Rating: 
Summary: fascinating
Review: this book will blow your mind. say what you might about flawed research, etc, the conclusions make sense and will challenge you
Rating: 
Summary: passionating science fiction!
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. It is passionating science fiction! It only has one drawback: the authors want you to believe this is serious history. Which it by no means is.
Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting, if not convincing
Review: I would have thought that a book that I have read three times would deserve the five stars. Maybe it is because, as a history fanatic, I am very interested by many of the chapters presented. But, even though I am not Catholic, I percieve the thesis in this book as too far-fetched and based almost entirely in "what if"s. It's true, the authors state that it's just that, a thesis, but they write the final chapters with a tone that implies that they are taking their conclusions as fact. I wouldn't want to spoil the book to anyone interested in reading it. If you like historical mysteries, lost treasure tales and the like, you'll find most of the book exciting as a smooth introduction to several historical periods, specially the early middle ages. The facts here shouldn't be accepted as the sole truth, but as a re-interpretation of the 'official' history which is, as the authors state, always written by the winning side. The second part is much more controversial, though. Any ancient manuscript filled with allegories is bound to have any number of interpretations, and I feel the last part of the book is based on just one. And one of the most radicals by the way. All in all, it's a very interesting book to read and I would definitely recommended it to anyone who looks for a good time in history books.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad book -not recommend for any one on the earth
Review: This is one of the bad books that I wasted my money. The authors have tried hard to present his idea in different perspectives. I can't imagine which part that they quote from Bible whenever they refer to the Bible. Very bad book.
Rating:
Summary: FLAWED ACCOUNT OF THE BIBLE.
Review: Jesus Christ was a baby in Matthew when the shepards visited.But when the magi visited and he was no longer seen in the manger, he was around two years old and lived in a house.The evidence is that when Herod tried to kill all the babies to get him, he killed them all around two years old.Because the magi had told him how old Jesus Christ was at the time. The geneology however from further studies are both Josephs. Wether surnames in one and not the other, there are differences, but they refer to the same people.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the read
Review: The book provides credible arguments regarding the reinterpretation of historical events in the bible, which are blindly accepted by most of us. This is comforting concerning the growing number of shoddily researched books regarding religion. Although the content of the book is compelling, the writing is not so great. Still, it is worth the read, definitely to those who think they are strong enough to question aspects of their faith.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, but don't expect to be convinced.
Review: It's fun, especially for people who like the air of mystery, conspiracy, and such. However, any skeptical person will soon grow wary when they read logic like: "We felt we should consider this information authentic because if someone had faked it they wouldn't have tried to make it look so authentic." and choices like: "Either this information is true, or someone has faked it and wants us to think that they want us to think it is true, but they really only want to confuse us." Huh?
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but...
Review: I can well understand why so many people either love or hate this book. It does not pretend to be politically correct, subtle or tactful. It presents a thesis with a number of very good points and arguments -- but a thesis whose evidence is somewhat controversial. It should be mentioned that this is not a scientific book. I have a degree in philosophy/logic and I am not aware of any logical fallacy that authors do not commit in this book, more specifically in the latter half of the book. For example, all claims presented in the chapter 'The Priest-King Who Never Ruled' can be dismissed on grounds of flawed argumentation. To give the authors the benefit of doubt, though, it should equally be mentioned that they do not claim that this is a scientific proof. They acknowledge that it is a hypotheosis, even if a 'probable' one (as they put it). I wonder what would have resulted if they had spent some more time on fine-tuning the arguments.
Rating:
Summary: Written by the Priory of Zion? Ego...
Review: As a student of medieval history, especially 1066 through the 1300's, I found a few new useful references in the book but many more ignored or disparaged. As a physicist, I found the history part of the text while interesting, to have a patchwork quilt consistency; but once again I found some references to make a shadowy sketch of the Templer Knights from this point of view. O.K. I believe that the conjectural roughly the second half of the book with its secrets still secret is ludicrous. All of the secrets turn out to be some particular element of a fault tree, every branch of which is based on a -what if-. The technique used by the book is called -hasty generalization-. Worse yet, I found a plethora of inconsistencies (please read Ash's King Arthur books or the historians in the original Middle English or Middle French for this period). Especially this is so for all of the supposedly transformed individuals I read about in these evaluations. And, I myself conjecture that the secrets bearing second half of Baigent's book was in fact written by or for the Prieure de sion.
Rating:
Summary: The Holy Grail is the Kabbalah
Review: The authors have done a great job of bringing to light the mysterious connections betweent the legends of the Holy Grail and the Merovingians, Templars, Cathars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons. However, where they fail is in recognizing the true origin of their doctrines. The authors are victims of a fashion that seeks to identify a "purer" form of Christianity suppressed by the Roman Church. Though the Roman Church is certainly not a representation of original Christianity, the cults of the Holy Grail are derived from a Jewish heresy, a mode of Bible interpretation known as the Kabbalah. Their claim to preserving a secret bloodline from Jesus is merely a pretence. Their creed is the survival of the first and second century AD Christian heresy knows as Gnosticism. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the Gnostics were influenced by heretical Jewish sects adhering to early Kabbalistic ideas, which exited prior to Christianity. Any connection between Jesus and such communities, like that of the Essenes, is equally erroneous. The Kabbalah is the founding theology of the most of the European occult groups. Dupes of the New Ages movement, and their oracle, HP Blavatsky, have been fooled into seeing the Kabbalah as primordial revelation granted to the early generations of mankind. Many have been misled into seeking the origin of the doctrines of the occult in India, and others, like Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, authors of the "Hiram Key", and Graham Hancock, of the "Fingerprints of the Gods", seek it in Egypt. The Kabbalah is a heresy incepted in Babylon while the Jews were held there in captivity between 589 and 539 BC. In antiquity, the practitioners of these doctrines, of dualism, asceticism, numerology, vegetarianism, reincarnation and astrology, were known as the Magi. It can be demonstrated that the creed of the Magi does not date back beyond the sixth century BC. From Babylon the Magian religion was exported by Buddhist missionaries to India. Important Jewish communities were established in Egypt, mainly Elephantine, since the beginning of the sixth century BC, and later Alexandria, which infected Egypt with the cult of the Magi.
| 
