to me. This book however, leaped out at me when searching for a book to help me to understand the meanings in life...the "Why Me" speculation that shrouded me. I have read many self=help books..this one helped.
Alkso the books that have helped me with the abusive side of my life is Nightmares Echo
Rating:
Summary: Holy Da Vinci Code !
Review: This book is aprox 7th on my all time favorite conspiracy whacko theories. It received little attention until the success of 'The Da Vinci Code '---a good murder mystery thriller, which motivated readers to research the 'true account' from which much of the plot in 'The Da Vinci Code' is derived.OK, here's the thesis: JC not only didn't die on the cross, he married Mary Magdalene and got her pregnant, whereupon MM had to flee Palestine to the south of France. (Guess if you're going to flee The Romans, the Riviera sounds better than the Himalayas) Anyway MM's womb WAS the Holy Grail, and she bore the child of JC, who in turn begat the French kings! At least for a while, until their line was overthrown by evil Frenchies, but never fear because the secret society of THE PRIORY OF SION keeps the bloodline going to this day, and has all the inside scoop on just about everything. Grandmasters of said secret society have included Professor Snape er... I mean Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo. Naturally most of you will scoff this as nonsense BUT IS THERE A GRAIN OF TRUTH TO IT? No. Well, at least that's what I thought until I was researching my unpublished book : 'The Seven Oswalds ' which conclusively proves that there were actually seven men impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald at the time he was supposed to be in Mexico. I was meeting with one of them, an ex-Marine called Oliver Stoned, when I fell from my barstool as a result of one Tequila too many. As I banged my head on the floor, I regained my repressed memories. Yes, I am indeed the son of the Emperor Hirohito and Amelia Erhart. I have been kept from the throne of Japan by evil yakuzas. However, I have now joined forces with The Bavarian Illuminati, The Knights Templar, and Alanon. So, having gathered our strength, we are now ready for Phase Five. . .
----------------------------------------------------------------- Other loony tune conspiracy books I've found outrageously amusing and heartily reccommend to the paranoiacally challenged are: " The Passover Plot " (JC arranged to receive a drug in the 'vinegar' soaked sponge while he was crucified so he could fake his own death and 'resurrect' later but his plan backfired and he really died--kind of like Romeo and Juliet ). " The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare " (Christopher Marlowe faked his own death to escape Queen Elizabeth's vengeance and was the true author of the plays attributed to W.S.) And of course " The Chariots of The Gods " Holy P.T. Barnum! It appears that some people will believe ANYTHING printed---provided it's unorthodox enough. . .
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting tale...
Review: HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL appears to be the basis of much of the information found in THE DA VINCI CODE, however in my opinion, the book by Baigent, et al is BETTER. Working on a BBC documentary that explored the topic of "The Grail", Baignent and his coauthors collected an enormous amount of information which supports the notion that Jesus married Mary Magdalen and fathered a child who went on to become the ancestor of a special bloodline in Europe. Many of the assertions in this book are supported by academic work. Many academic books, articles, etc, written after HBHG was published indicate there is substance to some suppositions not addressed in earlier research. Baignent is mostly correct when he asserts that academics are mostly analytic and what is needed from time to time is synthesis, but a number of historians - Braudel, Schama, and Norwich to name a few, have presented enormous amounts of academic material in various synthetic studies. When these historians synthesize, they rely on a disciplined approach that reflects training in how to present an "unbiased" study. Journalists like Baignent are generally looking for something "newsworthy" and different (not reported or under-reported). In addition, they rely on secondary material of varying quality (from the perspective of the academic). On the other hand, the academic working within restricted guidelines can be viewed as the victim of a kind of censorship. One further note - Every person (particularly those living in America and Europe) has a possible 1 million ancestors over a 400 year period. (2 to the 20th power - two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc.; assumes mean length of a generation = 20 years). Intermarriage among the members of a village would narrow this number for individuals, but powerful males (like knights with "first night" rights) have always had access to women from the lower classes. An academic specializing in historical demography once calculated that everyone alive in Europe in the 14th Century (following the Black plague) was related to Charlemagne who had lived about 400 years earlier. Given these "odds" the chances that the bloodline of Jesus, if it existed, remaining within a few families is fantasy, especially given the forced "marriages" of noble women from the Cathar areas of France.
