I decided to add them after watching and old DVD of a Dan Brown film adaptation, including another video of the techie and worker types praising their bosses, without mentioning Baigent and the others. I faintly recalled a copyright case.
Michael Baigent has a write-up on Wikipedia in their usual fact-weak oppositional style. I'd guess his birth is correct (born Michael Barry Meehan in New Zealand). Not much on his parents. His supposedly very Roman Catholic dad left him; Baigent moved around the world—common enough with New Zealanders—and met Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in Britain. There are Freemason links in there; Wiki says he was 'a Grand Officer of the United Grand Lodge of England', and 'an editor of Freemasonry Today' from 2001 to 2011. For my taste, he looks a bit like John Pilger.
No doubt there were concealed Jewish links, though as always they are suppressed. The success of his books testifies to them. There are many Jews in the bibliographies and the more recent media and publicity circuses. And of course in the 'core texts'.
Such is the power of words that such items seem real, even if they never existed. And that power extends to liking and approval, and the opposites, even when the brain concerned has no personal connection whatever with the items.
Judaic behaviour has been kept so thoroughly secret that many people are unable to believe it is possible. In fact, the modern world is a battle between Jewish use of unaware people as their dogs and pets and slaves, and aware people who have difficulty in uniting.
– Raeto West 24 October 2023
[SCANNED IN MATERIAL 15 Sept 95]
CHAPTER 12 THE PRIES-KING WHO NEVER RULED
Most people today speak of 'Christianity' as if it were a single specific thing, a coherent, homogeneous and unified entity. Needless to say 'Christianity' is nothing of the sort. As everyone knows, there are numerous forms of 'Christianity': Roman Catholicism, for example, or the Church of England initiated by Henry VIII. There are the various other denominations of Protestantism, from the original Lutheranism and Calvinism of the sixteenth century to such relatively recent developments as Unitarianism. There are multitudinous 'fringe' or 'evangelical' congregations, such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. And there are assorted contemporary sects and cults, like the Children of God and the Unification Church of the Reverend Moon. If one surveys this bewildering spectrum of beliefs, from the rigidly dogmatic and conservative to the radical and ecstatic, it is difficult to determine what exactly constitutes 'Christianity'.
If there is a single factor that does permit one to speak of Christianity', a single factor that does link the otherwise diverse and divergent 'Christian' creeds, it is the New Testament, and more particularly the unique status ascribed by the New Testament to Jesus, his Crucifixion and Resurrection. Even if one does not subscribe to the literal or historical truth of those events, acceptance of their symbolic significance generally suffices for one to be considered a Christian.
If there is any unity, then, in the diffuse phenomenon called Christianity, it resides in the New Testament, and, more specifically, in the accounts of Jesus known as the Four Gospels. These accounts are popularly regarded as the most authoritative on record: and for many Christians, they are assumed to be both coherent and unimpugnable. From childhood one is led to believe that the 'story' of Jesus, as it is preserved in the Four Gospels, is, if not God. Inspired, at least definitive. The four evangelists, supposed authors of the Gospels, are deemed to be unimpeachable witnesses who reinforce and confirm each other's testimony. Of the people who today call themselves Christians, relatively few are aware of the fact that the Four Gospels not only contradict each other, but, at times violently disagree.
So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth of Jesus are well enough known. But in reality the Gospels, on which that tradition is based, are considerably more vague on the matter. Only two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke, say anything at all about Jesus's origins and birth; and they are flagrantly at odds with each other. According to Matthew, for example, Jesus was an aristocrat, if not a rightful and legitimate king descended from David via Solomon. According to Luke, on the other hand, Jesus's family, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted stock, and it is on the basis of Mark's account that the legend of the 'poor carpenter' came into being. The two genealogies, in short, are so strikingly discordant that they might well be referring to two quite different individuals.
The discrepancies between the Gospels are not confined to the question of Jesus's ancestry and genealogy. According to Luke, Jesus, on his birth, was visited by shepherds. According to Matthew, he was visited by kings. According to Luke, Jesus's family lived in Nazareth. From here they are said to have journeyed, for a census which history suggests never in fact occurred, to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger. But according to Matthew, Jesus's family had been fairly well-to-do residents of Bethlehem all along, and Jesus himself was born in a house. In Matthew's version Herod's persecution of the innocents prompts the family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their home in Nazareth.
The information in each of these accounts is quite specific and, assuming the census did occur, perfectly plausible. And yet the information itself simply does not agree. This contradiction cannot be rationalised. There is no possible means whereby the two conflicting narratives can both be correct, and there is no means whereby they can be reconciled. Whether one cares to admit it or not, the fact must be recognised that one or both of the Gospels is wrong. In the face of so glaring and inevitable a conclusion, the Gospels cannot be regarded as unimpugnable. How can they be unimpugnable when they impugn each other?
The more one studies the Gospels, the more the contradictions between them become apparent. Indeed they do not even agree on the day of the Crucifixion. According to John's Gospel, the Crucifixion occurred on the day before the Passover. According to the Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew, it occurred on the day after. Nor are the Gospels in accord on the personality and character of Jesus. Each depicts a figure who is patently at odds with the figure depicted in the others, a meek lamb-like saviour in Luke, for example, a powerful and majestic sovereign in Matthew who comes 'not to bring peace but a sword'. And there is further disagreement about Jesus's last words on the cross. In Matthew and Mark these words are, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' In Luke they are, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' And in John, they are simply, 'It is finished.'
Given these discrepancies, the Gospels can only be accepted as a highly questionable authority, and certainly not as definitive. They do not represent the perfect word of any God, or, if they do, God's words have been very liberally censored, edited, revised, glossed and rewritten by human hands. The Bible, it must be remembered, and this applies to both the Old and New Testaments, is only a selection of works, and, in many respects, a somewhat arbitrary one. In fact, it could well include far more books and writings than it actually does. Nor is there any question of the missing books having been 'lost'. On the contrary they were deliberately excluded. In A.D. 367 Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria compiled a list of works to be included in the New Testament. This list was ratified by the Church Council of Hippo in 393 and again by the Council of Carthage four years later. At these councils a selection was agreed upon. Certain works were assembled to form the New Testament as we know it today, and others were cavalierly ignored. How can such a process of selection possibly be regarded as definitive? How could a conclave of clerics infallibly decide that certain books 'belonged' in the Bible while others did not? Especially when some of the excluded books have a perfectly valid claim to historical veracity?
As it exists today, moreover, the Bible is not only a product of a more or less arbitrary selective process. It has also been subjected to some fairly drastic editing, censorship and revision. In 1958, for example, Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered, in a monastery near Jerusalem, a letter which contained a missing fragment of the Gospel of Mark. The missing fragment had not been lost. On the contrary, it had apparently been deliberately suppressed, at the instigation, if not the express behest, of Bishop Clement of Alexandria, one of the most venerated of the early Church fathers.
Clement, it seems had received a letter from one Theodore, who complained of a Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians. The Carpocratians appear to have been interpreting certain passages of the Gospel of Mark in accordance with their own principles, principles that did not concur with the position of Clement and Theodore. In consequence, Theodore apparently attacked them and reported his action to Clement. In the letter found by Professor Smith, Clement replies to his disciple as follows:
You did well in silencing the unspeakable teachings of the Carpocratians. For these are the 'wandering stars' referred to in the prophecy, who wander from the narrow road of the commandments into a boundless abyss of the carnal and bodily sins. For, priding themselves in knowledge, as they say, 'of the deep [things] of Satan', they do not know that they are casting themselves away into 'the nether world of the darkness' of falsity, and, boasting that they are free, they have become slaves of servile desires. Such [men] are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For, even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not, even so, agree with them. For not all true [things] are the truth, nor should that truth which [merely] seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith
It is an extraordinary statement for a Church father. In effect Clement is saying nothing less than, 'If your opponent happens to tell the truth, you must deny it and lie in order to refute him.' But that is not all. In the following passage, Clement's letter goes on to discuss Mark's Gospel and its 'misuse', in his eyes, by the Carpocratians:
[As for] Mark, then, during Peter's stay in Rome he wrote [an account of] the Lord's doings; not, however, declaring all [of them], nor yet hinting at the secret [ones], but selecting those he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died as a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former book the things suitable to whatever makes for progress towards knowledge [gnosis]. [Thus] he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven [veils] Thus, in sum, he prearranged matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.
But since the foul demons are always devising destruction for the race of men, Carpocrates, instructed by them and using deceitful arts, so enslaved a certain presbyter of the church in Alexandria that he got from him a copy of the secret Gospel, which he both interpreted according to his blasphemous and carnal doctrine and, moreover, polluted, mixing with the spotless and holy words utterly shameless lies.2
Clement thus freely acknowledges that there is authentic secret Gospel of Mark. He then instructs Theodore to deny it:
To them [the Carpocratians], therefore, as I said above one must never give way, nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath. For 'not all true [things] are to be said to all men'.3
What was this 'secret Gospel' that Clement ordered his disciple to repudiate and that the Carpocratians were 'misinterpreting'? Clement answers the question by including a word-for-word transcription of the text in his letter:
To you, therefore, I shall not hesitate to answer the [questions] you have asked, refuting the falsifications by the very words of the Gospel. For example after 'And they were in the road going up to Jerusalem,' and what follows, until 'After three days he shall arise', [the secret Gospel] brings the following [material] word for word:
'And they come into Bethany, and a certain woman whose brother had died, was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me". But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over [his] naked [body]. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.'4
This episode appears in no existing version of the Gospel of Mark. In its general outlines, however, it is familiar enough. It is, of course, the raising of Lazarus described in the Fourth Gospel, ascribed to John. In the version quoted, however, there are some significant variations. In the first place there is a 'great cry' from the tomb before Jesus rolls the rock aside or instructs the occupant to come forth. This strongly suggests that the occupant was not dead and thereby, at a single stroke, contravenes any element of the miraculous. In the second place there would clearly seem to be something more involved than accepted accounts of the Lazarus episode lead one to believe. Certainly the passage quoted attests to some special relation between the man in the tomb and the man who 'resurrects' him. A modern reader might perhaps be tempted to see a hint of homosexuality. It is possible that the Carpocratians, a sect who aspired to transcendence of the senses by means of satiation of the senses, discerned precisely such a hint. But, as Professor Smith argues, it is in fact much more likely that the whole episode refers to a typical mystery school initiation, a ritualised and symbolic death and rebirth of the sort so prevalent in the Middle East at the time.
In any case the point is that the episode, and the passage quoted above, do not appear in any modern or accepted version of Mark. Indeed, the only references to Lazarus or a Lazarus figure in the New Testament are in the Gospel ascribed to John. It is thus clear that Clement's advice was accepted, not only by Theodore, but by subsequent authorities as well. Quite simply the entire Lazarus incident was completely excised from the Gospel of Mark.
If Mark's Gospel was so drastically expurgated, it was also burdened with spurious additions. In its original version it ends with the Crucifixion, the burial and the empty tomb. There is no Resurrection scene, no reunion with the disciples. Granted, there are certain modern Bibles which do contain a more conventional ending to the Gospel of Mark, an ending which does include the Resurrection. But virtually all modern Biblical scholars concur that this expanded ending is a later addition, dating from the late second century and appended to the original document.5
The Gospel of Mark thus provides two instances of a sacred document, supposedly inspired by God, which has been tampered with, edited, censored, revised by human hands. Nor are these two cases speculative. On the contrary, they are now accepted by scholars as demonstrable and proven. Can one then suppose that
Mark's Gospel was unique in being subjected to alteration? Clearly if Mark's Gospel was so readily doctored, it is reasonable to assume that the other Gospels were similarly treated.
For the purposes of our investigation, then, we could not accept the Gospels as definitive and unimpugnable authority, but, at the same time we could not discard them. They were certainly not wholly fabricated, and they furnished some of the few clues available to what really happened in the Holy Land two thousand years ago. We therefore undertook to look more closely, to winnow through them, to disengage fact from fable, to separate the truth they contained from the spurious matrix in which that truth was often embedded. And in order to do this effectively, we were first obliged to familiarise ourselves with the historical reality and circumstances of the Holy Land at the advent of the Christian era. For the Gospels are not autonomous entities, conjured out of the void and floating, eternal and universal, over the centuries. They are historical documents, like any other, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the epics of Homer and Virgil, the Grail romances. They are products of a very specific place, a very specific time, a very specific people and very specific historical factors.
Palestine at the Time of Jesus
Palestine in the first century was a very troubled corner of the globe. For some time the Holy Land had been fraught with dynastic squabbles, internecine strife and, on occasion, full-scale war. During the second century B.C. a more or less unified Judaic kingdom was transiently established, as chronicled by the two Apocryphal Books of Maccabees. By 63 B.C., however, the land was in upheaval again, and ripe for conquest.
More than half a century before Jesus's birth, Palestine fell to the armies of Pompey, and Roman rule was imposed. But Rome at the time was over-extended, and too preoccupied with her own affairs, to install the administrative apparatus necessary for direct rule. She therefore created a line of puppet kings to rule under her aegis. This line was that of the Herodians, who were not Jewish, but Arab. The first of the line was Antipater, who assumed the throne of Palestine in 63 B.C. On his death in 37 B.C., he was succeeded by his son, Herod the Great, who ruled until 4 B.C. One must visualise, then, a situation analogous to that of France under the Vichy government between 1940 and 1944. One must visualise a conquered land and a conquered people, ruled by a puppet regime which was kept in power by military force. The people of the country were allowed to retain their own religion and customs. But the final authority was Rome. This authority was implemented according to Roman law and enforced by Roman soldiery, as it was in Britain not long after.
In A.D. 6 the situation became more critical. In this year the country was split administratively into two provinces, Judaea and Galilee. Herod Antipas became king of the latter. But Judaea, the spiritual and secular capital was rendered subject to direct Roman rule, administered by a Roman Procurator based at Caesarea. The Roman regime was brutal and autocratic. When it assumed direct control of Judaea more than three thousand rebels were summarily crucified. The Temple was plundered and defiled. Heavy taxation was imposed. Torture was frequently employed, and many of the populace committed suicide. This state of affairs was not improved by Pontius Pilate, who presided as procurator of Judaea from A.D. 26 to 36. In contrast to the Biblical portraits of him, existing records indicate that Pilate was a cruel and corrupt man, who not only perpetuated, but intensified, the abuses of his predecessor. It is thus all the more surprising, at least on first glance, that there should be no criticism of Rome in the Gospels, no mention even of the burden of the Roman yoke. Indeed the Gospel accounts suggest that the inhabitants of Judaea were placid and contented with their lot.
In point of fact very few were contented, and many were far from placid. The Jews in the Holy Land at the time could be loosely divided into several sects and subsects. There were, for example, the Sadducees, a small but wealthy land-owning class who, to the anger of their compatriots, collaborated, Quisling-fashion, with the Romans. There were the Pharisees, a progressive group who introduced much reform into Judaism and who, despite the portrait of them in the Gospels, placed themselves in staunch, albeit largely passive, opposition to Rome. There were the Essenes, an austere, mystically oriented sect, whose teachings were much more prevalent and influential than is generally acknowledged or supposed. Among the smaller sects and sub-sects there were many whose precise character has long been lost to history, and which, therefore, are difficult to define. It is worth citing the Nazorites, however, of whom Samson, centuries before, had been a member, and who were still in existence during Jesus's time. And it is worth citing the Nazoreans or Nazarenes, a term which seems to have been applied to Jesus and his followers. Indeed the original Greek version of the New Testament refers to Jesus as 'Jesus the Nazarene', which is mistranslated in English as 'Jesus of Nazareth'. 'Nazarene', in short, is a specifically sectarian word and has no connection with Nazareth.
There were numerous other groups and sects as well, one of which proved of particular relevance to our inquiry. In A.D. 6, when Rome assumed direct control of Judaea, a Pharisee rabbi known as Judas of Galilee had created a highly militant revolutionary group composed, it would appear, of both Pharisees and Essenes. This following became known as Zealots. The Zealots were not, strictly speaking, a sect. They were a movement, whose membership was drawn from a number of sects. By the time of Jesus's mission, the Zealots had assumed an increasingly prominent role in the Holy Land's affairs. Their activities formed perhaps the most important political backdrop against which Jesus's drama enacted itself. Long after the Crucifixion, Zealot activity continued unabated. By A.D. 44 this activity had so intensified that some sort of armed struggle already seemed inevitable. In A.D. 66 the struggle erupted, the whole of Judaea rising in organised revolt against Rome. It was a desperate, tenacious but ultimately futile conflict, reminiscent in certain respects of, say, Hungary in 1956. At Caesarea alone 20,000 Jews were massacred by the Romans. Within four years Roman legions had occupied Jerusalem, razed the city, and sacked and plundered the Temple. Nevertheless the mountain fortress of Masada held out for yet another three years, commanded by a lineal descendant of Judas of Galilee.
The aftermath of the revolt in Judaea witnessed a massive exodus of Jews from the Holy Land. Nevertheless enough remained to foment another rebellion some sixty years later in A.D. 132. At last, in 135, the Emperor Hadrian decreed that all Jews be expelled by law from Judaea, and Jerusalem became essentially a Roman city. It was renamed Aelia Capitolina.
Jesus's lifetime spanned roughly the first thirty-five years of a turmoil extending over 140 years. The turmoil did not cease with his death, but continued for another century. And it engendered the psychological and cultural adjuncts inevitably attending any such sustained defiance of an oppressor. One of these adjuncts was the hope and longing for a Messiah who would deliver his people from the tyrant's yoke. It was only by virtue of historical and semantic accident that this term came to be applied specifically and exclusively to Jesus.
For Jesus's contemporaries, no Messiah would ever have been regarded as divine. Indeed the very idea of a divine Messiah would have been preposterous if not unthinkable. The Greek word for Messiah is 'Christ' or 'Christos'. The term, whether in Hebrew or Greek meant simply 'the anointed one' and generally referred to a king. Thus David, when he was anointed king in the Old Testament, became, quite explicitly, a 'Messiah' or a 'Christ'. And every subsequent Jewish king of the house of David was known by the same appellation. Even during the Roman occupation of Judaea, the Roman-appointed high priest was known as the 'Priest Messiah' or 'Priest Christ'.6
For the Zealots, however, and for other opponents of Rome, this puppet priest was, of necessity, a 'false Messiah'. For them the 'true Messiah' implied something very different, the legitimate roi perdu or 'lost king', the unknown descendant of the house of David who would deliver his people from Roman tyranny. During Jesus's lifetime anticipation of the coming of such a Messiah attained a pitch verging on mass hysteria. And this anticipation continued after Jesus's death. Indeed the revolt of A.D. 66 was prompted in large part by Zealot agitation and propaganda on behalf of a Messiah whose advent was said to be imminent.
The term 'Messiah', then, implied nothing in any way divine. Strictly defined, it meant nothing more than an anointed king; and in the popular mind it came to mean an anointed king who would also be a liberator. In other words, it was a term with specifically political connotations, something quite different from the later Christian idea of a 'Son of God'. It was this mundane political term that was applied to Jesus. He was called 'Jesus the Messiah' or, translated into Greek, 'Jesus the Christ'. Only later was this designation contracted to 'Jesus Christ' and a purely functional title distorted into a proper name.
The History of the Gospels
The Gospels issued from a recognisable and concrete historical reality. It was a reality of oppression, of civic and social discontent, of political unrest, of incessant persecution and intermittent rebellion. It was also a reality suffused with perpetual and tantalising promises, hopes and dreams, that a rightful king would appear, a spiritual and secular leader who would deliver his people into freedom. So far as political freedom was concerned, such aspirations were brutally extinguished by the devastating war between A.D. 66 and 74. Transposed into a wholly religious form, however, the aspirations were not only perpetuated by the Gospels, but given a powerful new impetus.
Modern scholars are unanimous in concurring that the Gospels do not date from Jesus's lifetime. For the most part they date from the period between the two major revolts in Judaea, 66 to 74 and 132 to 135, although they are almost certainly based on earlier accounts. These earlier accounts may have included written documents since lost, for there was a wholesale destruction of records in the wake of the first rebellion. But there would certainly have been oral traditions as well. Some of these were undoubtedly grossly exaggerated and/or distorted, received and transmitted at second, third or fourth hand. Others, however, may have derived from individuals who were alive in Jesus's lifetime and may even have known him personally. A young man at the time of the Crucifixion might well have been alive when the Gospels were composed.
The earliest of the Gospels is generally considered to be Mark's, composed sometime during the revolt of 66.74 or shortly thereafter, except for its treatment of the Resurrection, which is a later and spurious addition. Although not himself one of Jesus's original disciples, Mark seems to have come from Jerusalem. He seems to have been a companion of Saint Paul, and his Gospel bears an unmistakable stamp of Pauline thought. But if Mark was a native of Jerusalem, his Gospel, as Clement of Alexandria states, was composed in Rome, and addressed to a Greco-Roman audience. This, in itself, explains a great deal. At the time that Mark's Gospel was composed, Judaea was, or had recently been, in open revolt, and thousands of Jews were being crucified for rebellion against the Roman regime. If Mark wished his Gospel to survive and impress itself on a Roman audience, he could not possibly present Jesus as anti-Roman. Indeed, he could not feasibly present Jesus as politically oriented at all. In order to ensure the survival of his message, he would have been obliged to exonerate the Romans of all guilt for Jesus's death, to whitewash the existing and entrenched regime and blame the death of the Messiah on certain Jews. This device was adopted not only by the authors of the other Gospels, but by the early Christian Church as well. Without such a device neither Gospels nor Church would have survived.
The Gospel of Luke is dated by scholars at around A.D. 80. Luke himself appears to have been a Greek doctor, who composed his work for a high-ranking Roman official at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. For Luke, too, therefore, it would have been necessary to placate and appease the Romans and transfer the blame elsewhere. By the time the Gospel of Matthew was composed, approximately A.D. 85, such a transference seems to have been accepted as an established fact and gone unquestioned. More than half of Matthew's Gospel, in fact, is derived directly from Mark's, although it was composed originally in Greek and reflects specifically Greek characteristics. The author seems to have been a Jew, quite possibly a refugee from Palestine. He is not to be confused with the disciple named Matthew, who would have lived much earlier and would probably have known only Aramaic.
The Gospels of Mark, Luke and Matthew are known collectively as the 'Synoptic Gospels', implying that they see 'eye to eye' or 'with one eye', which, of course, they do not. Nevertheless there is enough overlap between them to suggest that they derived from a single common source either an oral tradition or some other document subsequently lost. This distinguishes them from the Gospel of John, which betrays significantly different origins.
Nothing whatever is known about the author of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed there is no reason to assume his name was John. Except for John the Baptist, the name John is mentioned at no point in the Gospel itself, and its attribution to a man called John is generally accepted as later tradition. The Fourth Gospel is the latest of those in the New Testament, composed around A.D. 100 in the vicinity of the Greek city of Ephesus. It displays a number of quite distinctive features. There is no nativity scene, for example, no description whatever of Jesus's birth, and the opening is almost Gnostic in character. The text is of a decidedly more mystical nature than the other Gospels, and the content differs as well. The other Gospels, for instance, concentrate primarily on Jesus's activities in the northern province of Galilee and reflect what appears to be only a second. or third-hand knowledge of events to the south, in Judaea and Jerusalem, including the Crucifixion. The Fourth Gospel, in contrast, says relatively little about Galilee. It dwells exhaustively on the events in Judaea and Jerusalem which concluded Jesus's career, and its account of the Crucifixion may well rest ultimately on some first-hand eye-witness testimony. It also contains a number of episodes and incidents which do not figure in the other Gospels at all, the wedding at Cana, the roles of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and the raising of Lazarus (although the last was once included in Mark's Gospel). On the basis of such factors modern scholars have suggested that the Gospel of John, despite its late composition, may well be the most reliable and historically accurate of the four. More than the other Gospels, it seems to draw upon traditions current among contemporaries of Jesus, as well as other material unavailable to Mark, Luke and Matthew. One modern researcher points out that it reflects an apparently first-hand topographical knowledge of Jerusalem prior to the revolt of A.D. 66. The same author concludes, 'Behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the other Gospels.'7 This is not an isolated opinion. In fact, it is the most prevalent in modern Biblical scholarship. According to another writer, 'The Gospel of John, though not adhering to the Markian chronological framework and being much later in date, appears to know a tradition concerning Jesus that must be primitive and authentic.'8
On the basis of our own research we, too, concluded that the Fourth Gospel was the most reliable of the books in the New Testament, even though it, like the others, had been subjected to doctoring, editing, expurgation and revision. In our inquiry we had occasion to draw upon all four Gospels, and much collateral material as well. But it was in the Fourth Gospel that we found the most persuasive evidence for our, as yet, tentative hypothesis.
