Rating: 
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: Ms. Starbird has done a great job of presenting what would be, for some, a disturbing counter to the traditional Church's version of the Jesus story. Although the writing style is sometimes simplistic, the genuiness of the author and the intriguing nature of the subject make it a riveting read. If you liked Holy Blood, Holy Grail, you will love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Facts are wrong
Review: Unfortunately the author has her history and theology wrong. Mary Magdalen was not the women who anointed Jesus and she was not a prostitute she came from a prominent family and was possessed by demons. (Luke 8 2and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out;) Even in the Synoptic Gospels, Gnostic Gospels and Christian Apocrypha she was not the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with oils, perfume and her tears. This woman has never been identified and is not Mary Magdalen:
Matthew 26:7
a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
(Whole Chapter: Matthew 26 In context: Matthew 26:6-8)
Mark 14:3
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
(Whole Chapter: Mark 14 In context: Mark 14:2-4)
Luke 7:37
When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume,
(Whole Chapter: Luke 7 In context: Luke 7:36-38)The only history any where about Mary Magdalen involved in the anointment of Jesus is at the Tomb:
Mark 16The Resurrection
1When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. This brings questionable validity to her discovery which is unfortunate because I do believe there is proof that a very deep relationship existed between Jesus and Mary.
Rating: 
Summary: Fatal flaws
Review: The woman with the alabaster jar of expensive perfume is Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead), not Mary Magdalene. The story is in all four Gospels, but her identity is revealed in Jn 11:1-2. After Pentecost, when the Gospel starting spreading to the ends of the earth, Mary Magdalene went with Maximilian (or Maximus--one of the 72 elders of the NT) and Simon (Hb name), the man born blind that Jesus healed, to the Roman colony city of Aix en Provence, France to spread the Gospel--not Egypt. Their tombs are there. I have a friend who spends three months every year there. Why do you think the French are so devoted to the Madeleine? She was there! Who knew her? The French. At no time in history did they make such wild claims about Mary Magdalene as this author does. She's been watching the movie "Jesus Christ Superstar" and taking her ideas from that. It's art, not truth. BTW, I'm a fan of JCS but I won't let its errors confuse me. The Catholic Church has never formally taught that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and the Scriptures only say that seven demons were cast out of her. Enjoy this book as a work of fiction and fantasy if you must, but do not make the mistake of thinking it is historical truth. Read the earliest Christian writings to see what the first believers knew to be true faith and what they fought as heresy...including priestesses, goddess worship, and Collyridianism. Fertility goddess womb worship of the divine feminine already existed in Christ's time and before then. Christ and Mary Magdalene wouldn't have been necessary to reveal this sort of faith if it were true. What new covenant would that be? Nothing new about it.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting, thought-provoking read...
Review: This was suggested to me by a Catholic friend and I know it ruffled his tail-feathers a lot more than mine (since I'm not Catholic). This lady certainly knows what she is talking about and the story takes a little imagination, though she does provide a lot of convincing evidence. I would love to see a "rebuttal" book to this one since I am sure there is quite a bit of "evidence" in the other direction as well. This is really an interesting book for anyone with any religious or historical interest.
Rating: 
Summary: Yet Another View of Relgion
Review: This was a good book but not great. It offered some outstanding nuggets of information which presented me with much food for thought. The idea that Mary Magdalen was actually married to Jesus Christ and the Holy Grail is not a cup or chalice at all but Mary's womb as she carried the "bloodline" of Jesus to Egypt and then to Europe is very interesting. She backs up this thought by analyzing art of the dark ages and the "understood" meaning behind it. There was obviously a lot of research that went into this book and I must admit that it was very intriguing. Yet I could not bring myself to believe most of it. There seemed to be a lot of leaps made between some of the information. But I do think there is enough here to warrant some more research on the subject. It would be tough to find out much of what happened because of the Inquisition and the fact that the Roman-Catholic Church purged most of the records of other religions as they stepped on them throughout time as being heresy. In short the beginning of the book really pulled me in but from the mid point on I felt that it was a bit reaching in trying to defend the ideas it presented. But it certainly is a good book to read in combination with other books on the subject. Just don't make it your first and only one on Christianity.
Rating:
Summary: I had to mark this book down because....
Review: it contained a HUGE mistake. Starbird's definition of Mary's (BVM that is, not Mary Magdalene) Immaculate Conception is that Mary's parents didn't sin in the act of conceiving her. First, as warped as the Catholic church is about sex, it does not consider procreational sex a sin. What the Immaculate Conception actually means is that Mary was conceived with original sin on her soul. As fascinating as I found this book, because of that gigantic error, I have to question almost everything else in it. Another mistake she made was calling Jesus "Jesus of Nazareth." She uses "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" as a major source of her research, yet in that book, the authors explain how and why that title is erroneous. I really hate to be so nitpicky because I DID enjoy this book - but when I come across such inaccuracies in this type of book that needs all the "ammunition" it can muster for its unorthodox theories, I feel the need to point them out.
Rating:
Summary: great approach!
Review: This is not your typical academic book, I mean this in a good way!
It contains a lot of information but, it reads like a novel and it is truly good.
M. Starbird takes of a more personnal approach in her research on Mary Magdalen and the result is amazing. A lot of books on Mary Magdalen tend to repeat the same thing over and over. I have read about forty of them and the gist of them is the same. It was not the case this time and I learn plenty of new things.
I also recommend her follow up book.
Rating:
Summary: Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute!
Review: This book really made my day. (Okay, I read it in a day)
Full of lots of great clues from the past about what things
might have been like, .. the church wiped out a lot of people that it didn't agree with. Including the descendants of Christ! I love
it!!
great read!
Rating:
Summary: A great research, great intellectual honesty
Review: Margaret Staribird decided to write this book after reading "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". The reason was that she was upset by the conclusions the three authors drew.
To her great surprise, and intellectual honesty, her conclusions confirmed the above mentioned conclusions.
Besides, this book clearly explains the use of Gnostic symbols as well as the nature of Tarot, to which we look at only as an instrument of divination.
This book was also good for me. I was able to trace down signs of the Grail "heresy" in Florence, my town.
The book would have been perfect if it insisted a little more on the Black Madonna topic.
Rating:
Summary: Old news - and boring
Review: I first heard this idea back in 1968 from a friend who was convinced. It sounded intriguing to me, so I began a very long and exhaustive search for the truth. What I found was that the "truth" really isn't there. Lots of opinions over time are, however. These somehow get sanctified by time, and then quoted as evidence! In fact, maybe Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, maybe they weren't. . . there is no real way to know. Bottom line: it really isn't important one way or the other, unless you have some sort of vested interest in the outcome, beyond the simple teachings of Jesus. For example, if you were a priest who had left the priesthood, married, and then still wrote reviews here on Amazon and signed yourself "A Roman Catholic priest". I guess you might want Jesus to have been married.
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