Customer Reviews

Holy Blood, Holy Grail

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

This is a great book. One hell of an entertaining yarn. But that's all it is. If you like these historic religious quest books, you will eat it this up. However, Baigent and Leigh (I will leave Lincoln out of this critcism) have proven themselves, to knowledgible scholars, unwilling to back up their statements with historical facts. Even a layman can easily poke holes in most of their conclusions, provided one is willing to try. To back up this statement one need go no further than Baigent and Leigh's "The Dead Sea Scroll Deception". The thesis of this work is familar to readers of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", namely conspiracy and cover up, However as another reviewer has stated, method is explaned, but not motive. This is a fun book to read, but it should never be considered as revisionist history. What it is , is a well written, fanciful yarn. I give it 5 stars for entertainment and 1 for its accuracy. Still if you like historical detective stories you will love this book. I couldn't put it down. Just don't believe all you read.

Some people may say this is just a blind conspiracy theory and perhaps even be offended by it. The authors even admit where they are speculating and call it their hypothesis. Unlike the normal Christian histories imposed upon us as absolute truth, these authors open the door for our thoughts and interpretations. As for the medieval historian, I wish that person would have at least told us a bit about "what a Merovingian is". The historian gives us nothing of what the correct version might be anymore than why the book is wrong. I absolutely love history and if these authors are wrong, I would love at least a new direction to get facts that are perhaps more accurate. I did look up other alternative sources on the Merovingians and find nothing to prove or disprove what the book says. I am not sure if I believe this book total truth or not, but the Vatican itself has distorted and or denied access to information as well as the Holy Bible itself has never proved or disproved either, yet these versions are widely believed with so little evidence. This book is an awsome alternative to the mainstream history usually given. It requires an open mind and perhaps a bit of research by yourself. Think for yourselves and enjoy the book!

Perhaps Fr. Saugnier, a poor priest in the Langue'doc would have never found the 'Pearl of Great Price' from which came his fortunes and the beginning of a great mystery of the Priory of Zion, the lineage of the Royal Davidic Family, the mysterious works of Marc Chagal and the poetry of Blake. But, that is bygone and only mentionable upon the path set by Messrs. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln.
Come with us now to ancient and dangerous times with landmarks and esotericisms leading us to the conclusion: The Davidic Line did not die with Y'shua bar Y'usef or his, I believe, wife, Mary, the Magdalen. It spread and was preserved. The Grail was the vessel, Mary, from which the bloodline continued through the Goth's intermarriage with the Jews of Marseille.
This book is not only about the Templars and its mysterious start, but of the even more mysterious Priory of Zion who pur portedly has protected as maintained the Holy Bloodline and whose leaders are stated to include Sir Isaac Newton, Leonard DaVinci, Robert Fludd, Claude Debussey and Jean Cocteau, and members may have included Marc Chagall, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, many of the French, British and European royalty.
Adventures abound and the search unpeels like an endlessly petalled rose (I say 'rose' most purposefully).
Detail after detail after detail. Connections, connections and reinforced research that some have criticized as rather exhausting. Well, this is a serious work of research and this is what one must do to survive peer review. No apologies here.
dIf you have read Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror", Laurence Gardner's "Bloodline of the Holy Grail", or the "Dagobert's Revenge Compilation" (which I recommend most highly and which you can retrieve online by keyword) and you're still hungry for more, this is the place to start, or their next book "The Messianic Legacy".
Indispensible. Seminal. If you don't get any others, at least get this one.

I guess if you believe everything written in the bible you shouldn't read this. However I don't believe everything in the bible so this book was interesting to me.

This book was extremely compelling and fascinated me from page 1. If you are into the lord our God Jesus Christ or the origin of the world's biggest and best religion, then get this book and curl up with it next to a big pot of coffee because you won't want to stop reading.

If you like this book, might I suggest the Protocals of Zion?

In my opinion this book is clap-trap, & pretentious clap-trap at that! Worse, it is dreadfully dreary & dull to read. Masses of dates, places, details that are brought together from numerous dubious sources & then presented as having some (usually preposterous) bearing on their peculier "Jesus" theory. It's totally unconvincing & an awesomely boring read. In fact, if this review saves one person from repeating the experience, then that will be my only reward for the excrutiating time I spent reading the book.

This book's claim to fame is the theory that Jesus did not die 2,000 years ago and is based on suppositions, myth and a twisted view of the scriptures.