The Marital Status of Jesus
It was not our intention to discredit the Gospels. We sought only to winnow through them, to locate certain fragments of possible or probable truth and extract them from the matrix of embroidery surrounding them. We were seeking fragments, moreover, of a very precise character, fragments that might attest to a marriage between Jesus and the woman known as the Magdalene. Such attestations, needless to say, would not be explicit. In order to find them, we realised, we would be obliged to read between the lines, fill in certain gaps, account for certain caesuras and ellipses. We would have to deal with omissions, with innuendoes, with references that were, at best, oblique. And we would not only have to look for evidence of a marriage. We would also have to look for evidence of circumstances that might have been conducive to a marriage. Our inquiry would thus have to encompass a number of distinct but closely related questions. We began with the most obvious of them.
1) Is there any evidence in the Gospels, direct or indirect, to suggest that Jesus was indeed married?
There is, of course, no explicit statement to the effect that he was. On the other hand, there is no explicit statement to the effect that he was not, and this is both more curious and more significant than it might first appear. As Dr Geza Vermes of Oxford University points out, 'There is complete silence in the Gospels concerning the marital status of Jesus, , , Such a state of affairs is sufficiently unusual in ancient Jewry to prompt further enquiry.'~
The Gospels state that many of the disciples, Peter, for example, were married. And at no point does Jesus himself advocate celibacy. On the contrary, in the Gospel of Matthew he declares, 'Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, , , For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?' (19:4.5) Such a statement can hardly be reconciled with an injunction to celibacy. And if Jesus did not preach celibacy, there is no reason either to suppose that he practised it. According to Judaic custom at the time it was not only usual, but almost mandatory, that a man be married. Except among certain Essenes in certain communities, celibacy was vigorously condemned. During the late first century one Jewish writer even compared deliberate celibacy with murder, and he does not seem to have been alone in this attitude. And it was as obligatory for a Jewish father to find a wife for his son as it was to ensure that his son be circumcised.
If Jesus were not married, this fact would have been glaringly conspicuous. It would have drawn attention to itself, and been used to characterise and identify him. It would have set him apart, in some significant sense, from his contemporaries. If this were the case, surely one at least of the Gospel accounts would make some mention of so marked a deviation from custom? If Jesus were indeed as celibate as later tradition claims, it is extraordinary that there is no reference to any such celibacy. The absence of any such reference strongly suggests that Jesus, as far as the question of celibacy was concerned, conformed to the conventions of his time and culture suggests, in short, that he was married. This alone would satisfactorily explain the silence of the Gospels on the matter. The argument is summarised by a respected contemporary theological scholar:
Granted the cultural background as witnessed ... it is highly improbable that Jesus was not married well before the beginning of his public ministry. If he had insisted upon celibacy, it would have created a stir, a reaction which would have left some trace. So, the lack of mention of Jesus's marriage in the Gospels is a strong argument not against but for the hypothesis of marriage, because any practice or advocacy of voluntary celibacy would in the Jewish context of the time have been so unusual as to have attracted much attention and comment.'10
The hypothesis of marriage becomes all the more tenable by virtue of the title of 'Rabbi', which is frequently applied to Jesus in the Gospels. It is possible, of course, that this term is employed in its very broadest sense, meaning simply a self-appointed teacher. But Jesus's literacy, his display of knowledge to the elders in the Temple, for example, strongly suggests that he was more than a self-appointed teacher. It suggests that he underwent some species of formal rabbinical training and was officially recognised as a rabbi. This would conform to tradition, which depicts Jesus as a rabbi in the strict sense of the word. But if Jesus was a rabbi in the strict sense of the word, a marriage would not only have been likely, but virtually certain. The Jewish Mishnaic Law is quite explicit on the subject: 'An unmarried man may not be a teacher.'11
In the Fourth Gospel there is an episode related to a marriage which may, in fact, have been Jesus's own. This episode is, of course, the wedding at Cana, a familiar enough story. But for all its familiarity, there are certain salient questions attending it which warrant consideration.
From the account in the Fourth Gospel, the wedding at Cana would seem to be a modest local ceremony, a typical village wedding, whose bride and groom remain anonymous. To this wedding Jesus is specifically 'called', which is slightly curious perhaps, for he has not yet really embarked on his ministry. More curious still, however, is the fact that his mother 'just happens', as it were, to be present. And her presence would seem to be taken for granted. It is certainly not in any way explained.
What is more, it is Mary who not merely suggests to her son, but in effect orders him, to replenish the wine. She behaves quite as if she were the hostess: 'And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.' (John 2:3.4) But Mary, thoroughly unperturbed, ignores her son's protest: 'His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.' (5) And the servants promptly comply quite as if they were accustomed to receiving orders from both Mary and Jesus.
Despite Jesus's ostensible attempt to disown her, Mary prevails; and Jesus thereupon performs his first major miracle, the transmutation of water into wine. So far as the Gospels are concerned, he has not hitherto displayed his powers: and there is no reason for Mary to assume he even possesses them. But even if there were, why should such unique and holy gifts be employed for so banal a purpose? Why should Mary make such a request of her son? More important still, why should two 'guests' at a wedding take on themselves the responsibility of catering, a responsibility that, by custom, should be reserved for the host? Unless, of course, the wedding at Cana is Jesus's own wedding. In that case, it would indeed be his responsibility to replenish the wine.
There is further evidence that the wedding at Cana is in fact Jesus's own. Immediately after the miracle has been performed, the 'governor of the feast', a kind of majordomo or master of ceremonies, tastes the newly produced wine, 'the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.' ~John 2:9.10; our italics.) These words would clearly seem to be addressed to Jesus. According to the Gospel, however, they are addressed to the 'bridegroom'. An obvious conclusion is that Jesus and the 'bridegroom' are one and the same.
The Wife of Jesus
2) If Jesus was married, is there any indication in the Gospels of the identity of his wife?
On first consideration there would appear to be two possible candidates, two women, apart from his mother, who are mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels as being of his entourage. The first of these is the Magdalene, or, more precisely, Mary from the village of Migdal, or Magdala, in Galilee. In all four Gospels this woman's role is singularly ambiguous and seems to have been deliberately obscured. In the accounts of Mark and Matthew she is not mentioned by name until quite late. When she does appear it is in Judaea, at the time of the Crucifixion, and she is numbered among Jesus's followers. In the Gospel of Luke, however, she appears relatively early in Jesus's ministry, while he is still preaching in Galilee. It would thus seem that she accompanies him from Galilee to Judaea, or, if not, that she at least moves between the two provinces as readily as he does. This in itself strongly suggests that she was married to someone. In the Palestine of Jesus's time it would have been unthinkable for an unmarried woman to travel unaccompanied and, even more so, to travel unaccompanied with a religious teacher and his entourage. A number of traditions seem to have taken cognisance of this potentially embarrassing fact. Thus it is sometimes claimed that the Magdalene was married to one of Jesus's disciples. If that were the case, however, her special relationship with Jesus and her proximity to him would have rendered both of them subject to suspicions, if not charges, of adultery.
Popular tradition notwithstanding, the Magdalene is not, at any point in any of the Gospels, said to be a prostitute. When she is first mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, she is described as a woman 'out of whom went seven devils'. It is generally assumed that this phrase refers to a species of exorcism on Jesus's part, implying the Magdalene was 'possessed'. But the phrase may equally refer to some sort of conversion and/or ritual initiation. The cult of Ishtar or Astarte, the Mother Goddess and 'Queen of Heaven', involved, for example, a seven-stage initiation. Prior to her affiliation with Jesus, the Magdalene may well have been associated with such a cult. Migdal, or Magdala, was the 'Village of Doves', and there is some evidence that sacrificial doves were in fact bred there. And the dove was the sacred symbol of Astarte.
One chapter before he speaks of the Magdalene, Luke alludes to a woman who anointed Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark there is a similar anointment by an unnamed woman. Neither Luke nor Mark explicitly identify this woman with the Magdalene. But Luke reports that she was a 'fallen woman', a 'sinner'. Subsequent commentators have assumed that the Magdalene, since she apparently had seven devils cast out of her, must have been a sinner. On this basis the woman who anoints Jesus and the Magdalene came to be regarded as the same person. In fact they may well have been. If the Magdalene were associated with a pagan cult, that would certainly have rendered her a 'sinner' in the eyes not only of Luke, but of later writers as well.
If the Magdalene was a 'sinner', she was also, quite clearly, something more than the 'common prostitute' of popular tradition. Quite clearly she was a woman of means. Luke reports, for example, that her friends included the wife of a high dignitary at Herod's court, and that both women, together with various others, supported Jesus and his disciples with their financial resources. The woman who anointed Jesus was also a woman of means. In Mark's Gospel great stress is laid upon the costliness of the spikenard ointment with which the ritual was performed.
The whole episode of Jesus's anointing would seem to be an affair of considerable consequence. Why else would it be emphasised by the Gospels to the extent it is? Given its prominence, it appears to be something more than an impulsive spontaneous gesture. It appears to be a carefully premeditated rite. One must remember that anointing was the traditional prerogative of kings, and of the 'rightful Messiah', which means 'the anointed one'. From this, it follows that Jesus becomes an authentic Messiah by virtue of his anointing. And the woman who consecrates him in that august role can hardly be unimportant.
In any case it is clear that the Magdalene, by the end of Jesus's ministry, has become a figure of immense significance. In the three Synoptic Gospels her name consistently heads the lists of women who followed Jesus, just as Simon Peter heads the lists of male disciples. And, of course, she was the first witness to the empty tomb following the Crucifixion. Among all his devotees, it was to the Magdalene that Jesus first chose to reveal his Resurrection.
Throughout the Gospels Jesus treats the Magdalene in a unique and preferential manner. Such treatment may well have induced jealousy in other disciples. It would seem fairly obvious that later tradition endeavoured to blacken the Magdalene's background, if not her name. The portrayal of her as a harlot may well have been the overcompensation of a vindictive following, intent on impugning the reputation of a woman whose association with Jesus was closer than their own and thus inspired an all too human envy. If other 'Christians', either during Jesus's lifetime or afterwards, grudged the Magdalene her unique bond with their spiritual leader, there might well have been an attempt to diminish her in the eyes of posterity. There is no question that she was so diminished. Even today one thinks of her as a harlot, and during the Middle Ages houses for reformed prostitutes were called Magdalenes. But the Gospels themselves bear witness that the woman who imparted her name to these institutions did not deserve to be so stigmatised.
Whatever the status of the Magdalene in the Gospels, she is not the only possible candidate for Jesus's wife. There is one other, who figures most prominently in the Fourth Gospel and who may be identified as Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. She and her family are clearly on very familiar terms with Jesus. They are also wealthy, maintaining a house in a fashionable suburb of Jerusalem large enough to accommodate Jesus and his entire entourage. What is more, the Lazarus episode reveals that this house contains a private tomb, a somewhat flamboyant luxury in Jesus's time, not only a sign of wealth but also a status symbol attesting to aristocratic connections. In Biblical Jerusalem, as in any modern city, land was at a premium; and only a very few could afford the self-indulgence of a private burial site.
When, in the Fourth Gospel, Lazarus falls ill, Jesus has left Bethany for a few days and is staying with his disciples on the Jordan. Hearing of what has happened, he nevertheless delays for two days, a rather curious reaction, and then returns to Bethany, where Lazarus lies in the tomb. As he approaches, Martha rushes forth to meet him and cries, 'Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.' (John 11:21) It is a perplexing assertion, for why should Jesus's physical presence necessarily have prevented the man's death? But the incident is significant because Martha, when she greets Jesus. is alone. One would expect Mary, her sister, to be with her. Mary, however, is sitting in the house, and does not emerge until Jesus explicitly commands her to do so. The point becomes clearer in the 'secret' Gospel of Mark, discovered by Professor Morton Smith and cited earlier in this chapter. In the suppressed account by Mark, it would appear that Mary does emerge from the house before Jesus instructs her to do so. And she is promptly and angrily rebuked by the disciples, whom Jesus is obliged to silence.
It would be plausible enough for Mary to be sitting in the house when Jesus arrives in Bethany. In accordance with Jewish custom, she would be 'sitting Shiveh', sitting in mourning. But why does she not join Martha and rush to meet Jesus on his return? There is one obvious explanation. By the tenets of Judaic law at the time, a woman 'sitting Shiveh' would have been strictly forbidden to emerge from the house except at the express bidding of her husband. In this incident the behaviour of Jesus and Mary of Bethany conforms precisely to the traditional comportment of a Jewish man and wife.
There is additional evidence for a possible marriage between Jesus and Mary of Bethany. It occurs, more or less as a non sequitur, in the Gospel of Luke:
Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.
But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.
And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:
But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:38.42)
From Martha's appeal, it would seem apparent that Jesus exercises some sort of authority over Mary. More important still, however, is Jesus's reply. In any other context one would not hesitate to interpret this reply as an allusion to a marriage. In any case it clearly suggests that Mary of Bethany was as avid a disciple as the Magdalene.
There is substantial reason for regarding the Magdalene and the woman who anoints Jesus as one and the same person. Could this person, we wondered, also be one and the same with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus and Martha? Could these women who, in the Gospels, appear in three different contexts in fact be a single person? The medieval Church certainly regarded them as such, and so did popular tradition. Many Biblical scholars today concur. There is abundant evidence to support such a conclusion.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, for example, all cite the Magdalene as being present at the Crucifixion. None of them cites Mary of Bethany. But if Mary of Bethany was as devoted a disciple as she appears to be, her absence would seem to be, at the least, remiss. Is it credible that she, not to mention her brother, Lazarus would fail to witness the climactic moment of Jesus's life? Such an omission would be both inexplicable and reprehensible, unless, of course, she was present and cited by the Gospels as such under the name of the Magdalene. If the Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are one and the same, there is no question of the latter having been absent from the Crucifixion.
The Magdalene can be identified with Mary of Bethany. The Magdalene can also be identified with the woman who anoints Jesus. The Fourth Gospel identifies the woman who anoints Jesus with Mary of Bethany. Indeed, the author of the Fourth Gospel is quite explicit on the matter:
Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) (John 11:1.2)
And again, one chapter later:
Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. (John 12:1.3)
It is thus clear that Mary of Bethany and the woman who anoints Jesus are the same woman. If not equally clear, it is certainly probable that this woman is also the Magdalene. If Jesus was indeed married, there would thus seem to be only one candidate for his wife, one woman who recurs repeatedly in the Gospels under different names and in different roles.
The Beloved Disciple
3) If the Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are the same woman, and If this woman was Jesus's wife, Lazarus would have been Jesus's brother-in-law Is there any evidence in the Gospels to suggest that Lazarus did indeed enjoy such a status?
Lazarus does not figure by name in the Gospels of Luke, Matthew and Mark, although his 'resurrection from the dead' was originally contained in Mark's account and then excised. As a result Lazarus is known to posterity only through the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. But here it is clear that he does enjoy some species of preferential treatment, which is not confined to being 'raised from the dead'. In this and a number of other respects, he would appear, if anything, to be closer to Jesus than the disciples themselves. And yet, curiously enough, the Gospels do not even number him among the disciples.
Unlike the disciples, Lazarus is actually menaced. According to the Fourth Gospel, the chief priests, on resolving to dispatch Jesus, decided to kill Lazarus as well (John 12:10). Lazarus would seem to have been active in some way on Jesus's behalf, which is more than can be said of some of the disciples. In theory this should have qualified him to be a disciple himself, and yet he is still not cited as such. Nor is he said to have been present at the Crucifixion, an apparently shameless display of ingratitude in a man who, quite literally, owed Jesus his life. Granted, he might have gone into hiding, given the threat directed against him. But it is extremely curious that there is no further reference to him in the Gospels. He seems to have vanished completely, and is never mentioned again. Or is he? We attempted to examine the matter more closely.
After staying in Bethany for three months, Jesus retires with his disciples to the banks of the Jordan, not much more than a day's distance away. Here a messenger hastens to him with the news that Lazarus is ill. But the messenger does not refer to Lazarus by name. On the contrary, he portrays the sick man as someone of very special importance, 'Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.' (John 11:3) Jesus's reaction to this news is distinctly odd. Instead of returning post-haste to the succour of the man he supposedly loves, he blithely dismisses the matter: 'When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.' (11:4) And if his words are perplexing, his actions are even more so: 'When he heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.' (11:6) In short Jesus continues to dally at the Jordan for another two days despite the alarming news he has received. At last he resolves to return to Bethany. And then he flagrantly contradicts his previous statement by telling the disciples that Lazarus is dead. He is still unperturbed however. Indeed, he states plainly that Lazarus's 'death' had served some purpose and is to be turned to account: 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.' (11:11) And four verses later he virtually admits that the whole affair has been carefully stage-managed and arranged in advance: 'And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless, let us go unto him.' (11:15) If such behaviour is bewildering, the reaction of the disciples is no less so: 'Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.' (11:16) What does this mean? If Lazarus is literally dead, surely the disciples have no intention of joining him by a collective suicide! And how is one to account for Jesus's own carelessness, the blase indifference with which he hears of Lazarus's illness and his delay in returning to Bethany?
The explanations of the matter would seem to lie, as Professor Morton Smith suggests, in a more or less standard 'mystery school' initiation. As Professor Smith demonstrates, such initiations and their accompanying rituals were common enough in the Palestine of Jesus's era. They often entailed a symbolic death and rebirth, which were called by those names; sequestration in a tomb, which became a womb for the acolyte's rebirth; a rite, which is now called baptism, a symbolic immersion in water; and a cup of wine, which was identified with the blood of the prophet or magician presiding over the ceremony. By drinking from such a cup, the disciple consummated a symbolic union with his teacher, the former becoming mystically 'one' with the latter. Significantly enough, it is precisely in these terms that Saint Paul explains the purpose of baptism. And Jesus himself uses the same terms at the Last Supper.
As Professor Smith points out, Jesus's career is very similar to those of other magicians, healers, wonder-workers and miracle-workers of the period.'2 Throughout the Four Gospels, for example, he consistently meets secretly with the people he is about to heal, or speaks quietly with them alone. Afterwards he often asks them not to divulge what transpired. And so far as the general public is concerned, he speaks habitually in allegories and parables.
It would seem, then, that Lazarus, during Jesus's sojourn at the Jordan, has embarked on a typical initiation rite, leading as such rites traditionally did to a symbolic resurrection and rebirth. In this light the disciples' desire to 'die with him' becomes perfectly comprehensible, as does Jesus's otherwise inexplicable complacency about the whole affair. Granted, Mary and Martha would appear to be genuinely distraught, as would a number of other people. But they may simply have misunderstood or misconstrued the point of the exercise. Or perhaps something seemed to have gone wrong with the initiation, a not uncommon occurrence. Or perhaps the whole affair was a skilfully contrived piece of stagecraft, whose true nature and purpose were known only to a very few.
If the Lazarus incident does reflect a ritual initiation, he is clearly receiving very preferential treatment. Among other things, he is apparently being initiated before any of the disciples, who, indeed, seem decidedly envious of his privilege. But why should this hitherto unknown man of Bethany thus be singled out? Why should he undergo an experience in which the disciples are so eager to join him? Why should later, mystically oriented 'heretics' like the Carpocratians have made so much of the matter? And why should the entire episode have been expurgated from the Gospel of Mark? Perhaps because Lazarus was 'he whom Jesus loved', more than the other disciples. Perhaps because Lazarus had some special connection with Jesus like that of brother-in-law Perhaps both. It is possible that Jesus came to know and love Lazarus precisely because Lazarus was his brother-in-law In any case the love is repeatedly stressed. When Jesus returns to Bethany and weeps, or feigns to weep, for Lazarus's death, the bystanders echo the words of the messenger: 'Behold how he loved him!' (John 11:36)
The author of the Gospel of John, the Gospel in which the Lazarus story figures, does not at any point identify himself as 'John'. In fact he does not name himself at all. He does, however, refer to himself by a most distinctive appellation. He constantly calls himself 'the beloved disciple', 'the one whom Jesus loved', and clearly implies that he enjoys a unique and preferred status over his comrades. At the Last Supper, for example, he flagrantly displays his personal proximity to Jesus, and it is to him alone that Jesus confides the means whereby betrayal will occur:
Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake.
He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. (John 1 3:23.6)
Who is this 'beloved disciple', on whose testimony the Fourth Gospel is based? All the evidence suggests that he is in fact Lazarus, 'he whom Jesus loved'. It would seem, then, that Lazarus and the 'beloved disciple' are one and the same person, and that Lazarus is the real identity of 'John'. This conclusion would seem to be almost inevitable. Nor were we alone in reaching it. According to Professor William Brownlee, a leading Biblical scholar and one of the foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls: 'From internal evidence in the Fourth Gospel ... the conclusion is that the beloved disciple is Lazarus of Bethany."3
If Lazarus and the 'beloved disciple' are one and the same, it would explain a number of anomalies. It would explain Lazarus's mysterious disappearance from the Scriptural account, and his apparent absence during the Crucifixion. For if Lazarus and the 'beloved disciple' were one and the same, Lazarus would have been present at the Crucifixion. And it would have been to Lazarus that Jesus entrusted the care of his mother. The words with which he did so might well be the words of a man referring to his brother-in-law:
When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!
Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home. (John 19:26.7)
The last word of this quotation is particularly revelatory. For the other disciples have left their homes in Galilee and, to all intents and purposes, are homeless. Lazarus, however, does have a home, that crucial house in Bethany, where Jesus himself was accustomed to stay.
After the priests are said to have decided on his death, Lazarus is not again mentioned by name. He would appear to vanish completely. But if he is indeed the 'beloved disciple', he does not vanish after all, and his movements and activities can be traced to the very end of the Fourth Gospel. And here, too, there is a curious episode that warrants examination. At the end of the Fourth Gospel Jesus forecasts Peter's death and instructs Peter to 'follow' him:
Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee? follow thou me.
Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die, but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. (John 21:20.24)
Despite its ambiguous phraseology, the import of this passage would seem to be clear. The 'beloved disciple' has been explicitly instructed to wait for Jesus's return. And the text itself is quite emphatic in stressing that this return is not to be understood symbolically in the sense of a 'second coming'. On the contrary, it implies something much more mundane. It implies that Jesus, after dispatching his other followers out into the world, must soon return with some special commission for the 'beloved disciple'. It is almost as if they have specific, concrete arrangements to conclude and plans to make.
If the 'beloved disciple' is Lazarus, such collusion, unknown to the other disciples, would seem to have a certain precedent. In the week before the Crucifixion, Jesus undertakes to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem; and in order to do so in accordance with Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah, he must be riding astride an ass. (Zechariah 9:9.10) Accordingly an ass must be procured. In Luke's Gospel Jesus dispatches two disciples to Bethany, where, he tells them, they will find an ass awaiting them. They are instructed to tell the beast's owner that the 'Master has need of it'. When everything transpires precisely as Jesus has forecast, it is regarded as a sort of miracle. But is there really anything very extraordinary about it? Does it not merely attest to carefully laid plans? And would not the man from Bethany who provides an ass at the appointed time seem to be Lazarus?
This, certainly, is the conclusion of Doctor Hugh Schonfield.14 He argues convincingly that the arrangements for Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem were entrusted to Lazarus, and that the other disciples had no knowledge of them. If this was indeed the case, it attests to an inner circle of Jesus's followers, a core of collaborators, co-conspirators or family members who, alone, are admitted into their master's confidence. Doctor Schonfield believes that Lazarus is part of just such a circle. And his belief concurs with Professor Smith's insistence on the preferential treatment Lazarus receives by virtue of his initiation, or symbolic death, at Bethany. It is possible that Bethany was a cult centre, a place reserved for the unique rituals over which Jesus presided. If so, this might explain the otherwise enigmatic occurrence of Bethany elsewhere in our investigation. The Prieure de Sion had called its 'arch' at Rennes-le-Château 'Béthanie'. And Saunière, apparently at the Prieure de Sion's request, had christened his villa Villa Bethania.
In any case, the collusion which seems to elicit an ass from the 'man from Bethany' may well be displaying itself again at the mysterious end of the Fourth Gospel, when Jesus orders the 'beloved disciple' to tarry until he returns. It would seem that he and the 'beloved disciple' have plans to make. And it is not unreasonable to assume that these plans included the care of Jesus's family, At the Crucifixion he had already entrusted his mother to the 'beloved disciple's' custody. If he had a wife and children, they, presumably, would have been entrusted to the 'beloved disciple' as well. This, of course, would be all the more plausible if the 'beloved disciple' were indeed his brother.in.law.
According to much later tradition, Jesus's mother eventually died in exile at Ephesus, from whence the Fourth Gospel is said to have subsequently issued. There is no indication, however, that the 'beloved disciple' attended Jesus's mother for the duration of her life. According to Doctor Schonfield, the Fourth Gospel was probably not composed at Ephesus, only reworked, revised and edited by a Greek elder there, who made it conform to his own ideas.l5
If the 'beloved disciple' did not go to Ephesus, what became of him? If he and Lazarus were one and the same that question can be answered, for tradition is quite explicit about what became of Lazarus. According to tradition, as well as certain early Church writers, Lazarus, the Magdalene, Martha, Joseph of Arimathea and a few others, were transported by ship to Marseilles.'6 Here Joseph was supposedly consecrated by Saint Philip and sent on to England, where he established a church at Glastonbury. Lazarus and the Magdalene, however, are said to have remained in Gaul. Tradition maintains that the Magdalene died at either Aix.en.Provence or Saint Baume, and Lazarus at Marseilles after founding the first bishopric there. One of their companions, Saint Maximin, is said to have founded the first bishopric of Narbonne.
