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Loading... The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in Historyby Michael Baigent
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A lot of hype - little, if any, catharsis. This is a very boring book. I have trouble with Baigent's books, torn between wanting to call them historical fiction or novels. The LofC has a great tag for this book: miscellanea. I finally decided to tag it under Theology because it shares that shelf in my bookcase. Baigent is one of the people responsible for the book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" and this is partially a re-iteration of theories put forward then and partially a series of new issues that he's uncovered in the years since then. Interesting, and should be required reading for both historians and archaeologists. Why? Because although the leaps of faith he takes a few times are too far it would encourage looking at the facts and thinking about them without blindly accepting the "truths" presented. I'm sure lurking within the pages of this book there are some hidden things that need further investigation but they're obscured by rambling journeys on Baigent's pet hobby-horse, that Jesus was a member of the Essene community, survived past the crucifixion, was married to Mary Magdelene, his descendents live on today, that the Roman Catholic Church knows this and keeps it secret. It's a fun read, it's full of conspiracy but it is an interesting look at a different reflection on early Christianity. 0.049 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Download Description (ISBN 0060827130, Hardcover)"What if everything you think you know about Jesus is wrong? In The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent reveals the truth about Jesus's life and crucifixion. Despite -- or rather because of -- all the celebration and veneration that have surrounded the figure of Jesus for centuries, Baigent asserts that Jesus and the circumstances leading to his death have been heavily mythologized. As a religious historian and a leading expert in the field of arcane knowledge, Baigent has unequaled access to hidden archives, secret societies, Masonic records, and the private collections of antiquities traders and their moneyed clients. Using that access to full advantage, Baigent explores the religious and political climate in which Jesus was born and raised, examining not only the conflicts between the Romans and the Jews, but the strife within the different factions of the Jewish Zealot movement. He chronicles the migrations of Jesus's family, his subsequent exposure to other cultures, and the events, teachings, and influences that were most likely to have shaped his early years. Baigent also uncovers the inconsistencies and biases in the accounts of the major historians of Jesus's time, including Josephus, Pliny, and Tacitus. The enduring influence of these accounts in forming our most common conceptions of Jesus reveals that spin is not a new phenomenon. Taking us back to sites that over the last twenty years he has meticulously explored, studied, and in some instances excavated for the first time, Baigent provides a detailed account of his groundbreaking discoveries, including many never-before-seen photos. The evidence he has uncovered has lead him to make shocking new assertions that threaten the conventional account of Jesus's life and death and shake the very foundation of Western thought, based as it is upon the assumption of Jesus's divinity. Ultimately, his investigation raises the hope that we may gain a new understanding of Jesus. "(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Like Holy Blood Holy Grail this book is all over the place, I guess Micheal did not have enough information on the Jesus Papers to actually write about his so called proof of papers that were written by Jesus long after the crucifixion.
This book went way off topic and more or less described religion from the Neanderthal burials, Egyptian beliefs and several other communities that were in close proximity of the Jewish people and how some of the rituals were absorbed from each of these communities.
As far as credibility of his research, his first chapter... his proof disappeared from a college, his view of the Jesus papers cannot be confirmed because he cannot read Aramaic text. About the only thing that I would find credible in his book is the fact that the Vatican has sought out ancient written texts to destroy anything that they find heresy. (