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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still impressed after carefully checking the geometry,
This review is from: Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2000 Year Old Mystery (Hardcover)
I wrote a favorable review in September of '98 and have not changed my opinion. Let me say that I agree that the geometrical arguments are difficult -- this is not light reading. I doubt that the reviewers who dismiss this book out of hand have patiently spent the time required to digest the analyses presented. I have gone over this book in detail several times since my first review. I have laboriously checked the authors' diagrams, and they are what they purport to be: a geometrical solution to the mysterious "parchments" that are in reality a treasure map and not simply biblical passages in latin. (I have taught geometry in high school and have designed and built sundials involving geometric calculations.) I do not necessarily agree with the religious and historical conclusions the authors draw. However, this book presents a genuine contribution to the history of painting -- something that other reviewers have missed. I and others have found other ancient paintings (not mentioned in this book) which also are laid out on the "sacred Platonic geometry" hidden in those parchments that are the center of the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery. The color reproductions and careful illustrations in this book alone make it worthy of consideration. One must realize that this book was written in part to refute Henry Lincoln, (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, etc) author of competing books with his own solutions to the Rennes-le-Chateau mystery. Mr. Lincoln was at one time a writer for the BBC, and seems to have failed to decipher properly the geometric code hidden in the parchments, which made a poor French priest go from rags to riches in the 1890's. Tomb of God is a scholarly work with sixteen pages of research notes that can be checked; explanatory appendices; an extensive and useful bibliography; a good index; excellent color plates including reproductions of the paintings analysed and a photograph of the solution site. It includes the analysis of a Templar map of Jerusalem from the 1300's. The paintings cannot be forged for they are in museums -- and the analyses are far from arbitrary -- an observation that could only come from one who was unable to follow them. It is unfortunate that the authors (one a civil engineer) did not have a better editor. To their credit they checked the position of churches and castles in S. France with satellite-derived Global Positioning Instrumentation to establish that the geometry hidden in Poussin's "Et In Arcadia Ego" paintings was confirmed on the landscape of Southern France. One reviewer calls attention to a TV documentary that attacked this book. It is so easy for a TV documentary to criticize a book . . . while it would be next to impossible to defend properly on TV the complicated arguments involved. To me, it is evidence of the book's importance and quite commendatory to the authors that a TV documentary attacking their Tomb of God was aired in the first place. I am only arguing that the authors have succesfully deciphered the mysterious puzzle of the parchments. This alone makes the book a worthwhile mystery and detective story. I do not argue that they have proved that anything is buried at the spectacular mountain site they reveal. I believe they went too far in saying anything about Jesus being buried there. This is so controversial that it spoils it for those who might otherwise enjoy the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the puzzle of the parchments that made a poor priest fabulously wealthy and has caused the mountain village of Rennes-le-Chateau to be a tourist mecca. If you enjoy a mystery, a detective story, and detailed investigations reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's writings, give this book the benefit of the doubt. Skip the detailed geometrical arguments, ignore the religious implications, and enjoy the intriguing puzzles and their solutions for what they are worth. Suspend disbelief and appreciate the effort that went into Tomb of God (a better title might have been selected) This book will raise questions in your mind which may lead to the reading of other approaches to a mystery that has enchanted many intellectually inclined readers -- especially on the other side of the Atlantic.