If Lazarus and the 'beloved disciple' were one and the same, there would thus be an explanation for their joint disappearance. Lazarus, the true 'beloved disciple', would seem to have been set ashore at Marseilles together with his sister, who, as tradition subsequently maintains, was carrying with her the Holy Grail, the 'blood royal'. And the arrangements for this escape and exile would seem to have been made by Jesus himself, together with the 'beloved disciple', at the end of the Fourth Gospel.
The Dynasty of Jesus
4) If Jesus was indeed married to the Magdalene, might such a marriage have served some specific purpose? In other words, might it have been something more than a conventional marriage? Might it have been a dynastic alliance of some kind, with political implications and repercussions? Might a bloodline resulting from such a marriage, in short, have fully warranted the appellation 'blood royal'?
The Gospel of Matthew states explicitly that Jesus was of royal blood, a genuine king, the lineal descendant of Solomon and David. If this is true, he would have enjoyed a legitimate claim to the throne of a united Palestine, and perhaps even the legitimate claim. And the inscription affixed to the cross would have been much more than mere sadistic derision, for Jesus would indeed have been 'King of the Jews'. His position, in many respects, would have been analogous to that of, say, Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. And thus he would have engendered the opposition he did precisely by virtue of his role, the role of a priest-king who might possibly unify his country and the Jewish people, thereby posing a serious threat to both Herod and Rome.
Certain modern Biblical scholars have argued that Herod's famous 'Massacre of the Innocents' never in fact took place. Even if it did, it was probably not of the garish and appalling proportions ascribed to it by the Gospels and subsequent tradition. And yet the very perpetuation of the story would seem to attest to something, some genuine alarm on Herod's part, some very real anxiety about being deposed. Granted, Herod was an extremely insecure ruler, hated by his enslaved subjects and sustained in power only by Roman cohorts. But however precarious his position might have been, it cannot, realistically speaking, have been seriously threatened by rumours of a mystical or spiritual saviour, of the kind with which the Holy Land at the time already abounded anyway. If Herod was indeed worried, it can only have been by a very real, concrete, political threat, the threat posed by a man who possessed a more legitimate claim to the throne than his own, and who could muster substantial popular support. The 'Massacre of the Innocents' may never have occurred, but the traditions relating to it reflect some concern on Herod's part, about a rival claim and, quite possibly, some action intended to forestall or preclude it. Such a claim can only have been political in nature. And it must have warranted being taken seriously.
To suggest that Jesus enjoyed such a claim is, of course, to challenge the popular image of the 'poor carpenter from Nazareth'. But there are persuasive reasons for doing so. In the first place it is not altogether certain that Jesus was from Nazareth. 'Jesus of Nazareth' is in fact a corruption, or mistranslation, of 'Jesus the Nazorite' or 'Jesus the Nazorean' or perhaps 'Jesus of Gennesareth'. In the second place there is considerable doubt as to whether the town of Nazareth actually existed in Jesus's time. It does not occur in any Roman maps, documents or records. It is not mentioned in the Talmud. It is not mentioned, still less associated with Jesus, in any of the writings of Saint Paul which were, after all, composed before the Gospels. And Flavius Josephus, the foremost chronicler of the period, who commanded troops in Galilee and listed the province's towns, makes no mention of Nazareth either. It would seem, in short, that Nazareth did not appear as a town until sometime after the revolt of A.D. 68.74, and that Jesus's name became associated with it by virtue of the semantic confusion, accidental or deliberate, which characterises so much of the New Testament.
Whether Jesus was 'of Nazareth' or not there is no indication that he was ever a 'poor carpenter'.17 Certainly none of the Gospels portrays him as such. Indeed their evidence suggests quite the contrary. He seems to be well educated, for example. He seems to have undergone training for the rabbinate, and to have consorted as frequently with wealthy and influential people as with the poor, Joseph of Arimathea, for instance, and Nicodemus. And the wedding at Cana would seem to bear further witness to Jesus's status and social position.
This wedding does not appear to have been a modest, humble festival conducted by the 'common people'. On the contrary it bears all the marks of an extravagant aristocratic union, a 'high society' affair, attended by at least several hundred guests. There are abundant servants, for example, who hasten to do both Mary's and Jesus's bidding. There is a 'master of the feast' or 'master of ceremonies', who, in the context, would have been a kind of chief butler or perhaps even an aristocrat himself. Most clearly there is a positively enormous quantity of wine. When Jesus 'transmutes' the water into wine, he produces, according to the 'Good News Bible', no less than six hundred litres, which is more than eight hundred bottles! And this is in addition to what has already been consumed.
All things considered, the wedding at Cana would seem to have been a sumptuous ceremony of the gentry or aristocracy. Even if the wedding were not Jesus's own, his presence at it, and his mother's, would suggest that they were members of the same caste. This alone would explain the servants' obedience to them.
If Jesus was an aristocrat, and if he was married to the Magdalene, it is probable that she was of comparable social station. And indeed, she would appear to be so. As we have seen she numbered among her friends the wife of an important official at Herod's court. But she may have been more important still.
As we had discovered by tracing references in the 'Prieure documents', Jerusalem, the Holy City and capital of Judaea, had originally been the property of the Tribe of Benjamin. Subsequently the Benjamites were decimated in their war with the other tribes of Israel, and many of them went into exile, although, as the 'Prieure documents' maintain, 'certain of them remained'. One descendant of this remnant was Saint Paul, who states explicitly that he is a Benjamite. (Romans 11:1)
Despite their conflict with the other tribes of Israel, the Tribe of Benjamin appears to have enjoyed some special status. Among other things, it provided Israel with her first king, Saul, anointed by the prophet Samuel, and with her first royal house. But Saul was eventually deposed by David, of the Tribe of Judah. And David not only deprived the Benjamites of their claim to the throne. By establishing his capital at Jerusalem he deprived them of their rightful inheritance as well.
According to all New Testament accounts, Jesus was of the line of David and thus also a member of the Tribe of Judah. In Benjamite eyes this might have rendered him, at least in some sense, a usurper. Any such objection might have been surmounted, however, if he were married to a Benjamite woman. Such a marriage would have constituted an important dynastic alliance, and one filled with political consequence. It would not only have provided Israel with a powerful priest-king It would also have performed the symbolic function of returning Jerusalem to its original and rightful owners. Thus it would have served to encourage popular unity and support, and consolidated whatever claim to the throne Jesus might have possessed.
In the New Testament there is no indication of the Magdalene's tribal affiliation. In subsequent legends, however, she is said to have been of royal lineage. And there are other traditions which state specifically that she was of the Tribe of Benjamin.
At this point, the outlines of a coherent historical scenario began to be discernible. And, as far as we could see, it made sound political sense. Jesus would have been a priest-king of the line of David, who possessed a legitimate claim to the throne. He would have consolidated his position by a symbolically important dynastic marriage. He would then have been poised to unify his country, mobilise the populace behind him, drive out the oppressors, depose their abject puppet and restore the glory of the monarchy as it was under Solomon. Such a man would indeed have been 'King of the Jews'.
The Crucifixion
5) As Gandhi's accomplishments bear witness, a spiritual leader, given sufficient popular support, can pose a threat to an existing regime. But a married man, with a rightful claim to the throne and children through whom to establish a dynasty, is a threat of a decidedly more serious nature. Is there any evidence in the Gospels that Jesus was in fact regarded by the Romans as such a threat?
During his interview with Pilate, Jesus is repeatedly called 'King of the Jews'. In accordance with Pilate's instructions, an inscription of this title is also affixed to the cross. As Professor S. G. F. Brandon of Manchester University argues, the inscription affixed to the cross must be regarded as genuine, as much so as anything in the New Testament. In the first place it figures, with virtually no variation, in all four Gospels. In the second place it is too compromising, too embarrassing an episode for subsequent editors to have invented it.
In the Gospel of Mark, Pilate, after interrogating Jesus, asks the assembled dignitaries, 'What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?' (Mark 15:12) This would seem to indicate that at least some Jews do actually refer to Jesus as their king. At the same time, however, in all four Gospels Pilate also accords Jesus that title. There is no reason to suppose that he does so ironically or derisively. In the Fourth Gospel he insists on it quite adamantly and seriously, despite a chorus of protests. In the three Synoptic Gospels, moreover, Jesus himself acknowledged his claim to the title: 'And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it.' (Mark 15:2) In the English translation this reply may sound ambivalent perhaps deliberately so. In the original Greek, however, its import is quite unequivocal. It can only be interpreted as 'Thou hast spoken correctly'. And thus the phrase is interpreted whenever it appears elsewhere in the Bible.
The Gospels were composed during and after the revolt of A.D. 68.74, when Judaism had effectively ceased to exist as an organised social, political and military force. What is more, the Gospels were composed for a Greco-Roman audience, for whom they had, of necessity, to be made acceptable. Rome had just fought a bitter and costly war against the Jews. In consequence it was perfectly natural to cast the Jews in the role of villains. In the wake of the Judaean revolt, moreover, Jesus could not possibly be portrayed as a political figure, a figure in any way linked to the agitation which culminated in the war. Finally the role of the Romans in Jesus's trial and execution had to be whitewashed and presented as sympathetically as possible. Thus Pilate is depicted in the Gospels as a decent, responsible and tolerant man, who consents only reluctantly to the Crucifixion.18 But despite these liberties taken with history, Rome's true position in the affair can be discerned.
According to the Gospels, Jesus is initially condemned by the Sanhedrin, the Council of Jewish Elders, who then bring him to Pilate and beseech the Procurator to pronounce against him. Historically this makes no sense at all. In the three Synoptic Gospels Jesus is arrested and condemned by the Sanhedrin on the night of the Passover. But by Judaic law the Sanhedrin was forbidden to meet over the Passover.19 In the Gospels Jesus's arrest and trial occur at night, before the Sanhedrin. By Judaic law the Sanhedrin was forbidden to meet at night, in private houses, or anywhere outside the precincts of the Temple. In the Gospels the Sanhedrin is apparently unauthorised to pass a death sentence, and this would ostensibly be the reason for bringing Jesus to Pilate..However, the Sanhedrin was authorised to pass death sentences, by stoning, if not by crucifixion. If the Sanhedrin had wished to dispose of Jesus, therefore, it could have sentenced him to death by stoning on its own authority. There would have been no need to bother Pilate at all.
There are numerous other attempts by the authors of the Gospels to transfer guilt and responsibility from Rome. One such is Pilate's apparent offer of a dispensation, his readiness to free a prisoner of the crowd's choosing. According to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, this was a 'custom of the Passover festival'. In fact it was no such thing.20 Modern authorities agree that no such policy ever existed on the part of the Romans, and that the offer to liberate either Jesus or Barabbas is sheer fiction. Pilate's reluctance to condemn Jesus, and his grudging submission to the bullying pressure of the mob, would seem to be equally fictitious. In reality it would have been unthinkable for a Roman Procurator, and especially a Procurator as ruthless as Pilate, to bow to the pressure of a mob. Again, the purpose of such fictionalisation is clear enough, to exonerate the Romans, to transfer blame to the Jews and thereby to make Jesus acceptable to a Roman audience.
It is possible, of course, that not all Jews were entirely innocent. Even if the Roman administration feared a priest-king with a claim to the throne, it could not embark overtly on acts of provocation, acts that might precipitate a full-scale rebellion. Certainly it would have been more expedient for Rome if the priest-king were ostensibly betrayed by his own people. It is thus conceivable that the Romans employed certain Sadducees as, say, agents provocateurs. But even if this were the case, the inescapable fact remains that Jesus was the victim of a Roman administration, a Roman court, a Roman sentence, Roman soldiery and a Roman execution, an execution which, in form, was reserved exclusively for enemies of Rome. It was not for crimes against Judaism that Jesus was crucified, but for crimes against the empire.21
Who Was Barabbas?
6) Is there any evidence in the Gospels that Jesus actually did have children?
There is nothing explicit. But rabbis were expected, as a matter of course, to have children; and if Jesus was a rabbi, it would have been most unusual for him to remain childless. Indeed, it would have been unusual for him to remain childless whether he was a rabbi or not. Granted, these arguments, in themselves, do not constitute any positive evidence. But there is evidence of a more concrete, more specific kind. It consists of the elusive individual who figures in the Gospels as Barabbas, or, to be more precise, as Jesus Barabbas, for it is by this name that he is identified in the Gospel of Matthew. If nothing else, the coincidence is striking.
Modern scholars are uncertain about the derivation and meaning of 'Barabbas'. 'Jesus Barabbas' may be a corruption of 'Jesus Berabbi'. 'Berabbi' was a title reserved for the highest and most esteemed rabbis and was placed after the rabbi's given name.22 'Jesus Berabbi' might therefore refer to Jesus himself. Alternatively, 'Jesus Barabbas' might originally have been 'Jesus bar Rabbi', 'Jesus, son of the Rabbi'. There is no record anywhere of Jesus's own father having been a rabbi. But if Jesus had a son named after himself, that son would indeed have been 'Jesus bar Rabbi'. There is one other possibility as well. 'Jesus Barabbas' may derive from 'Jesus bar Abba', and since 'Abba' is 'father' in Hebrew, 'Barabbas' would then mean 'son of the father', a fairly pointless designation unless the 'father' is in some way special. If the 'father' were actually the 'Heavenly Father', then 'Barabbas' might again refer to Jesus himself. On the other hand, if Jesus himself is the 'father', 'Barabbas' would again refer to his son.
Whatever the meaning and derivation of the name, the figure of Barabbas is extremely curious. And the more one considers the incident concerning him, the more apparent it becomes that something irregular is going on and someone is attempting to conceal something. In the first place Barabbas's name, like the Magdalene's, seems to have been subjected to a deliberate and systematic blackening. Just as popular tradition depicts the Magdalene as a harlot, so it depicts Barabbas as a 'thief'. But if Barabbas was any of the things his name suggests, he is hardly likely to have been a common thief. Why then blacken his name? Unless he was something else in reality, something which the editors of the New Testament did not want posterity to know.
Strictly speaking the Gospels themselves do not describe Barabbas as a thief. According to Mark and Luke he is a political prisoner, a rebel charged with murder and insurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, Barabbas is described as a 'notable prisoner'. And in the Fourth Gospel Barabbas is said to be (in the Greek) a lestai. (John 18:40) This can be translated as either 'robber' or 'bandit'. In its historical context, however, it meant something quite different. Lestes was in fact the term habitually applied by the Romans to the Zealots23, the militant nationalistic revolutionaries who for some time had been fomenting social upheaval. Since Mark and Luke agree that Barabbas is guilty of insurrection, and since Matthew does not contradict this assertion, it is safe to conclude that Barabbas was a Zealot.
But this is not the only information available on Barabbas. According to Luke, he had been involved in a recent 'disturbance', 'sedition' or 'riot' in the city. History makes no mention of any such turmoil in Jerusalem at the time The Gospels, however, do. According to the Gospels, there had been a civic disturbance in Jerusalem, only a few days before, when Jesus and his followers overturned the tables of the money-enders at the Temple. Was this the disturbance in which Barabbas was involved, and for which he was imprisoned? It certainly seems likely. And in that case there is one obvious conclusion, that Barabbas was one of Jesus's entourage.
According to modern scholars, the 'custom' of releasing a prisoner on the Passover did not exist. But even if it did the choice of Barabbas over Jesus would make no sense. If Barabbas were indeed a common criminal, guilty of murder, why would the people choose to have his life spared? And if he were indeed a Zealot or a revolutionary it is hardly likely that Pilate would have released so potentially dangerous a character, rather than a harmless visionary, who was quite prepared, ostensibly, to 'render unto Caesar'. Of all the discrepancies, inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Gospels, the choice of Barabbas is among the most striking and most inexplicable. Something would clearly seem to lie behind so clumsy and confusing a fabrication.
One modern writer has proposed an intriguing and plausible explanation. He suggests that Barabbas was the son of Jesus and Jesus a legitimate king.24 If this were the case, the choice of Barabbas would suddenly make sense. One must imagine an oppressed populace confronted with the imminent extermination of their spiritual and political ruler, the Messiah, whose advent had formerly promised so much. In such circumstances, would not the dynasty be more important than the individual? Would not the preservation of the bloodline be paramount, taking precedence over everything else? Would not a people, faced with the dreadful choice, prefer to see their king sacrificed in order that his offspring and his line might survive? If the line survived, there would at least be hope for the future.
It is certainly not impossible that Barabbas was Jesus's son. Jesus is generally believed to have been born around 6 B.C. The Crucifixion occurred no later than A.D. 36, which would make Jesus, at most, forty-two years of age. But even if he was only thirty-three when he died, he might still have fathered a son. In accordance with the customs of the time, he might have married as early as sixteen or seventeen. Yet even if he did not marry until aged twenty, he might still have had a son aged thirteen, who, by Judaic custom, would have been considered a man. And, of course, there may well have been other children too. Such children could have been conceived at any point up to within a day or so of the Crucifixion.
The Crucifixion in Detail
7) Jesus could well have sired a number of children prior to the Crucifixion. If he survived the Crucifixion, however, the likelihood of offspring would be still further increased. Is there any evidence that Jesus did indeed survive the Crucifixion, or that the Crucifixion was in some way a fraud?
Given the portrait of him in the Gospels, it is inexplicable that Jesus was crucified at all. According to the Gospels, his enemies were the established Jewish interests in Jerusalem. But such enemies, if they in fact existed, could have stoned him to death of their own accord and on their own authority, without involving Rome in the matter. According to the Gospels, Jesus had no particular quarrel with Rome and did not violate Roman law. And yet he was punished by the Romans, in accordance with Roman law and Roman procedures. And he was punished by crucifixion, a penalty exclusively reserved for those guilty of crimes against the empire. If Jesus was indeed crucified, he cannot have been as apolitical as the Gospels depict him. On the contrary, he must, of necessity, have done something to provoke Roman, as opposed to Jewish wrath.
Whatever the trespasses for which Jesus was crucified his apparent death on the cross is fraught with inconsistencies. There is, quite simply, no reason why his Crucifixion, as the Gospels depict it, should have been fatal. The contention that it was warrants closer scrutiny.
The Roman practice of crucifixion adhered to very precise procedures.25 After sentence a victim would be flogged, and consequently weakened by loss of blood. His outstretched arms would then be fastened, usually by thongs but sometimes by nails, to a heavy wooden beam placed horizontally across his neck and shoulders. Bearing this beam, he would then be led to the place of execution. Here, with the victim hanging from it, the beam would be raised and attached to a vertical post or stake.
Hanging thus from his hands, it would be impossible for the victim to breathe, unless his feet were also fixed to the cross, thus enabling him to press down on them and relieve the pressure on his chest. But, despite the agony, a man suspended with his feet fixed, and especially a fit and healthy man, would usually survive for at least a day or two. Indeed, the victim would often take as much as a week to die, from exhaustion, from thirst, or, if nails were used from blood poisoning. The attenuated agony could be terminated more quickly by breaking the victim's legs or knees, which, in the Gospels, Jesus's executioners are about to do before they are forestalled. Breaking of the legs or knees was not an additional sadistic torment. On the contrary, it was an act of mercy, a coup de grâce which caused a very rapid death. With nothing to support him, the pressure on the victim's chest would become intolerable, and he would quickly asphyxiate.
There is consensus among modern scholars that only the Fourth Gospel rests on an eyewitness account of the Crucifixion. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus's feet were affixed to the cross, thus relieving the pressure on his chest muscles, and his legs were not broken. He should therefore, in theory at least, have survived for a good two or three days. And yet he is on the cross for no more than a few hours before being pronounced dead. In the Gospel of Mark, even Pilate is astonished by the rapidity with which death occurs (Mark 15:44).
What can have constituted the cause of death? Not the spear in his side, for the Fourth Gospel maintains that Jesus was already dead when this wound was inflicted on him. (John 19:33) There is only one explanation, a combination of exhaustion, fatigue, general debilitation and the trauma of the scourging. But not even these factors should have proved fatal so soon. It is possible, of course, that they did, despite the laws of physiology, a man will sometimes die from a single relatively innocuous blow. But there would still seem to be something suspicious about the affair. According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus's executioners are on the verge of breaking his legs, thus accelerating his death. Why bother, if he was already moribund? There would, in short, be no point in breaking Jesus's legs unless death were not in fact imminent.
In the Gospels Jesus's death occurs at a moment that is almost too convenient, too felicitously opportune. It occurs just in time to prevent his executioners breaking his legs. And by doing so, it permits him to fulfil an Old Testament prophecy. Modern authorities agree that Jesus, quite unabashedly, modelled and perhaps contrived his life in accordance with such prophecies, which heralded the coming of a Messiah. It was for this reason that an ass had to be procured from Bethany on which he could make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And the details of the Crucifixion seem likewise engineered to enact the prophecies of the Old Testament.26
In short Jesus's apparent and opportune 'demise' which, in the nick of time, saves him from certain death and enables him to fulfil a prophecy, is, to say the least, suspect. It is too perfect, too precise to be coincidence. It must either be a later interpolation after the fact, or part of a carefully contrived plan. There is much additional evidence to suggest the latter.
In the Fourth Gospel Jesus, hanging on the cross, declares that he thirsts. In reply to this complaint he is proffered a sponge allegedly soaked in vinegar, an incident that also occurs in the other Gospels. This sponge is generally interpreted as another act of sadistic derision. But was it really? Vinegar, or soured wine, is a temporary stimulant, with effects not unlike smelling salts. It was often used at the time to resuscitate flagging slaves on galleys. For a wounded and exhausted man, a sniff or taste of vinegar would induce a restorative effect, a momentary surge of energy. And yet in Jesus's case the effect is just the contrary. No sooner does he inhale or taste the sponge then he pronounces his final words and 'gives up the ghost'. Such a reaction to vinegar is physiologically inexplicable. On the other hand such a reaction would be perfectly compatible with a sponge soaked not in vinegar, but in some type of soporific drug, a compound of opium and/or belladonna, for instance commonly employed in the Middle East at the time. But why proffer a soporific drug? Unless the act of doing so along with all the other components of the Crucifixion were elements of a complex and ingenious stratagem, a stratagem designed to produce a semblance of death when the victim, in fact, was still alive. Such a stratagem would not only have saved Jesus's life, but also have realised the Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah.
There are other anomalous aspects of the Crucifixion which point to precisely such a stratagem. According to the Gospels Jesus is crucified at a place called Golgotha 'the place of the skull'. Later tradition attempts to identify Golgotha as a barren, more or less skull-shaped hill to the north-west of Jerusalem. And yet the Gospels themselves make it clear that the site of the Crucifixion is very different from a barren skull-shaped hill. The Fourth Gospel is most explicit on the matter: 'Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.' (John 19:41) Jesus, then, was crucified not on a barren skull-shaped hill, nor, for that matter, in any 'public place of execution'. He was crucified in or immediately adjacent to a garden containing a private tomb. According to Matthew (27:60) this tomb and garden were the personal property of Joseph of Arimathea, who, according to all four Gospels, was both a man of wealth and a secret disciple of Jesus.
Popular tradition depicts the Crucifixion as a large-scale public affair, accessible to the multitude and attended by a cast of thousands. And yet the Gospels themselves suggest very different circumstances. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Crucifixion is witnessed by most people, including the women, from 'afar off' (Luke 23:49). It would thus seem clear that Jesus's death was not a public event, but a private one, a private crucifixion performed on private property. A number of modern scholars argue that the actual site was probably the Garden of Gethsemane. If Gethsemane were indeed the private land of one of Jesus's secret disciples, this would explain why Jesus, prior to the Crucifixion, could make such free use of the place.27
Needless to say a private crucifixion on private property leaves considerable room for a hoax, a mock crucifixion, a skilfully stage-managed ritual. There would have been only a few eye-witnesses immediately present. To the general populace the drama would only have been visible, as the Synoptic Gospels confirm, from some distance. And from such a distance, it would not have been apparent who in fact was being crucified. Or if he was actually dead.
Such a charade would, of course, have necessitated some connivance and collusion on the part of Pontius Pilate, or of someone influential in the Roman administration. And indeed such connivance and collusion is highly probable. Granted, Pilate was a cruel and tyrannical man. But he was also corrupt and susceptible to bribes. The historical Pilate, as opposed to the one depicted in the Gospels, would not have been above sparing Jesus's life, in exchange for a sizeable sum of money and perhaps a guarantee of no further political agitation.
Whatever his motivation, there is, in any case, no question that Pilate is somehow intimately involved in the affair. He acknowledges Jesus's claim as 'King of the Jews'. He also expresses, or feigns to express, surprise that Jesus's death occurs as quickly as it apparently does. And, perhaps most important of all, he grants Jesus's body to Joseph of Arimathea.
According to Roman law at the time, a crucified man was denied all burial.28 Indeed guards were customarily posted to prevent relatives or friends removing the bodies of the dead. The victim would simply be left on the cross, at the mercy of the elements and carrion birds. Yet Pilate, in a flagrant breach of procedure, readily grants Jesus's body to Joseph of Arimathea. This clearly attests to some complicity on Pilate's part. And it may attest to other things as well.
