Interesting. Very interesting. This novel/novelization brings balance to the force. I mean brings balance to The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Worth reading? Definitely, but only if you are into religious novels and theories. If you are hard core the-bible-is-the-word-and-it-is-whole-and-complete-as-is, then skip this one.The main character is Maureen Paschal a writer/historian/academic who discovers through visions and subsequent research that she is a literal descendent of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. She is "The Expected One" that Mary Magdalene prophesied about two thousand years ago and her role is to bring forth Mary's lost story and written gospel. Maureen's modern life story is entwined with Mary Magdalene's journal and an ancient third person account of Mary Magdalene's role in Christ's life.
The story has some mystery, intrique and danger, but they are more afterthoughts and not really part of the central story. So I pose this question: does putting the main character in danger make the story more important or true?
The author asserts that the basic story is true and happened to her. She novelized her experiences to 1)make it easier to streamline events and 2)to protect herself against religious fanatics by hiding behind the banner of fiction. However, I think this book is classified as fiction, because it IS fiction. Fiction masquerading as Truth masquerading as Fiction. That is reason enough to crack open this book.
I am no scriptorian, but even I found errors in her "gospel" that illuminate the fact that this author mostly likely did not find a lost gospel. For example, John the Beloved was the son of Zebedee according to St. Mark 1:19-20 (KJV) and not Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, or Jesus Christ. Taking into consideration that the Bible may contain translation errors from Greek to English, names and geneaologies are very consistent throughout scripture versions and translations. The other explanations are St. Mark was wrong or untruthful. I have to go "by the spirit" here and say The Expected One is in error and not St. Mark. Many many many more similar instances.
The biggest problem I (personally) had with this novel was the renaming of Jesus Christ. The point was that Mary Magdalene and Christ were close during their childhoods that she had a pet name for him. The pet name should have been used only in dialogue or journal entries by Mary Magdalene. Subsitituting the pet name for every reference of Jesus Christ was too familiar and disrespectful.
I am intrigued by the idea that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and I enjoy reading others' thoughts on the matter. So I very much enjoyed this novel and it gave me much information to research, think and ponder. I plan on re-reading this novel with my scriptures a little closer next time.
