Is it just my impression, or are we being inundated with books that seek to give alternate explanations to biblical material, a la Dan Brown? Map of Bones is another in this genre which includes an action-packed arc and some interesting characters.

In Rollins' case, he picks the magi, the wise men who attended Christ shortly after his birth. He traces the fascination with these men, three or four or more? by the ancient church leading to veneration of their bones after the time of Constantine. These bones evidently hid a secret going back to ancient times in which gold transmutes into a special explosive state.

From a terrible slaughter in a cathedral in Germany the chase leads to the sites of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Could religion and science unite to unleash power leading to a horror if in the hands of a mystical and mysterious group harking back to Thomas and gnostics. Did the gnostics hide in the very organization of the Roman church until the present day?

Well anyway the story is entertaining even if the pyrotechnics is far, far, far fetched. But all these stories leave me with the question, why can't people just accept the simple text of the Bible and believe what it says? Why do they have to jazz it up with wild and wooly mysticism and pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo?