Cristina Sanchez Reyes |
Mexico City (EFE) of almost four decades writing on the subject, which is nothing more, he assures, than a message of hope.
“I have felt very relieved. It’s been many years, almost 40 years, and a lot of very different information, very different from the information contained in the canonical gospels, what the Church says, what religion says, the historical tradition,” says Benítez in an interview with EFE from Mexico.
“Belén”, edited by Planeta, is the 12th volume of the saga of which JJ Benítez has sold millions of copies around the world since the first “Trojan Horse” came out in 1984.
“Bethlehem” belongs to what is narrated in “Caballo de Troya 9: Caná”, published in 2011 and where, for “purely technical” reasons, hundreds of pages were left out of the book and tells, among other things, the veracity of the Magi , the Massacre of the Innocents and various miracles performed by Jesus.
The writer, born in Pamplona in 1946, assures that, after having written more than 7,000 pages on the life of Jesus of Nazareth, this book is definitely the end of the series.
“I no longer have anything to tell you on the subject, I have no more information about the ‘Trojan Horse’ project, that is, what has been published is what it is,” he asserts.
a different vision
The saga tells the story of two USAF (United States Air Force) pilots who, in a secret project, managed to travel back in time to the year 30 of this era, to the ancient Roman province of Judea (now Israel).
The apparent objective of the mission was to follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth to verify, with the utmost rigor, what his last days were like, although it ends up being an unorthodox version of the life of the “Son of man”, as he calls him.
“It personally changed my life. He is a very different Jesus of Nazareth, much more human, closer, much more interesting and, surely, he has also changed the perspective of many people who have read these books”, he explains.
The most amazing thing, says Benítez, is that the information contained in the 12 volumes is real and was given to him in a privileged way by the protagonist of the books.
These statements have even earned him questions from critics and from the Church, which on occasion asked parishioners to burn their books, although this has lessened.
“Everywhere I have had problems, very harsh criticism from very conservative sectors of the Church, (although) now it seems that the whole world is calmer,” he says.
The opium of humanity
One of the premises that Benítez maintains in the saga is, among other things, that Jesus never wanted to found a religion and, after having digested all the information, he assures that religion is “the opium of humanity.”
“(Religion) is numbing the mind and intelligence of the human being, because the human being has the obligation to think for himself and decide for himself, not to abide by the dogmas or the rules of religion,” he says.
“That’s why I always invite people to flee from any religion,” he says.
He assures that, within his work, the “capital” message is hope, because that is what Jesus always told people.
Benítez confesses that, at some point, he was concerned about the possibility that fans of the saga wanted to start a new religion based on his books.
“Yes, I have thought about it at some time, but fortunately the people who read the Horses and who change their way of thinking (know that) the most important premise is not to belong to any group, to any Church, to any religion and, I repeat, think for yourself, process all that information and end up looking for the truth yourself, if it exists”, he concludes.