Back in the early 2000’s everyone went a little crazy over Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. It was not the case that there was no mystery, but of course, Brown had the incentive of wanting to sell copies of his book, so mystery that was legitimate overlapped with fancy that made for good storytelling. Determining where those boundaries are though, is a subject of mass debate even still.
The Templar Legacy, by Steve Berry, is a blatant mercenary attempt to cash in on the Brown craze. This version goes to France into the mysteries of the Cathars and Knight’s Templar to do so. The premise is that the former master of the order knows a Templar Schism is coming and that the Knight’s Templar is going to be torn asunder over an old problem relating to the dissolution of the order some 700 years ago. As the master dies, he develops a plan and has all the pieces in place to allow a host of characters to discover a hiding spot of Templar treasure and knowledge.
SpoilerSpoiler alert: Mostly the plot revolves around how The Messiah (Yeshuah) in the book, was never actually crucified.
The adventure part of the novel reads well, but due to the spoiler I mentioned above the entire novel is tiring to read in the same way listening to a lecture by Richard Dawkins is tiring. The idea that the Templars are some kind of heretic is nothing new, but this book does little by way of helping that assertion to become resolved. If anything, it worsens that accusation in order to sell the book to people who might be interested in such a story.
So yeah, there are Departments of Justice, intrigue, and billionaires in this thing, but it reads like a heaping wad of suck since the basic premise is to try to create some alternate history that has already had a million versions offered and put forth. It’s not that the writing is bad. It’s not that the plot and supporting facts are terrible, but when you go so far as to make your own “Testimony of Simon” which reads like something an egotistical five-year-old might write, the line must be drawn.
While the novel poses as ‘fiction’ it looks instead to be a special kind of pleading–the goal of the plea being ‘All religions suck!’ and everyone is bad but the true people who know that everything is fiction! Okay, but the actions of the Templars fly in the face of this very thing. Yes, they got ‘burned’ over what seems to be mostly a monetary issue, but they had all that money from doing something else other than having super secret information. It involved keeping the roads to Jerusalem clear which began in earnest due to the Crusades. I rather doubt that they got to Jerusalem and discovered any form of knowledge that had to do with the Holy Land being a lie. If anything, they probably discovered that the entire truth was not being disclosed by the Catholic Church which ordered the Crusades with which to start.
Hence, making up a fiction about burned people who were sacrificed for religious reasons to sell a book is in poor taste. The only thing worse might be making a fictional book about the Holocaust and saying how the Jews actually deserved it due to some “secret history” that legitimizes Nazi actions.!
Eeking out another book review before the end of the year is easy if your book happens to be The Harbinger by Johnathan Cahn. It’s easy as the clarity of the book is immediately apparent. Cahn has adopted a narrative format in the guise of a mystery so that he can go about interpreting the events of 9-11 in light of a prophecy that occurs in Isaiah whereby God proclaims that He intends to ‘cut down the Sycamores’ concerning Israel which is a type of metaphorical and actual phrase that means He intends to cut off the prosperity and security of the nation.
Cahn, for his part, sees this kind of judgment as a pattern and advances his case for it being so. In other words, what Cahn has here is more like a thesis on judgment cycles and how that thesis is being applied to the nation of America. This thesis is solidly argued and the evidence is quite clear. The only thing I think Cahn might be missing is that he asserts that those who echo the words of this prophecy who are in charge of the nation are doing so ‘not really knowing what they are doing’ and are more like puppets in the will of God. A more disturbing interpretation is that they know exactly what they are doing and what Cahn sees as a subconscious ballet is an outright defiance of God and a mocking of this prophecy.
Of course, if Cahn said that, the absolute rage that would follow is probably predictable and he would be branded an even more extreme pastor/rabbi than he all ready is considered to be. However, it does not do to let traitors off the hook so easily as to suggest they are unwitting mouthpieces of God if in fact they are choosing to allow the nation to fail.
Cahn gets close to understanding or stating this realization when he determines the Lehman Brothers collapse to be an echo of the Twin Tower attack. He remarks that Congress ‘decided not to pass a bill to allow Lehman Brothers and the economy to collapse’. If this is indeed the “second iteration” of the first ordeal, then it is the second iteration that, and this is key, was allowed to take place by those who had power to do otherwise.
As for the rest of the book, the format is ingenious by having a mysterious stranger explain the prophecy with a series of seals that Nouriel, (a name of a Clinton era economist by chance called Dr. Doom) our main protagonist, must decipher. The mystery level of the stranger is, perhaps, a little too high as we never even learn his name, but the fact that he always shows up just when needed while certainly being a trope, works in the parameters of this novel.
It can be rather hard to explain to those not familiar with literary symbolism and Biblical imagery how a prophecy is being fulfilled since the language is at once poetic and exact. It is not an archetype, as we usually think of archetypes, because an archetype is usually not the thing itself but is the thing itself showing up in multiple guises. In prophecy, a literal Sycamore tree will typically fall ALONG WITH all the symbolism it entails. It is not just a symbol. It is the symbol and the fulfillment of the symbolism.
