Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: Although it is long and at times somewhat boring it always picks up agian. This is one of those books that promises to keep you interested regardless of what happens in no ways is it a dry religious history. I actually thought it was an actual historical manuscript untill I checked the copyright date. Mr. Robert Graves did a wonderful job with this.
Rating: 
Summary: WONDERFUL!!
Review: Although it is long and at times somewhat boring it always picks up agian. This is one of those books that promises to keep you interested regardless of what happens in no ways is it a dry religious history. I actually thought it was an actual historical manuscript untill I checked the copyright date. Mr. Robert Graves did a wonderful job with this.
Rating:
Summary: Fictional-historical story... what's fact, what's fiction?
Review: Definitely not the easiest read I've done, and I confess that before starting the book, I was a little skeptical about it, specially because of being a Faith-related novel. However, I found it to be just that: a novel. A book based on historical events (with recreated fictional elements of course) and the author does a fine job in accomplishing a very comprehensive narrative work (and well documented too!). Of course, English not being my native tongue made this book a bit harder (the style of English and the vocabulary used were not that "friendly" for me, but I guess you gotta be in my shoes to know what I mean). All in all, I enjoyed the book, specially having gone and seen The Passion, where both the movie and the book made this past month a very reflexive one for me (and no, I'm not very into religion, I'm "just" one more not-so-good-Christian..... Catholic in my case).
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant, remarkable achievement
Review: Easy reading this ain't, especially while you're first trying to get into it, but it's hard to think of a more rewarding way to spend your time and intellectual effort. The research is astonishing, the hypothesis is brilliant and revelatory, the theology flawless and the narrative lucid and inspiring. Moreover despite Graves' atheism the novel remains utterly respectful of Jesus Christ. A riveting book which I expect to continue to bore my friends by quoting for probably the rest of my life.
Rating:
Summary: Jesus the man and how things must have happened
Review: Graves fits the known and not so known facts around Jesus in a fascinanting story about what his presence meant to his contemporaries.
After reading the book you have to say " Si non e vero e ben trovato"
Rating:
Summary: A scholarly alternative approach to the life of Jesus
Review: Having grown up in an Episcopalian family in the Southeastern US, I am very familiar with Christ the Savior from St.John's gospel and the epistles of Paul. Graves offers the viewer two alternative interpreations of Jesus in his book,King Jesus. These two alternative views are based on Hebrew concepts of a political/military messiah and the mystery religion of the triple goddess, which requires the sacrifice of the goddess's consort to bless the land and people with his sacrificial blood. There is no doubt that these two world-views, religions, concepts were dominant in the Mediterranean Roman world. For example, St. Paul's epistles strongly condemn the mystery religions of the triple goddess, which he identies as Artemis (also known as Diana in Roman mythology).
I realize that my many fundamentalists Christian friends would find this book disturbing but I would invite them to read this exceptional historic novel to gain more insight into the Hebrew concept of a worldly military messiah destined to overthrow Roman domination or the concept of the consort of the triple goddess, destined to be sacrificed for the well being of the land and people.
First, the book is a political novel about the efforts of the Hebrew leadership to bring about the birth and development of a young man to be their military leader and savior. Jesus is the son of Mary and Herod's oldest son,Antipater, hidden in the home of Joseph until the time he will arise as the Hebrew ruler. Graves was a scholar of Hebrew religion and he brings his considerable knowledge of the Hebrew faith to the novel. Graves writes of a possible plot wherein the birth, schooling, and mentoring of Jesus were all part of a Hebrew plot to produce the Messiah that would defeat the Romans and bring about a Hebrew golden age of 1000 years.
Second,the book is a novel about the struggle between the patriarchial religion of the Hebrews and the cult mystery religions of the triple goddess, or the white goddess. This ancient religion has as the central deity a female goddess who is mother/birth, wife/consort/fertility, and death/destroyer. Graves has Mary the mother of Jesus, his cousin Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus), and Mary Magdalene playing these roles. However, in the religion of the triple goddess or white goddess, a male plays the role of son, husband, consort, king, and finally human sacrifice to this triple goddess. Graves has Jesus move from the role of warrior king of the Jews to sacrificial king through the novel. Whereas Mary the mother of Jesus is a player in the Hebrew plot to support Jesus as the military Messiah, his wife and cousin Mary asks him to use his powers to raise his cousin (her brother) Lazarus from the dead. Jesus does this act but because he must now offer God a life for a life, he must offer his own life for that of Lazarus. This puts Jesus directly in the power and plot of Mary Magdalene (the layer-out) who requires the sacrificial death of her husband/consort to bless the world and its people. Graves was probably the foremost expert on the religions of the triple goddess and his scholarship helps maintain the internal consistency of the novel.
Finally, we are left with the question of whether Jesus' crucifixion was a triump of the feminist mystery religion of the triple goddess over the Hebrew messiah or whether Jesus' cruicifixion spelled the doom of the triple goddess as he emerges as the Christian savior.
Graves, an expert on Hebrew religion and mythology, classical history and mythology, and the canonical gospels as well as the Gnostic gospels, is certainly the scholar best suited to try to bring all this together in a fascinating historic novel consistent with the society and theology of the times. Graves was a highly creative and independent thinker and I have no doubt that this book will disturb my fundamentalists Christian friends - none-the-less it is a wonderful description of the world into which Jesus was born and the two major east Mediteranean religious philosophies that competed with Christianity at the time of his death.
Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: I agree that I, Claudius and Claudius the God are far better reads as far as entertainment value. But my reaction to King Jesus was, "You know...It COULD have happened that way." In childhood I was the kid that made the teachers raise their eyebrows with my questions (and probably consign me to Satan's realm when my time comes), but it's always bothered me that the only species I've ever heard of being capable of parthenogenesis was--turkeys.
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Summary: Ok, ok, I'll say it: I, Claudius it ain't
Review: in that King Jesus is certainly not a soap opera. Graves has constructed a well-researched and intriguing life of Christ on earth, which departs in many ways from the received tradition. An excellent book to give the brain cells a stretch of the legs: highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Truly Astonishing
Review: It is doubtful if there is any man alive today who could write a book which equaled "King Jesus" as an intellectual virtuoso performance. The work is a dazzling display of esoteric scholarship, poerty and imagination which leaves the reader breathless at the sheer audacity of its mystical logic. This is a most important book which should be read by anyone interested in looking beyond stock theology.
Rating:
Summary: King Jesus
Review: King Jesus is pure historical romance, a prose masterpiece, a poetically allegorical phenomenon. Blow away the pussywillow's outer flowering and what you hold is the wish granting root and stem; eliminate the metaphor and symbol from the central principle of "King Jesus" and what you find is the actual entity of this heroic figure in Western art, philosophy and religion. I must admit I am a "Johnny come lately" to the wonders that is Jesus Christ. I am a Buddhist by faith, with a kind of theosophical attitude towards all religions; I have tried to appreciate the meaning and significance of Jesus over the years, reading Renan, Schweitzer, Steiner, and most recently A.N. Wilson. Robert Graves has existed in my pantheon of great writers since the late sixties. I read his translation of Apulieus, his poetry, and puzzled over the White Goddess for years. They say timing is everything when it comes to appreciating great literature or works of art. Now the time has come for me to recommend this exceptional literary gem. Anyone familiar enough with the author must note the liturgical thread running throughout his writings: Graves, the poet priest, so to speak, of the Goddess Isis. Here, in this novel, you get our savior, the Christ or "Chrestman," in all the sacrificial and cocksure glory of Frazer, projected out of a chilling virtual reality, paying the ultimate price for all psychic sins and one sided human development. In this nightmare vision to the well known and often told tale, resplendent with a fervent reality beyond the dream within a dream, I find a most endearing and honorable person of rare and supremely authentic quality. Like one of those "prophetic birds" written of in The White Goddess, (c.f., P. 26), whose plumage is said to line her nest containing the "jawbones and entrails of poets," King Jesus is an awesomely important tale to read and hear; as imperative, one could say, as the Mariner's recollection to the Wedding Guest in Coleridge's "Rime." I hope you will find the time to read what this story has to say about the life and death of Western tradition's most important religious icon, King Jesus.
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