In English translations of Mark's Gospel Joseph asks Pilate for Jesus's body. Pilate expresses surprise that Jesus is dead, checks with a centurion, then, satisfied consents to Joseph's request. This would appear straightforward enough at first glance; but in the original Greek version of Mark's Gospel, the matter becomes rather more complicated. In the Greek version when Joseph asks for Jesus's body, he uses the word soma, a word applied only to a living body. Pilate, assenting to the request, employs the word ptoma, which means 'corpse'.29 According to the Greek, then, Joseph explicitly asks for a living body and Pilate grants him what he thinks, or pretends to think, is a dead one.
Given the prohibition against burying crucified men, it is also extraordinary that Joseph receives any body at all. On what grounds does he receive it? What claim does he have to Jesus's body? If he was a secret disciple, he could hardly plead any claim without disclosing his secret discipleship, unless Pilate was already aware of it, or unless there was some other factor involved which militated in Joseph's favour.
There is little information about Joseph of Arimathea. The Gospels report only that he was a secret disciple of Jesus, possessed great wealth and belonged to the Sanhedrin, the Council of Elders which ruled the Judaic community of Jerusalem under Roman auspices. It would thus seem apparent that Joseph was an influential man. And this conclusion receives confirmation from his dealings with Pilate, and from the fact that he possesses a tract of land with a private tomb.
Medieval tradition portrays Joseph of Arimathea as a custodian of the Holy Grail; and Perceval is said to be of his lineage. According to other later traditions, he is in some way related by blood to Jesus and Jesus's family. If this was indeed the case, it would, at very least, have furnished him with some plausible claim to Jesus's body for while Pilate would hardly grant the corpse of an executed criminal to a random stranger, he might well do so, with the incentive of a bribe, to the dead man's kin. If Joseph, a wealthy and influential member of the Sanhedrin, was indeed Jesus's kin, he bears further testimony to Jesus's aristocratic pedigree. And if he was Jesus's kin, his association with the Holy Grail, the 'blood royal', would be all the more explicable.
The Scenario
We had already sketched a tentative hypothesis which proposed a bloodline descended from Jesus. We now began to enlarge on that hypothesis and, albeit still provisionally, fill in a number of crucial details. As we did so, the overall picture began to gain both coherence and plausibility.
It seemed increasingly clear that Jesus was a priest-king, an aristocrat and legitimate claimant to the throne embarking on an attempt to regain his rightful heritage. He himself would have been a native of Galilee, a traditional hotbed of opposition to the Roman regime. At the same time, he would have had numerous noble, rich and influential supporters throughout Palestine, including the capital city of Jerusalem; and one of these supporters, a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, may also have been his kin. In the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, moreover, was the home of either his wife or his wife's family; and here, on the eve of his triumphal entry into the capital, the aspiring priest-king resided. Here he established the centre for his mystery cult. Here he augmented his following by performing ritual initiations, including that of his brother.in.law.
Such an aspiring priest-king would have generated powerful opposition in certain quarters, inevitably among the Roman administration and perhaps among entrenched Judaic interests represented by the Sadducees. One or both of these interests apparently contrived to thwart his bid for the throne. But in their attempt to exterminate him they were not as successful as they had hoped to be. For the priest-king would seem to have had friends in high places; and these friends, working in collusion with a corrupt, easily bribed Roman Procurator, appear to have engineered a mock crucifixion, on private grounds, inaccessible to all but a select few. With the general populace kept at a convenient distance, an execution was then staged, in which a substitute took the priest-king's place on the cross, or in which the priest-king himself did not actually die. Towards dusk, which would have further impeded visibility, a 'body' was removed to an opportunely adjacent tomb, from which, a day or two later, it 'miraculously' disappeared.
If our scenario was accurate, where did Jesus go then? So far as our hypothesis of a bloodline was concerned, the answer to that question did not particularly matter. According to certain Islamic and Indian legends, he eventually died at a ripe old age, somewhere in the East, in Kashmir, it is claimed most frequently. On the other hand, an Australian journalist has put forward an intriguing and persuasive argument that Jesus died at Masada when the fortress fell to the Romans in A.D. 74, by which time he would have been approaching his eightieth year.30
According to the letter we received, the documents found by Berenger Saunière at Rennes-le-Château contained 'incontrovertible proof' that Jesus was alive in A.D. 45, but there is no indication as to where. One likely possibility would be Egypt, and specifically Alexandria where, at about the same time, the sage Ormus is said to have created the Rose-Croix by amalgamating Christianity with earlier, pre-Christian mysteries. It has even been hinted that Jesus's mummified body may be concealed somewhere in the environs of Rennes-le-Château which would explain the ciphered message in Saunière's parchments IL EST Là MORT ('He is there dead').
We are not prepared to assert that he accompanied his family to Marseilles. In fact, circumstances would argue against it. He might not have been in any condition to travel, and his presence would have constituted a threat to his relatives' safety. He may have deemed it more important to remain in the Holy Land, like his brother, Saint James, to pursue his objectives there. In short, we can offer no real suggestion about what became of him, any more than the Gospels themselves do.
For the purposes of our hypothesis, however, what happened to Jesus was of less importance than what happened to the holy family, and especially to his brother-in-law, his wife and his children. If our scenario was correct, they, together with Joseph of Arimathea and certain others, were smuggled by ship from the Holy Land. And when they were set ashore at Marseilles, the Magdalene would indeed have brought the Sangraal, the 'blood royal', the scion of the house of David, into France.
CHAPTER 13 THE SECRET THE CHURCH FORBADE
We were well aware, of course, that our scenario did not concur with established Christian teachings. But the more we researched the more apparent it became that those teachings, as they have been passed down through the centuries, represent only a highly selective compilation of fragments, subjected to stringent expurgation and revision. The New Testament, in other words, offers a portrait of Jesus and his age that conforms to the needs of certain vested interests, of certain groups and individuals who had, and to a significant degree still have, an important stake in the matter. And anything that might compromise or embarrass these interests, like the 'secret' Gospel of Mark, for example, has been duly excised. So much has been excised, as a matter of fact, that a sort of vacuum has been created. In this vacuum speculation becomes both justified and necessary.
If Jesus was a legitimate claimant to the throne, it is probable that he was supported, at least initially, by a relatively small percentage of the populace, his immediate family from Galilee, certain other members of his own aristocratic social class, and a few strategically placed representatives in Judaea and the capital city of Jerusalem. Such a following, albeit distinguished, would hardly have been sufficient to ensure the realisation of his objectives, the success of his bid for the throne. In consequence he would have been obliged to recruit a more substantial following from other classes, in the same way that Bonnie Prince Charlie, to pursue a previous analogy, did in 1745.
How does one recruit a sizeable following? Obviously by promulgating a message calculated to enlist their allegiance and support. Such a message need not necessarily have been as cynical as those associated with modern politics. On the contrary it may have been promulgated in perfectly good faith, with thoroughly noble and burning idealism. But despite its distinctly religious orientation, its primary objective would have been the same as those of modern politics, to ensure the adherence of the populace. Jesus promulgated a message which attempted to do just that, to offer hope to the downtrodden, the afflicted, the disenfranchised, the oppressed In short it was a message with a promise. If the modern reader overcomes his prejudices and preconceptions on the matter, he will discern a mechanism extraordinarily akin to that visible everywhere in the world today, a mechanism whereby people are, and always have been, united in the name of a common cause and welded into an instrument for the overthrow of a despotic regime. The point is that Jesus's message was both ethical and political. It was directed to a particular segment of the populace in accordance with political considerations. For it would only have been among the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised and the afflicted that he could have hoped to recruit a sizeable following. The Sadducees, who had come to terms with the Roman occupation, would have been as loath as all the Sadducees throughout history to part with what they possessed, or to risk their security and stability.
Jesus's message, as it appears in the Gospels, is neither wholly new nor wholly unique. It is probable that he himself was a Pharisee, and his teachings contain a number of elements of Pharisaic doctrine. As the Dead Sea Scrolls attest, they also contain a number of important aspects of Essene thought. But if the message, as such, was not entirely original, the means of transmitting it probably was. Jesus himself was undoubtedly an immensely charismatic individual. He may well have had an aptitude for healing and other such 'miracles'. He certainly possessed a gift for communicating his ideas by means of evocative and vivid parables, which did not require any sophisticated training in his audience, but were accessible, in some sense, to the populace at large. Moreover, unlike his Essene precursors, Jesus was not obliged to confine himself to forecasting the advent of a Messiah. He could claim to be that Messiah. And this, quite naturally, would have imparted a much greater authority and credibility to his words.
It is clear that by the time of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus had recruited a following. But this following would have been composed of two quite distinct elements, whose interests were not precisely the same. On the one hand there would have been a small nucleus of 'initiates', immediate family, other members of the nobility, wealthy and influential supporters, whose primary objective was to see their candidate installed on the throne. On the other hand there would have been a much larger entourage of 'common people', the 'rank and file' of the movement whose primary objective was to see the message, and the promise it contained, fulfilled. It is important to recognise the distinction between these two factions. Their political objective, to establish Jesus on the throne, would have been the same. But their motivations would have been essentially different.
When the enterprise failed, as it obviously did, the uneasy alliance between these two factions, 'adherents of the message' and adherents of the family, would seem to have collapsed. Confronted by debacle and the threat of imminent annihilation, the family would have placed a priority on the single factor which, from time immemorial, has been of paramount importance to noble and royal families, preservation of the bloodline at all costs and, if necessary, in exile. For the 'adherents of the message' however, the family's future would have become irrelevant. For them survival of the bloodline would have been of secondary consequence. Their primary objective would have been perpetuation and dissemination of the message.
Christianity, as it evolves through its early centuries and eventually comes down to us today, is a product of the 'adherents of the message'. The course of its spread and development has been too widely charted by other scholars to necessitate much attention here. Suffice it to say that with Saint Paul, 'the message' had already begun to assume a crystallised and definitive form; and this form became the basis on which the whole theological edifice of Christianity was erected. By the time the Gospels were composed, the basic tenets of the new religion were virtually complete.
The new religion was oriented primarily towards a Roman or Romanised audience. Thus the role of Rome in Jesus's death was, of necessity, whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews. But this was not the only liberty taken with events to render them palatable to the Roman world. For the Roman world was accustomed to deifying its rulers, and Caesar had already been officially instated as a god. In order to compete, Jesus, whom nobody had previously deemed divine, had to be deified as well. In Paul's hands he was.
Before it could be successfully disseminated, from Palestine to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Rome and Western Europe, the new religion had to be made acceptable to the people of those regions. And it had to be capable of holding its own against already established creeds. The new god, in short, had to be comparable in power, in majesty, in repertoire of miracles, to those he was intended to displace. If Jesus was to gain a foothold in the Romanised world of his time, he had perforce to become a fully fledged god. Not a Messiah in the old sense of that term, not a priest-king, but God incarnate, who, like his Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian and classical counterparts, passed through the underworld and the harrowing of Hell and emerged, rejuvenated, with the spring. It was at this point that the idea of the Resurrection first assumed such crucial importance, and for a fairly obvious reason, to place Jesus on a par with Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Osiris and all the other dying and reviving gods who populated both the world and the consciousness of their time. For precisely the same reason the doctrine of the virgin birth was promulgated. And the Easter festival the festival of death and resurrection, was made to coincide with the spring rites of other contemporary cults and mystery schools.
Given the need to disseminate a god myth, the actual corporeal family of the 'god', and the political and dynastic elements in his story, would have become superfluous. Fettered as they were to a specific time and place, they would have detracted from his claim to universality. Thus, to further the claim of universality, all political and dynastic elements were rigorously excised from Jesus's biography. And thus all references to Zealots, for example, and Essenes, were also discreetly removed. Such references would have been, at the very least, embarrassing. It would not have appeared seemly for a god to be involved in a complex and ultimately ephemeral political and dynastic conspiracy, and especially one that failed In the end nothing was left but what was contained in the Gospels, an account of austere, mythic simplicity, occurring only incidentally in the Roman-occupied Palestine of the first century and primarily in the eternal present of all myth.
While 'the message' developed in this fashion, the family and its supporters do not seem to have been idle. Julius Africanus, writing in the first century, reports that Jesus's surviving relatives bitterly accused the Herodian rulers of destroying the genealogies of Jewish nobles, thereby removing all evidence that might challenge their claim to the throne. And these same relatives are said to have 'migrated through the world', carrying with them certain genealogies which had escaped the destruction of documents during the revolt between A.D. 66 and 74 1
For the propagators of the new myth, the existence of this family would quickly have become more than an irrelevance. It would have become a potential embarrassment of daunting proportions. For the family, who could bear first-hand testimony to what really and historically happened, would have constituted a dangerous threat to the myth. Indeed, on the basis of first-hand knowledge, the family could have exploded the myth completely. Thus in the early days of Christianity all mention of a noble or royal family, of a bloodline, of political or dynastic ambitions would have had to be suppressed. And, since the cynical realities of the situation must be acknowledged, the family itself, who might betray the new religion, should, if at all possible, be exterminated. Hence the need for the utmost secrecy on the part of the family. Hence the intolerance of early Church fathers towards any deviation from the orthodoxy they endeavoured to impose. And hence also, perhaps, one of the origins of anti-Semitism In effect the 'adherents of the message' and propagators of the myth would have accomplished a dual purpose by blaming the Jews and exonerating the Romans. They would not only have made the myth and 'the message' palatable to a Roman audience. They would also, since the family was Jewish, have impugned the family's credibility. And the anti-Jewish feeling they engendered would have furthered their objectives still more. If the family had found refuge in a Jewish community somewhere within the empire, popular persecution might, in its momentum, conveniently silence dangerous witnesses.
By pandering to a Roman audience, deifying Jesus and casting the Jews as scapegoats, the spread of what subsequently became Christian orthodoxy was assured of success. The position of this orthodoxy began to consolidate itself definitively in the second century, principally through Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons around A.D. 180. Probably more than any other early Church father, Irenaeus contrived to impart to Christian theology a stable an coherent form. He accomplished this primarily by means of a voluminous work, Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses ('Five Books against Heresies'). In his exhaustive opus Irenaeus catalogued all deviations from the coalescing orthodoxy, and vehemently condemned them. Deploring diversity, he maintained there could be only one valid church, outside which there could be no salvation. Whoever challenged this assertion, Irenaeus declared to be heretic, to be expelled and, if possible, destroyed.
Among the numerous diverse forms of early Christianity, it was Gnosticism that incurred Irenaeus's most vituperative wrath. Gnosticism rested on personal experience, personal union with the divine. For Irenaeus this naturally undermined the authority of priests and bishops, and so impeded the attempt to impose uniformity. As a result he devoted his energies to suppressing Gnosticism. To this end it was necessary to discourage individual speculation, and to encourage unquestioning faith in fixed dogma. A theological system was required, a structure of codified tenets which allowed of no interpretation by the individual. In opposition to personal experience and gnosis, Irenaeus insisted on a single 'catholic' (that is universal) church resting on apostolic foundation and succession. And to implement the creation of such a church, Irenaeus recognised the need for a definitive canon, a fixed list of authoritative writings. Accordingly he compiled such a canon, sifting through the available works, including some, excluding others. Irenaeus is the first writer whose New Testament canon conforms essentially to that of the present day.
Such measures, of course, did not prevent the spread of early heresies. On the contrary, they continued to flourish. But with Irenaeus, orthodoxy, the type of Christianity promulgated by the 'adherents of the message', assumed a coherent form that ensured its survival and eventual triumph. It is not unreasonable to claim that Irenaeus paved the way for what occurred during and immediately after the reign of Constantine, under whose auspices the Roman Empire became, in some sense, a Christian empire.
The role of Constantine in the history and development of Christianity has been falsified, misrepresented and misunderstood. The spurious eighth-century 'Donation of Constantine', discussed in Chapter 9, has served to confuse matters even further in the eyes of subsequent writers. Nevertheless, Constantine is often credited with the decisive victory of the 'adherents of the message', and not wholly without justification. We were therefore obliged to consider him more closely, and in order to do so we had to dispel certain of the more fanciful and specious accomplishments ascribed to him.
According to later Church tradition, Constantine had inherited from his father a sympathetic predisposition towards Christianity. In fact this predisposition seems to have been primarily a matter of expediency, for Christians by then were numerous and Constantine needed all the help he could get against Maxentius, his rival for the imperial throne. In A.D. 213 Maxentius was routed at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, thus leaving Constantine's claim unchallenged. Immediately before this crucial engagement Constantine is said to have had a vision, later reinforced by a prophetic dream, of a luminous cross hanging in the sky. A sentence was supposedly inscribed across it, In Hoc Signo Vinces ('By this sign you will conquer'). Tradition recounts that Constantine, deferring to this celestial portent, ordered the shields of his troops hastily emblazoned with the Christian monogram, the Greek letter Chi Rho, the first two letters of the word 'Christos'. As a result Constantine's victory over Maxentius at Milvian Bridge came to represent a miraculous triumph of Christianity over paganism.
This, then, is the popular Church tradition, on the basis of which Constantine is often thought to have 'converted the Roman Empire to Christianity'. In actual fact, however, Constantine did no such thing. But in order to decide precisely what he did do, we must examine the evidence more closely.
In the first place Constantine's 'conversion', if that is the appropriate word, does not seem to have been Christian at all but unabashedly pagan. He appears to have had some sort of vision, or numinous experience, in the precincts of a pagan temple to the Gallic Apollo, either in the Vosges or near Autun. According to a witness accompanying Constantine's army at the time, the vision was of the sun god, the deity worshipped by certain cults under the name of 'Sol Invictus', 'the Invincible Sun'. There is evidence that Constantine, just before his vision, had been initiated into a Sol Invictus cult. In any case the Roman Senate, after the Battle of Milvian Bridge, erected a triumphal arch in the Colosseum. According to the inscription on this arch, Constantine's victory was won 'through the prompting of the Deity'. But the Deity in question was not Jesus. It was Sol Invictus, the pagan sun god.2
Contrary to tradition, Constantine did not make Christianity the official state religion of Rome. The state religion of Rome under Constantine was, in fact, pagan sun worship; and Constantine, all his life, acted as its chief priest. Indeed his reign was called a 'sun emperorship', and Sol Invictus figured everywhere, including the imperial banners and the coinage of the realm. The image of Constantine as a fervent convert to Christianity is clearly wrong. He himself was not even baptised until 337, when he lay on his deathbed and was apparently too weakened or too apathetic to protest. Nor can he be credited with the Chi Rho monogram. An inscription bearing this monogram was found on a tomb at Pompeii, dating from two and a half centuries before.3
The cult of Sol Invictus was Syrian in origin and imposed by Roman emperors on their subjects a century before Constantine. Although it contained elements of Baal and Astarte worship, it was essentially monotheistic. In effect, it posited the sun god as the sum of all attributes of all other gods, and thus peacefully subsumed its potential rivals. Moreover, it conveniently harmonised with the cult of Mithras, which was also prevalent in Rome and the empire at the time, and which also involved solar worship. For Constantine the cult of Sol Invictus was, quite simply, expedient. His primary, indeed obsessive, objective was unity, unity in politics, in religion and in territory. A cult, or state religion, that included all other cults within it obviously abetted this objective. And it was under the auspices of the Sol Invictus cult that Christianity consolidated its position.
Christian orthodoxy had much in common with the cult of Sol Invictus; and thus the former was able to flourish unmolested under the latter's umbrella of tolerance. The cult of Sol Invictus, being essentially monotheistic, paved the way for the monotheism of Christianity. And the cult of Sol Invictus was convenient in other respects as well respects which both modified and facilitated the spread of Christianity. By an edict promulgated in A.D. 321, for example, Constantine ordered the law courts closed on 'the venerable day of the sun', and decreed that this day be a day of rest. Christianity had hitherto held the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, as sacred. Now, in accordance with Constantine's edict, it transferred its sacred day to Sunday. This not only brought it into harmony with the existing regime, but also permitted it to further dissociate itself from its Judaic origins. Until the fourth century, moreover, Jesus's birthday had been celebrated on January 6th. For the cult of Sol Invictus, however, the crucial day of the year was December 25th, the festival of Natalis Invictus, the birth (or rebirth) of the sun, when the days began to grow longer. In this respect, too, Christianity brought itself into alignment with the regime and the established state religion.
The cult of Sol lnvictus meshed happily with that of Mithras, so much so, indeed, that the two are often confused.4 Both emphasised the status of the sun. Both held Sunday as sacred. Both celebrated a major birth festival on December 25th. As a result Christianity could also find points of convergence with Mithraism, the more so as Mithraism stressed the immortality of the soul, a future judgment and the resurrection of the dead.
In the interests of unity Constantine deliberately chose to blur the distinctions between Christianity, Mithraism and Sol Invictus, deliberately chose not to see any contradiction between them. Thus he tolerated the deified Jesus as the earthly manifestation of Sol Invictus. Thus he would build a Christian church and, at the same time, statues of the Mother Goddess Cybele and of Sol Invictus the sun god, the latter being an image of himself, bearing his features. In such eclectic and ecumenical gestures, the emphasis on unity can be seen again. Faith, in short, was for Constantine a political matter; and any faith that was conducive to unity was treated with forbearance.
While Constantine was not, therefore, the 'good Christian' that later tradition depicts, he consolidated, in the name of unity and uniformity, the status of Christian orthodoxy. In A.D. 325, for example, he convened the Council of Nicea. At this council the dating of Easter was established. Rules were framed which defined the authority of bishops, thereby paving the way for a concentration of power in ecclesiastical hands. Most important of all, the Council of Nicea decided, by vote,5 that Jesus was a god, not a mortal prophet. Again however, it must be emphasised that Constantine's paramount consideration was not piety but unity and expediency. As a god Jesus could be associated conveniently with Sol Invictus. As a mortal prophet he would have been more difficult to accommodate. In short Christian orthodoxy lent itself to a politically desirable fusion with the official state religion; and in so far as it did so Constantine conferred his support upon Christian orthodoxy.
Thus, a year after the Council of Nicea, he sanctioned the confiscation and destruction of all works that challenged orthodox teachings, works by pagan authors that referred to Jesus, as well as works by 'heretical' Christians. He also arranged for a fixed income to be allocated to the Church and installed the bishop of Rome in the Lateran Palace.6 Then, in A.D. 331, he commissioned and financed new copies of the Bible. This constituted one of the single most decisive factors in the entire history of Christianity, and provided Christian orthodoxy, the 'adherents of the message', with an unparalleled opportunity.
In A.D. 303, a quarter of a century before, the pagan Emperor Diocletian had undertaken to destroy all Christian writings that could be found. As a result Christian documents, especially in Rome, all but vanished. When Constantine, commissioned new versions of these documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit and re-write their material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were probably made, and Jesus assumed the unique status he has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantine's commission must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early manuscript versions of the New Testament, not one pre-dates the fourth century.7 The New Testament, as it exists today, is essentially a product of fourth-century editors and writers, custodians of orthodoxy, 'adherents of the message', with vested interests to protect.
The Zealots
After Constantine the course of Christian orthodoxy is familiar enough and well documented. Needless to say it culminated in the final triumph of the 'adherents of the message'. But if 'the message established itself as the guiding and governing principle of Western civilisation, it did not remain wholly unchallenged. Even from its incognito exile, the claims and the very existence of the family would seem to have exerted a powerful appeal, an appeal which, more often than was comfortable, posed a threat to the orthodoxy of Rome.
Roman orthodoxy rests essentially on the books of the New Testament. But the New Testament itself is only a selection of early Christian documents dating from the fourth century. There are a great many other works that pre-date the New Testament in its present form, some of which cast a significant, often controversial, new light on the accepted accounts.
There are, for instance, the diverse books excluded from the Bible, which comprise the compilation now known as the Apocrypha. Some of the works in the Apocrypha are admittedly late, dating from the sixth century. Other works, however, were already in circulation as early as the second century, and may well have as great a claim to veracity as the original Gospels themselves.
One such work is the Gospel of Peter, a copy of which was first located in a valley of the upper Nile in 1886, although it is mentioned by the bishop of Antioch in A.D 180. According to this 'apocryphal' Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea was a close friend of Pontius Pilate, which, if true, would increase the likelihood of a fraudulent Crucifixion. The Gospel of Peter also reports that the tomb in which Jesus was buried lay in a place called 'the garden of Joseph'. And Jesus's last words on the cross are particularly striking: 'My power, my power, why hast thou forsaken me?'8
Another apocryphal work of interest is the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, which dates from no later than the second century and possibly from before. In this book Jesus is portrayed as a brilliant but eminently human child. All too human perhaps, for he is violent and unruly prone to shocking displays of temper and a rather irresponsible exercise of his powers. Indeed, on one occasion he strikes dead another child who offends him. A similar fate is visited upon an autocratic mentor. Such incidents are undoubtedly spurious, but they attest to the way in which, at the time, Jesus had to be depicted if he were to attain divine status amongst his following.