The statement in the book that Jesus' impalement only last 3 hours is bogus, as the scriptures do not say this. Luke 23:33-46 clearly shows that Jesus' torture started long before the "sixth hour", which was when the "darkness over the land" started and lasted until the ninth hour. It was at the ninth hour when Jesus finally died.

Another bizarre theory in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is the use of some midieval picture that shows the disciples carrying Jesus' body. In the background there is a full moon and it is dark. The authors have decided that the picture insinuates that Jesus did not die as no Jew would touch a dead body on the Sabbath as is indicated by the full moon in the background, and that they were, in fact, REMOVING the body from the tomb.

With a small amount of reasoning, this theory too can be shown to be false. First, the picture was painted eons after Jesus' time
and cannot be used as anything credible to the actual crucifiction. Second, the authors are correct in saying that no Jew would touch a dead body on the Sabbath, but they would also not carry a wounded body, or any other body on the Sabbath, as this would have been considered "work."

In addition, the book claims evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdelene married and moved to France and established a "Royal Blood Line" is without merit. There is nothing at all in the scriptures or anywhere else that points to this conclusion or even hints at it. Another consideration is that, not only was Jesus himself a decendent of King David, but he also had at least 4 half-brothers and 2 half-sisters (as shown in Mark 6:3) that were also decendents of King David; any one of them or their children or grandchildren could have moved to France or anywhere else, and established a "royal blood line."

This book is, in my opinion, absolute rubbish.

When this book was first brought out, it created a wave of shock throughout not only the christian, but also the Islamic world....After all, it is all connected, as the authors show.

What the authors say is nothing new though, and they know that themsleves as well. But their extensive research in the matter, made this an exceptional book. At a certain point, in defense of their hypothesis, the authors critisize the way of analysis most historians will turn to. They show the lack of the ability to make connections between certain -at first glance unconnected-events of most present day historians.
This makes this book so immensely special: they DID make the connections.
The result: they lead you gently but surely through the world of the cathars and their secret. From there, they will lead you through to the templars, and their possible secret. Then to the secretive order that worked behind the screens of the templars. They expose the entire dynasty of the Merovingians, and their bloodline.....Finally, they show you the person of Jesus, and his connection in the mystery of all the things spoken of up to that point. Throw al this together, and you don't only have an explanation of what the Holy Grail is, but also what consequences this mysterious "object" had on history, and perhaps also will have on the future! The blood of Jesus, passed down by his descendants, might have quite an impact on the religious world and beyond, if the secretive order spoken of in this book succeeds in its task. The King of The Jews might still be around...And in this world of decay in spirituality, could anything have a bigger impact?

All in all: a book you will not be able to put away, even though you will go mad after the 1000th date they throw at you. Read it, and you'll comprehend many things concerned with religion so much better. Not religious? Read it anyway. You might find out you can relate more to Jesus after reading it...Good luck!

A very exciting and wonderful read. Very much a good representative example of conspiracy theories. It could be used as a text book case. The real interesting thing is that one is almost sure that the authors set out to manufacture something that would appeal to the gullible and those without even a rudimentary understanding of how to think clearly about ideas, history and reasoning from first principles. For those who can see this as their true purpose, the book is wildly exciting and has all of the good elements of a detective sleuth story, with convoluted plots, existing theories turned on their head, dark unseen powers manipulating the central characters, and plenty of bad guys.

The central idea is that the blood line of Christ is alive and well and reposited and protected over time by a group of secret societies, mainly the Rosecrucians. But the Knights Templar, Cisterian Monks and other secret societies are also given pride of place in this pantheon of conspiracy vendors.

The line of investigation and reasoning moves very well and for those with a bent for medievalism, you will love the book, with a lot of the basic historical outline being true. But one would never take it as serious history. (If you are interested in the Cathars one should check out Johnathan Sumption's "Albigensian Crusade," a good read and serious history).

Some out there may actually take its contents seriously. The authors leave subtle hints throughout that they are pulling our leg and that is one of the joys of the book. In addition it is interesting to pick apart the reasoning and leaps of logic that are sometimes subtle and sometimes outlandish and funny --- eg, the supposed leaders of those that have been entrusted to protect the blood line.

For those who want a good read that plays with your mind, this is a good read. For those who are gullible enough to believe conspiracy theories in general, I serious recommend that they re-read it or, if still beyond then, add some serious reasoning and skepticism to your diet, by reading some Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, or Richard Feynman.