My mom just bought it awhile I ago. I'm thinking of reading it maybe.

I read it, but I'm still a good Chatolic.

Very recently JP2 said that the Inquisition was not as bad as it was made out to be. At the same token, the RCC has pretty much expressed its strong disapproval of this book. (Like it was a big surprise to anyone).

I tend to have difficulty reading things like this in which, of all things, the
Capetian Dynasty is it is descended from Christ?

It's not that it is heretical in my view or anything like that. It is more a matter
to me of taking liberties with a subject that clearly will provoke unnecessary religious reaction to a concept that toys with such a deeply rooted and basic religous belief.

I know it sells book but where is the sense of common decency in that? Well I guess Salman Rushdie sort of already crossed this boundary line with the Satanic Verses but I had the same negative reaction to that book as well.

"the Capetian Dynasty is it is descended from Christ?"

oh no, not this old chestnut - don't tell me, the Holy Grail is hidden in France, brought there by the Virgin Mary who's buried near Troyes, pah, it's all the same old stuff rehashed. Knights Templar, the haywain, blah blah blah.

course if yopu want a bit more fun, read "King Jesus" by Robert Graves..

..there is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro..

Ugh, read this book. Guessed the ending correctly half way through.

I say Angels and Demons was a much much better novel than this.

Erm I think it is Mary Magdalen.

Mary Magdalen then, it's always one or the other. Do the Cathars come into it as well? and the Gnostics?

this stuff ranks alongside Joseph of Arimathea bringing the Grail to Britain, Druids going to America, and all that Atlantis rubbish. it's as if there's a huge lottery machine full of coincidences and ill-researched pseudo-facts that every couple of years get churned out into the latest "revelation" that will shatter the way we view history..

when it's in novel form i don't mind, it makes great fiction. what i resent is when some wannabee historian with more bravado than brain glosses someone elses's pseudo-history then gets it published with a hoo-haa and no matter how much you debunk it, like mud or vomit it sticks

..there is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro..

The thing about is that so many people who read it want to believe that it is true. What is known of history is confused and revisionistic enough without the fictional novelists getting into the act.

What is the book about? Never heard of it (prbably because I'm trying to be as far from anything related to religion as possible).

Wisdom comes with age. But sometimes age comes alone...

Everything I have heard about this book tells me there's a very good reason it's found in the FICTION section. It's a huge insult to Christianity and pretty much everyone else. Also, let's just say I'd hate to be the author when he reaches the Highest Court. Ouch. BTW, has anyone ever researched the "bestseller list" books to see how many of those sales actually just went to libraries and that sort of thing? If every library has a copy of a really cruddy book, would it still make it to the list without sales to anyone else?

@Space,

No. If the sales are only to libraries, the total count will not be enough to make it a best seller.

The best seller listing is based on retail sales reports... i.e. over the counter at Borders Books or Barnes & Nobel, etc.

@Space: a huge insult to Christianity?! I'm buying it ASAP!
Seriously, what it's about?

Wisdom comes with age. But sometimes age comes alone...

@Zlo, look here

PS. I am not saying that it is an insult to Christianity. But I am saying is that there ought to be plenty of other ways to sell a book without poking religious people in the eye, so to speak.

Edited by - Indy11 on 6/17/2004 11:00:01 AM

nice link, Ed!

cross-referred that write-up with a few others and looks like I was right - this is largely a gloss of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" with nothing new in it at all.

such revelations!

so the early & medieval Church didn't like women, burned unbelievers and heretics, and tried to stamp out the pagan cult of the female Goddess? well I never, there's a novelty for you. Chartres Cathedral has lots of sexual symbolism in its decoration? must be goddess symbolism - the fact that the sexual imagery largely involves devils being rude and nasty to sinners (therefore equating sex with wrongdoing in the mind of the medieval observer) can be conveniently disregarded! as I thought, the usual myths regarding the Templars, Jacques de Molay, blah blah blah nothing new there, that's been rehashed for several hundred years. What I can see of this author's discussion of LdV, the Mona Lisa, and the Last Supper is risible, to the point of insulting - remember what I said a while back about there being NO MYSTERY to the Mona Lisa painting except what's in people's heads?

this territory has been covered far better by non-fiction and fiction writers. I've had for many years a rather a special interest in the development of the early Church and how Christianity supplanted "pagan" religions in the centuries after Christ's death until the end of the Western Roman Empire. One of the best fictionalised accounts I ever came across was "Whose is the Kingdom?" by John Arden and Margaretta d'Arcy, unf never released in novel form, but as a BBC radio play - you used to be able to get hold of the scripts.

Now that was a work of talent, with deep research and well-rounded interpretations of historical personages, and some fictional but very believeable characters as well. Only ever really matched, for me, by Gore Vidal's "Julian"

unf this book will be seized on by certain elements and factions in the general public that lean towards new age-ism and pseudo-paganism and I've no doubt that it will be q popular - drivel often is. Moreover by putting it in novel form the author & the publishers get to distance themselves from any controversy or consequences - after all, it's just a work of fiction! nice...

I don't have any problem debunking Christianity, ffs I do it all the time, but at least I do it from a standpoint of accuracy and facts and not this carrion activity of eclectically chucking bits in from whatever crackpot theories I find entertaining and can pass off as "scholarship"

..there is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro..