Today we have a PERFECT addition to History Corner!
Synopsis:
To what lengths would the Vatican go to suppress the secret origins of its power?
Current papal politics has made this thriller eerily prophetic (predicts the resignation of the pope and the election of an Argentine Jesuit to succeed him, written a YEAR before it occurred!), The Messiah Matrix is a myth-shattering novel whose protagonists delve into the secrets of the past—and expose the fundamentalists who hide them still.
Religious Fiction Christianity, Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic, Christian origins
A renowned scholar-monsignor is killed in Rome while a Roman coin is recovered from a wreck off the coast of ancient Judea. It’s up to his young American protégé--a Jesuit priest--and a vivacious, brilliant archaeologist to connect these seemingly disparate events and unravel the tapestry that conceals in plain view the greatest mystery in the ecclesiastical world. Together they pursue their passion for truth—while fighting to control their passion for each other. What they uncover is an ancient Roman imperial stratagem so controversial the Curia fears it could undermine the very foundations of the Roman Catholic faith--much like the secrets emerging from the Vatican in today's news.
From the ancient port of Caesarea to Rome's legendary catacombs and the sacred caves of Cumae, this contemporary novel follows their exhilarating quest to uncover the truth about the historical existence of the real "Christian Savior."
Read an excerpt:
Prologue
The three-wheeled truck, having weathered World War II and every day after, carried its battle scars proudly as it hovered on the curb of Via del Plebiscito. Its V-shaped bumper was as jagged as a saw. Behind the wheel its latest owner, Zbysek Bailin, waited patiently, as though he were long accustomed to assassination on a rainy Wednesday evening.
A red umbrella rounded the corner from the Piazza del Gesù. Zbysek took in a breath and turned the ignition key. The engine coughed to an idle, purred raggedly awaiting further command from its driver. The silver-haired man ambled toward the intersection of Via degli Astalli that flanked the rear of the massive church. Purposely leaving his headlight off, Zbysek shifted into gear and bounced into the street. His foot pressed on the reluctant accelerator, the ancient vehicle climbing all too slowly up to speed.
The man had reached the intersection, and as he passed beneath the streetlight Zbysek thought he might well be deaf—he was so lost in thought he didn’t seem to hear the rumbling truck, even as it barreled toward him at full speed.
Clutching tight to the shaky steering wheel, Zbysek was hunched forward in the cab, eyes intent on his target. All he could see was the man’s bent back, crawling up Via Astalli like a praying mantis.
In seconds the truck had jumped the curb and was upon him.
The man swung around with his books and umbrella, a look of sudden shock on his face—the smile erased. His coat fell open.
For the first time, Zbysek saw his victim clearly in the light of the street lamp—the crisp white collar and the purple piping on his black vest.
His target was a monsignor!
Zbysek hauled at the wheel—but it was too late. His head struck the roof as the vehicle jerked over the body and slammed straight into the lamppost, thrusting Zbysek into the windshield and cracking his head on the glass. He climbed clumsily out of the cab and fell to his knees beside his victim. “Forgive me, father,” Zbysek finally choked out.
The old man’s face was twisted with pain. His narrowed eyes were glistening, blood trickling from his lips. He reached his hand toward his Angel of Death. He seemed to want to speak. Zbysek lowered his head to hear. The monsignor’s final whispered words confused and frightened him, and he leapt for the three-wheeler and fled from the scene.
I/1
Unholy Thursday
Father Ryan McKeown’s mood was less than reverential as he headed for the confessional where he was to perform his priestly duties. The lines of penitents in Gesù were short today. Perhaps because there’d been no major holidays recently or any coming soon, the “occasions of sin” were easier to avoid. Just as Ryan was about to step into the polished mahogany cubicle, a bedraggled man burst into the nave. The man headed for the first confessional, and knelt briefly. Moments later he unceremoniously leapt to his feet to join a short line at the next confessional booth, causing bowed heads to look up in curiosity. Ryan was bemused. Could a man’s sins be so grave he feels the need to come clean of them to several confessors?