56 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A solution to the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau, and more,
By Don Lowry (dlowry@tfb.com) (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2000 Year Old Mystery (Hardcover)
The only reason I don't rate this book a 10 is that the opening chapters, while very interesting, and well written (considering what they contain) are not easy to get through, due to the extreme complexity of the subject. I shudder to think what a casual reader who had never read anything before about the mysteries surrounding the little village of Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France (the works of Henry Lincoln, especially) would make of them. But if you have read any of Lincoln's books, or seen any of his TV documentaries on the subject, don't miss this book. The authors, an archeologist and an engineer, make Lincoln look like a bumbling amateur by deftly maneuvering through a complex mine-field of clues, real and false, that led Lincoln far down the wrong trail. In several chapters of detailed detective work, they demonstrate with geometric logic (pun intended) that the real treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau (or that general area) is not Templar gold, or some vague ancient Holy Place, but the tomb of Jesus, its existence and location kept secret by some few initiates over the centuries because denial of the physical resurrection and assumption of Jesus was grounds for the most excrutiating punishments of the Catholic Inquisition. The closing chapters are much easier to follow, and explore the question of how the body of Jesus came to be buried in a secret location in what was then Gaul and who was responsible for keeping the secret all these centuries, in encoded paintings, parchments, gravestones, and landmarks. (Here it helped that I had just recently read Bloodline of the Holy Grail and The Hiram Key, q.v.) Unfortunately for those of us who would like to see the authors' thesis put to the ultimate test, the site the authors show to be indicated by all these clues is on private land and not likely to be excavated. But even if human remains were to be found there, it would be impossible to prove whose they were. Jesus left no fingerprints or DNA samples on file anywhere to compare them to. ! But the authors make an extremely convincing case. If you're interested in the origins and true nature of Christianity, or just love a good (true) mystery, you'll find this book well worth the effort it takes to follow the evidence.
31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
For Those Who'll Believe Anything,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2000 Year Old Mystery (Hardcover)
For Those Who'll Believe AnythingThis work combines the lure of a "Search for Lost Treasure" story with the sinister attraction of a murder mystery, the "Lost Wisdom of the Ancients", the dark world of the occult, the deepest secrets of the Knights Templar, the secret knowledge of the Rosicrucians, the hidden meaning of certain paintings, and a fantastic religious conspiracy that has supposedly remained hidden for almost 2000 years. The authors are clearly members in good standing of the current school of English "religious conspiracy" theorists. "The Tomb of God" is an eerie but fascinating read, as you join the authors in their "quest" for the secret of Rennes-le-Chateau, bouncing back and forth between high-school geometry, Latin, French, history, art, religion, and cartography. The book is handsomely printed, with many pictures, drawings, color plates, and even a fold-out map. The authors provide a highly interesting smattering of all the above in pse! udo-scholarly fashion -- but the main glue that ultimately holds the book together is the unbridled speculation and imagination of the authors themselves. Those with a scholarly bent may enjoy the ride for its own sake, but are likely to find many serious flaws in this work. To start with, the most critical foundation and source material used by the authors is neither primary nor trustworthy -- it is in fact largely unverifiable. Many other items start out as "legends" and wind up as facts. Other crucial material (such as the "Chess Code" in "Parchment #2") is missing altogether -- we must accept the authors' own conclusions on "blind faith". In other areas there is almost a paranoic tendency to read "hidden" meanings into common geometrical forms and linear angles. Many of the authors' geometric constructions (an essential part of their theory), and the interpretations given to them in context are purely arbitrary. There is also a distressing tendency to "fiddle" wit! h information to make it fit the theory -- nowhere is this ! more evident than the use of anagrammatic phrases when the original phrase will not do. In short (and meaning no disrespect), using the exact same methods em-ployed by these authors, I would have little difficulty locating the "site" (The Tomb of God) right in my own back yard. The authors claim that they were successful in their "quest" in locating the Tomb containing the Body of God (Jesus Christ) -- but this is also very conveniently unverifiable (the "site" is buried under hundreds of thousands of tons of solid rock and is not likely to be excavated soon, if ever). The "mystery" of Rennes-le-Chateau has several other far more plausible (and less sensational) explanations that are known to scholars and historians. The authors, unfortunately, do not discuss any of them at length, and although I enjoyed the book, I closed it with the uneasy feeling that I had been "had" by two guys who were writing off their vacations abroad for tax reasons and working all their spec! ulations into a sensational theory (and book) that would attract a lot of curious people and could never be disproven. Having read their theory in its entirety, I myself have one question I would like to ask the authors: If someone went to all that trouble to hide the "body of God" somewhere in the middle of a mountain, and then remove all obvious clues to its existence and/or whereabouts (leaving only hidden, occult clues), then why NAME the mountain "Body of God" ("Cardieu") (i.e., "Corps Dieu", pronounced "Cardieu" in Languedoc) ???
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