While writing my earlier reviews of the Lives of Jesus, I realised that my reading was getting a little dated - almost nothing after 1995. So it's time to do something about that - starting with Stephan Huller's The Real Messiah: The Throne of St Mark and the True Origins of Christianity. Apart from the title, two things about this book let us know immediately that we are reading a work of pseudo-history. The first is the biographical note, which informs us that after graduating with a degree in philosophy, Huller pursued a career in the circus. The second is the point on Page 2 where he cites The Da Vinci Code as evidence of a groundswell of awareness that something is wrong with the traditional view of Christianity. The rest of the book does not disappoint. All the tricks of the pseudohistorical trade are here - characters with multiple names, coded messages, fortuitous discoveries of previously hidden evidence, and of course the inevitable Catholic cover-up. Along
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson