Rating: 
Summary: Still is not clear why Jesus was crucified!!
Review: This is a great book with plenty of references for the material. It starts excitingly with all of these secret socities; however, it slows down by presenting the reader with all sorts of mysteries and riddles and the promise of solving all of those later on in the book! I lost track of all of these promises and don't know how many of the mysteries were solved at the end. But the main ones for me were the relationship of all of these secret societies such as Templars and then the Masons with respect to each other and how they were derived from each other which was not clear. Even though the authors were quick to turn down the previous work that was done in Hiram Key and Second Messiah but they did not produce a clear theory to replace the work in those books! One of the mysteries that was not solved is the following: if Jesus staged all of his work to capture every ones attention why was he crucified? There are no theories on what his crime was and how did he end up getting on the cross and if it was so important for him to relive the legend of Isis and Orisis then how come he vanished into the thin air after the crucifiction. The final question is that with all of the historical evidence available about the these religions and their so-called prophets why is it that you still have people following them and still they are No. 1 business in the world? Reading more about the truth behind all of religions has given a different meaning to Karl Marx's statement that "Religion is the opium of the masses."
Rating: 
Summary: Many of us already know this
Review: A great achievement. I know some are chuckling at the fact that what has been known for centuries in many circles is coming forth into full public disclosure from many sources. You know who you are. savasti hetepu
Rating:
Summary: Great book with some flawed writing
Review: Having just finished this book I would highly recommend it to anyone with the caution that if you are a believer in Christianity be prepared to have some articles of your faith strongly questioned. That said the book is a pretty good detective story at trying to piece together what the real story of Christ was and what he was really trying to preach. This book affirmed a lot of what I had already read in the Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagals about Christianity not being as clear cut as we all thought. The evidence is laid out fairly well (although of course it is sketchy at times) and I think it makes at least the case that what is taught by various versions of Christianity is not necessarily the truth; at the most extreme it kind of paints Christianity as nothing more than a political movement and the New Testament a book of propaganda. However someone approaches this book it at least opens the door to doubt and it especially points out the problem with the fundementalist Christians and how dangerous they are, since they are taking literally a work that has severe flaws and contradictions in it. My big complaint about the book is that the section detailing the Templars and Masons and the Priory of Sion rambles a bit all over the place.It was almost like 2 books put together and the first half was somewhat hard to get through for its style(though the factual matter was interesting) and almost made me stop reading it, which I am glad I did not. In response to one prior review:If the Priory of Sion does exist it is not surprising it is underground. Besides the Catholic Church (which if you remember only found Galileo to be "right" in 1994!) there are others in the so called Christian Community who could threaten such an organization and its members, through harassment (via sympathetic government officials)or even the violence that has been extended to abortion clinics and the like by these groups. Ask a practicing Pagan about what Christian groups do to them and you will soon see the answer... Anyway, a great read and eye opening to say the least and recommended, despite some problems with the writing style.
Rating:
Summary: Keep an Open Mind.
Review: This book is a must read for anyone who ever had questions about Christianity, the Church, and essentially the History of how the World today was formed. Do I believe everything that was written in the book? Well... not necessarily, but if I believed everything that I read I would never have picked this book up! A warning: the book starts off a little slow and seems a bit implausible, but the more I read the more it made sense. And part 2 of the book is where it really takes off. FYI, they do mention the title of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" as "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail." My copy of HB,HG (1996 Edition) has the shorter title on the cover, but the introduction begins; "On January 18, 1982 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' was published in England." It looks like the book was originally published under the longer title and Picknett/Prince DID do their research.
Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly new, and brilliantly accurate.
Review: What great books are coming out now on the Templars,Cathars,Christ etc etc This is yet another book I cannot put down. Like the Tomb of God, the logistics are refreshing and new. Almost to the point of being simple. I simply cannot get enough view points on this subject matter and am interested in setting up a web chat site. Its great that Amazon have such a readily available library with book reviews from ordinary people.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, but who really knows the truth?