In addition to Jesus's rather scandalous behaviour as a child, there is one curious and perhaps significant fragment in the Gospel of the Infancy. When Jesus was circumcised, his foreskin was said to have been appropriated by an unidentified old woman who preserved it in an alabaster box used for oil of spikenard. And 'This is that alabaster box which Mary the sinner procured and poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head and the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ.'9
Here, then, as in the accepted Gospels, there is an anointing which is obviously more than it appears to be, an anointing tantamount to some significant ritual. In this case, however, it is clear that the anointing has been foreseen and prepared long in advance. And the whole incident implies a connection, albeit an obscure and convoluted one, between the Magdalene and Jesus's family long before Jesus embarked on his mission at the age of thirty. It is reasonable to assume that Jesus's parents would not have conferred his foreskin on the first old woman to request it, even if there were nothing unusual in so apparently odd a request. The old woman must therefore be someone of consequence and/or someone on intimate terms with Jesus's parents. And the Magdalene's subsequent possession of the bizarre relic or, at any rate, of its container, suggests a connection between her and the old woman. Again we seem to be confronted by the shadowy vestiges of something that was more important than is now generally believed.
Certain passages in the books of the Apocrypha, the flagrant excesses of Jesus's childhood, for example, were undoubtedly embarrassing to later orthodoxy. They would certainly be so to most Christians today. But it must be remembered that the Apocrypha, like the accepted books of the New Testament, was composed by 'adherents of the message', intent on deifying Jesus. The Apocrypha cannot therefore be expected to contain anything that might seriously compromise the 'message', which any mention of Jesus's political activity, still more of his possible dynastic ambitions, manifestly would. For evidence on such controversial matters as those, we were obliged to look elsewhere.
The Holy Land in Jesus's time contained a bewildering number of diverse Judaic groups, factions, sects and subsects. In the Gospels, only two of these, the Pharisees and Sadducees, are cited, and both are cast in the roles of villains. However, the role of villain would only have been appropriate to the Sadducees, who did collaborate with the Roman administration. The Pharisees maintained a staunch opposition to Rome; and Jesus himself, if not actually a Pharisee, acted essentially within the Pharisee tradition.10
In order to appeal to a Romanised audience, the Gospels were obliged to exonerate Rome and blacken the Jews. This explains why the Pharisees had to be misrepresented and deliberately stigmatised along with their genuinely culpable countrymen, the Sadducees. But why is there no mention in the Gospels of the Zealots, the militant nationalistic 'freedom fighters' and revolutionaries who, if anything, a Roman audience would only too eagerly have seen as villains? There would seem to be no explanation for their apparent omission from the Gospels, unless Jesus was so closely associated with them that this association could not possibly be disowned, only glossed over and thereby concealed. As Professor Brandon argues 'The Gospels' silence about Zealots ... must surely be indicative of a relationship between Jesus and these patriots which the Evangelists preferred not to disclose.11
Whatever Jesus's possible association with the Zealots there is no question but that he was crucified as one. Indeed the two men allegedly crucified with him are explicitly described as lestai, the appellation by which the Zealots were known to the Romans. It is doubtful that Jesus himself was a Zealot. Nevertheless, he displays, at odd moments in the Gospels, an aggressive militarism quite comparable to theirs. In one awkwardly famous passage, he announces that he has come 'not to bring peace, but a sword'. In Luke's Gospel, he instructs those of his followers who do not possess a sword to purchase one (Luke 22:36); and he himself then checks and approves that they are armed after the Passover meal (Luke 22:38). In the Fourth Gospel Simon Peter is actually carrying a sword when Jesus is arrested. It is difficult to reconcile such references with the conventional image of a mild pacifist saviour. Would such a saviour have sanctioned the bearing of arms, particularly by one of his favourite disciples, the one on whom he supposedly founded his church?
If Jesus was not himself a Zealot, the Gospels seemingly despite themselves, betray and establish his connection with that militant faction. There is persuasive evidence to associate Barabbas with Jesus; and Barabbas is also described as a lestai. James, John and Simon Peter all have appellations which may hint obliquely at Zealot sympathies, if not Zealot involvement. According to modern authorities, Judas Iscariot derives from 'Judas the Sicarii', and 'Sicarii' was yet another term for Zealot, interchangeable with lestai. Indeed the Sicarii seem to have been an elite within the Zealot ranks, a crack cadre of professional assassins. Finally there is the disciple known as Simon. In the Greek version of Mark, Simon is called Kananaios, a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word for Zealot. In the King James Bible, the Greek word is mistranslated and Simon appears as 'Simon the Canaanite'. But the Gospel of Luke leaves no room for doubt. Simon is clearly identified as a Zealot, and even the King James Bible introduces him as 'Simon Zelotes'. It would thus seem fairly indisputable that Jesus numbered at least one Zealot among his followers.
If the absence, or, rather, apparent absence, of the Zealots from the Gospels is striking, so too is that of the Essenes. In the Holy Land of Jesus's time, the Essenes constituted a sect as important as the Pharisees and Sadducees, and it is inconceivable that Jesus did not come into contact with them. Indeed, from the account given of him, John the Baptist would seem to have been an Essene. The omission of any reference to the Essenes seems to have been dictated by the same considerations that dictated omission of virtually all references to the Zealots. In short Jesus's connections with the Essenes, like his connections with the Zealots, were probably too close and too well known to be denied. They could only be glossed over and concealed.
From historians and chroniclers writing at the time, it is known that the Essenes maintained communities throughout the Holy Land and, quite possibly, elsewhere as well. They began to appear around 150 B.C., and they used the Old Testament, but interpreted it more as allegory than as literal historical truth. They repudiated conventional Judaism in favour of a form of Gnostic dualism, which seems to have incorporated elements of sun worship and Pythagorean thought. They practised healing and were esteemed for their expertise in therapeutic techniques. Finally they were rigorously ascetic, and readily distinguished by their simple white garb.
Most modern authorities on the subject believe the famous Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran to be essentially Essene documents. And there is no question that the sect of ascetics living at Qumran had much in common with Essene thought. Like Essene teaching, the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect a dualist theology. At the same time they lay a great stress on the coming of a Messiah, an 'anointed one', descended from the line of David.'12 They also adhere to a special calendar, according to which the Passover service was celebrated not on Friday, but on Wednesday, which agrees with the Passover service in the Fourth Gospel. And in a number of significant respects they coincide, almost word for word, with some of Jesus's teaching. At the very least it would appear that Jesus was aware of the Qumran community and, to some extent at any rate, brought his own teachings into accord with theirs. One modern expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls believes that they 'give added ground for believing that many incidents [in the New Testament] are merely projections into Jesus' own history of what was expected of the Messiah'.13
Whether the Qumran sect were technically Essenes or not, it seems clear that Jesus, even if he did not undergo formal Essene training, was well versed in Essene thought. Indeed, many of his teachings echo those ascribed to the Essenes. And his aptitude for healing likewise suggests some Essene influence. But a closer scrutiny of the Gospels reveals that the Essenes may have figured even more significantly in Jesus's career.
The Essenes were readily identifiable by their white garments, which, paintings and cinema notwithstanding, were less common in the Holy Land at the time than is generally believed. In the suppressed 'secret' Gospel of Mark, a white linen robe plays an important ritual role and it recurs later even in the accepted authorised version. If Jesus was conducting mystery school initiations at Bethany or elsewhere, the white linen robe suggests that these initiations may well have been Essene in character. What is more, the motif of the white linen robe recurs later in all four Gospels. After the Crucifixion Jesus's body 'miraculously' disappears from the tomb, which is found to be occupied by at least one white-clad figure. In Matthew it is an angel in 'raiment white as snow' (28:3). In Mark it is 'a young man in long white garment' (16:5). Luke reports that there were 'two men. , , in shining garments' (24:4), while the Fourth Gospel speaks of 'two angels in white' (20:12). In two of these accounts the figure or figures in the tomb are not even accorded any supernatural status. Presumably, these figures are thoroughly mortal, and yet, it would appear, unknown to the disciples. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that they are Essenes. And given the Essenes' aptitude for healing, such a supposition becomes even more tenable. If Jesus, on being removed from the cross, was indeed still alive the services of a healer would clearly have been required. Even if he were dead, a healer is likely to have been present, if only as a 'forlorn hope'. And there were no more esteemed healers in the Holy Land at the time than the Essenes.
According to our scenario a mock Crucifixion on private ground was arranged, with Pilate's collusion, by certain of Jesus's supporters. More specifically it would have been arranged not primarily by 'adherents of the message', but by adherents to the bloodline, immediate family, in other words, and/or other aristocrats and/or members of an inner circle. These individuals may well have had Essene connections or have been Essenes themselves. To the 'adherents of the message', however, the 'rank and file' of Jesus's following, epitomised by Simon Peter, the stratagem would not have been divulged.
On being carried to Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, Jesus would have required medical attention, for which an Essene healer would have been present. And afterwards, when the tomb was found to be vacant, an emissary would again have been necessary, an emissary unknown to the 'rank and file' disciples. This emissary would have had to reassure the unsuspecting 'adherents of the message', to act as intermediary between Jesus and his following, and to forestall charges of grave-robbing or grave desecration against the Romans, which might have provoked dangerous civic disturbances.
Whether this scenario was accurate or not, it seemed to us fairly clear that Jesus was as closely associated with the Essenes as he was with the Zealots. At first this might seem somewhat odd, for the Zealots and the Essenes are often imagined to have been incompatible. The Zealots were aggressive, violent, militaristic, not averse to assassination and terrorism. The Essenes, in contrast, are frequently depicted as divorced from political issues, quietist, pacifist and gentle. In actual fact, however, the Zealots included numerous Essenes in their ranks, for the Zealots were not a sect but a political faction. As a political faction they drew support not only from the anti-Roman Pharisees, but from the Essenes as well, who could be as aggressively nationalistic as anyone else.
The association of the Zealots and the Essenes is especially evident in the writings of Josephus. from whom much of the available information on Palestine at the time derives Joseph ben Matthias was born into the Judaic nobility in A.D. 37. On the outbreak of the revolt in A.D. 66 he was appointed governor of Galilee, where he assumed command of the forces aligned against the Romans. As a military commander he seems to have proved signally inept, and was promptly captured by the Roman Emperor Vespasian. Thereupon he turned Quisling. Taking the Romanised name of Flavius Josephus, he became a Roman citizen, divorced his wife and married a Roman heiress, and accepted lavish gifts from the Roman emperor which included a private apartment in the imperial palace, as well as land confiscated from Jews in the Holy Land. Around the time of his death in A.D. 100, his copious chronicles of the period began to appear.
In The Jewish War Josephus offers a detailed account of the revolt between A.D. 66 and 74. Indeed, it was from Josephus that subsequent historians learned most about that disastrous insurrection, the sack of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple. And Josephus's work also contains the only account of the fall, in A.D. 74, of the fortress of Masada, situated at the south-western corner of the Dead
Sea.
Like Montségur some twelve hundred years later Masada has come to symbolise tenacity, heroism and martyrdom in defence of a lost cause. Like Montségur it continued to resist the invader long after virtually all other organised resistance had ceased. While the rest of Palestine collapsed beneath the Roman onslaught, Masada continued to be impregnable. At last, in A.D. 74, the position of the fortress became untenable. After sustained bombardment with heavy siege machinery, the Romans installed a ramp which put them into a position to breach the defences. On the night of April 15th they prepared for a general assault. On that same night the 960 men, women, and children within the fortress committed suicide en masse. When the Romans burst through the gate the following morning, they found only corpses amid the flames.
Josephus himself accompanied the Roman troops who entered the husk of Masada on the morning of April 16th. He claims to have witnessed the carnage personally. And he claims to have interviewed three survivors of the débâcle, a woman and two children who supposedly hid in the conduits beneath the fortress while the rest of the garrison killed themselves. From these survivors Josephus reports that he obtained a detailed account of what had transpired the night before. According to this account the commander of the garrison was a man named Eleazar, a variant, interestingly enough, of Lazarus. And it seems to have been Eleazar who, by his persuasive and charismatic eloquence, led the defenders to their grisly decision. In his chronicle Josephus repeats Eleazar's speeches, as he claims to have heard them from the survivors. And these speeches are extremely interesting. History reports that Masada was defended by militant Zealots. Josephus himself uses the words 'Zealots' and 'Sicarii' interchangeably. And yet Eleazar's speeches are not even conventionally Judaic. On the contrary, they are unmistakably Essene, Gnostic and dualist:
Ever since primitive man began to think, the words of our ancestors and of the gods, supported by the actions and spirit of our forefathers, have constantly impressed on us that life is the calamity for man, not death. Death gives freedom to our souls and lets them depart to their own pure home where they will know nothing of any calamity; but while they are confined within a mortal body and share its miseries, in strict truth they are dead. For association of the divine with the mortal is most improper. Certainly the soul can do a great deal even when imprisoned in the body: it makes the body its own organ of sense, moving it invisibly and impelling it in its actions further than mortal nature can reach. But when, freed from the weight that drags it down to earth and is hung about it, the soul returns to its own place, then in truth it partakes of a blessed power and an utterly unfettered strength, remaining as invisible to human eyes as God Himself. Not even while it is in the body can it be viewed; it enters undetected and departs unseen, having itself one imperishable nature, but causing a change in the body; for whatever the soul touches lives and blossoms, whatever it deserts withers and dies: such a superabundance it has of immortality.34
And again:
They are men of true courage who, regarding this life as a kind of service we must render to nature, undergo it with reluctance and hasten to release their souls from their bodies; and though no misfortune presses or drives them away, desire for immortal life impels them to inform their friends that they are going to depart.15
It is extraordinary that no scholar, to our knowledge, has ever commented on these speeches before, for they raise a multitude of provocative questions. At no point, for example, does orthodox Judaism ever speak of a 'soul', still less of its 'immortal' or 'imperishable' nature. Indeed, the very concept of a soul and of immortality is alien to the mainstream of Judaic tradition and thought. So, too, is the supremacy of spirit over matter, the union with God in death, and the condemnation of life as evil. These attitudes derive, quite unequivocally, from a mystery tradition. They are patently Gnostic and dualist; and, in the context of Masada, are characteristically Essene.
Certain of these attitudes, of course, may also be described as in some sense 'Christian'. Not necessarily as that word subsequently came to be defined, but as it might have been applied to Jesus's original followers, those, for example, who wished to join Lazarus in death in the Fourth Gospel. It is possible that the defenders of Masada included some adherents to Jesus's bloodline. During the revolt of A.D. 66 to 74 there were numerous Christians who fought against the Romans as vigorously as did the Jews. Many Zealots, in fact, were what would now be called 'early Christians'; and it is quite likely that there were some of them at Masada.
Josephus, of course, suggests nothing of this sort although even if he once did, it would have been excised by subsequent editors. At the same time, one would expect Josephus, writing a history of Palestine during the first century, to make some mention of Jesus. Granted, many later editions of Josephus's work do contain such references, but these references conform to the Jesus of established orthodoxy, and most modern scholars dismiss them as spurious interpolations dating from no earlier than the time of Constantine. In the nineteenth century, however, an edition of Josephus was discovered in Russia which differed from all others. The text itself, translated into Old Russian, dated from approximately 1261. The man who transcribed it was not an orthodox Jew, because he retained many 'pro-Christian' allusions. And yet Jesus, in this version of Josephus, is described as human, as a political revolutionary and as a 'king who did not reign'.16 He is also said to have had 'a line in the middle of his head in the manner of the Nazireans.'17
Scholars have expended much paper and energy disputing the possible authenticity of what is now called the 'Slavonic Josephus'. All things considered, we were inclined to regard it as more or less genuine, a transcription from a copy or copies of Josephus which survived the destruction of Christian documents by Diocletian and eluded the editorial zeal of the reinstated orthodoxy under Constantine. There were a number of cogent reasons for our conclusion. If the Slavonic Josephus was a forgery, for example, whose interests would it have served? Its description of Jesus as a king would hardly have been acceptable to a thirteenth-century Jewish audience. And its depiction of Jesus as human would hardly have pleased thirteenth-century Christendom. What is more, Origen, a Church father writing in the early third century, alludes to a version of Josephus which denies Jesus's Messiahship.18 This version, which may once have been the original, authentic and 'standard' version, could well have provided the text for the Slavonic Josephus.
The Gnostic Writings
The revolt of A.D. 66.74 was followed by a second major insurrection some sixty years later, between 132 and 135. As a result of this new disturbance all Jews were officially expelled from Jerusalem, which became a Roman city. But even as early as the first revolt history had begun to draw a veil over events in the Holy Land, and there are virtually no records for another two centuries. Indeed the period is not dissimilar to Europe at various points during the so-called 'Dark Ages'. Nevertheless it is known that numerous Jews remained in the country, though outside Jerusalem. So, too, did a number of Christians. And there was even one sect of Jews, called the Ebionites, who, while adhering generally to their faith, at the same time revered Jesus as a prophet albeit a mortal one.
Nevertheless the real spirit of both Judaism and Christianity moved away from the Holy Land. The majority of Palestine's Jewish population dispersed in a diaspora like that which had occurred some seven hundred years before, when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. And Christianity, in a similar fashion, began to migrate across the globe, to Asia Minor, to Greece, to Rome, to Gaul, to Britain, to North Africa. Not surprisingly conflicting accounts of what had happened in or around A.D. 33 began to arise all over the civilised world. And despite the efforts of Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and their ilk, these accounts, officially labelled 'heresies', continued to flourish. Some of them undoubtedly derived from some sort of first-hand knowledge, preserved both by devout Jews and by groups like the Ebionites, Jewish converts to one or another form of Christianity. Other accounts were patently based on legend, on rumour, on an amalgamation of current beliefs, such as Egyptian, Hellenistic and Mithraic mystery traditions. Whatever their specific sources, they caused much disquiet to the 'adherents of the message', the coalescing orthodoxy which was endeavouring to consolidate its position.
Information on the early 'heresies' is meagre. Modern knowledge about them derives largely from the attacks of their opponents, which naturally makes for a distorted picture, like the picture that might emerge of the French Resistance, for instance, from Gestapo documents. On the whole, however, Jesus seems to have been viewed by the early 'heretics' in one of two ways. For some he was a fully fledged god, with few, if any, human attributes. For others he was a mortal prophet, not essentially different from, say, the Buddha, or, half a millennium later, Muhammad.
Among the most important of the early heresiarchs was Valentinus, a native of Alexandria who spent the latter part of his life (A.D. 136.65) in Rome. In his time Valentinus was extremely influential, numbering such men as Ptolemy among his following. Claiming to possess a body of 'secret teachings' of Jesus, he refused to submit to Roman authority, asserting that personal gnosis took precedence over any external hierarchy. Predictably enough Valentinus and his adherents were among the most belaboured targets of Irenaeus's wrath.
Another such target was Marcion, a wealthy shipping magnate and bishop who arrived in Rome around 140 and was excommunicated four years later. Marcion posited a radical distinction between 'law' and 'love', which he associated with the Old and New Testaments respectively; certain of these Marcionite ideas surfaced a full thousand years later in such works as the Perlesvaus. Marcion was the first writer to compile a canonical list of Biblical books, which, in his case, excluded the whole of the Old Testament. It was in direct response to Marcion that Irenaeus compiled his canonical list, which provided the basis for the Bible as we know it today
The third major heresiarch of the period, and in many ways the most intriguing, was Basilides, an Alexandrian scholar writing between A.D.120 and 130. Basilides was conversant with both Hebrew scriptures and Christian Gospels. He was also steeped in Egyptian and Hellenistic thought. He is supposed to have written no less than twenty-four commentaries on the Gospels. According to Irenaeus, he promulgated a most heinous heresy indeed. Basilides claimed that the Crucifixion was a fraud, that Jesus did not die on the cross, and that a substitute, Simon of Cyrene, took his place instead.19 Such an assertion would seem to be bizarre. And yet it has proved to be extraordinarily persistent and tenacious. As late as the seventh century the Koran maintained precisely the same argument, that a substitute, traditionally Simon of Cyrene, took Jesus's place on the cross.20 And the same argument was upheld by the priest from whom we received the mysterious letter discussed in Chapter 1, the letter that alluded to 'incontrovertible proof' of a substitution.
If there was any one region where the early heresies most entrenched themselves, it was Egypt, and more specifically Alexandria, most learned and cosmopolitan city in the world at the time, the second largest city in the Roman Empire and a repository for a bewildering variety of faiths, teachings and traditions. In the wake of the two revolts in Judaea, Egypt proved the most accessible haven for both Jewish and Christian refugees, vast numbers of whom thronged to Alexandria. It was thus not surprising that Egypt yielded the most convincing evidence to support our hypothesis. This was contained in the so-called 'Gnostic Gospels', or, more accurately, the Nag Hammadi Scrolls.
In December 1945 an Egyptian peasant, digging for soft and fertile soil near the village of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, exhumed a red earthenware jar. It proved to contain thirteen codices, papyrus books or scrolls bound in leather. Unaware of the magnitude of the discovery, the peasant and his family used some of the codices to stoke their fire. Eventually, however, the remainder attracted the attention of experts; and one of them, smuggled out of Egypt, was offered for sale on the black market. Part of this codex, which was purchased by the C. G. Jung Foundation, proved to contain the now famous Gospel of Thomas.
In the meantime the Egyptian government nationalised the remainder of the Nag Hammadi collection in 1952. Only in 1961, however, was an international team of experts assembled to copy and translate the entire corpus of material. In 1972 the first volume of the photographic edition appeared. And in 1977 the entire collection of scrolls appeared in English translation for the first time.
The Nag Hammadi Scrolls are a collection of Biblical texts, essentially Gnostic in character, which date, it would appear, from the late fourth or early fifth century from about A.D. 400. The scrolls are copies, and the originals from which they were transcribed date from much earlier. Certain of them, the Gospel of Thomas, for example, the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of the Egyptians, are mentioned by the very earliest of Church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Origen. Modern scholars have established that some if not most of the texts in the scrolls date from no later than A.D. 150. And at least one of them may include material that is even older than the four standard Gospels of the New Testament. 21
Taken as a whole, the Nag Hammadi collection constitutes an invaluable repository of early Christian documents, some of which can claim an authority equal to that of the Gospels. What is more, certain of these documents enjoy a claim to a unique veracity of their own. In the first place they escaped the censorship and revision of later Roman orthodoxy. In the second place they were originally composed for an Egyptian, not a Roman, audience, and are not therefore distorted or slanted to a Romanised ear. Finally they may well rest on first-hand and/or eyewitness sources, oral accounts by Jews fleeing the Holy Land, for instance, perhaps even personal acquaintances or associates of Jesus, who could tell their story with an historical fidelity the Gospels could not afford to retain.
Not surprisingly the Nag Hammadi Scrolls contain a good many passages that are inimical to orthodoxy and the 'adherents of the message'. In one undated codex, for example, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus is depicted precisely as he is in the heresy of Basilides escaping his death on the cross by dint of an ingenious substitution. In the following extract, Jesus speaks in the first person:
I did not succumb to them as they had planned, ., And I did not die in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them ... For my death which they think happened [happened] to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death, ., It was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns ... And I was laughing at their ignorance.22
With convincing consistency, certain other works in the Nag Hammadi collection bear witness to a bitter and ongoing feud between Peter and the Magdalene, a feud that would seem to reflect a schism between the 'adherents of the message' and the adherents to the bloodline. Thus, in the Gospel of Mary, Peter addresses the Magdalene as follows: 'Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember, which you know but we do not.'23 Later Peter demands indignantly of the other disciples: 'Did he really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?'24 And later still, one of the disciples replies to Peter: 'Surely the Saviour knows her very well That is why he loved her more than us.'25
In the Gospel of Philip the reasons for this feud would appear to be obvious enough. There is, for example, a recurring emphasis on the image of the bridal chamber According to the Gospel of Philip, 'the Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber.'26 Granted, the bridal chamber, at first glance, might well seem to be symbolic or allegorical. But the Gospel of Philip is more explicit: 'There were three who always walked with the Lord, Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion.'27 According to one scholar, the word 'companion' is to be translated as 'spouse.'28 There are certainly grounds for doing so, for the Gospel of Philip becomes more explicit still:
And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her?'29
The Gospel of Philip elaborates on the matter: 'Fear not the flesh nor love it. If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you love it, it will swallow and paralyse you.'30 At another point, this elaboration is translated into concrete terms: 'Great is the mystery of marriage! For without it the world would not have existed. Now the existence of the world depends on man, and the existence of man on marriage.'3l And towards the end of the Gospel of Philip, there is the following statement: 'There is the Son of man and there is the son of the Son of man. The Lord is the Son of man, and the son of the Son of man is he who is created through the Son of man.'32
CHAPTER 14 THE GRAIL DYNASTY
On the basis of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls alone, the possibility of a bloodline descended directly from Jesus gained considerable plausibility for us. Certain of the so-called 'Gnostic Gospels' enjoyed as great a claim to veracity as the books of the New Testament. As a result the things to which they explicitly or implicitly bore witness, a substitute on the cross, a continuing dispute between Peter and the Magdalene, a marriage between the Magdalene and Jesus, the birth of a 'son of the Son of Man', could not be dismissed out of hand, however controversial they might be. We were dealing with history, not theology. And history, in Jesus's time, was no less complex, multifaceted and oriented towards practicalities than it is today.
