What surprised me is the incredible popularity of the book. As of today, this is the first time it has dropped off the NYT "Best Seller list" in two years. It is now number 16, and you can bet it will be back to the top next week when the movie comes out. Here is an interesting column in the Boston Globe.
The new profits of Christianity
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | April 12, 2006
It is Easter Week. He has risen again. To the top of the bestseller lists, that is.
On Easter Sunday's New York Times bestseller list, Jesus Christ will be putting up big numbers. Five of the 15 entries on the upcoming fiction list owe their existence to our collective fascination with Christ and Christianity. I am including ''The Da Vinci Code," the two Templar knockoff novels, and books about the Holy Grail and the painting ''The Last Supper.
Over on the nonfiction list, the laughable ''Jesus Papers" debuts at the No. 5 spot. ''Misquoting Jesus," a proto-academic howler, ranks No. 8, followed by the conversational ''Home With God" at No. 10, and Garry Wills's ''What Jesus Meant" at No. 16.
All in all, a strong outing for the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth.
Fiction is fiction, and God bless it. A lot of the nonfiction strains credulity, too, which is the subject of this column.
''Scholarship" adorns University of North Carolina professor Bart Ehrman's ''Misquoting Jesus" for the same reason that symphonic music graces ''Star Wars": to convey a sense of import. In this silly, sensationalistic outing -- HarperCollins should feel free to use my blurb in its publicity campaign -- Ehrman notes that the Bible is not the word of God but the word of man. The work of many men and no women, who spent the better part of 20 centuries combing over the teachings of Jesus and his disciples to make them conform with accepted church doctrine.
In a series of dramatic revelations for the ignorant (the very definition of a hardcover best-seller, I'd say), Ehrman notes that there have been a lot of changes to the Bible in the past 2,000 years. I don't want to come between Mr. Ehrman and his payday, but this point has been made much more eloquently by, among others, Benson Bobrick in his wonderful ''Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired." ''Waters" has much of the same information as ''Misquoting Jesus," minus the idiocy.
If anyone doubted that the British lawsuit filed against ''The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown by authors of ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail" was anything more than a (successful) publicity stunt, they should have seen the paperback copies of ''Holy Blood" stacked alongside ''The Da Vinci Code" next to cash registers all over London. By remarkable coincidence, just days after the trial's conclusion, Michael Baigent, one of the anti-Brown plaintiffs, has released ''The Jesus Papers."
''Papers" is a remarkable achievement, a 286-page book about nothing. But, like ''Seinfeld," the successful TV show on a similar theme, it seems destined for greatness.
How moronic is this book? Let me count the ways. Baigent, holder of a master's degree in ''mysticism and religious experience," starts off by retyping a few dozen pages of ''Grail," which trotted out the now-familiar suggestion that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and went off to live in Southern California -- sorry, the south of France. After a stay at the Zadokite Temple of Onias, that is.
''We can argue," he writes, ''that Jesus was married and that Mary Magdalene was his wife. But we are short of evidence." Don't let that hold you back, Michael! And he doesn't. Baigent gratuitously introduces the CIA into his story of ''the greatest cover-up in history," the story of Jesus' fake execution. ''Clearly, it would be difficult to survive a crucifixion," Baigent writes, but then goes on to suggest that that is exactly what happened. The sponge thrust up to the agonizing Jesus, we are told, was impregnated with opium, belladonna, and hashish. So Christ was drugged, brought down from the cross, and relocated to southern California. Or whatever -- you get the picture.
It's only in the last chapter that we encounter the ''Jesus papers," two letters that Christ is supposed to have written to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council that paid off Judas. Baigent says he held the ''Jesus papers" in his hand, but he had no idea what they said, having no ''familiarity with ancient languages." They are presumably still in the possession of a wealthy Israeli ''who had lived for many years in a large European city." Or maybe they're in LA where Jesus is buried. Forgive me, I'm all confused.
''Unfortunately, in this case, there are no facts," as Baigent himself writes about Jesus' surviving the crucifixion. ''At this point all I can do is speculate." And head for the ATM machine, laughing all the way.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
|
