Holy Blood, Holy Grail

Rating:
Summary: Not a favorite read
Review: This book has a lot of information. At times it was very boring to read and easily lost me with all of the details. It is well written and does make one think but I would not call this a favorite.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the strong at heart
Review: First off, let me say that this is a slow read, unless you are at all interested in the history of the Priory of Sion, Knights Templar or the divinity of Jesus. Second, let me say that this book is not for Christians who are deeply confirmed with their faith, for they will see this book as nothing but pure garbage.

Now on to the book...This book offers great insight into the past. Not only does it lay out good framework for other authors of the same subject but it also lays out its evidence clearly. Timelines, geneaology, and historical documents are the backbone of this book. It is hard to believe that someone who would read this book could say that all of the information is false. I'm not saying that everything is true, but what I am saying is that the theories and speculations in this book are indeed very probable. If anyone knows their pre-medieval European history then they would certainly know the heresies that surrounded certain sects of Christianity, especially those of Arianism and Gnosticism. With that being said it is clear to the educated reader how some of these probable truths that the Church has tried to hide can be actual truths.

Have fun reading this one I know I did.

Rating:
Summary: Great characters!
Review: With "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," Michael Baigent does a nice job of creating characters that drive the story, rather than vice-versa. If you're tired of plot-driven novels with thin, and often cliché, characters, then you're likely to dig this one.

If you're into writers like Baigent, Dan Brown, Michael Chabon, etc., then there's a new writer you should check out: GREG IPPOLITO. His most recent novel, "Zero Station," is a politically charged page-turner that pits its main Gen X character (John Saylor) against his Baby Boomer parents, teachers, etc., during the winter of 1991 -- in the heart of the Persian Gulf War. Right now, Ippolito is still a relative unknown (a friend turned me onto his work)...but this is a must-read. You can check him out and read an excerpt at:

http://www.zero-station.net

Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: The research basis for The Davinci Code
Review: Holy Blood, Holy Grail is well worth reading by anyone whose interest was piqued by The Da Vinci Code. It is essentially two histories: the history of the First Crusade and its antecedents, and the history of Christianity immediately following the Crucifixion.

The first history is very meticulously done and it holds our interest throughout an exposition of potentially tedious research. Granted, the conclusions are based on the existence of secret and hitherto unknown documents that serve as their Rosetta Stone, but even the skeptical will find the tapestry the authors weave to be an interesting one.

The second history, which purports to show that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and all that, is much less thorough and much more overtly speculative. Whereas the underlying documentary evidence of the Knights Templar may be a bit obscure, the Bible has been dissected in public and in detail for two millennia. Here, the authors purport no Rosetta Stone, and although the exposition is interesting, it does not have even a patina of research. One gets the feeling throughout of a conclusion being sought in the ambiguous language of the first four Gospels of the New Testament, a trick played by many before this.

If you are not a Biblical scholar or a scholar of pre-Medieval history but are interested in these subjects, this book will hold your interest. It is not ultimately convincing in the least but it presents the material in a very interesting and readable way. Scholars will undoubtedly quibble, but a layperson will find it interesting.

Is it possible to summarize our story briefly? It goes something like this:

· 700 BC, the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin, for obscure reasons, was driven out of Palestine, and settled first in Arcadia in Greece and then moved up to the Marseilles area of France.
· Later on, Mary Magdalene, Jesus' pregnant wife at the time of the Crucifixion, fled, together with her father, Joseph of Aramathea, to Marseilles where she was warmly welcomed by the descendants of the Tribe of Benjamin. (Joseph of Aramathea continued onward to Glastonbury, England carrying a cup of Jesus' blood.)
· Mary Magdalene's brother, Lazarus, meanwhile, went on to lead the revolt and mass suicide at Masada that culminated in the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Diaspora.
· Mary Magdalene's child founded the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings.
· Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne, heroes though they were for stemming the Saracen tide, treacherously overthrew the Merovingian dynasty. But the Merovingian line was preserved by the secret society of the Priory of Sion, which gave rise to the Knights Templar and had other shadowy doings down the centuries.
· There is living, today, in Paris a certain Pierre Plantard de Saint-Claire, who is a direct descendant of the Merovingian kings and, therefore, a direct lineal descendant of Jesus Christ, Son of God. And he, and his society, are working toward the eventual reinstatement of the "rightful", divinely ordained line of Merovingian kings.
· Me, too. Send money.

The premise and the conclusion of this book is the antithesis of the American ideal: the ultimate union of Church and State. It makes for interesting reading, but don't get carried away.

Rating:
Summary: What you should know about this book.
Review: For starters let me say that the idea's this book covers are plausible. Perhaps not correct but plausible. I don't think anyone knows the real answers. Even if someone did I don't think half the people would accept them. The authors of this book investigated the subject as best they saw fit and at times surely believed they had a truth. But on the reverse side of the coin most Christians also believe they have a truth. That is what will keep these discussions going on forever. In the end you make your own assumptions and devise your own truths based on what you have learned. But at the very least it gives you new material to think about and those are the kind of books that are always good.

