The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail [Import] [Paperback]

Michael Baigent (Author), Richard Leigh (Author), Henry Lincoln (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 614 pages
• Publisher: Arrow Books (1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099682419
• ISBN-13: 978-0099682417
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,605,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fact, fancy, or something else...?, November 3, 2003

By 

Michael Troup (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Paperback)

When my mother gave me this book, saying she could never take communion again, I was shocked. When I read the introduction, I was intrigued. When I began reading in earnest, I was enthralled...
Could Jesus have actually been married, fathered a family, and had them escape the Romans?
Fantastic, crazy, UNORTHODOX, yes- but could it be true, and does it MATTER? Since we were small, we have been told that Jesus was a poor, gentle peaceloving, almost non-Jewish Jew(after all, Hollywood has always gone to great lengths to make him look positively gentile), who allowed himself to be murdered by the Romans with barely a whimper, and that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute that inhabited the periphery of the very male world of first century Palestine.

But what if we look at the story from a truly historical perspective...
The region was swollen with fundimentalists, not unlike the Islamists we face today, and Jesus would have been a very orthodox Jew. Perhaps his story has been filtered over the centuries so that it is no longer recognizable...
And nowhere in the Bible does it refer to Mary as a prostitute- historians are begrudgingly now laying this interpretaion at the feet of a chauvinistic revisionist church- is it so unlikely that a woman in the company of a group of men traveling throughout the Holy Land, would have been married to one of those men? And why would it have been so unlikely that that man was Jesus? After all, a man of Jesus' age would have been looked upon with suspicion if he was NOT married...
Ah, the historical possibilites!
Link these intrigues with the Knights Templar and the mystery of their origins and purpose, the secretive Prior de Sion and a strange priest who was able to face down the power of the Catholic Church after the discovery of a secret in the mountains between France and Spain, while he amassed a fortune and built a tower dedicated to the Magdalene- put all this together and you have a yarn that will grip the heart of any mystery buff, history fan or conspiracy nut!
True- I don't know.
Plausible- yes...just plausible enough to make you look at history and religion from a new perspective, and perhaps make communion impossible.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Challanging, March 9, 2003

By 

Jeffrey S. Groene (Schuyler, NE United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Paperback)

If you like life inside "the box," then this is not a book for you. I have been a conspiracy theorist and a follower of the so-called "secret societies" for years. Most of the book deals with these aspects of history and politics.

However, I found the most interesting chapters to be the ones dealing with the practical side of Jesus' life in Roman occupied Palastine in the first century. Some of the conclusions will absolutely astonish you!!!

Being raised in an orthodox religious atmosphere, my perceptions of Christianity and Jesus himself have been radically altered. Although shaken, I have not faltered because I read David R. Hawkins' books which gave me a contexts for the authors' suppositions.

This is an intellectual as well as a spiritual read. If you can wade through the first 10-11 chapters, I highly recommend it to dedicated, Christian (or even non-Christian), spiritual seekers.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reason and the Real Mystery, August 27, 2005

By 

Ogma (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Paperback)

This is one of my favourite books because of what it symbolizes. This book was first published nearly a quarter of a century ago, BEFORE there was a market for historical fiction and non-fiction works relating to Jesus and his family. The 21st century Jesus-mania has inspired all kinds of sensational publications by all kinds of crackpots.

But these guys - Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln - were the real deal. They investigated a mystery in Rennes-le-Chateau and stumbled upon a supposed secret society called the Priory of Sion. Although some of the claims made by certain parties have proven doubtful or false, there are several threads in this book that remain as valid and important today as when the book was first written.

This is the foundation book that introduces one to the issues of (often fraudulent) claims of the early Church, the potential messianic bloodline, questions regarding the Knights Templar and the repression of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Once a person has read through this 'introductory text', there is a plethora of related reading with which to follow up. These same authors (in ones or twos or all three) have also written The Messianic Legacy, Temple & The Lodge, Dead Sea Scroll Deception, Inquisition and Ancient Traces. The first three are great books for following up the various threads from Holy Blood Holy Grail. The fourth book is interesting for the detail of the events leading up to the monstrous Inquisition; Ancient Traces is a solo effort by Baigent which is interesting for its discussion and refutation of commonly accepted archaeological and other theories.

Another great book in this stream is Robert Eisenman's James, the Brother of Jesus. A great academic book in its own right, also useful for weightlifting, this book depicts the actual history of the man who would later be known to the world as Jesus and discusses, indepth, the events preceding and succeeding his lifetime.

The most important aspect of these books is not so much their conclusions but the possibilities and ideas they present. For those of us who are curious about actual history, outside of the religion- and politically-motivated spoon-fed pablum history that has become the status quo, these books are a great find.

Although Holy Blood Holy Grail is dry reading in some places, overall it is a really good book that introduces us to many of the concepts that are being thrown around by academics, sensationalists and academic sensationalists today regarding messianic bloodlines, etc.

Happy Reading!