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Review title: "Ignorance is no excuse"
Product review: I first read Ms. Bogin's small book 25 years ago, and valued it for the translations, mostly made by Frederick Goldin. Her "knowledge" is a tissue of myths, extreme prejudices, and confusion. My favorite: "The doctrine of Immaculate Conception, which made the Virgin Mary herself the child of a virgin birth, was an ingenious way of sparing Jesus Christ the indignation of having to pass through a contaminated mother. As a second generation virgin, Mary presumably was free of the curse of Eve." (11) Mary is conceived by normal sexual intercourse between her parents, but by anticipation she does not have original sin. Having never read Steven Runciman or a dozen other scholars on the Cathars/Gnostics/Manichees, she presents them as "pacifists and vegetarians" (58), which would greatly amuse the Cathars! Far from seeing women as "equal," they particularly deplored women, who by giving birth served evil. But the Goldin translations and the illustrations are very attractive.