If you're looking for a book that is all about Jesus Christ and who he might really have been you're only going to get this information in the last quarter of the book. If that. Most of the book talks about secret societies and their influence and mysterious happenings over the ages, across Europe (mostly France) and the holy land. It's only when you get to the end of the book that it tries to tie it all together with Jesus Christ. It's a detailed setup and you do learn quite a lot (whether it's factual of not). But it's a long setup with a lot of unpronounceable French names that are thrown at you left and right. If that's not bad enough the authors feel the need to replace some verbs with French language catch phrases assuming we all know French.

Most of the time it's like reading a family tree for a bunch of people you've never heard of and aren't going to remember a day after you read. As a casual American reader I approached this book wanting to learn about the secret societies as a whole and what secret truths they knew about Christ. But ultimately the book is about a bloodline and so you learn about a chunk of people in that bloodline whether you care to or not.

The book is a complete give away. The author's keep you hooked through the entire thing based on the premise that there are secrets about Christ that certain underground societies know. But just by reading the back of the book you already know what those secrets are. So the book is more about taking the investigative journey with the authors to find those secrets. Then justifying them based on historical documents, educated guesses and shady pamphlets that may or may not have any real validity.

In my opinion it ties it all together very loosely in the end and is all pretty speculative. One educated guess leads to another and at some point you either say "wow" or "wait a minute had you just made a left turn here when you were bordering on completely speculative as is, the ultimate conclusion may have been wholly different."

Personally I feel this book would have been a better read as a cliffsnote.
Without learning about everyone in the family tree or this or that societies hierarchy.
But there are moments that are engrossing and it's those moments that kept me reading the book.

Rating:
Summary: Read SB 1 or God by Maddox, more indepth
Review: The speculations throughout this book are very disquieting. Not in the sense that they are possible, but these speculations are truly just that, one hundred percent speculative. The research done is nothing more than general background history which absolutely has no direct connection to Jesus Christ. I do not support or reject Jesus, I only support what is fact and this book goes no further than the New Testament had done for years. The questions posed, such as "Did Jesus really die on the cross or did he have a spouse,,,are rambled about here with added speculation. I am continually surprised at what the publishing industry prints, better read Karl Maddox, SB 1 or God, Jesus gets a scientific and historic breakdown, nothing beats it.

Rating:
Summary: Overhyped Nonsense
Review: I can't believe this book showed up on the NY Times best seller list. I thought it had faded into the obscurity it so richly deserves but I guess The DaVinci Code has resurrected alot of this tired old nonsense.

First of all, the Knights Templar were accused of heresy but most of them denied it even under torture and death. The real reason they were hunted down by the church was because King Philip "the fair" of France wanted to get his hands on their wealth and their lands in France and had his puppet pope, Clement V, carry it out under trumped up charges of heresy. Prior to this, they were very devout in their Catholic beliefs and never converted to any Muslim or Gnostic beliefs. Their mission was not to excavate the site of the ancient Temple but to protect Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. The Templars were established by the church, not by some secret society in France.

The book claims that Emperor Diocletian purged earlier Christian writings in 303 AD and that the New Testament is a product of the 4th century. This is absolute nonsense! Second century Christian martyrs such as Justin, Ignatius of Antioch, and Irenaeus testified to and quoted the New Testament long before Diocletian.

The book claims that the Essenes repudiated Judaism for Gnostic dualism. Please show me where in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls that Gnostic dualism is expounded or the idea of the creator God being the wicked "Demiurge".

The book makes the claim that Jesus was some kind of Zealot warrior king but was Essene in his beliefs. Since the only writings we have about the Essenes describe them as pacifists, which was it?

There are way too many "what ifs", "may have beens", and "probably's" in this book. ie "Bar Abbas may have been Jesus' son" or "Joseph of Arimathea was probably kin to Jesus" is like saying Saddam Hussein "may have been" Hitler's son since they were both psychopaths and had mustaches.

The book claims their may have been a connection between the Merovingians and Jewish Nazarites since Merovingians had long hair parted in the middle. In that case, many rock stars and Charles Manson may have been connected to the Jewish Nazarites as well.

The book references the Koranic belief that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross. So we are to believe 8th century Arabic writings over second century Christian writings?!!

The bottom line is, the "Holy Grail" was a medeival myth that started in Europe and had nothing to do with a family bloodline. This belongs in the fiction and fantasy section right beside The DaVinci Code.

