The Celestine Prophecy - Reception and Critique

Reception and Critique

The book was generally well received by readers and spent 165 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The Celestine Prophecy has also received some criticism, mostly from the literary community, who point out that the plot of the story is not well developed and serves only as a delivery tool for the author's ideas about spirituality. James Redfield has admitted that, even though he considers the book to be a novel, his intention was to write a story in the shape of a parable, a story meant to illustrate a point or teach a lesson.

Critics point to Redfield's heavy usage of subjective validation and reification in dealing with coincidences to advance the plot thus spending more time concentrating on the explanation of spiritual ideas rather than furthering character development or developing the plot in a more traditional manner.

Critics also point to improperly explained and, in some cases, completely unexplained “facts” as flaws in the story. Examples of this include the author’s suggestion of the presence of a Mayan society in modern day Peru, rather than in Central America, as well as the suggestion that the manuscript was written in 600 BC in the jungles of Peru, despite the fact that it is written in Aramaic. This shares a thread with the Book of Mormon, which is a purported history of Hebrew people who migrated to the American continent 600 years B.C. Another point of criticism has been directed at the book’s attempt to explain important questions about life and human existence in an overly simplified fashion.