Review: The best parts of this book are the descriptions of the Magdalene and John the Baptist cults in the South of France, plus the chapters on Rennes-les-Chateaux, all of which would make a great itinerary for a vacation in that part of the world. There definitely seem to have been some odd things going on in Provence and the Languedoc over the years, but whether any of this really matters much these days is questionable. I was, however, appalled to find out that the Albigensian Crusade was led by Simon de Montfort, who was portrayed as being something of a hero in my history lessons many years ago back in England. I guess it points to the key fact that history tends to get written by the victors. The descriptions of the early history of Christianity in the book are also very thought provoking, but given the passage of time, and the deliberate suppression of alternative thinking by the Church of Rome, a lot of the authors' theories are based on fragments of information and some fairly wide leaps in logic, and are therefore highly conjectural. It does seem that Jesus was not all he is made out to be by the Church, however. This has been profferred by other authors also, including Knight and Lomax, in "The Hiram Key" and "The Second Messiah". I also find Picknett & Prince's obsession with the Priory of Sion a bit off-putting, not being much of a conspiracy theorist. It's really hard to believe that anyone would bother to keep something like the Priory going through the centuries, particular if the bottom line is the revelation that Jesus was a priest in an Isis cult. Anyway, "The Templar Revelation" makes for a good read, if one remains objective about the topic.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, yet Unfulfilling
Review: Being a fan of the whole Templar/Masonic/Rennes-le-Chateau "thing" (for lack of a better term), I was eager to hear yet another viewpoint on it. I have to say, the authors do bring up some interesting points, but are too quick to dismiss the works of others and cast themselves as the "only" authorities. They consistently get the title for the Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln book wrong, which only makes me wonder how accurate their other research is. The chapter on "Sex: The Ultimate Sacrament" becomes wildly off-topic, and while THE HIRAM KEY (Knight and Lomas)may not be the most accurately footnoted book, it cannot be simply "dismissed". I also worry about the broad "dismissal" of what has become a widely researched and accepted origin for the Qumran Community and the Dead Sea Scrolls (not surprisingly, Robert Eisenman is not even mentioned in the bibliography). Also, they are too quick to dismiss THE TOMB OF GOD (Andrews and Schellenberger). What is ultimately odd about the majority of these dismissals is that the authors eventually come close to arriving at the same points as many of those they dismiss (ancient Egyptian Mystery Schools were also strongly hypothesized by Knight and Lomas). Entertaining at times, yet disappointing too. Reminiscent of Caffeine Free Diet Coke, or non-alcoholic beer.
Rating:
Summary: A great read, with some problems
Review: This book is definitely a great read, on a fascinating subject. But my concerns boil down to two issues: will either the skeptic or the believer be persuaded one way or another by all this massive research, utterly absorbing though it may be? and, since the question of the Priory of Sion interconnects with the central issues in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and since the Priory seems to have been doing its work at least since the Renaissance, and is still doing it in France in the age of Existentialism and Deconstruction, why all the secrecy requiring all this research? Could any enlightened person in contemporary France still be concerned about the Church of Rome? I'm also a bit concerned that the authors of the present volume consistently get the title of the Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln book wrong. It's not The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. And I also wish the authors had tracked the Cathars back to the Nestorians and Manichaeans, which would explain the link with Jesus a bit more directly. I'm glad they debunk the Merovingian connection, which, if credible, seems as much an aspect of Merovingian mythos as a genuine bloodline. The central issue has to do with faith not monarchism in the late 20th Century. And, there again, I wonder whose mind is going to be changed by any of this, however fascinating the subject may be. I'm coming at this as a student of literature, so I'm particularly interested in the connections with Yeats and other turn-of-the-century dabblers in the pseudo-mystical. Picknett & Prince have given me a lot of food for thought on that issue, since it has a great deal to do with the origins of 20th-century art, despite its questionable relevance to late-20th-century religion or politics.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of assumptions...
Review: The authors very clearly demonstrate how little the average Christian knows their own Scriptures, not to mention supposedly familiar figures such as Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist and Jesus himself. The problem is that the average Christian bases his/her faith too much on tradition and fables (Christmas, Easter, etc.) rather than paying more attention to proper history. The starting chapters on Leonardo are fascinating. The commentaries on the coded messages in his paintings to the mysterious Lady M and John the Baptist are very intriguing. Although I am still largely unconvinced on their theory of Leonardo's faking of the Turin Shroud. There are grounds to believe that John the Baptist cults and the Magdalene cults have been around for centuries. However, upon a rereading of this book, I found it to be filled with lots of unproven assumptions and relying instead on the convenient stringing-together of popular conspiracy theories - Goddess Traditions in ancient Christian sects, Gnosticism, Templar, Cathar, etc. etc.
Rating:
Summary: We are slowly getting nearer to the truth!
Review: 'The Templar Revelation' forms a kind of trilogy with previous authors works such as 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' and 'The Second Messiah'. The current work opens with a fascinating disclosure about Leonardo de Vinci, and closes powerfully with the 'revelations' about Mary Magdalene and the 'initiates' of a Jesus-Egyptian mystery school. Prince and Picknett point out that some of Jesus's own disciples didn't really understand what he was teaching, and this book takes us one step closer to the reason why the Templars and Prieure de Sion venerate Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist above all. Great read!
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