Unholy Grail Essays

Introduction

Mary Magdalene is currently one of the most popular figures from the New Testament. As the woman who anointed Jesus with perfume, and to whom Christ appeared first after his resurrection, her life was multifaceted and therefore appealed to many different groups:

1. She was a troubled woman who found mercy and was helped by Jesus. In other words, she was a very human figure—part saint and part sinner with a hint of sexual intrigue.
2. She was a deeply dedicated and spiritual woman, humbly devoted to serving both man and God

Introduction

Many, if not most of the books that have been written about Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus Christ, in the last 40 years have taken the position that the traditional view of him is wrong, or at best biased. For example, see the following:

My Name Was Judas, by C.K. Stead
Judas: A Biography, by Susan Gubar
Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus, by William Klassen

The only true superhero: Jesus Christ!
~ Willie Aames

Sometime in early 3 BC, two years before Simon’s wife Dinah conceived her second son Judah in our story, another Jewish wife in Nazareth, a town in northern Israel, also became pregnant. Later that year when the wife was expecting, the couple left their home, but the trip was not done for either business or pleasure. They, along with all of their countrymen, were forced by the Romans to register in a census that had been ordered by the Emperor. In order to comply, they had to return to the city or town of their ancestry at some time during that year. Both husband and wife were from the tribe of Judah, and therefore had to register in Bethlehem, the ancestral town of King David.

The Unholy Grail series spans history from Biblical times to the present. The following dossiers are provided in order to gain a better appreciation for the historical background of the novels.

Dossier on the Ancient History of the Jews
Dossier on Herod the Great