Ryan settled himself behind the ivory baffle and listened, in turn, to an old man cursing God because his arthritis no longer allowed him to play bocce; to a teenager who abused himself fourteen times in the past seven days, using the image of his teacher, a nun, as inspiration—Father Ryan, doing his best to repress a smile, told him to say the rosary and promise never to sin again; and to a seminarian barely out of high school who asked if having concerns about his faith meant he should quit the seminary.
“Doubts are not in themselves a sin,” he told the young man. “Thomas, though he doubted, went on to become a great apostle and martyr. Not to mention Mother Teresa, whose troublesome doubts dogged at her heels even more persistently than Calcutta’s poor. I can tell you, it’s what you do with doubt that matters.” He questioned whether his comments had been of any service, or whether he should have simply referred the seminarian to a therapist. He’d often wondered where he’d be today if he himself hadn’t rejected psychotherapy as an option.
He was removing his stole to leave when a tardy penitent thumped down on the kneeler and activated the tiny red light. Ryan slid open the grate. In the obscure light he could see only enough to determine that his supplicant was a male. “Yes, my son?”
“Are you Father Ryan?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Ryan answered, before he could consider how the penitent could know his name.
“Thank God I’ve found you.”
Ryan realized he was speaking with the lost soul who’d been playing musical confessionals. “How long has it been since your last confession?”
“I killed a priest.” Ignoring the sacramental protocol, the man blurted it out in a coarse accent that Ryan had never heard before. Then, remembering the ritual formalities, the man added, “I don’t remember my last Confession. Many years ago, in Tirana.”
So the accent was Albanian. “What do you mean you killed a priest?”
“I hit him with my truck. He was a monsignor. I tried to help him. His eyes…oh my God! I got scared and drove away.”
Ryan’s heart went out to the man on the other side of the grate. The anguish in the man’s voice was dreadful. “An accident, no matter how grievous, is not a sin,” he said. “You simply have to—”
“It wasn't an accident,” the immigrant interrupted. “I was paid to run him down.”
Ryan fell silent. What fate had led this man to his confessional today among so many hundreds in the Holy City?
“They didn't tell me he was a monsignor.” Now the man was choking, the guttural sound poignantly wretched. “Oh, my God, I am damned to hell for all eternity.”
“Why would you accept payment for such an act?”
“I was desperate—I am desperate. My family has no money, my children need doctors—” The man’s explanations gave way to wrenching sobs. Then he regained control. “He looked at me. He told me words I didn't understand. But I will hear them for the rest of my life.”
Reflexively Ryan slipped into his persona as an investigative scholar. “What were his words, my son?”
The poor man’s scream echoed in the hollowness of the empty church. “No!”
“It’s all right to tell me,” Ryan said. “You’re protected by the Seal of the Confessional, Holy Mother Church’s—”
“You don’t understand! It was Holy Mother Church…that paid me!”
Review:
If there is one thing to sell this book alone it is- RESEARCH. Seriously- there are FIVE webpages of resources, that the author used to write this book! From the first chapter, you realize the Atchity has done his research, and this is NOT your typical archeology meets religion thriller- it is way more than that simple formula! And thanks to Atchity's great pacing and characters development, once you get bast the 2nd chapter, this book is VERY hard to put down. But be warned, by mid book you may be putting it down a lot to pick up your tablet and research what he is talking about, to see what is true and what isn't! The author has been references, including photos of locations in the book, available on his website, and I suggest looking through them, about midpoint in your reading. The book is not for the feint of heart, with its many Illiad, Virgil and other ancient references (though the author does a great job explaining where they all came from and placing proper context for the reader who may not know/remember them). Which all makes this a SMART, thought provoking roller coaster of a read that will make the reader see-saw back and forth, questioning what they were taught in bible school at a young age!The author has said that he wanted to write a purely historical non-fiction book about the topic, but knew that if it was presented as such, it would have a limited readership, but by making the work a fictionalized account, he could include all the facts, and have a much larger audience. Well played Dr Atchity, well played!