Rating:
Summary: The Church Wouldn't Lie - Or Would It?
Review: I read this book almost 20 years ago when it was a controversial bestseller and reread it twice more in the following years. I think that most Americans are more open minded and inquisitive now. I also have to chuckle at the 'religious extremists' ranting reviews. Some people just don't want you to think for yourselves. I mean, do you really think an organization that hides its Pedophile Priests is/was always telling the truth?
For the first 1600 years of Christendom, only the Catholic Church had domain over Christ. Numerous writings were in older versions of the Christian scriptures but were edited out over the centuries.

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/religion and how it may have been purposely kept from the general public, then don't read this book. Also don't read the shocking and amazing book, 'Alien Rapture' by Edgar Fouche, or the real truth from Dr. Paul Hill's 'Unconventional Flying Objects.' Actually the 'Truth is out There', but we don't take the time to find it.

Rating:
Summary: The Mind of Jesus Christ Was Not Studied
Review: It is not possile to provide the tuth about Jesus Christ without researching the mind of Jesus and the content of His sayings. The authors of this book deal with the mind of Jesus only briefly when they speak of Jesus as a member of a higher class compared to being a carpenter. For this reason, the authors conclude that Jesus was not a divine thing, that is, a creator and a creature. Instead of determining whether Jesus is divine or not, based on His sayings, the authors spend their thoughts on the effects of Jesus' sayings, that is, the interpretations that people have had for centuries. These effects on people and secret organizations become the subject of this book. Thus, the real truths about Jesus never come out.

Unfortunately, the sayings of Jesus Christ are both literal and metophoric. This is why many sayings of Jesus are argued continuously throught the centuries. This is also why many of Jesus' sayings not understood yet today.

If Jesus says that He is the Son of God, the authors should have accepted this saying until they prove that He is a liar. The interpretations of Jesus' sayings over the last 2000 years are interesting. But these interpretations are not absolute truths as the secret societies are claiming.

One can extract ideas from the metaphorical sayings of the Jesus. They are both new and turbulent ideas. They are new because they have never been expressed or heard before in our world And, they are turbulent because the have the power to produce thousands of subideas. Only a Son of God can produce new and turbulent ideas. Some of the sayings of Jesus are just being discovered in modern science.

With respect to the existence of Holy Blood and its power yet today, the blood of Jesus Christ became "dead blood" when it left the body of Jesus. Dead blood cannot think.

So, this book is a story the authors wanted to produce rather that a story of the truth.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but unsatisfying
Review: I came to find out about this book after looking up the "Da Vinci Code", a book about which much has been said in the press and media lately. Under the customer reviews section of the "Da Vinci Code", a reviewer had listed this books as "the one that started it all." An exaggerated expression nonetheless, but it may be accurate with respect to "Da Vinci Code".

To start off with, the authors come accross as genuine scholars in search of the truth. They do not have a biased tone at all but rather are very meticulous in referencing their statements with supporting documents. This makes the "tone" of the book believable and genuine.

In the area of readability, the book is intense. The authors present a number of related theories which are sometimes hard to follow. One also gets the feeling sometimes that at least some of the theories are somewhat left unifinished. But in totality, they style of presentation is very good. The authors also take the reader through a journey where they speak of a great "secret" which was intentionally kept from the masses on purpose. This adds to the novel-like feeling of the book and keeps the reader engaged.

The main problem I had with the book was the fact that when the authors finally reveal the secret (that Jesus was not crucified and acutually married and his descendants still exist...), they ignore important issues related to this secret like for example, where he went after the alleged crucifixion and how he lived his life after that. The reason these issues are important is that there are other theories (especially in the east) that present a similar "secret" but go a step beyond by explaining all related issues as well. Most notable is the theory which states that Jesus fainted on the cross, was deemed dead by the Jews, healed to his full health, and traveled to India to preach to the other Jewish tribes (and of course was also married etc.) The authors actually present this theory but do not devote more than a sentence or two to it. Fine as it may be, I just felt that when devoting painstaking research to a subject and taking hundereds of pages to explain it, one would expect the research to be comprehensive and fill in the holes. The authors even go state at one point that it is not relevant what happened to Jesus after crucifixion but simply that he survived. Again, it may not be relevent in their view but discussion of a topic in (relative) totality gives credence to it. The stand taken by the authors seems to lend greater credence to the idea that Jesus was never crucified but rather someone else was put in his place. Again, the related issues to this theory are not discussed whereas the theory of Jesus fainting on the cross is much more credible. One interested in reading about this should research to topic of Jesus in India or Jesus in Kashmir.

In summary, the book is an interesting but intense read. However it leaves you a little unsatisfied at the end. Even though the authors' research forms its foundation on a handful of works (Purie documents and related material) and as such leads to a singular conclusion based primarily on these documents, it is an interesting proposition and one that, at least to a non-zealot searcher of truth, should at least incite some curiosity about the real, historical Jesus. The fact that in doing so, it shatters the foundations of present-day Christianity, may of course be offensive to the "belivers" but shouldn't search for the truth be of higher importance than sticking to the beliefs?