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aethelgifu's review
1.0
Oh dear...I got to 76 pages out of 305 before giving up on this hybrid love-child of Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' [referred to often as a source of info] and Baigent et al's 'Holy Blood and Holy Grail; [referred to equally frequently].
The basic premise is that the author owns a Renaissance painting of the 'Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist'. During a bout of severe depression, following a business collapse, she is given a copy of Baigent's book and in its now well known theory that Christ married Mary Magdalene and had a child which was connected to the French Royal family she found a belief to carry her through her depression. She also came to believe that her painting shows Mary Magdalene holding the child she bore to Jesus and that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The book is her attempt to prove that theory true.
Unfortunately it is very badly written in a very conversational style, with no notes to enable the reader to follow up references. In the 76 pages I read the author appears to cite texts which suit her belief without considering current academic debates around them cf Robert Graves and the 'White Goddess' on page 36, and the dissection of the same text by Helen Morales in her 'Classical Mythology'.
The author appears to make a virtue of her lack of academic training / background in the subjects she discusses, but it only serves to weaken her thesis.
I'll end this review with my favourite image from what I had read: Christ as a proto-gap-year student 'doing' Rock, Padstow and North Cornwall on holiday with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea ;-> [According to McLaren Christ accompanied him on tin-trading expeditions to Cornwall]
The basic premise is that the author owns a Renaissance painting of the 'Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist'. During a bout of severe depression, following a business collapse, she is given a copy of Baigent's book and in its now well known theory that Christ married Mary Magdalene and had a child which was connected to the French Royal family she found a belief to carry her through her depression. She also came to believe that her painting shows Mary Magdalene holding the child she bore to Jesus and that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The book is her attempt to prove that theory true.
Unfortunately it is very badly written in a very conversational style, with no notes to enable the reader to follow up references. In the 76 pages I read the author appears to cite texts which suit her belief without considering current academic debates around them cf Robert Graves and the 'White Goddess' on page 36, and the dissection of the same text by Helen Morales in her 'Classical Mythology'.
The author appears to make a virtue of her lack of academic training / background in the subjects she discusses, but it only serves to weaken her thesis.
I'll end this review with my favourite image from what I had read: Christ as a proto-gap-year student 'doing' Rock, Padstow and North Cornwall on holiday with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea ;-> [According to McLaren Christ accompanied him on tin-trading expeditions to Cornwall]
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