-Caveat Lector- from: prioryofsion digest 543 http://www.onelist.com The mailing list resource page can be found at the following address http://www.albino.com/circle/pos/ ---- Message: 6 Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 19:15:26 -0700 (PDT) From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Book Review: 'Sion' by Philip Boast (1/2) The opinions expressed in this review are my individual opinions and do not reflect the views of the Priory of Sion mailing list, which has no corporate views. Sion, a novel by Philip Boast. Headline, UK, 1999. Hardback, 17.99 UKP This is the first work of fiction that I have reviewed for the list, and it's quite a ride. 'Sion' is an overtly PoS and Bloodline oriented novel, which places it in a category of its own. In the past, certain writers, notably Michele Roberts ('The Wild Girl') and Jose Saramago ('The Gospel According to Jesus Christ') have published novels featuring the sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene; indeed, Roberts's book, which culminates in the escape of the pregnant Mary M. to the South of France, is probably the first post HBHG novel, published as it was in 1984, just two years after BLL's effort. But no previous novelist, to my knowledge, has attempted to incorporate quite so much of the HBHG mythos, nor to place the story so definitively in the context of contemporary, though somewhat left-field, New Testament study. Philip Boast can, IMO, claim not only a first, but a qualified success. This work is exceedingly ambitious. Not only has the writer saddled himself with all the complexities of NT and other first-century literature (the Gospel of Thomas is obviously a source), but he's created further difficulties for himself by employing an absolutely fascinating, but extremely complicated, narrative structure. The story of this book is told by a succession of discarnate entities: by the spirits who are born as, variously, Mary Magdalene herself, her granddaughter, and later descendants; and Jude, son of Jesus and Mary, and his many bodily heirs around the world. They watch their own stories from outside the world of time and space, and comment upon their own life histories; they dive into and out of incarnation, pausing only to wonder what on earth they are doing, going back to all this stuff ('Life. I remember now. I hate it,' as the Mary Magdalene entity says at one point.). Each has, at the same time, the perfect knowledge of the discarnate, and the limited point of view of the time-bound human. As a feat of imagination, this is remarkable; as a reflection of some of the more new-age variations upon the HBHG story, it's as faithful as one might expect. Jude, son of Jesus, has perhaps the most interesting tale to tell, in the context of contemporary speculation. He's informed of his heritage by his mother Mary only as she lies dying, in response to his persistent questioning; so he is Percival, the youth brought up in ignorance of his inheritance; he is the Holy Fool, the Widow's Son. He is also, as it turns out, the Germanic Grail Knight Perlesvaus, who is, unlike his chaste French counterparts, a husband and father, both the scion and the progenitor of a kingly line. Hearing both who he is, and the contradictions of the message of the early Christian missionaries in the land, Jude investigates his own origins, and comes into contact both with Peter and Paul, and with Jesus's own brother James, who is depicted as an obsessional madman, consumed with the desire to locate the burial place of the Ark of the Covenant. None of these contacts give Jude much hope for the future, though they do enable the writer to establish a background for the alleged pact between the Bloodline and the Church, later betrayed with the murder of Dagobert II. Jude is holy and untouchable, as the Son of the Lord, but he is also an outcast, anathema, for the same reason, and so Peter and Paul can neither support him, nor stop him; instead, the parties must reach an agreement by which they can continue both to exist, and to disagree. James is another matter. So possessed by his own status as leader of the Jerusalem church (here, Mary M. was forced to flee from Palestine before her one and only pregnancy was known, so Jesus's son and heir is a long way from Jerusalem even before his birth) that even death cannot stop him, James meets Jude on the site of the destroyed Jerusalem Temple, in CE 74. Jude has discovered the hiding-place of the Ark, yet, perceiving that this is a thing which will drive men mad, he causes a landslide to descend and cover the entrance to the hiding-place, until someone shall come along and excavate the area (the Templars are strongly implied). James has been killed, martyred on the steps of the Temple as Christian legend has it, and, in mockery of his brother's return from the grave, he has risen not as a recognisable human being with wounds that can be investigated, but as a rotting undead. Meeting him in the Temple grounds, Jude rejects him and destroys him. This is powerful stuff, as is the entire novel. Philip Boast is a competent writer, with the ability to create living, breathing characters who continue to convince even within what could be the irritating context of their omniscient knowledge and repetitive incarnations. Even when one gathers, through the medium of 'press cuttings' inserted within the book, that there is an overall story, and that it concerns the revelation of a Bloodline heir as Second Coming at the end of the millennium, the writing is sufficiently plain, and direct, and moving, that the reader will find it involving and tense, rather than annoying. Boast has also devoted a great deal of time to his research,presenting utterly convincing descriptions of such diverse matters as first-century midwifery - (Not for the squeamish! though the agonised cry of Mary Magdalene's father, powerless to help his struggling wife, has a few resonances: 'Cursed is the child who kills its mother', he tells the midwife, much as someone else must have done centuries before. Mary M. is after all supposedly of the line of Benjamin, lastborn of Rachel and Jacob: Benjamin, the child who killed his mother.) - odd Jewish apocalyptic cults (one of which Jesus's family belongs to, yet Jesus himself rejects, to his father's disgust - here, the Parable of the