The world's sixteen crucified saviors by Kersey Graves, , Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

Interesting but highly polemical

This is an interesting and very thought provoking book. It describes many of the shared features between Christianity and several of the religous beliefs and systems which preceded it. These range from broad ideas - for example, the common idea of God made flesh to redeem the world from sin - to the fine details - the saviours being heralded by a star in the sky, wise men turning up for the birth etc. etc. There is very little in the way of notes or references and many quotes are unattributed, so it is perhaps as much a point of departure for research as the final word on the subject. The thing I found a bit irritating was the highly polemical style of writing. It is written in the form of an address to a Christian minister or believer, and the author is continually reiterating his point that in the face of the arguments he has presented Christianity cannot possibly be true. It was written in the 19th century and he may have actually believed people could be convinced by rational arguments. Despite its shortcomings this is an interesting well written, and well researched book and most of the points it makes are argued well.

Thought Provoking

A very interesting book from a historical and a religions perspective. But let me warn you, this book is not for everyone. The book looks at the 16 religious saviors that were crucified in their persepctive religions, all before the advent of Christianity. There are many chapters covering the similarities of the different religions and their saviors.

One of the most intriguing chapters is the one comparing the Hindoo savior Krishna's similarities with Jesus. The chapter lists 346 similarities from the teachings of the perspective religions as written in the Bible and the Baghavat Gita (Hindoo Bible). It is quite startling, considering Krishna lived thousands of years before Jesus.

The book is more or less a basher of Christianity, not the faith itself but the belief that Jesus was the only savior ever to come to earth based on the writings in the Bible. It shows that other religious writing previous to the Bible in other religions listed their own crucified saviors. Kind of a religious mans "Age of Reason" if you will.

The book is interesting but seems to lack some proof in a few areas when listing older saviors. But he also lists sources and historical documents for many of them. I feel he would have been better off listing 10 or 12 instead of 16. But overall it is worth the read for anyone with an open mind or who is curious about ancient religions. I have read both better and worse but this book is not a waste of time.

View more reviews or product details from Amazon.co.uk