Atchity admits that this tale could NOT have been written without his own Jesuit training, in all his lower and higher educational years, and that he in fact owes a great debt to the Jesuits who trained him, and this book is NOT an attempt to tear apart the foundations of today’s Roman Catholic Church, but to expose the truth, and what lays underneath, " They honed my mind with analysis to the point that it became impossible to accept anything at face value without looking beneath the surface to understand what made its face what it appears to be". Having spent 4 years with the Dominicans and 4 years with the Jesuits, I can heartedly agree with Atchity, and feel a kindred spirit, which could be why so much of the book resonated with me, especially about the use of the Chi-Rho, right, which we were taught to use when referencing Christ in school, and which I've found confounds most people when I use it now, instead of writing 'Christ'.Once you read this novel though, you may find yourself using it more and more!
From both my high school and college years, I was taught that it was ok to question, to search for universal truths, all in order to come back to a higher knowledge of "the divine within us and the human institutions that seek to profess it with rigidity and inhuman conclusions" (as Atchity so well says). This book may cause a lot of consternation- but the facts are the facts and while there is some evidence for the
historical existence of the Christian Savior, Jesus, the facts are that for all the 'miracles' and displays of divine that he did according to the Bible, there are no historical texts noting them. When you read the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts, you DO start to question about what was left out of the Bible, and why, are were things as we think now. Read the ancient histories by Josephus Flavius, and other historians, and more questions come to light.
The Messiah Matrix IS a tour de force of classical scholarship, early church history and just flat out, great writing, that will allow the reader to understand all the available research in a simple way, and allow the reader to rethink what they truly know about the birth of Christianity, and it's evolution. My hat is off to Dr. Atchity for crafting a tome that will cause as much controversary, as it offers answers to questions many have had for hundreds of year! If there is one thing you can do for yourself, READ this book, do your own research, and then see which side of the proverbial fence you reside on!
About the Author:
Atchity, at age ten, began instructions in the Latin language from a multi-lingual Jesuit mentor and went on to continue his study of Latin, and to begin Homeric Greek, and French at the Jesuit high school, Rockhurst, in Kansas City, Missouri. He won an Ignatian Scholarship to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated as an English/Classics major and won the University Honor Program’s prestigious Virgilian Academy Silver Medal for his nationally-tested knowledge of Virgil’s Aeneid.
At Georgetown, he added to his four years of high school Homeric Greek with studies of Attic and Koinaic Greek as well as further studies in Homer and four more years of Latin. He spent his junior year summer at King’s College, Cambridge.
Atchity received his Ph.D. from Yale in Comparative Literature, after adding Italian to his seven languages, focused on the study of Dante under Harvard’s Dante della Terza and Yale’s Thomas Bergin.
His dissertation, Homer’s Iliad: The Shield of Memory, was awarded the Porter Prize, Yale Graduate School’s highest academic honor. His mentors at Yale included Thomas Bergin, Thomas Greene, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Richard Ellinger, Eric Segal, and Lowry Nelson, Jr.
He was professor of literature and classics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, 1970-87, served as chairman of the comparative literature department, and as Fulbright Professor to the University of Bologna. His academic career included books on Homer and Italian literature, and dozens of academic articles and reviews. During his years at Occidental, Atchity was a frequent columnist for The Los Angeles Times Book Review, where he reviewed the novels of Umberto Eco, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and many others.
In a second career Atchity represented writers of both fiction and nonfiction, accounting for numerous bestsellers and movies for both television and big screen. In the tradition of Dominick Dunne, Sidney Sheldon, and Steven Cannell he has drawn on his professional experience with storytelling to write The Messiah Matrix.
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Phenomenal review!!! Thank you for sharing your insight on this book!
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