Prodigal Son really is autobiographical), and the doings, and disgraces, of Rome as Occupying Power. It's all remarkably circumstantial and compelling. The only details with which I would quibble are those regarding the quarrel between Mary Magdalene and the representatives, including most of the Apostles, of the early Christian church. I guess any novelist has to go for something of the sort. If one wants to include the Mary Magdalene relationship or marriage, the only way to account for later canonical silence on the issue is to assume that for some reason, nobody talked about it; and there are only two possibilities here. Either there was a need to keep the Queen Mother and the new King secret, in order to keep them safe; or there was some kind of falling-out between Jesus's heirs and his other followers (including other members of his blood family) that was so drastic that the latter denied, in later years, that the former ever existed. Boast goes for the second option, and it is here, in my opinion, that one finds most of the flaws of his narrative. (part 2 coming up) _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ______________________________________________________________________________ _ ______________________________________________________________________________ _ Message: 7 Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 19:19:51 -0700 (PDT) From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Book Review: 'Sion' by Philip Boast (2/2) (continued) Trouble is, it's entirely anachronistic. According to Boast, the marriage of Jesus, and the very existence of his wife and child, was expunged from history *on purpose*, by those who wished instead to believe in the 'perfect, virginal' Jesus Christ. There might well be some truth in this, from a much later perspective; but it's not at all likely that, as Boast presents in this novel, Peter and Jesus's other contemporaries were involved directly in such conscious deceit and disinformation. The perfect virginal Jesus (indeed, the entire idea that 'perfection' connotes 'virginity') is a second-century notion at the earliest, arising from the contact of the new religion of Christianity with the flesh-denying gnosticism which was already in existence within the Greek and Roman worlds. It has nothing to do with first-century Judaism, nor indeed with the Judaism of any other century; even the apparent celibacy of the Essenes has more to do with Old Testament rules for the preparedness of armies, than with any notion of virginity or celibacy as ipso facto a 'higher' state of being. So I found the repeated reference to this idea in this novel, and the way in which it is used to provide a basis for the disastrous (and, here, physically violent; he breaks her arm!) quarrel between Peter and Mary Magdalene, both irritating and unconvincing. Boast appears to have taken the references in the Gospel of Thomas to the disagreement between Peter and Mary, and interpreted them in the light of far later Christian teaching. Since this disagreement, and the reason for it, underpins much of the second part of the book, it tends to reduce the reader's ability to suspend disbelief, and thus to enjoy the novel. The only basis upon which this kind of thing is excusable is a polemical one, and I guess this may apply. Some of the language Boast puts in the mouths of the apostles is so redolent of later orthodoxy that one suspects this has to be his motive: to debate with, and to expose, the teaching of the church on sexual matters for what it is. In Roman Catholic terms, he's mostly debating - cogently enough - with the official position of the church of 30 years ago, but I guess this has its point, since there are plenty of people around who still subscribe to such views. However, one suspects that such people are among those least likely to read this book. Fortunately, there's plenty of other stuff in here that prevents even such a large error from destroying altogether the reader's interest. The notion that Jesus's son might have died in the eruption of Vesuvius, and that his remains might even now be preserved at Pompeii, is haunting to say the least, as is the way in which the later Heirs of the Bloodline look back on their history, and contemplate their destiny and their own powerlessness. The scene where Jude confronts the undead James is the stuff of horror stories, and the love story of Mary and Jesus is tense and convincing, to the extent that even when one knows what is going to happen, his sudden demand, 'Marry me,' comes as a total surprise. And for the PoS enthusiast, the marriage of Jude bar-Jesus to a Gaulish woman named Giselle, and the presence, among his ten or eleven children, of a son called Dagobert, is very satisfying. Over all, this book can be recommended on many counts. For such an ambitious work, it is astonishingly successful. Save in the instance detailed above, which may reflect the writer's deliberate, ideologically and polemically based choice, the research is impeccable, whether it involves first-century history, or contemporary myth. It is easy to read, and powerfully plotted and characterised. While it will not appeal to the vicarage tea-party variety of Christian, and while it will annoy the historical Jesus purist, anyone who is interested in Christian mysteries, or the possible relationship of Christianity to the doctrines of karma and reincarnation, or modern Christian mythology and its development, is bound to find it fascinating. And it is, of course, a first in its field. Any subsequent Priory novel can only be a riposte, or an imitation. xxxxxxxxxx _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ______________________________________________________________________________ _ ______________________________________________________________________________ _ Message: 8 Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 19:28:55 -0700 (PDT) From: xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: 'Sion' review part 1 correction Naturally, as Dr. Spooner might have said (did I ever tell you I was the great man's fifth cousin twice removed? Could account for all kinds of stuff): When I said 'Perlesvaus', I should have said 'Parsifal'. Sorry 'bout that. x _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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