What if everything we have been told about the origins of Christianity is a lie?

What if a small group had always known the truth and had kept it hidden . . . until now?

What if there is evidence that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion?

In Holy Blood, Holy Grail Michael Baigent and his co-authors Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh stunned the world with a controversial theory that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene married and founded a holy bloodline. The book became an international publishing phenomenon and was one of the sources for Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. Now, with two additional decades of research behind him, Baigent's The Jesus Papers presents explosive new evidence that challenges everything we know about the life and death of Jesus.

Will current generations live to see Armageddon?

Are there really sinister forces at work, encouraging its imminent arrival? If so, who exactly are they?

In his latest investigative book Michael Baigent takes us to the assembly hall of the UN, the boardrooms of major businesses and powerful lobbying groups, the cabinet meetings of world leaders, the ranches of cattle breeders, the churches of the faithful, and the narrow winding streets of modern Jerusalem, revealing to us the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures behind a perilous messianic agenda.

By unveiling truly bizarre alliances, revisiting centuries-old ghostly events still haunting the birthplaces of religion, unraveling complex threads of history to discern the difference between myth and prophecy, and providing a thorough explication of the religious texts underlying all of this madness in the context of the times in which they were written, Baigent presents a very different view of the past, present, and future than that perpetuated by many loose interpretations of scripture.

What are faith force multipliers? Which members of the U.S. military top brass have fought to employ them? Which world leader belongs to a secret messianic society called the Hojjatieh? What is the Chalcedon Foundation? And what is the correlation between its tenets, those of sharia law, and the fulfillment of end-time prophecies?

The answers to these questions and others will intrigue, mystify, and enrage you, whether you're a person of faith or a staunch secularist. But the author's goal is not simply to shock the reader—it is to help diffuse the time bomb that has been set by the hard-liners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the end, Baigent asks these questions to deliver an urgent message: that spiritual yearning is actually a deep and personal issue of awareness, one that can bring hope and tolerance to the world, rather than the self-superiority and control that are born of fear and conflict.

Dennoch kann sich Michael Baigent freuen, dass durch die große Medienaufmerksamkeit sein bis dato weitgehend unbeachtetes Werk selbst zum Bestseller avancierte. Seit seinem Erscheinen sind über 20 Jahre vergangen, in denen er unermüdlich weiter recherchierte, um seine Thesen zu untermauern. Diese sind nun in Die Gottesmacher nachzulesen: dass Jesus von Nazareth tatsächlich mit Maria Magdalena verheiratet war, Nachkommen zeugte und eine Dynastie begründete, die bis ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein in Frankreich zurückzuverfolgen ist. Baigent will erforschen, wer der historische Jesus wirklich war, welche Lehre er vertrat und warum die Römische Kirche davon nichts wissen will.

Michael Baigent hat sich komfortabel in der Rolle des Ketzers eingerichtet, dessen brisante Forschungsergebnisse, so seine Wahrnehmung, von der Katholischen Kirche totgeschwiegen würden, weil sie sich vor der "Wahrheit" fürchte. Allein: Seriöse Bibelforscher und Historiker konnte Baigent bislang nicht überzeugen. Und so liest man die Die Wahrheit über Jesus von Nazareth, wie der Untertitel lautet, am besten als spannenden historischen Thriller -- denn spannend ist die Geschichte allemal -- und nicht unbedingt als eine historischen Fakten verpflichtete Enthüllung. -- Henrik Flor, Literaturtest