The feud, in the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, between Peter and the Magdalene apparently testified to precisely the conflict we had hypothesised, the conflict between the 'adherents of the message' and the adherents to the bloodline, But it was the former who eventually emerged triumphant to shape the course of Western civilisation. Given their increasing monopoly of learning, communication and documentation, there remained little evidence to suggest that Jesus's family ever existed. And there was still less to establish a link between that family and the Merovingian dynasty.
Not that the 'adherents of the message' had things entirely their own way. If the first two centuries of Christian history were plagued by irrepressible heresies, the centuries that followed were even more so. While orthodoxy consolidated itself, theologically under Irenaeus' politically under Constantine, the heresies Continued to proliferate on a hitherto unprecedented Scale~
However much they differed in theological details, most of the major heresies shared certain crucial factors. Most of them were essentially Gnostic or Gnostic-influenced repudiating the hierarchical structure of Rome and extolling the supremacy of personal illumination over blind faith. Most of them were also, in one sense or another, dualist, regarding good and evil less as mundane ethical problems than as issues of ultimately cosmic import. Finally most of them concurred in regarding Jesus as mortal, born by a natural process of conception, a prophet, divinely inspired perhaps but not intrinsically divine, who died definitively on the cross or who never died on the cross at all. In their emphasis on Jesus's humanity, many of the heresies referred back to the august authority of Saint Paul, who had spoken of 'Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh' (Romans 1:3).
Perhaps the most famous and profoundly radical of the heresies was Manichaeanism, essentially a fusion of Gnostic Christianity with skeins of earlier Zoroastrian and Mithraic traditions. It was founded by an individual named Mani, who was born near Baghdad in A.D. 214 to a family related to the Persian royal house. As a youth Mani was introduced by his father into an unspecified mystical sect, probably Gnostic, which emphasised asceticism and celibacy, practised baptism and wore white robes. Around A.D. 240 Mani commenced to propagate his own teachings and, like Jesus, was renowned for his spiritual healing and exorcisms. His followers proclaimed him 'the new Jesus' and even credited him with a virgin birth, a prerequisite for deities at the time. He was also known as 'Saviour', 'Apostle', 'Illuminator', 'Lord', 'Raiser of the Dead', 'Pilot' and 'Helmsman'. The last two designations are especially suggestive, for they are interchangeable with 'Nautonnier', the official title assumed by the Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion.
According to later Arab historians Mani produced many books in which he claimed to reveal secrets Jesus had mentioned only obscurely and obliquely. He regarded Zarathustra, Buddha and Jesus as his forerunners and declared that he, like them, had received essentially the same enlightemnent from the same source. His teachings consisted of a Gnostic dualism wedded to an imposing and elaborate cosmological edifice. Pervading everything was the universal conflict of light and darkness; and the most important battlefield for these two opposed principles was the human soul. Like the later Cathars, Mani espoused the doctrine of reincarnation. Like the Cathars, too, he insisted on an initiate class, an 'illuminated elect'. He referred to Jesus as the 'Son of the Widow', a phrase subsequently appropriated by Freemasonry. At the same time he declared Jesus to be mortal, or, if divine at all, divine only in a symbolic or metaphorical sense, by virtue of enlightenment. And Mani, like Basilides, maintained that Jesus did not die on the cross, but was replaced by a substitute.1
In A.D. 276, by order of the king, Mani was imprisoned, flayed to death, skinned and decapitated; and, perhaps to preclude a resurrection, his mutilated body was put on public display. His teachings, however, only gained impetus from his martyrdom; and among his later adherents. at least for a time, was Saint Augustine. With extraordinary rapidity, Manichaeanism spread throughout the Christian world. Despite ferocious endeavours to suppress it, it managed to survive, to influence later thinkers and to persist up to the present day. In Spain and in the south of France Manichaean schools were particularly active. By the time of the Crusades these schools had forged links with other Manichaean sects from Italy and Bulgaria. It now appears unlikely that the Cathars were an offshoot of the Bulgarian Bogomils. On the contrary, the most recent research suggests that the Cathars arose from Manichaean schools long established in France. In any case the Albigensian Crusade was essentially a crusade against Manichaeanism; and despite the most assiduous efforts of Rome, the word 'Manichaean' has survived to become an accepted part of our language and vocabulary.
In addition to Manichaeanism, of course, there were numerous other heresies. Of them all, it was the heresy of Arius which posed the most dangerous threat to orthodox Christian doctrine during the first thousand years of its history Arius was a presbyter in Alexandria around 318, and died in 335. His dispute with orthodoxy was quite simple and rested on a single premise, that Jesus was wholly mortal, was in no sense divine, and in no sense anything other than an inspired teacher.
By positing a single omnipotent and supreme God, a God who did not incarnate in the flesh, and did not suffer humiliation and death at the hands of his creation, Arius effectively embedded Christianity in an essentially Judaic framework. And he may well, as a resident of Alexandria have been influenced by Judaic teachings there, the teachings of the Ebionites, for example. At the same time the supreme God of Arianism enjoyed immense appeal in the West. As Christianity came to acquire increasingly secular power, such a God became increasingly attractive. Kings and potentates could identify with such a God more readily than they could with a meek, passive deity who submitted without resistance to martyrdom and eschewed contact with the world.
Although Arianism was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325, Constantine had always been sympathetic towards it, and became more so at the end of his life. On his death, his son and successor, Constantius, became unabashedly Arian: and under his auspices councils were convened which drove orthodox Church leaders into exile. By 360 Arianism had all but displaced Roman Christianity. And though it was officially condemned again in 381, it continued to thrive and gain adherents. When the Merovingians rose to power during the fifth century, virtually every bishopric in Christendom was either Arian or vacant.
Among the most fervent devotees of Arianism were the Goths, who had been converted to it from paganism during the fourth century. The Suevi, the Lombards, the Alans, the Vandals, the Burgundians and the Ostrogoths were all Arian. So were the Visigoths, who, when they sacked Rome in 480, spared Christian churches. If the early Merovingians, prior to Clovis, were at all receptive to Christianity, it would have been the Arian Christianity of their immediate neighbours, the Visigoths and Burgundians.
Under Visigoth auspices, Arianism became the dominant form of Christianity in Spain, the Pyrenees and what is now southern France. If Jesus's family did indeed find refuge in Gaul, their overlords, by the fifth century, would have been the Arian Visigoths. Under the Arian régime, the family is not likely to have been persecuted. It would probably have been highly esteemed and might well have intermarried with Visigoth nobility before its subsequent intermarriage with the Franks to produce the Merovingians. And with Visigoth patronage and protection, it would have been secure against all threats from Rome. It is thus not particularly surprising that unmistakably Semitic names, Bera, for instance, occur among Visigoth aristocracy and royalty. Dagobert II married a Visigoth princess whose father was named Bera. The name Bera recurs repeatedly in the Visigoth-Merovingian family tree descended from Dagobert II and Sigisbert IV.
The Roman Church is said to have declared that Dagobert's son had converted to Arianism,2 and it would not be very extraordinary if he had done so. Despite the pact between the Church and Clovis, the Merovingians had always been sympathetic to Arianism. One of Clovis's grandsons, Chilperic, made no secret of his Arian proclivities.
If Arianism was not inimical to Judaism, neither was it to Islam, which rose so meteorically in the seventh century. The Arian view of Jesus was quite in accord with that of the Koran. In the Koran Jesus is mentioned no less than thirty-five times, under a number of impressive appellations, including 'Messenger of God' and 'Messiah'. At no point, however, is he regarded as anything other than a mortal prophet, a forerunner of Muhammad and a spokesman for a single supreme God. And like Basilides and Mani, the Koran maintains that Jesus did not die on the cross, 'they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did.'3 The Koran itself does not elaborate on this ambiguous statement, but Islamic commentators do. According to most of them, there was a substitute, generally, though not always, supposed to have been Simon of Cyrene. Certain Muslim writers speak of Jesus hiding in a niche of a wall and watching the Crucifixion of a surrogate, which concurs with the fragment already quoted from the Nag Hammadi Scrolls.
Judaism and the Merovingians
It is worth noting the tenacity, even in the face of the most vigorous persecution, with which most of the heresies, and especially Arianism, insisted on Jesus's mortality and humanity. But we found no indication that any of them necessarily possessed any first-hand knowledge of the premise to which they so persistently adhered. Still less was there any evidence, apart from the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, to suggest their awareness of a possible bloodline. It was possible, of course, that certain documents did exist, documents akin to the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, perhaps even genealogies and archives. The sheer virulence of Roman persecution might well suggest a fear of such evidence and a desire to ensure that it would never see the light. But if that was the case, Rome would appear to have succeeded.
The heresies, then, provided us with no decisive confirmation of a connection between Jesus's family and the Merovingians, who appeared on the world stage some four centuries later. For such confirmation we were obliged to look elsewhere, back to the Merovingians themselves. At first glance the evidence, such as it was, seemed to be meagre. We had already considered the legendary birth of Mérovée, for example, child of two fathers, one of whom was a mysterious aquatic creature from across the sea, and guessed that this curious fable might have been intended simultaneously to reflect and conceal a dynastic alliance or intermarriage. But, while the fish symbolism was suggestive, it was hardly conclusive. Similarly the subsequent pact between Clovis and the Roman Church made considerably more sense in the light of our scenario; but the pact itself did not constitute concrete evidence. And while the Merovingian royal blood was credited with a sacred, miraculous and divine nature, it was not explicitly stated anywhere that this blood was in fact Jesus's.
In the absence of any decisive or conclusive testimony, we had to proceed cautiously. We had to evaluate fragments of circumstantial evidence, and try to assemble these fragments into a coherent picture. And we had first to determine whether there were any uniquely Judaic influences on the Merovingians.
Certainly the Merovingian kings do not seem to have been anti-Semitic On the contrary they seem to have been not merely tolerant, but downright sympathetic to the Jews in their domains, and this despite the assiduous protests of the Roman Church. Mixed marriages were a frequent occurrence. Many Jews, especially in the south, possessed large landed estates. Many of them owned Christian slaves and servants. And many of them acted as magistrates and high-ranking administrators for their Merovingian lords. On the whole the Merovingian attitude towards Judaism seems to have been without parallel in Western history prior to the Lutheran Reformation.
The Merovingians themselves believed their miraculous power to be vested, in large part, in their hair, which they were forbidden to cut. Their position on this matter was identical to that of the Nazorites in the Old Testament, of whom Samson was a member. There is much evidence to suggest that Jesus was also a Nazorite. According to both early Church writers and modern scholars his brother, Saint James, indisputably was.
In the Merovingian royal house, and in the families connected with it, there were a surprising number of specifically Judaic names. Thus, in 577, a brother of King Clotaire II was named Samson. Subsequently one Miron 'le Lévite' was count of Bésalou and bishop of Gerona. One count of Roussillon was named Solomon, and another Solomon became king of Brittany. There was an Abbot Elisachar, a variant of 'Eleazar' and 'Lazarus'. And the very name 'Mérovée' would seem to be of Middle Eastern derivation.4
Judaic names became increasingly prominent through dynastic marriages between the Merovingians and the Visigoths. Such names figure in Visigoth nobility and royalty; and it is possible that many so-called 'Visigoth' families were in fact Judaic. This possibility gains further credence from the fact that chroniclers would frequently use the words 'Goth' and 'Jew' interchangeably. The south of France and the Spanish marches, the region known as Septimania in Merovingian and Carolingian times, contained an extremely large Jewish population. This region was also known as 'Gothie' or 'Gothia', and its Jewish inhabitants were thus often called 'Goths', an error which may, on occasion, have been deliberate. By dint of this error, Jews could not be identified as such, save perhaps by specific family names. Thus Dagobert's father-in-law was named Bera, a Semitic name. And Bera's sister was married to a member of a family named Levy.5 Granted, names and a mystical attitude towards one's hair were not necessarily a solid basis on which to establish a connection between the Merovingians and Judaism. But there was another fragment of evidence which was somewhat more persuasive. The Merovingians were the royal dynasty of the Franks, a Teutonic tribe which adhered to Teutonic tribal law. In the late fifth century this law, codified and couched in a Roman framework, became known as Salic Law. In its origins, however, Salic Law was ultimately Teutonic tribal law and predated the advent of Roman Christianity in Western Europe. During the centuries that followed it continued to stand in opposition to the ecclesiastical law promulgated by Rome. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the official secular law of the Holy Roman Empire. As late as the Lutheran Reformation the German peasantry and knighthood included, in their grievances against the Church, the latter's disregard for traditional Salic law.
There is one entire section of the Salic Law, Title 45, 'De Migrantibus', which has consistently puzzled scholars and commentators, and been the source of incessant legal debate. It is a complicated section of stipulations and clauses pertaining to circumstances whereby itinerants may establish residence and be accorded citizenship. What is curious about it is that it is not Teutonic in origin, and writers have been driven to postulate bizarre hypotheses to account for its inclusion in the Salic Code. Only recently, however, it has been discovered that this section of the Salic Code derives directly from Judaic Law.6 More specifically, it can be traced back to a section in the Talmud. It can thus be said that Salic Law at least in part, issues directly from traditional Judaic law. And this in turn suggests that the Merovingians, under whose auspices Salic Law was codified, were not only versed in Judaic law, but had access to Judaic texts.
The Principality in Septimania
Such fragments were provocative, but they provided only tenuous support for our hypothesis, that a bloodline descended from Jesus existed in the south of France, that this bloodline intermarried with the Merovingians and that the Merovingians, in consequence, were partly Judaic. But while the Merovingian epoch failed to provide us with any conclusive evidence for our hypothesis, the epoch which immediately followed it did. By means of this 'retroactive evidence' our hypothesis suddenly became tenable.
We had already explored the possibility of the Merovingian bloodline surviving after being deposed from its thrones by the Carolingians. In the process we had encountered an autonomous principality that existed in the south of France for a century and a half, a principality whose most famous ruler was Guillem de Gellone. Guillem was one of the most revered heroes of his age. He was also the protagonist of the Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and is said to have been associated with the Grail family. It was in Guillem and his background that we found some of our most surprising and exciting evidence.
At the apex of his power Guillem de Gellone included among his domains north-eastern Spain, the Pyrenees and the region of southern France known as Septimania. This area had long contained a large Jewish population. During the sixth and seventh centuries this population had enjoyed extremely cordial relations with its Visigoth overlords, who espoused Arian Christianity, so much so, in fact, that mixed marriages were common, and the words 'Goth' and 'Jew' were often used interchangeably.
By 711, however, the situation of the Jews in Septimania and north-eastern Spain had sadly deteriorated. By that time Dagobert II had been assassinated and his lineage driven into hiding in the Razès, the region including and surrounding Rennes-le-Château. And while collateral branches of the Merovingian bloodline still nominally occupied the throne to the north, the only real power resided in the hands of the so-called Mayors of the Palace, the Carolingian usurpers who, with the sanction and support of Rome, set about establishing their own dynasty. By that time, too, the Visigoths had themselves converted to Roman Christianity and begun to persecute the Jews in their domains. Thus, when Visigoth Spain was overrun by the Moors in 711, the Jews eagerly welcomed the invaders.
Under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a thriving existence. The Moors were gracious to them, often placing them in administrative charge of captured cities like Córdoba, Granada and Toledo. Jewish commerce and trade were encouraged and attained a new prosperity. Judaic thought coexisted, side by side, with that of Islam, and the two cross-fertilised each other. And many towns including Córdoba, the Moorish capital of Spain, were predominantly Jewish in population.
At the beginning of the eighth century the Moors crossed the Pyrenees into Septimania; and from 720 until 759, while Dagobert's grandson and great-grandson continued their clandestine existence in the Razès, Septimania was in Islamic hands. Septimania became an autonomous Moorish principality, with its own capital at Narbonne and owing only nominal allegiance to the emir of Córdoba. And from Narbonne the Moors of Septimania began to strike northwards, capturing cities as deep into Frankish territory as Lyons.
The Moorish advance was checked by Charles Martel, Mayor of the Palace and grandfather of Charlemagne. By 738 Charles had driven the Moors back to Narbonne, to which he then laid siege. Narbonne, however, defended by both Moors and Jews, proved impregnable, and Charles vented his frustration by devastating the surrounding countryside.
By 752 Charles's son, Pepin, had formed alliances with local aristocrats, thereby bringing Septimania fully under his control. Narbonne, however, continued to resist, withstanding a seven-year long siege by Pepin's forces. The city was a painful thorn in Pepin's side, at a time when it was most urgent for him to consolidate his position. He and his successors were acutely sensitive to charges of having usurped the Merovingian throne. To establish a claim to legitimacy, he forged dynastic alliances with surviving families of the Merovingian royal blood. To further validate his status he arranged for his coronation to be distinguished by the Biblical rite of anointing, whereby the Church assumed the prerogative of creating kings. But there was another aspect to the ritual of anointing as well. According to scholars, anointing was a deliberate attempt to suggest that the Frankish monarchy was a replica, if not actually a continuation, of the Judaic monarchy in the Old Testament. This, in itself, is extremely interesting. For why would Pepin the usurper want to legitimise himself by means of a Biblical prototype? Unless the dynasty he deposed, the Merovingian dynasty, had legitimised itself by precisely the same means.
In any case Pepin was confronted by two problems, the tenacious resistance of Narbonne, and the matter of establishing his own legitimate claim to the throne by referring to Biblical precedent. As Professor Arthur Zuckerman of Columbia University has demonstrated, he resolved both problems by a pact in 759 with Narbonne's Jewish population. According to this pact, Pepin would receive Jewish endorsement for his claim to a Biblical succession. He would also receive Jewish aid against the Moors. In return he would grant the Jews of Septimania a principality, and a king, of their own.7
In 759 the Jewish population of Narbonne turned suddenly upon the city's Muslim defenders, slaughtered them and opened the gates of the fortress to the besieging Franks. Shortly thereafter, the Jews acknowledged Pepin as their nominal overlord and validated his claim to a legitimate Biblical succession. Pepin, in the meantime, kept his part of the bargain. In 768 a principality was created in Septimania, a Jewish principality which paid nominal allegiance to Pepin but was essentially independent. A ruler was officially installed as king of the Jews. In the romances he is called Aymery. According to existing records, however, he seems, on being received into the ranks of Frankish nobility, to have taken the name Theodoric or Thierry. Theodoric, or Thierry, was the father of Guillem de Gellone. And he was recognised by both Pepin and the caliph of Baghdad, as 'the seed of the royal house of David.'8
As we had already discovered, modern scholars were uncertain about Theodoric's origins and background. According to most researchers he was of Merovingian descent.9 According to Arthur Zuckerman he is said to have been a native of Baghdad, an 'exilarch', descended from Jews who had lived in Babylon since the Babylonian Captivity. It is also possible, however, that the 'exilarch' from Baghdad was not Theodoric. It is possible that the 'exilarch' came from Baghdad to consecrate Theodoric, and subsequent records confused the two. Professor Zuckerman mentions a curious assertion that the 'Western exilarchs' were of 'purer blood' than those in the East.10
Who were the 'Western exilarchs', if not the Merovingians? Why would an individual of Merovingian descent be acknowledged as king of the Jews, ruler of a Jewish principality and 'seed of the royal house of David', unless the Merovingians were indeed partly Judaic? Following the Church's collusion in Dagobert's assassination and its betrayal of the pact ratified with Clovis, the surviving Merovingians may well have repudiated all allegiance to Rome, and returned to what was their former faith. Their ties to that faith would, in any case, have been strengthened by Dagobert's marriage to the daughter of an ostensibly 'Visigoth' prince with the patently Semitic name of Bera.
Theodoric, or Thierry, further consolidated his position, and Pepin's as well, by an expeditious marriage to the latter's sister Alda, the aunt of Charlemagne. In the years that followed the Jewish kingdom of Septimania enjoyed a prosperous existence. It was richly endowed with estates held in freehold from the Carolingian monarchs. It was even granted sizeable tracts of Church land, despite the vigorous protests of Pope Stephen III and his successors.
The son of Theodoric, king of the Jews of Septimania, was Guillem de Gellone, whose titles included count of Barcelona, of Toulouse, of Auvergne, and of Razès. Like his father Guillem was not only Merovingian, but also a Jew of royal blood. Royal blood acknowledged, by the Carolingians, by the caliph and, albeit grudgingly, by the pope, to be that of the House of David.
Despite subsequent attempts to conceal it, modern scholarship and research have proved Guillem's Judaism beyond dispute. Even in the romances, where he figures as Guillaume, Prince of Orange, he is fluent in both Hebrew and Arabic. The device on his shield is the same as that of the Eastern 'exilarchs', the Lion of Judah, the tribe to which the house of David, and subsequently Jesus, belonged. He is nicknamed 'Hook-Nose'. And even amidst his campaigns, he takes pains to observe the Sabbath and the Judaic Feast of the Tabernacles. As Arthur Zuckerman remarks:
The chronicler who wrote the original report of the siege and fall of Barcelona recorded events according to the Jewish calendar ... [The] commander of the expedition, Duke William of Narbonne and Toulouse conducted the action with strict observance of Jewish sabbaths and holy Days. In all of this, he enjoyed the full understanding and co-operation of King Louis."
Guillem de Gellone became one of the so-called 'Peers of Charlemagne', an authentic historical hero who, in the popular mind and tradition, ranked with such legendary figures as Roland and Olivier. When Charlemagne's son, Louis, was invested as emperor, it was Guillem who placed the crown on his head. Louis is reported to have said, 'Lord William, , , it is your lineage that has raised up mine.'12 It is an extraordinary statement, given that it is addressed to a man whose lineage, so far as later historians are concerned, would seem to be utterly obscure.
At the same time Guillem was more than a warrior. Shortly before 792 he established an academy at Gellone, importing scholars and creating a renowned library, and Gellone soon became an esteemed centre of Judaic studies. It is from just such an academy that the 'heathen' Flegetanis might have issued, the Hebrew scholar descended from Solomon, who, according to Wolfram, confided the secret of the Holy Grail to Kyot of Provence.
In 806 Guillem withdrew from active life, secluding himself in his academy. Here, around 812, he died, and the academy was later converted into a monastery, the now famous Saint Guilhelm le Désert.l3 Even before Guillem's death, however, Gellone had become one of the first known seats in Europe for the cult of the Magdalene14 which, significantly enough, flourished there concurrently with the Judaic academy.
Jesus was of the Tribe of Judah and the royal house of David. The Magdalene is said to have carried the Grail the Sangraal or 'royal blood', into France. And in the eighth century there was, in the south of France, a potentate of the Tribe of Judah and the royal house of David, who was acknowledged as king of the Jews. He was not only a practising Jew, however. He was also a Merovingian. And through Wolfram von Eschenbach's poem, he and his family are associated with the Holy Grail.
The Seed of David
In later centuries assiduous attempts seem to have been made to expunge from the records all trace of the Jewish Kingdom of Septimania. The frequent confusion of 'Goths' and 'Jews' seems indicative of this censorship. But the censorship could not hope to be entirely successful. As late as 1143 Peter the Venerable of Cluny, in an address to Louis VII of France, condemned the Jews of Narbonne who claimed to have a king residing among them. In 1144 a Cambridge monk, one Theobald, speaks of 'the chief Princes and Rabbis of the Jews who dwell in Spain [and] assemble together at Narbonne where the royal seed resides.15 And in 1165.6 Benjamin of Tudela, a famous traveller and chronicler, reports that in Narbonne there are 'sages, magnates and princes at the head of whom is ... a descendant of the House of David as stated in his family tree.'16
But any seed of David residing in Narbonne by the twelfth century was of less consequence than certain other seed living elsewhere. Family trees bifurcate spread, subdivide and produce veritable forests. If certain descendants of Theodoric and Guillem de Gellone remained in Narbonne, there were others who over the intervening four centuries had attained more august domains. By the twelfth century these domains included the most illustrious in Christendom, Lorraine and the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem.
In the ninth century the bloodline of Guillem de Gellone had culminated in the first dukes of Aquitaine. It also became aligned with the ducal house of Brittany. And in the tenth century a certain Hugues de Plantard nicknamed 'Long Nose' and a lineal descendant of both Dagobert and Guillem de Gellone, became the father of Eustache, first Count of Boulogne. Eustache's grandson was Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine and conqueror of Jerusalem. And from Godfroi there issued a dynasty and a 'royal tradition' which by virtue of being founded on 'the rock of Sion', was equal to those presiding over France, England and Germany. If the Merovingians were indeed descended from Jesus, then Godfroi, scion of the Merovingian blood royal, had, in his conquest of Jerusalem, regained his rightful heritage.
