Customer Reviews

The Journey of the Magi: The Truth about the "Three Kings" and the Historical Jesus

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This is a very thin speculative book based on the author's broad leaps from tiny slivers of evidence to far away conclusions that suit his personal and religious predjudices. Often he is simply intuiting his conclusions based on his own feeling, and the whole thing seems like a phony rant. His material about the coins is - at least - original. But it's all made suspect by his huge leaps of logic. Basically, bull.

Hans Holzer (1920-2009) was an Austrian-born, American paranormal researcher, and author of more than 100 books.

The subtitle of this 2006 book might persuade a prospective reader that it is an objective, "historical" survey; in reality, it is extremely speculative (treating Astrology, the "seven levels of the Other Side," and wild interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls as established facts, for instance), although not without some interest.

He (rather immodestly) suggested in the Introduction that he was the first scholar to separate the experience of the shepherds and of the three Magi by two years, to identify the real date of the birth of Jesus, and the arrival of the three Magi, as well as who they were and why they traveled together.

He suggests that Jesus was a Libra (Pg. 15), although there is little historical evidence he uses to support this.

He suggests (Pg. 30-31) that Balthasar, the last of the three Magi was the Emperor of Ethiopia.

On the negative side, he confuses the "Immaculate Conception" with the Virgin Birth (Pg. 81-82).