Rating: 
Summary: Trash posing as history
Review: I haven't read this book although I was aware of the claims made at he time of publication. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people (especially in the US for some reason) seem to swallow this kind of nonsense - we have had Hancock and his lost civilisation as well and both have been comprehensively taken apart by BBC TV programmes. These books rest on unsubstantiated claims selectively chosen to suit to suit the "conclusion" already reached by the authors - to make money out of readers. they do not look at the context nor even the validity of these claims - but they rely on the inabillity of the average reader to access the material to check them out. As an example, Ic ame across this in he Amazon "inside the book": "...also implies coyly that Archduke Karl (brother of Napoleon's wife) was bribed to lose the battle of Wagram in 1809 in exchange for part of the Merovingian treasure, which Napoleon had found in the Razas. This treasure was later discovered". There is only one expression for this - absolute garbage. Karl was the uncle of Napoleon's future wife, Marie Louise, as he was married to Josephine at the time! Karl himself was a devoted servant of the state, but you would need to read German to know this. So several facts wrong, a claim made with no evidence. It sums the book up!
Publishers putting this stuff out should be ashamed of themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Research can lead to interesting places
Review: It is well known that history is written by the winners. This is clearly illustrated in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which chronicles the attempts of two researchers working in France to find out just what is up with the Holy Grail, the Templars, and the Church. Their journey is complicated and strange -- and a lot more than the reader or the researchers themselves bargained for. Even if you don't agree with their conclusions, you have to admit that the source material points in the direction of the Holy Grail being exactly what they say it is. It also points to the Priory of Sion and the Templars being intricately connected to the whole story. I became interested in Holy Blood, Holy Grail after reading The Da Vinci Code, and I must say that Brown closely follows the information in this work. If you wanted to know "what was true" about The Da Vinci Code, this book will clarify it for you. I would say the most unfortuntate thing about the whole book is that if even just half of it is true, there are a lot of things about religous history as we know it that are either wrong or "written by the winners."
Rating:
Summary: Investigative, though speculative
Review: This book provides a creative spur on Christianity and its historical context--in both parts logical theology and empiricism. The main problem of this book, however, is that it is mostly based on speculation. Yet, it has to be; significant historical records that could have definitively proven or refuted most of this book's hypotheses sadly do not exist. If anything, this book shouldn't be regarded a totally heretical or meaningless work; it should be a small part of a focused devotion to learning and understanding one's faith. At the very least, one should realize the true amount of disinformation out there--and, thus, the need for the discerning eye.
Rating: 
Summary: Really interesting ... until you look up the references
Review: I first got the paperback release of this book in Vancouver around 1990. The first 300 pages or so were fascinating. The information about the Knights Templar and the mysterious discovery under the cornerstone - all fascinating, and all have merit. They are DEFINITELY on to something with the "Sang Real" vs. "San Greal" argument, very cool. The book is worth getting for that all by itself. But the authors make a quantum leap when they try to argue that Jesus fathered an entire lineage of descendants. Their argument is based on the idea that Jesus' crucifixion was staged, and they select several verses from Luke to prove it. The problem is that their quotes from Luke are grossly taken out of context, and anyone who bothers to simply read the paragraphs from which their verses are taken could easily see this. For just one of many examples, they claim nobody was standing close enough to Jesus at the crucifixion to know if he was really dead - and quote one verse that mentions people standing far away to defend this notion. But they ignore the several other verses describing the people standing at the foot of the cross. So - they get points for some fascinating observations and questions. But a staged crucifixion, and the idea that Jesus wasn't really killed? The attempt by these two authors to discredit what hundreds of millions of people through history have believed? Sorry, doesn't work.
Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable read
Review: This is the story of the Knights Templar and the mystery surrounding Rennes-le-Chateau, a small town in southern France. Through over 10 years of research the authors claim that Jesus may not have died on the cross and actually made his way to southern France, where his bloodline continued. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Knights Templar, their secret and how it affects us today. If you can't handle an alternate view of history and how it may have been purposely kept from the general public, then don't read this book.
| 