Godfroi and the subsequent house of Lorraine were, of course, nominally Catholic. To survive in a now Christianised world, they would have had to be. But their origins seem to have been known about in certain quarters at least. As late as the sixteenth century it is reported that Henri de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, on entering the town of Joinville in Champagne, was received by exuberant crowds. Among them, certain individuals are recorded to have chanted 'Hosannah filio David' ('Hosannah to the Son of David').
It is not perhaps insignificant that this incident is recounted in a modern history of Lorraine, printed in 1966. The work contains a special introduction by Otto von Habsburg, who today is titular Duke of Lorraine and King of Jerusalem.17
CHAPTER 15 CONCLUSION AND PORTENTS FOR THE FUTURE
But if, for instance the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretation6 that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian's hope of immortality is invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity mankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?
Carl Jung, 'The Undiscovered Self', Collected Works, vol. 10 (1956) p. 266.
We had not, in the beginning, set out to prove or disprove anything, least of all the conclusion to which we had been ineluctably led. We had certainly not set out to challenge some of the most basic tenets of Christianity. On the contrary, we had begun by investigating a specific mystery. We were looking for answers to certain perplexing questions, explanations for certain historical enigmas. In the process we more or less stumbled upon something rather greater than we had initially bargained for. We were led to a startling, controversial and seemingly preposterous conclusion.
This conclusion compelled us to turn our attention to the life of Jesus and the origins of the religion founded upon him, When we did so, we were still not attempting to challenge Christianity. We were simply endeavouring to ascertain whether or not our conclusion was tenable. An
exhaustive consideration of Biblical material convinced us that it was. Indeed we became convinced that Our conclusion was not only tenable, but extremely probable,
We could not, and still cannot, prove the accuracy of our conclusion. It remains, to some extent at least, an hypothesis. But it is a plausible hypothesis, which makes coherent sense. It explains a great deal. And, so far as we are concerned, it constitutes a more historically likely account than any we have encountered of the events and personages which, two thousand years ago, imprinted themselves on Western consciousness, and, in the centuries that followed. shaped our culture and civilisation.
If we cannot prove our conclusion, however, we have received abundant evidence, from both their documents and their representatives, that the Prieure de Sion can On the basis of their written hints and their personal conversation with us, we are prepared to believe that Sion does possess something, something which does in some way amount to 'incontrovertible proof' of the hypothesis we have advanced. We do not know precisely what this proof might be. We can, however, make an educated guess.
If our hypothesis is correct, Jesus's wife and offspring (and he could have fathered a number of children between the ages of sixteen or seventeen and his supposed death), after fleeing the Holy Land, found a refuge in the south of France, and in a Jewish community there preserved their lineage. During the fifth century this lineage appears to have intermarried with the royal line of the Franks, thus engendering the Merovingian dynasty. In A.D. 496 the Church made a pact with this dynasty, pledging itself in perpetuity to the Merovingian bloodline, presumably in the full knowledge of that bloodline's true identity. This would explain why Clovis was offered the status of Holy Roman Emperor, of 'new Constantine', and why he was not created king, but only recognised as such.
When the Church colluded in Dagobert's assassination, and the subsequent betrayal of the Merovingian bloodline, it rendered itself guilty of a crime that could neither be rationalised nor expunged. It could only be suppressed. It would have had to be suppressed, for a disclosure of the Merovingians' real identity would hardly have strengthened Rome's position against her enemies.
Despite all efforts to eradicate it, Jesus's bloodline, or, at any rate, the Merovingian bloodline, survived. It survived in part through the Carolingians, who clearly felt more guilty about their usurpation than did Rome, and sought to legitimise themselves by dynastic alliances with Merovingian princesses. But more significantly it survived through Dagobert's son, Sigisbert, whose descendants included Guillem de Gellone, ruler of the Jewish kingdom of Septimania, and eventually Godfroi de Bouillon. With Godfroi's capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Jesus's lineage would have regained its rightful heritage, the heritage conferred upon it in Old Testament times.
It is doubtful that Godfroi's true pedigree during the time of the Crusades was as secret as Rome would have wished it to be. Given the Church's hegemony, there could not, of course, have been an overt disclosure. But it is probable that rumours, traditions and legends were rife; and these would seem to have found their most prominent expression in such tales as that of Lohengrin, for example, Godfroi's mythical ancestor, and, naturally, in the romances of the Holy Grail.
If our hypothesis is correct, the Holy Grail would have been at least two things simultaneously. On the one hand it would have been Jesus's bloodline and descendants the 'Sang Raal', the 'Real' or 'Royal' blood of which the Templars, created by the Prieure de Sion, were appointed guardians. At the same time the Holy Grail would have been, quite literally, the receptacle, or vessel, which received and contained Jesus's blood. In other words it would have been the womb of the Magdalene, and, by extension, the Magdalene herself. From this the cult of the Magdalene, as it was promulgated during the Middle Ages, would have arisen, and been confused with the cult of the Virgin. It can be proved, for instance, that many of the famous 'Black Virgins' or 'Black Madonnas' early in the Christian era were shrines not to the Virgin but to the Magdalene, and they depict a mother and child. It has also been argued that the Gothic cathedrals, those majestic stone replicas of the womb dedicated to 'Notre Dame', were also, as Le Serpent rouge states, shrines to Jesus's consort, rather than to his mother.
The Holy Grail, then, would have symbolised both Jesus's bloodline and the Magdalene, from whose womb that bloodline issued. But it may have been something else as well. In A.D. 70, during the great revolt in Judaea, Roman legions under Titus sacked the Temple of Jerusalem. The pillaged treasure of the Temple is said to have found its way eventually to the Pyrenees; and M. Plantard, in his conversation with us, stated that this treasure was in the hands of the Prieure de Sion today. But the Temple of Jerusalem may have contained more than the treasure plundered by Titus's centurions. In ancient Judaism religion and politics were inseparable. The Messiah was to be a priest-king, whose authority encompassed spiritual and secular domains alike. It is thus likely, indeed probable, that the Temple housed official records pertaining to Israel's royal line, the equivalents of the birth certificates, marriage licences and other relevant data concerning any modern royal or aristocratic family. If Jesus was indeed 'King of the Jews' the Temple is almost certain to have contained copious information relating to him. It may even have contained his body, or at least his tomb, once his body was removed from the temporary tomb of the Gospels.
There is no indication that Titus, when he plundered the Temple in A.D. 70, obtained anything in any way relevant to Jesus. Such material, if it existed, might of course have been destroyed. On the other hand it might also have been hidden; and Titus's soldiers, interested only in booty, might not have bothered to look for it. For any priest in the Temple at the time, there would have been one obvious course of action. Seeing a phalanx of centurions advancing upon him, he would have left them the gold, the jewels, the material treasure they expected to find. And he would have hidden, perhaps beneath the Temple, the items that were of greater consequence, items relating to the rightful king of Israel, the acknowledged Messiah and the royal family.
By 1100 Jesus's descendants would have risen to prominence in Europe and, through Godfroi de Bouillon, in Palestine as well. They themselves would have known their pedigree and ancestry. But they might not have been able to prove their identity to the world at large; and such proof may well have been deemed necessary for their subsequent designs. If it were known that such proof existed, or even possibly existed, in the precincts of the Temple, no effort would have been spared to find it. This would explain the role of the Knights Templar, who, under a cloak of secrecy, undertook excavations beneath the Temple, in the so-called Stables of Solomon. On the basis of the evidence we examined, there would seem to be little question that the Knights Templar were in fact sent to the Holy Land, with the express purpose of finding or obtaining something. And on the basis of the evidence we examined, they would seem to have accomplished their mission. They would seem to have found what they were sent to find, and to have brought it back to Europe. What became of it then remains a mystery. But there seems little question that, under the auspices of Bertrand de Blanchefort, fourth Grand Master of the Order of the Temple something was concealed in the vicinity of Rennes-le-chateau for which a contingent of German miners was imported, under the most stringent security, to excavate and construct a hiding-place One can only speculate about what might have been concealed there. It may have been Jesus's mummified body. It may have been the equivalent, so to speak, of Jesus's marriage licence, and for the birth certificates of his children. It may have been something of comparably explosive import. Any or all of these items might have been referred to as the Holy Grail. Any or all of these items might, by accident or design, have passed to the Cathar heretics and comprised part of the mysterious treasure of Montsegur.
Through Godfroi and Baudouin de Bouillon, a 'royal tradition' is said to have existed, which, because it was 'founded on the Rock of Sion', equalled in status the foremost dynasties of Europe. If, as the New Testament and later Freemasonry maintain, the 'Rock of Sion' is synonymous with Jesus, that assertion would suddenly make sense. Indeed it would be, if anything, an understatement.
Once installed on the throne of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the Merovingian dynasty could sanction and even encourage hints about its true ancestry. This would explain why the Grail romances appeared precisely when and where they did, and why they were so explicitly associated with the Knights Templar. In time, once its position in Palestine was consolidated, the 'royal tradition' descended from Godfroi and Baudouin would probably have divulged its origins. The king of Jerusalem would then have taken precedence over all the monarchs of Europe, and the patriarch of Jerusalem would have supplanted the pope. Displacing Rome, Jerusalem would then have become the true capital of Christendom, and perhaps of much more than Christendom. For if Jesus were acknowledged as a mortal prophet, as a priest-king and legitimate ruler of the line of David, he might well have become acceptable to both Muslims and Jews. As king of Jerusalem, his lineal descendant would then have been in a position to implement one of the primary tenets of Templar policy, the reconciliation of Christianity with Judaism and Islam.
Historical circumstances, of course, never allowed matters to reach this point. The Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem never consolidated its position. Beleaguered on every side by Muslim armies, unstable in its own government and administration, it never attained the strength and internal security it needed to survive, still less to assert its supremacy over the crowns of Europe and the Church of Rome. The grandiose design foundered; and with the loss of the Holy Land in 1291 it collapsed completely. The Merovingians were once again without a crown. And the Knights Templar were not only redundant but also expendable.
In the centuries that followed, the Merovingians, aided and/or directed and for protected by the Prieure de Sion made repeated attempts to regain their heritage, but these attempts were confined to Europe. They seem to have involved at least three interrelated but essentially distinct programmes. One was the creation of a psychological atmosphere, a clandestine tradition intended to erode the spiritual hegemony of Rome, a tradition that found expression in Hermetic and esoteric thought, in the Rosicrucian manifestos and similar writings, in certain rites of Freemasonry and, of course, in the symbols of Arcadia and the underground stream. A second programme entailed political machination, intrigue and, if feasible, an overt seizure of power, the techniques employed by the Guise and Lorraine families in the sixteenth century, and by the architects of the Fronde in the seventeenth. A third programme by which the Merovingians sought to regain their heritage was dynastic intermarriage.
On first consideration it might seem that such Byzantine procedures would have been unnecessary; it might seem that the Merovingians, if they were indeed descended from Jesus, would have had no trouble establishing their supremacy. They needed only to disclose and establish their real identity, and the world would acknowledge them. In fact, however, things would not have been so simple. Jesus himself was not recognised by the Romans. When it was expedient to do so, the Church had no compunction in sanctioning the murder of Dagobert and the overthrow of his bloodline. A premature disclosure of their pedigree would not have guaranteed success for the Merovingians. On the contrary, it would have been much more likely to misfire, to engender factional strife, precipitate a crisis in faith, and provoke challenges from both the Church and other secular potentates. Unless they were well entrenched in positions of power, the Merovingians could not have withstood such repercussions, and the secret of their identity, their trump card, as it were, would have been played and lost for ever. Given the realities of both history and politics, this trump card could not have been used as a stepping stone to power. It could only be played when power had already been acquired, played, in other words, from a position of strength.
In order to re-establish themselves, therefore, the Merovingians were obliged to resort to more conventional procedures, the accepted procedures of the particular age in question. On at least four occasions these procedures came frustratingly close to success, and were thwarted only by miscalculation, by force of circumstance or by the totally unforeseen. In the sixteenth century, for example, the house of Guise very nearly managed to seize the French throne. In the seventeenth century the Fronde very nearly succeeded in keeping Louis XIV from the throne and supplanting him with a representative of the house of Lorraine. In the late nineteenth century blueprints were laid for a species of revived Holy League, which would have unified Catholic Europe, Austria, France, Italy and Spain, under the Habsburgs. These plans were thwarted by the erratic and aggressive behaviour of both Germany and Russia, who provoked a constant shift of alliances among the major powers and eventually precipitated a war which toppled all the continental dynasties.
It was in the eighteenth century, however, that the Merovingian bloodline probably came closest to the realisation of its objectives. By virtue of its intermarriage with the Habsburgs, the house of Lorraine had actually acquired the throne of Austria, the Holy Roman Empire. When Marie Antoinette, daughter of Francois de Lorraine, became queen of France the throne of France, too, was only a generation or 80 away. Had not the French Revolution intervened, the house of Habsburg-Lorraine might well, by the early 1800s, have been on its way to establishing dominion over all Europe.
It would seem clear that the French Revolution was a devastating blow to Merovingian hopes and aspirations. In a single shattering cataclysm, the carefully laid and implemented designs of a century and a half were suddenly reduced to rubble. From references in the 'Prieure documents', moreover, it would seem that Sion, during the turmoil of the Revolution, lost many of its most precious records, and possibly other items as well. This might explain the shift in the Order's Grand Mastership to specifically French cultural figures who, like Nodier, had access to otherwise unobtainable material. It might also explain the role of Sauniere. Sauniere's predecessor, Antoine Bigou, had concealed, and possibly composed, the coded parchments on the very eve of the Revolution, and then fled to Spain, where, shortly after, he died. It is thus possible that Sion, for a time at any rate, did not know precisely where the parchments were. But even if they were known to have been in the church at Rennes-le-chateau, they could not easily have been retrieved with out a sympathetic priest on the spot, a man who would do Sion's bidding, refrain from embarrassing questions, keep silence, and not interfere with the Order's interests and activities. If the parchments, moreover, referred to something else, something concealed in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château, such a man would have been all the more essential
Saunière died without divulging his secret. So did his housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud. During the ensuing years there have been many excavations in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château, but none of them has yielded anything. If, as we assume, certain explosive items were once concealed in the environs, they would certainly have been removed when Sauniere's story began to attract attention and treasure-hunters, unless these items were concealed in some depository immune to treasure-hunters, in an underground crypt, for example, under a man-made pool on private property. Such a crypt would ensure safety and be proof against any unauthorised excavations. No such excavations would be possible unless the pool were first drained; and this could hardly be done clandestinely especially by trespassers on private land. In fact a manmade pool does exist near Rennes-le-Chateau, near a site called, appropriately enough, Lavaldieu (the Valley or Vale of God). This pool might well have been constructed over an underground crypt, which, in turn, might easily lead via a subterranean passageway to any of the myriad caves honeycombing the surrounding mountains.
As for the parchments found by Sauniere, two of them or, at any rate, facsimiles of two of them, have been reproduced, published and widely circulated. The other two, in contrast, have been kept scrupulously secret. In his conversation with us M. Plantard stated that they are currently in a safe deposit box in a Lloyds' bank in London. Further than that we have been unable to trace them.
And Sauniere's money? We know that some of it seems to have been obtained through a financial transaction involving the Archduke Johann von Habsburg. We also know that substantial sums were made available not only to Sauniere, but also to the bishop of Carcassonne, by the Abbe Henri Boudet, cure of Rennes-les-Bains There is reason to conclude that the bulk of Sauniere's revenue was paid to him by Boudet, through the intermediary Marie Denarnaud, Sauniere's housekeeper. Where Boudet, a poor parish priest himself, obtained such resources remains, of course, a mystery. He would clearly seem to have been a representative of the Prieure de Sion; but whether the money issued directly from Sion remains an unanswered question. It might equally well have issued from the treasury of the Habsburgs. Or it might have issued from the Vatican, which might have been subjected to high-level political blackmail by both Sion and the Habsburgs. In any case, the question of the money, or a treasure that engendered it, became, for us, increasingly incidental, when measured against our subsequent discoveries. Its chief function, in retrospect, had been to draw our attention to the mystery. After that, it paled to relative insignificance.
We have formulated an hypothesis of a bloodline, descended from Jesus, which has continued up to the present day. We cannot, of course, be certain that our hypothesis is correct in every detail. But even if specific details here and there are subject to modification, we are convinced that the essential outlines of our hypothesis are accurate. We may perhaps have misconstrued the meaning of, say, a particular Grand Master's activities, or an alliance in the power struggles and political machinations of eighteenth century politics. But our researches have persuaded us that the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau does involve a serious attempt, by influential people, to re-establish a Merovingian monarchy in France if not indeed in the whole of Europe, and that the claim to legitimacy of such a monarchy rests on a Merovingian descent from Jesus.
Viewed from this perspective a number of the anomalies, enigmas and unanswered questions raised by our researches become explicable. So do a great many of the seemingly trivial but equally baffling fragments: the title of the book associated with Nicolas Flamel, for example, The Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher to the Tribe of Jews who by the Wrath of God were Dispersed amongst the Gauls, or the symbolic Grail cup of Rene d'Anjou, which vouchsafed, to the man who quaffed it at a single draught, a vision of both God and the Magdalene; or Andrea's Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, which speaks of a mysterious girl-child of royal blood, washed ashore in a boat, whose rightful heritage has fallen into Islamic hands; or the secret to which Poussin was privy, as well as the 'Secret' said to 'lie at the heart' of the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement.
During the course of our research we had encountered 8 number of other fragments as well. At the time they had seemed either totally meaningless or irrelevant. Now, however, they, too, make sense. Thus it would now seem clear why Louis Xl regarded the Magdalene as a source of the French royal line, a belief which, even in the context of the fifteenth century, at first appeared absurd.l It would also be apparent why the crown of Charlemagne, a replica of which is now part of the imperial Habsburg regalia, is said to have borne the inscription 'Rex Salomon'.2 And it would be apparent why the Protocols of the Elders of Sion speak of a new king 'of the holy seed of David'.3
During the Second World War, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, the Cross of Lorraine became the symbol of the forces of Free France, under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle. In itself this is somewhat curious. Why should the Cross of Lorraine, the device of Rene d'Anjou, have been equated with France? Lorraine was never the heartland of France. For most of her history, in fact, Lorraine was an independent duchy, a Germanic state comprising part of the old Holy Roman Empire.
In part the Cross of Lorraine may have been adopted because of the important role the Prieure de Sion seems to have played in the French Resistance. In part it may have been adopted because of General de Gaulle's association with members of the Prieure de Sion, like M. Plantard. But it is interesting that, nearly thirty years before, the Cross of Lorraine figured provocatively in a poem by Charles Peguy. Not long before his death at the Battle of the Marne in 1914, Peguy, a close friend of Maurice Barres, author of La Colline inspiree, composed the following lines:
Les armes de Jesus c'est la croix de Lorraine,
Et le sang dans l'artere et le sang dans la veine,
Et la source de grace et la claire fontaine;
Les armes de Satan c'est la croix de Lorraine,
Et c'est la meme artere et c'est la meme veine
Et c'est le meme sang et la trouble fontaine ...
(The arms of Jesus are the Cross of Lorraine,
Both the blood in the artery and the blood in the vein,
Both the source of grace and the clear fountain;
The arms of Satan are the Cross of Lorraine,
And the same artery and the same vein,
And the same blood and the troubled fountain ...)4
In the late seventeenth century the Reverend Father Vincent, an historian and antiquarian in Nancy, wrote a history of Sion in Lorraine. He also wrote another work, entitled The True History of Saint Sigisbert, which also contains an account of the life of Dagobert II.5 On the title page of this latter work there is an epigraph, a quotation from the Fourth Gospel, 'He is among you and you do not know Him.'
Even before we began our research, we ourselves were agnostic, neither pro-Christian nor anti-Christian By virtue of our background and study of comparative religions we were sympathetic to the core of validity inherent in most of the world's major faiths, and indifferent to the dogma, the theology, the accouterments which comprise their superstructure. And while we could accord respect to almost every creed, we could not accord to any of them a monopoly on truth.
Thus, when our research led us to Jesus, we could approach him with what we hoped was a sense of balance and perspective. We had no prejudices or preconceptions one way or the other, no vested interests of any kind, nothing to be gained by either proving or disproving anything. In so far as 'objectivity' is possible, we were able to approach Jesus 'objectively', as an historian would be expected to approach Alexander, for example, or Caesar. And the conclusions that forced themselves upon us, though certainly startling, were not shattering. They did not necessitate a reappraisal of our personal convictions or shake our personal hierarchies of values.
But what of other people? What of the millions of individuals across the world for whom Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour, the Redeemer? To what extent does the historical Jesus, the priest-king who emerged from our research, threaten their faith? To what extent have we violated what constitutes for many people their most cherished understanding of the sacred?
We are well aware, of course, that our research has led us to conclusions that, in many respects, are inimical to certain basic tenets of modern Christianity, conclusions that are heretical, perhaps even blasphemous. From the standpoint of certain established dogma we are no doubt guilty of such transgressions. But we do not believe that we have desecrated, or even diminished, Jesus in the eyes of those who do genuinely revere him. And while we ourselves cannot subscribe to Jesus's divinity, our conclusions do not preclude others from doing so. Quite simply, there is no reason why Jesus could not have married and fathered children, while still retaining his divinity. There is no reason why his divinity should be dependent on sexual chastity. Even if he were the Son of God, there is no reason why he should not have wed and sired a family.
Underlying most Christian theology is the assumption that Jesus is God incarnate. In other words God, taking pity on His creation, incarnated Himself in that creation and assumed human form. By doing so He would be able to acquaint Himself at first-hand, so to speak, with the human condition. He would experience at first-hand the vicissitudes of human existence. He would come to understand, in the most profound sense, what it means to be a man, to confront from a human standpoint the loneliness, the anguish, the helplessness, the tragic mortality that the status of manhood entails. By dint of becoming man God would come to know man in a way that the Old Testament does not allow. Renouncing His Olympian aloofness and remoteness, He would partake, directly, of man's lot. By doing so, He would redeem man's lot, would validate and justify it by partaking of it, suffering from it and eventually being sacrificed by it.
The symbolic significance of Jesus is that he is God exposed to the spectrum of human experience, exposed to the first-hand knowledge of what being a man entails. But could God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the human condition? Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity?
We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children.
433
The Jesus of the Gospels, and of established Christianity, is ultimately incomplete, a God whose incarnation as man is only partial. The Jesus who emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what Christianity would have him be.
On the whole, then, we do not think we have compromised or belittled Jesus. We do not think he has suffered from the conclusions to which our research led us. From our investigations emerges a living and plausible Jesus, a Jesus whose life is both meaningful and comprehensible to modern man.
We cannot point to one man and assert that he is Jesus's lineal descendant. Family trees bifurcate, subdivide and in the course of centuries multiply into veritable forests. There are at least a dozen families in Britain and Europe today, with numerous collateral branches, who are of Merovingian lineage. These include the houses of Habsburg-Lorraine (present titular dukes of Lorraine and kings of Jerusalem), Plantard, Luxembourg, Montpezat, Montesquieu and various others. According to the 'Prieure documents', the Sinclair family in Britain is also allied to the bloodline, as are the various branches of the Stuarts. And the Devonshire family, among others, would seem to have been privy to the secret. Most of these houses could presumably claim a pedigree from Jesus; and if one man, at some point in the future, is to be put forward as a new priest-king, we do not know who he is.
But several things, at any rate, are clear. So far as we personally are concerned, Jesus's lineal descendant would not be any more divine, any more intrinsically miraculous, than the rest of us. This attitude would undoubtedly be shared by a great many people today. We suspect it is shared by the Prieure de Sion as well. Moreover the revelation of an individual, or group of individuals, descended from Jesus would not shake the world in the way it might have done as recently as a century or two ago. Even if there were 'incontrovertible proof' of such a lineage, many people would simply shrug and ask, 'So what?' As a result there would seem to be little point in the Prieure de Sion's elaborate designs unless those designs are in some crucial way linked with politics. Whatever the theological repercussions of our conclusions, there would seem, quite clearly, to be other repercussions as well, political repercussions with a potentially enormous impact, affecting the thinking, the values, the institutions of the contemporary world in which we live.
Certainly in the past, the various families of Merovingian descent were thoroughly steeped in politics, and their objectives included political power. This would also seem to have been true of the Prieure de Sion and a number of its Grand Masters. There is no reason to assume that politics should not be equally important to both Sion and the bloodline today. Indeed all the evidence suggests that Sion thinks in terms of a unity between what used to be called Church and State, a unity of secular and spiritual, sacred and profane, politics and religion. In many of its documents Sion asserts that the new king, in accordance with Merovingian tradition, would 'rule but not govern'. In other words he would be a priest-king, who functions primarily in a ritual and symbolic capacity; and the actual business of governing would be handled by someone else, conceivably by the Prieure de Sion.
During the nineteenth century the Prieure de Sion, working through Freemasonry and the Hieron du Val d'Or, attempted to establish a revived and 'updated' Holy Roman Empire, a kind of theocratic United States of Europe, ruled simultaneously by the Habsburgs and by a radically reformed Church. This enterprise was thwarted by the First World War and the fall of Europe's reigning dynasties. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that Sion's present objectives are basically similar, at least in their general outlines, to those of the Hieron du Val d'Or.
