Rating: 
Summary: A Great Historical Detective Story
Review: This book has a great deal for the Thinking Man and Woman: Buried Treasure maps disguised as Old Master Paintings and Ancient Parchment Texts. Shadowy figures with roots in ancient history -- The Priory of Sion, The Rosicrucians, The Gnostics, The Cathars, The Freemasons, The Knights Templar, The Celestines, The Merovingians, The Visigoths, The Romans, The Earliest Christian-Jews -- all with profound secrets to hide. All with religious and political axes to grind. A theory of the burial of the remains of Jesus Christ! and the relocation of his bloodline through Mary Magdalene in the Languedoc region of Southern France. A poor village priest suddenly made wealthy by his discoveries: perhaps with hush-money, and perhaps by blackmailing the Church. The Languedoc where Pontius Pilate and the descendants of Herod the King were exiled in dishonor: the region that has harbored heretics ever since the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire. What else from the tunnels under Jerusalem's Temple of Solomon is buried there in France at the rediscovered "Site" on the Rose Line -- a line of longitude passing right through Paris. Is the tomb of Jesus on a mountainside near the notorious Visigoth mountain village of Rennes-le-Chateau? All this in the Tomb of God and more. This is one of the few books I've read for the second time -- right after the first. For those who are geometry buffs, the authors explain in detail how they analysed paintings and texts for hidden map geometry -- "The Geometry" -- known for centuries only to the cognoscenti, supposedly those descended from refugees from the Holy Land who migrated to S. France after Jesus was crucified. However, the geometric arguments are quite involved and best skimmed over for the first reading, until the reader gets a handle on the enormous scope of the secrets revealed in this book. I have spent many pleasant hours studying the geometric arguments which lead to the stunning revelation of an enormous Star of David laid out on the map of the countryside of S. France -- all defined by the building of ancient churches, chateaus, and stone crossses -- all in conformance with "The Geometry" which is contained in its ealiest manifestation in a "map within a map" -- that of the Jerusalem of the Knights Templar in the 1300's. At the center of it all? After three years' research the authors are convinced that they have located the buried remains of Jesus, and they call for the immediate excavation of "The Site" -- a colossal undertaking of mining engineering that will require the sanction of the government of France among others. Now that there is no fear of being tortured and burned at the stake by an Inquisition, all this is coming out -- beginning quiety in the 1890's and culminating recently in a miniseries on BBC and a number of books of which this is arguably the best. The authors propound a religious approach to Christianity in conflict with the received wisdom preached for centuries by both Catholics and Protestants. The authors make a plausible claim to have found Le Sang Reale -- The San Graal -- The Holy Grail of song and story. I'll be studying and referring to this work for the foreseeable future. Highly recommended to the intellectually inclined.
Rating: 
Summary: Complex, confusing, but very compelling
Review: This is not a book you take for light reading to the beach! The theories and geometrical explanations that form the backbone of this book are quite complex, involved, and downright tedious. But, if you can comprehend all of the math, or, if you just take the authors at their word after several chapters, as I did (these guys most certainly did their homework), you get to an extremely engrossing, centuries-old mystery that could affect all of the Christian world. I found the theory that something of great import, some "secret" of enormous significance and/or value, has been hidden in the Languedoc region of France to be quite convincing. I do agree with the other reviewer who isn't sold on the fact that it is the body of Jesus. But it may be and, whatever it is, an awful lot of people seem to have gone to extraordinary lengths over the centuries to hide and protect it, but to make sure that its location was preserved for the future. Give this book some time and effort up front, and you will be rewarded with a great story in the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Something there, but...
Review: While I do not deny that there is some secret meaning hidden in the paintings of Pousin and Teniers and the Templar map of Jerusalem the authors present, I believe that they have jumped over a premise or two to arrive at their conclusion that this secret relates to the body of Christ. However, it is also true that anyone with a straight edge and a map of the area in question can confirm for themselves the obvious relationship that Cardou has to many of the ancient structures around. On the whole, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, so long as the reader closely examines the arguments the authors make.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Convinced
Review: While this is an interesting book, I feel that the authors make many suppositions on the basis of speculation. The story shifts from the mysterious activities of Abbe Sauniere, to a convoluted web of lines and conjecture based on COPIES of "parchments" supposedly found by Sauniere. Links of correlation between these and various paintings are also very tenuous. The fact that paintings have geometric composition and arrangement proves nothing in this regard. One may draw endless triangles, squares, etc on any painting and rotate it to match up with a map. I will grant that MAYBE there is indeed a "hidden treasure," but I was not convinced that it must be the "body of Christ." This was not proved in my opinion. If Christ survived his crucifixion, why did he then go into hiding? If he hadn't intended to be crucified all along as a sacrifice for sin, why did he say it? Are the gospel accounts false? If he did intend to be crucified, and survived, he failed in his goal. Further, how could Templars or anyone, especially a thousand years later, know whether a body was that of Christ? What would be the proof? What would be our proof now? The assertions here are monumental in scope, a conspiracy to put any "UFO coverup" or "JFK assassination conspiracy" to shame, a conspiracy across time, generations, cultures, and countries. The evidence must therefore be also monumentally compelling. I did not find it so. "If Christ is not raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins...we are of all men most to be pitied."
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