The Virgin and The Priest: The Making of The Messiah Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is not guilty of the major crime perpetrated by most 'historical Jesus' works, yet Mark Gibb's book is ground breaking solid scholarship. There is a major problem, in my opinion, with 'historical Jesus' labors -- that area of scholarship which seeks to know the real non-supernatural person who left tangible effects in and especially on history through his actual words and deeds that resulted in the religion and dominant cultural sphere of Christianity. This problem, and wayward deed, is historical Jesus scholarship, mostly inadvertently, reduces Jesus to a clinical end analysis, ignoring the spirit and heart of the man, ignoring his personal yearnings, desires and life-purpose. It lays out the dead body on the autopsy table for inspection, and severs the cadaver into constituent parts: He said this. He didn't say that. He did this. He couldn't have done that. Here is the language he spoke, with its idioms and nuances. Here were his Jewish beliefs. Here is the Hebrew impact. Here are the Greek, and Roman affects. He was a peasant in a discontented illiterate pastoral society, and the like. Lay out each of the body parts on the table for inspection under hot dehydrating lights. All of them are true, yet each of them is dead. Where is the heart? Under what purpose and intention did these parts come together in a real male human with his own personal mission that only he and his "father" knew. How did he suffer trying to share his visions with others? How much was his social situation typical of new religious movements in general, when the founder is typically ostracized, persecuted, prosecuted by the establishment for upsetting the social order. What kind of personal jealousies swirl around a would-be spiritual teacher in his own family setting, among own small circle of friends, and in own neighborhood? How is Jesus like you and me, rather than either set above us, or set about us in pieces? Religions and cultural paradigm shifts do not arise from dead parts. Where is the humanity of Jesus? Are his spirit, intentions, and undisclosed desires something which we, at times, have shared and can identity with? Read Mark Gibbs' "The "Virgin and the Priest" for the marvelous and astonishing historical Jesus.

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For the first time ever in print, The Virgin and The Priest unravels the Infancy Narratives of the New Testament to reveal how they were compiled to protect the truth of Jesus' parentage from those deemed incapable of receiving it. An ancient formula, explaining why "holy births" in the messianic lineage resulted from questionable sexual relationships, was insinuated into the gospel narratives. These trysts of the Old Testament heroes were necessary in order to "purify" Jesus' ancestry and allow his genetic inheritance to be "sinless." Far from advocating a miraculous birth, the New Testament informs us that Zacharias, the priestly father of John the Baptist, was Jesus' biological father.

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Celtic Design Review

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(More customer reviews)Celtic Design: Knotwork. This book has over 400 illustrations, half of which are step-by-step instructions followed by analyses of knotwork patterns from traditional sources, such as a chapter on the knotwork carpet page from the book of Durrow, folio 1v, page 91, one of the earliest and most fundamental sources.The underlying plan of this design is superimposed on a step pattern from the Sutton Hoo hoard, an original insight. The rest of the book concentrates on examples drawn from historical sources, including The Book of Kells, folios 1r and 2r; the Ardagh Chalice; several from the Ardagh Brooch; the Lagore Crannog.
Chapter V is a valuable study in the craft geometry of building a panel by dividing a square by means of the half-diagonal star.
Fig. 96 is an ornamental serif from Lindisfarne Gospels, folio 3; fig. 101 shows "border design, full page format; adapted from the book of Durrow, drawn with a quill, as are most of the illustrations in this book.
Chapter 11, Spiral knot borders, includes Romilly Allen's twelve elementary knots, from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland, first published in 1883, unknown save by a handful of paleographers since - an invaluable source.
The author gives the knots according to the proper, scribal method, "the Secret of the Scribes", which until this book has never been published in any depth before. Figure 113 gives an analysis from a border from the South Cross, Clonmacnoise, in Ireland. The text ends with the eight cord border from the Book of Durrow. Untypically, he omitted to give the exact folio for this design. The appendix gives a selection of sixty variations of the triangular knot, of which several are from traditional sources, but most are original designs. He does not give a bibliography, unlike most of his other books on Celtic art, but this hardly matters as the sources are given in the captions to each figure, where they apply, and this book is primarily an original source book in itself. This book is a rarity in that it is written in the form of a modern illuminated manuscript, calligraphed with a quill throughout, and decorated with beautiful ornamental initial letters. The calligraphy is not as good as that of his later books - the first six are calligraphed, and the quality of the script improves throughout. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant, competent Foundational script, with captions in a Gothicized Irish hand, and as such is a good source book for calligraphers as well as those interested in Celtic Knotwork.
Of all Meehan's books published in the past ten years - over a dozen similar volumes, of which this was only the second - this one remains one of the most popular. It was written as a companion to the first volume, which covers all the other forms of Celtic Design in equal depth and with comparable style, except knotwork, which obviously required a volume all to itself, namely, "Celtic Design: Knotwork, the Secret Method of the Scribes".

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Knotwork and plaitwork are examined in detail against the sacred background from which they sprang, and illustrations of motifs taken from famous brooches and carvings show how Celtic knots can be adapted for all manner craftwork.

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Art of the Maya Scribe Review

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(More customer reviews)Sumptuous, a true visual feast, Michael Coe's foray into the world of the Maya artist reveals the talents and personalities of the Maya scribes. Lushly illustrated by Justin Kerr, the world's foremost photographer of Precolumbian art, this coffeetable-style book looks at what scholars understand about the individuals who created the Maya's sculptural and painted repertoir. Coe brings his knowledge of hieroglyphic writing to bear on this previously little-known subject, revealing the names and titles of Maya artists and other significant facts. Following in the tradition of his best-selling BREAKING THE MAYA CODE, which describes the scholarly-community's halting attempts at decipherment, Coe relies heavily on cutting-edge breakthroughs in reading Maya script. But more than this, he demonstrates an ecellent knowledge of art history and archaeology, setting forth quite a rich array of information. A fine book by one of the great Precolumbian scholars of all time, amply supplemented with line drawings and an effective design strategy.

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