Therefore, having the seals as a type of background mystery is an ingenious method to explain how God works. At the end, Cahn even gives the reader a little wink as the conversation with the would-be publisher is had concerning how to write the material he has been given. He is told perhaps a narrative format would be best but there Cahn cautions and says, “But if I write it as fiction, then people will simply think it is fiction.” This leaves us wondering how much of Cahn’s narrative is imagined and how much of it he, in one way or another, has experienced.
This book occurred before the previous review on this site of The Paradigm and whereas The Paradigm is a lot more straight Biblical interpretation into modern times or at least efforts are made to indicate this is so, The Harbinger is more of a story that happens to also relate to 9-11. The difference is that The Paradigm can not really stand as a story on its own in the sense of there being a narrative. The Harbinger by contrast, can.
If you are a fast reader, this is not an especially difficult read but it is fascinating to see the connections that Cahn highlights. One should not be deceived by the simplicity of the read as there are many, many parallels and further mysteries hinted at that this book begins to explicate. Cahn is, as far as The Book Light is concerned, two-for-two in terms of Biblical scholarship even if, surprisingly, he took a little time to also try to make it entertaining.
There are a handful of books in the world that a person should read if they think they have an idea of what the world is all about. Ostrovosky’s book is one of those reads. It is not an especially new book as it was first published in 1990. There was a coordinated effort, however, to silence it. The reason for this becomes clear once it is understood that the subject matter concerns Israel’s intelligence agency–The Mossad.
Ostrovosky, the book’s subject, is a former Mossad ‘katsa’ or intelligence officer. He is recruited by the Mossad and at first is delighted to be selected for such an elite unit. As he progresses upwards in the ranks, however, he discovers that he fundamentally disagrees with how the agency runs without any apparent oversight. In some instances, the agency is celebrating pool parties with rampant sex within those who work in the organization. In others, it concerns an assassination hit that gets messy. In still other situations, the problem becomes a chain of command and crucial information gathered in the field and whether to report these things to those with authority. In these scenarios, the information, though vital, is puzzlingly not always welcome, and one such instance occurs that leads to Ostrovosky dropping out of Mossad itself.
The seeds of Ostrovosky’s disaffection are evident, however, well before we arrive at the spot where he is “burned” by his higher-ups. The problem it seems, is that Ostrovosky is thinking a little too much for the desires of the agency. He is not going to be content to simply accept a paycheck and do what he is told. He is also not a fan of the abuses of power he sees within the organization.
Reading through the book and remembering many of the events of the 70’s through the 90’s was interesting enough from the perspective Ostrovosky presents with the help of his writer, Claire Hoy. A question that occurs during the reading, though, is how much oversight should an agency have, and how much of it is an hindrance? Does oversight make a difference, really, within any organization that has sufficient power to do certain acts or does it simply create that many more people complicit in ‘covering-up’ things that they do not wish known?
As the subject matter here is the Mossad, we have an inside view to the abuses and perhaps more tellingly someone is still around to tell them. There are, however, many other intelligence agencies in the world without such witnesses left to ‘blow the whistle’. It was not that Ostrovsky got to blow the whistle without consequence to himself. He had to apply his own training to keep from getting kidnapped and likely killed. The fact that he is still alive, though, means somebody, somewhere decided he should be–specifically with the abuses he outlines in this book.
It is a hard problem to solve, as if you are a country and you do not play this game, you are a victim of it by other countries which are willing to pursue it. It seems at certain official levels throughout the world, there are those who lack any kind of authority to reign in their activities. It is not a uniquely Israeli issue.
A different though related question is what to do about evil existing in the world when you happen to be a nation or country? How much of it do you fight on its terms, versus how much of it do you not indulge?
There were some amusing anectdotes in the book concerning the brazen plans that were thwarted. At one point, the PLO wishes to purchase a load of weapons with the stated aim of harming Israel only to wind up with crates of raisins instead. At other times the training exercises feature the need to appear on a balcony by some means or another and the plans the recruits implement are quite ingenious and humorous.
The disturbing content, though, far outweighs the amusing anectdotes. There is a fellow who seems quite eager to use a kind of assasination glove that removes a person’s head from their shoulders relatively easy and quiety. Another person has a “hit” go wrong and has to kill two people in a car to complete his mission, but is concerned only with how long it is going to take because he wants to get something to eat. The blood is certainly cold. Of course, to have any other kind of blood in that world is probably the same as either not being in that world for long, or not being in THIS world entirely!
The thing the book does well is that it fills in a lot of blanks concerning such historical events as Iran-Contra and the Munich Olympic bombings. It is, without a doubt, a fascinating read. It is also, troublingly, full of foreshadowing as when the book is released the date of September, 11th in 1990 makes a guest appearance as the date the court tries to stop the book from being published. Some nightmares announce their presence well before they occur it would seem–or maybe there is more to all those events than is still generally known. Who will the next Ostrovsky be and what perspectives will they have to offer?!
ISBN: 978-0312056131