John Grigsby

Had I realised that Grigsby was associated with Graham Hancock and his "unconventional" ideas about an ancient advanced civilization, I probably would not have bought this book. But I didn't, so I did! And I'm glad I did, because it was a very absorbing read.

While not being convinced by all of his conclusions about the origins of the Beowulf story, there is a lot of interesting background and evocation of the Anglo-Saxon period. Whether you agree with the author's analysis or not, if you are show more interested in Beowulf, I think you would find this book worthy of a little of your time.

EDIT: Having asked for and kindly received expert opinion on the evidential quality and robustness of Grigsby's hypothesis, I've downgraded my rating by one star to three stars. As a non-acedemic I did enjoy reading it, so in fairness cannot knock any more off, but it seems the misgivings I spoke of above were justified. show less

I very much wanted to adore this book. The general thesis is that hidden underneath the Christian rewrites is evidence of two religious cults coming into conflict with one another: an older, agricultural based cult, represented by Grendel and his mother and a newer, warrior based cult, represented by Beowulf. Cool idea. It's been posited that the Vanir and the Aesir are gods from these two sorts of cults. I can buy that. It's when the author gets more into the god as the grain that I begin show more to have issues. I can accept that there may have been times when a ritual king was necessary for sacrifice, but I don't think there's evidence for it happening on a regular basis. And while the author does acknowledge that there's "controversy" about how accepted The Golden Bough is, he uses it as evidence for this claim. That's suspect to me. At one point, he compares the different myths of heroes and their association with a sheaf of wheat and concludes that this myth spread around the world from Egypt. Because different cultures could never possibly come up with the same type of myth to represent the same thing on their own. That's like saying the ancient Egyptians didn't have the technology to build pyramids and that flying saucers created Stonehenge. Please. But the weirdest thing is that chapters later, he gets into how different cultures did create similar myths for similar concepts. I also felt he relied far too much on Glob for all the info on bog bodies when a lot of Glob has been reinterpreted (a nice way of saying discredited, isn't it?) in light of better scientific equipment and better bog bodies. He also quotes his source documents from secondary sources. If you're going to quote Posidonos (sp), go to Tacitus, dammit, don't go to Miranda Green! While I love her, it's not like Posidonos is unavailable. I mean, how much would I love tying together bog bodies and Beowulf??? That's right up my twisted little alley. But for me to really go for it, contemporary scholarship needs to be used. And once again--and this is a big argument I had with Glob--not all earth goddesses of the Germanic tribes were Nerthus. There were a number of different goddesses and they weren't all aspects of one major goddess. His final analysis though, that Beowulf is in fact an aspect of Odin, is interesting. I'm not sure I buy it, but it's interesting. Just do better research! And don't use The Golden Bough to support your arguments. (Next he'll be writing something about the Celts supported by The White Goddess!) show less

I haven't actually read this, but merely added it to my stack of books because I thought it would be interesting. I am definitely looking forward to reading this.

"Un libro assai più avvincente di molti romanzi" così la copertina de "L'enigma di Marte" anticipa il suo contenuto. Irriverente, audace, rivoluzionario così Graham Hancock ,Robert Bauval e John Grigsby hanno concepito questo libro. Il tentativo di dare risposte
a quelle domande che la cosiddetta "versione ufficiale" non può o non sa dare. Cosa celano le sabbie del pianeta rosso? Questo libro
entusiasmerà tutti gli appassionati delle teorie "alternative". Esisteva una civiltà evoluta show more su Marte migliaia di anni fa ? Leggete
e lo scoprirete! Ma se un tempo il pianeta rosso era vivo e florido come la nostra amata terra, cosa lo ha ridotto nelle terribili condizioni in cui si trova adesso? Lo stesso destino potrebbe essere destinato al nostro Pianeta? "Catastrofismo", di questo è stato accusato questo autore. Infatti viva è l'ipotesi che in qualsiasi momento senza preavviso un asteroide di grandi dimensioni possa distruggerci in ogni momento. Forti anche le ipotesi da parte degli autori, circa l'attività di oscuramento da parte delle istituzioni in merito alle vicende appena descritte. Un buon libro per coloro che amano fantasticare e sognare, un ottimo libro per coloro che adorano pensare con la propria testa! LEGGETELO! show less