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The LainiBop Challenge
THE MARIAN CONSPIRACY
GRAHAM PHILIPS
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* * * * * SPOILERS * * * * *
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Ah
religious conspiracies. Can't get enough of them. In this
installment, Graham Philips travels from Israel to Wales in an effort
to find out if there is a connection between the Holy Grail and the
Virgin Mary. Early on he decides that his first job should be to
prove if the Virgin Mary actually existed or was she just an
invention? To do this he also has to prove that Jesus existed.
Using both the Bible and primary sources, he manages to discover that
they did exist but also points out a lot of errors in the Bible's
telling of the story. One of the main points he makes is that the
four Gospels all have different accounts of the events. This is
something I never noticed myself, lets face it, how many people
actually sit down and compare the Gospels for fun? His point is that
how accurate can they actually be if they contradict each other,
however saying this, he also points out that they were probably not
written at the time of Jesus, as most people like to believe but are
in fact accounts of the oral history's of this time, written much
much later. This would explain the differences in facts, and also
discrepancies regarding the years that events occurred, including the
birth of Christ. This event is usually described in the Gospels using
other historical events as perspective, for example, the 15th year of
X's reign, etc. Because of this, the birth of Christ varies
considerably.
I
enjoyed reading this book because it made me think of things in a new
light. Things which I had accepted such as the Gospels being the
same story in different words, which is not necessarily the case. It
was a fun read, surprisingly because of this, and I liked the fact
that primary sources were used to back up events described, for
example there was an astronomical event at that time, which would
have caused an especially bright star to appear in the skies for
weeks. He also uses Jewish prophecies of the coming of the Messiah
to explain why at this particular time, Jesus's birth would have been
significant.
On the
other hand however, I found that a lot of his "evidence"
was based on mistranslations. Some, such as the word for "Virgin"
in Greek being very similar to the word to describe a "young
woman" could discount the popular belief of an immaculate
conception were interesting, however some others especially later on
in the book, seemed to be pure speculation and a lot of his theory
was based on the fact that the original translators MAY have made a
mistake, and if they did, they COULD have meant this instead, so lets
presume they did mean this and ignore what they actually wrote. This
was used to connect names in primary sources to names from the Bible,
which felt in some ways to be a complete shot in the dark.
While I
enjoyed reading the conspiracy theory, I found the earlier part of
the book while exploring Bethlehem and Nazareth to be more plausible
than his discoveries of Mary's life after the crucifixion.
But
still an interesting read and would be interested in more of his
works, taken with a pinch of salt of course!
SCORE 6/10
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Her To Be Read Challenge - The Countdown Begins!
Book 30 - ?
Book 29 - ?
Book 28 - Sexing the Cherries by Jeanette Winterson
Book 27 - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Book 26 - Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
Book 25 - Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Book 24 - From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
Book 23 - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Book 22 - Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffery Archer
Book 21 - Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Book 19 - Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Book 18 - The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
Book 17 - A Falcon for a Queen by Catherine Gaskin
Book 16 - The Marian Conspiracy by Graham Philips
Book 15 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book 14 - Mary, Mary by Julie Parsons
Book 13 - Glitz by Louise Bagshawe
Book 12 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Book 11 - Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Book 10 - New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos editor Ramsey Campbell
Book 08 - Glamour by Louise Bagshawe
Book 06 - The Blue Hour by Jefferson Parker
Book 05 - The Drifters - Jim Thompson
Book 04 - The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Book 03 - Atonement - Ian McEwan
Book 02 - Waiting for Columbus - Thomas Trofimuk
Book 01 - Under the Dome - Stephen King
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Full Table of Contents
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