Needless to say, our understanding of those objectives can only be speculative. But they would seem to include a theocratic United States of Europe, a trans or pan-European confederation assembled into a modern empire and ruled by a dynasty descended from Jesus. This dynasty would not only occupy a throne of political or secular power, but, quite conceivably, the throne of Saint Peter as well. Under that supreme authority there might then be an interlocking network of kingdoms or principalities, connected by dynastic alliance and intermarriage, a kind of twentieth-century 'feudal system', but without the abuses usually associated with that term. And the actual process of governing would presumably reside with the Prieure de Sion, which might take the form of, say, a European Parliament endowed with executive and/or legislative powers.
A Europe of this sort would constitute a new and unified political force in international affairs, an entity whose status would ultimately be comparable to that of the Soviet Union, or the United States. Indeed it might well emerge stronger than either, because it would rest on deep-rooted spiritual and emotional foundations, rather than on abstract, theoretical or ideological ones. It would appeal not only to man's head, but to his heart as well. It would draw its strength from tapping the collective psyche of Western Europe, awakening the fundamental religious impulse.
Such a programme may well appear quixotic. But history by now should have taught us not to underestimate the potential of the collective psyche, and the power to be obtained by harnessing it. A few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that a religious zealot, without an army of his own, without a political party behind him, without anything at his disposal save charisma and the religious hunger of a people, could single-handedly topple the modern and superbly equipped edifice of the Shah's regime in Iran. And yet that is precisely what the Ayatollah Khomeini managed to do.
We are not, of course, sounding a warning. We are not implicitly or explicitly, comparing the Prieure de Sion to the Ayatollah. We have no reason to think Sion sinister as one might the demagogue of Iran. But the demagogue of Iran bears eloquent witness to the deep-rooted character, the energy, the potential power of man's religious impulse, and the ways in which that impulse can be channelled to political ends. Such ends need not entail an abuse of authority. They may be as laudable as those of Churchill or de Gaulle were during the Second World War. The religious impulse can be channelled in any of innumerable directions. It is a source of immense potential power. And it is all too often ignored or overlooked by modern governments founded on, and often fettered to, reason alone. The religious impulse reflects a profound psychological and emotional need. And psychological and emotional needs are every bit as real as the need for bread, for shelter, for material security.
We know that the Prieure de Sion is not a 'lunatic fringe' organisation. We know it is well financed and includes or, at any rate, commands sympathy from, men in responsible and influential positions in politics, economics media, the arts. We know that since 1956 it has increased its membership more than fourfold, as if it were mobilising or preparing for something; and M. Plantard told us personally that he and his Order were working to a more or less precise timetable. We also know that since 1956 Sion has been making certain information available, discreetly, tantalisingly, in piecemeal fashion, in measured quantities just sufficient to provide alluring hints. Those hints provoked this book.
If the Prieure de Sion intends to 'show its cards', the time is ripe for it to do so. The political systems and ideologies which, in the early years of our century, seemed to promise so much have virtually all displayed a degree of bankruptcy. Communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, Western-style democracy have all, in one way or another, betrayed their promise, jaundiced their adherents and failed to fulfil the dreams they engendered. Because of their small-mindedness, lack of perspective and abuse of office, politicians no longer inspire confidence, only distrust. In the West today there is increasing cynicism, dissatisfaction and disillusion. There is increasing psychic stress, anxiety and despair. But there is also an intensifying quest for meaning, for emotional fulfilment, for a spiritual dimension to our lives, for something in which genuinely to believe. There is a longing for a renewed sense of the sacred that amounts, in effect, to a full-scale religious revival, exemplified by the proliferation of sects and cults, for example, and the swelling tide of fundamentalism in the United States. There is also, increasingly, a desire for a true 'leader', not a Fuhrer, but a species of wise and benign spiritual figure, a 'priest-king' in whom mankind can safely repose its trust. Our civilisation has sated itself with materialism and in the process become aware of a more profound hunger. It is now beginning to look elsewhere, seeking the fulfilment of emotional, psychological and spiritual needs.
Such an atmosphere would seem eminently conducive to the Prieure de Sion's objectives. It places Sion in the position of being able to offer an alternative to existing social and political systems. Such an alternative is hardly likely to constitute Utopia or the New Jerusalem. But to the extent that it satisfies needs which existing systems do not even acknowledge it could well prove immensely attractive.
There are many devout Christians who do not hesitate to interpret the Apocalypse as nuclear holocaust. How might the advent of Jesus's lineal descendant be interpreted? To a receptive audience, it might be a kind of Second Coming.
THE END
Postscript to the Paperback Edition
Since the publication of our book, much new material has been forthcoming. Some readers, with extremely important new information, have been open and generous in passing it on to us. Others have preferred to be cryptic, enigmatic and elliptical, speaking mysteriously of unspecified knowledge they possess, or unspecified research they have done which has led to equally unspecified conclusions of a startling/amazing/shattering/definitive nature. Such hints may indeed attest to new and valid material or to an irrelevant intellectual ingenuity and a need for spurious mystification.
In any case, we have received letters from people so aggressively over-cautious and secretive that we wonder why they bothered to write to us at all. Their shroud of obscurity and opacity seems to have been generated by a fear (verging sometimes on paranoia) that they may be deprived, unscrupulously, of the fruits of their work, that we might steal the results of their research, or their decipherments, or the treasure they are convinced they have located, and leave them unacknowledged, unrecognised, unrewarded.
In The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, we have presented our material openly. We have also supplied information about relevant sources, in order that others may be stimulated to research of their own. The time for mystification is now past. We hope that readers who have what they consider worthwhile material will be as forthcoming as we have tried to be. We urge them, if possible, to publish it themselves. Alternatively, we request them to make their findings available to us.
We hereby publicly state that no such material will be published, used or exploited by us unless some prior and mutually acceptable arrangement has been concluded with those who provide it. We also publicly state that all such material, if used by us in any way, will be duly acknowledged in a fashion that is likewise mutually acceptable. We would also like to state that we have NO interest, beyond the historical and archaeological, in any 'treasure' uncovered in connection with Rennes-le-Chateau. We wish only to observe and record such discoveries as and when they might be made. Any cash rewards accruing from any 'treasure' would remain with those whose information leads to the location of the relevant site.
SOME REFERENCES to The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail [13 K checked]
Chapter 11 The Holy Grail
1 These very likely had some connection with Otto Rahn, see Chapter 2, n. 9.
2 Philippe of Flanders often visited Champagne, and in 1182 tried unsuccessfully to marry Marie of Champagne (daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine) who had been widowed the year before. Le Conte del Graal probably dates from about this time.
There is a connection between the house of Alsace and that of Lorraine. Gerard of Alsace, on the death of his brother in 1048, became the first hereditary duke of Haut-Lorraine, today simply Lorraine. All subsequent dukes of Lorraine traced their ancestry back to him.
3 It seems that there may have been some Grail 'source document' to which Philippe of Flanders had access, and which formed the basis of both Chretien's and Robert de Boron's romances. Professor Loomis says that one is forced to assume a common source for the Quest and Robert de Boron's romance. He feels that Robert de Boron was telling the truth when he referred to a book about the secrets of the Grail which provided the bulk of his information. See Loomis, The Grail, pp. 233 ff.
4 An argument for this is put forward by Barber, R., Knight and Chivalry, p. 126.
5 Perlesvaus, p. 359.
6 Ibid., p. 2.
7 Ibid., p. 214.
8 Ibid., p. 360.
9 Ibid., pp. 199 ff.
10 Ibid., p. 82.
11 Ibid., p. 89.
12 Ibid., p. 268.
13 Ibid., p. 12.
14 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, pp. 243 ff.
15 Ibid., p. 251.
16 Ibid., p. 253.
17 Ibid., p. 129.
18 Ibid., p. 130.
19 Ibid., pp. 251 ff.
20 Ibid., p. 251, n. 11.
21 Ibid., p. 252.
22 Ibid., p. 252.
23 Rahn, Croisade contre le Graal, pp. 77 ff., and La Cour de Lucifer, p. 69.
24 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal, pp. 263 ff.
25 Ibid., p. 264.
26 Ibid., p. 426.
27 Barral, Légendes Capétiennes, p. 64.
28 It is interesting that the French city of Avallon dates back to Merovingian times. It was the capital of a region, then a comté, which was part of the kingdom of Aquitaine. It gave its name to the whole region, the Avallonnais.
29 Greub, 'The Pre-Christian Grail Tradition', p. 68.
30 Halevi, Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree, pp. 194, 201. Fortune, Mystical Qabalah, p. 188.
31 It is sometimes said that the Christian and Cabalistic traditions did not come together until the fifteenth century in the hands of such writers as Pico della Mirandola. However, the Perlesvaus would seem to prove that they had fused by the beginning of the thirteenth century. This is an area which needs more study. The particular images in the Perlesvaus are those normally associated with the Cabalah as it is used magically.
32 Queste del Saint Graal, p. 34.
33 It may perhaps be echoing the fact that King Dagobert spent much of his youth in Britain.
34 Queste del Saint Graal, introduction, pp. 16 ff.
Chapter 12 The Priest-King Who Never Ruled
1 Smith, Secret Gospel, pp. 14 ff.
2 Ibid., pp. 15 ff.
3 Ibid., p. 16.
4 Ibid., pp. 16 ff. The youth naked save for a linen cloth appears later in Mark 14:51-2 When Jesus is betrayed in Gethsemane, he is accompanied by 'a certain young man, having linen cloth cast about his naked body'.
5 The oldest manuscripts of the Scriptures, including the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, do not have the present ending to Mark. In both of them Mark's gospel finishes at 16:8. Both date from the fourth century, the time when the whole Bible was collected into one volume for the first time.
6 Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, p. 99.
7 Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel, p. 423.
8 Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, p.16.
9 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p.99.
10 Charles Davis, reported in the Observer (London, March 28th, 1971), p. 25.
11 Phipps, Sexuality of Jesus, p. 44.
12 Smith, Jesus the Magician, pp. 81 ff.
13 Brownlee, 'Whence the Gospel According to John', p. 192.
14 Schonfield, Passover Plot, pp. 119, 134 ff.
15 Ibid., p. 256.
16 The standard tradition is given in Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, in the Life of S. Mary Magdalen, pp. 73 ff. This dates from 1270. The earliest written form of this tradition would appear to be the 'Life of Mary Magdalen' by Rabanus (776-856), Archbishop of Mainz. It is in The Antiquities of Glastonbury, by William of Malmesbury, that the extension of the legend, Joseph of Arimathea coming to Britain, first occurs. It is often considered a later addition to William's account.
17 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 21, mentions that in Talmudic sayings the Aramaic noun denoting carpenter or craftsman (naggar) stands for learned man or scholar.
18 Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, pp. 57 ff., quotes Philo of Alexandria describing Pilate as 'cruel by nature'.
19 Cohn, H., Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 97 ff.
20 All scholars concur that no such privilege existed. The purpose of the fiction is to increase the guilt of the Jews. See Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, p. 259, Cohn, H., Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 166 ff. (Haim Cohn is an ex-attorney-general of Israel, member of the Supreme Court, and lecturer on historical law), and Winter, P., On the Trial of Jesus. p. 94.
21 As Professor Brandon says (Jesus and the Zealots, p. 328) all inquiry concerning the historical Jesus must start from the fact of his execution by the Romans for sedition. Brandon adds that the tradition of his being 'King of the Jews' must be accepted as authentic. In view of its embarrassing character, the early Christians would not have invented such a title.
22 Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, p. 216.
23 Brandon, Trial of Jesus, p. 34.
24 Joyce, Jesus Scroll, p. 106.
25 For crucifixion details see Winter, On the Trial of Jesus, pp.62 ff., and Cohn, H., Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 230 ff.
26 See Schonfield, Passover Plot, pp. 154 ff., for details.
27 An argument for this identification is given by Allegro, The Copper Scroll, pp. 100 ff.
28 Cohn, H., Trial and Death of Jesus, p. 238.
29 See The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, p. 214 (Mark 15:43,45).
30 Joyce, Jesus Scroll. The author claims that while in Israel he was asked to help smuggle a stolen scroll from the Masada excavations out of the country. Although he refused, he claims to have seen the scroll. It was signed Yeshua ben Ya'akob ben Gennesareth who described himself as eighty years old and added that he was the last of the rightful kings of Israel (p. 22). The name, when translated into English, becomes Jesus of Gennesareth, son of Jacob. Joyce identifies the author as Jesus of Nazareth.
Chapter 13 The Secret the Church Forbade
1 Eisler, Messiah Jesus, pp. 606 ff.
2 Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 125.
3 Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 7, pp. 178 ff.
4 See Halsberghe, The Cult of Sol Invictus. The author explains that this cult was brought to Rome in the third century A.D. by the Emperor Elagabalus. When Aurelian introduced his religious reform it was in fact a re-establishment of the cult of Sol Invictus as originally introduced.
5 218 for, 2 against. The Son was then pronounced identical with the Father.
6 It was not until 384 that the Bishop of Rome called himself 'Pope' for the first time.
7 There is a possibility that some may be discovered. In 1976 a large repository of old manuscripts was discovered at the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai. The find was kept quiet for some two years before news was leaked to a German newspaper in 1978. There are thousands of fragments, some dating from before A.D. 300, including eight missing pages from the Codex Sinaiticus now in the British Museum. The monks who hold the bulk of the material have granted access only to one or two Greek scholars. See International Herald Tribune (April 27th, 1978).
8 Gospel of Peter, 5:5.
9 Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, 2:4.
10 Maccoby, Revolution in Judaea, p. 129. The author adds that the portrayal of Jesus as anti-Pharisee was probably part of the attempt to show him as a rebel against the Jewish religion rather than as a rebel against Rome.
11 Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, p. 327. See also Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 50, 'Zealot or not, Jesus was certainly charged, prosecuted and sentenced as one.'
12 Allegro, Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 167.
13 Ibid., p.175.
14 Josephus, Jewish War, p. 387.
15 Ibid., p. 387.
16 Ibid., appendix, p. 400.
17 Eisler, Messiah Jesus, p.427.
18 Ibid., p. 167.
19 Irenaeus, Five Books ... against Heresies, p. 73.
20 Koran,4:157. See also Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur'an, pp. 108 ff.
21 Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, pp. xvi ff.
22 The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, in Robinson, J., Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 332.
23 The Gospel of Mary, in Robinson, J., Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 472.
24 Ibid., p.473.
25 Ibid.
26 The Gospel of Philip, in Robinson, J., Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 140.
27 Ibid., pp. 135 ff.
28 Phipps, Was Jesus Married?, pp. 136 ff.
29 The Gospel of Philip, in Robinson, J., Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 138.
30 Ibid., p.139.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., p.148.
Chapter 14 The Grail Dynasty
1 Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur'an, pp.110 ff.
2 Blancasall, Les Descendants, p. 9.
3 Koran, 4:157.
4 There was the sacred Bull of Meroe, at Heliopolis. That bulls were regarded highly by the Sicambrians is shown by the fact that a gold bull's head was found buried with Childeric, the father of Clovis.
5 Henri Lobineau, Dossiers secrets, planche no. 1 950-1400, n. 1.
6 Rabinowitz, 'De Migrantibus'.
7 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, pp. 36 ff.
8 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, p. 59.
9 Ponsich, 'Le Conflent', p. 244, n. 10. See also Levillain 'Nibelungen', year 50 (1938) genealogy facing p.46.
10 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, p. 81.
11 Ibid., p. 197.
12 William, Count of Orange, The Crowning of Louis, p. 4 (9)
13 Part of it now forms 'The Cloisters' in New York.
14 Saxer, Marie Madeleine, vol. 2, p. 412. The cult, observing the day of January 19th, dates from at least A.D. 792-5.
15 Zuckerman, Jewish Princedom, p. 64.
16 Ibid., p. 58.
17 Pange, Maison de Lorraine, p. 60.
Chapter 15 Conclusion and Portents for the Future
1 Lacordaire, St Mary Magdalen, p. 185.
2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn (1972), Crown and Regalia, fig. 2.
3 Nilus, Protocols, no. 24.
4 Péguy, Charles, 'La Tapisserie de Sainte Geneviève', in Oeuvres poétiques complètes (Paris, 1957), p. 849.
5 Saint Sigisbert was the father of Dagobert II.
Appendix: The Alleged Grand Masters of the Prieure de Sion
1 See Digot, P., Notre-Dame-de-Sion, p. 8. We obtained a copy of the original charter of this Order, the records being held in the Bibliotheque Municipale, Nancy.
2 Fédié Le Comte de Razes, p. 119.
3 Birch, Life of Robert Boyle, p. 274.
4 Ibid.
5 See Manuel, Portrait of Isaac Newton, and Dobbs, Foundations of Newton's Alchemy.
6 Newton was also a supporter of the Socinians, a religious group who believed that Jesus was divine by office rather than by nature. They were Arian in orientation. Newton himself was described as an Arian
7 Perey; Charles de Lorraine, p. 287.
FULL INDEX
Page numbers in italics refer to Notes and References
Acre, 68, 127
Adam, Abbot of Orleans, 127
Alaric the Great, 35
Albi, 45
Albigensian Crusade, 33, 42-3, 50-1
Albigensians, see Cathars
Alchemy, 155, 311, 455, 456-7
Alexandria, Athanasius, Bishop of, see Athanasius
Alexandria, Clement, Bishop of, see Clement
Alpina, Grande Lodge, 97, 104, 218, 238
Alsace, Gerard d', 510
Alsace, Philippe d', Count of Flanders, 300, 510
Amatus, Saint, Bishop of Sion, 262,506
Andrea, Johann Valentin, 125, 133,134,145,147,453; Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, 125,145, 430
Anjou, Count of, 85
Anjou, Fulques, Count of, 316
Anjou, house of, 316
Anjou, Iolande d', 140
Anjou, René d', 133, 138-40, 168, 299, 430, 446-7
Anson, George, 191
Antoine l'Ermite, 96, 97: Un Trésor mérovingien à Rennes-le-Château, 103-4
Apocrypha, 389-90
Arc, Jeanne d', 139-40
Arcadia, 140-1, 249-50, 285-9
Arcadia, see Sannazaro, Jacopo
Arcons, César d', 92
Arianism, 45, 255, 263, 408-9, 516
Arimathea, Joseph of, 299, 362, 375-6, 390
Arius, 407
Arnaldus, Prior, 113
Arques, 39, 41
Arsenal Library, Paris, 154-5
Ashmole, Elias, 147
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, 333
Auvergne, Bernard d', 275
Axel, see Villiers, P.A., Comte de l'Isle Adam
Bannockburn, Battle of, 74
Baphomet, 29
Bar, Catherine de, 453
Bar, Edouard de, Count, 133, 168, 443
Bar, Iolande de,133, 447-8
Bar, Jean de,444
Bar, Jeanne de,444
Bar, Louis de, Cardinal, 447
Barabbas, Jesus, 368-71
Barberie, Château, 184-5, 217, 223
Barres, Everard des, 131, 491
Barrès, Maurice,463; La Colline inspirée, 161
Basilides, 401
Baudouin 1, King of Jerusalem, 61, 111, 116-17
Belle-Isle, Marquis of, 187
Benedict X, Pope, 71
Benjamin, Tribe of, 282-7, 365 Bera Vl, 276
Bernard, Saint, 49, 88-9, 118 In Praise of the New Knighthood, 63
Bésalou, Miron 'le Lévite' Count of, see Miron 'le Lévite'
Bethania, Villa (Rennes-le-Château), 28-9. 32, 170, 204, 361
Béthanie, 'arch', 361
Bethany, Mary of, 352-3
Béziers, 43
Bézu, 25, 91
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 96-7, 103-4
Bieil, Abbé, 26
Bigou, Abbé Antoine, 25, 28, 428
Blancassal, Madeleine (Les Descendants mérovingiens et l'enigme du Razès wisigoth), 97
Blanche, Queen of Castile, 224
Blanchefort 484
Blanchefort, Bertrand de,25,34, 69, 91, 130, 425, 484, 490
Blanchefort, family of, 107
Blanchefort, Marie, Marquise d'Hautpoul de, 28 30
Blavatsky, H. P., 77
Bogomils, 52
Bois, Jules, 159
Bonhomme, Pierre, 212
Boniface VIII, Pope, 71
Bonne Soirée, 223
Boron, Robert de (Roman de l'Estoire dou Saint Graal), 300- 1
Botticelli (Sandro Filipepi), 133, 134, 144, 448-9
Boudet, Abbé Henri, 25, 42, 160, 204, 206, 429
Bouillon, Duke of, 151, 178
Bouillon, Godfroi de, 107, 112-13, 114, 117-18, 278-9, 295, 419-20, 508
Bouillon, Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Duke of, see Tour d'Auvergne
Boulogne, Eustache, Count of, see Eustache, Count of Boulogne
Bourdon, Raynier, 128
Boyle, Robert, 133, 134, 148, 453-5, 492
Bran the Blessed, 82, 297
Brandon, Professor S. G. F. 366
Brownlee, Professor Wiliiam, 359
Bruno, Giordano, 452
Buonarroti, Filippo Michele, 493
Burrus, Lionel, 216-18
Cabalism, 44, 318-19
Calvé, Emma, 27, 42, 159, 464
Camisards, 51, 150, 458
Campagne-sur-Aude, 92
Cana, wedding at, 348, 364
Carcassonne, 41
Carcassonne, Bishop of, 205
Carpocratians, 335-6
Castelnau, Pierre de, 50
Castile, Blanche, Queen of, see Blanche
Cathars, 33-4, 41-58; doctrine 46-9; origins, 51-2; treasure, 52, 54, 57-8; links with Templars, 69-70; see also Albigensian Crusade
Catholic Modernist Movement, 38, 196-7
Catholic Rose-Croix, the Temple and the Grail, Order of the, 160-1; see also Rosicrucians
Catholic Weekly of Geneva, 216
Cercle d'Ulysse, Le, see Delaude, Jean
Cévennes, Prophets of, see Camisards
Chalons, Hugues de, 486
Chalons, Jean de, 486
Champagne, Count of, see Hugues, Count of Champagne
Champagne, Countess of, see Marie, Countess of Champagne
Charlemagne, Emperor, 268-9
Charnay, Geoffroi de, 73
Chartres, Bishop of 85-6
Chartres, Fulk de, 62, 83
Chateaubriand, François-René, 156
Chaumeil, Jean-Luc (Le Trésor du triangle d'or),205,225,233
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, see Andrea, Johann V.
Chérisey, Philippe de, 224-5, 500
Chevalerie d'Institutions et Regles Catholiques, d'Union Indépendante et Traditionaliste, 210
Childeric I, King, 248
Childeric III, King, 248, 266
Chrétien de Troyes, 87; Le Conte del Graal, 299-300
Christ, Knights of, see Knights of Christ
Christian Unions, 147
Christian, Paul, see Pitois, Jean B.
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, see Newton, Sir Isaac
Circuit, 210, 239, 240, 241, 501-3
Cîteaux, Abbot of, 50
Claverhouse, John, Viscount of Dundee, 74
Clement, Bishop of Alexandria, 334
Clement V, Pope (Bertrand de Goth), 71, 76, 93
Clement XII, Pope, 192
Clovis I, King, 254-7, 422
Cocteau, Jean, 133, 161-4, 465
Colline inspirée, La, see Barres, Maurice
Comenius, see Komensky, Adam
Committees of Public Safety, 232, 240
Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, see Saint-Sacrement, Compagnie du
'Constantine, Donation of', see 'Donation of Constantine'
Constantine, Emperor, 266-7, 385-9, 408
Constantius, Emperor, 408
Conte del Graal, Le, see Chrétien de Troyes
'Copper Scroll', see Dead Sea Scrolls
Corbu, Noel, 31
Crescent, Order of the, 447
Cyrene, Simon of, 401
Dagobert II, King: treasure, 34, 262: bloodline. 106, 329; biography, 259-64; assassination, 263-4, 506; erased from history, 269-71, 507; account of his life, 432
Dagobert, Saint, Church of (Stenay), 264
Dead Sea Scrolls, 393; Copper Scroll, 87
Debussy, Claude, 133-4, 158-61,162,464-5
Dee, John, 145, 452, 492
Defagot, Pierre; 212
De Gaulle, Charles. see Gaulle Ch, de
Delaude, Jean (Le Cercle d'Ulysse), 96-7, 428
Delaval, Jean, 212
Delmas, Abbé, 481-Z
De Molay Society, 77
Denarnaud, Marie, 24, 30-1, 204, 429
Denyau, Robert, 126, 507
Desaguliers, Jean, 150, 154, 456
Descadeillas, René, 96
Descendants mérovingiens et l'enigme du flozes wisigoth, Les, see Blancassal, Madeleine
Doinel, Jules,41, 159-60,507
'Donation of Constantine'. 266-7
Dossiers secrets, see Lobineau, Henri
Dron, François, see Pinchon, Abbé
Ducaud-Bourget, François, Abbé, 220-1, 223, 224, 229
Duillier, Nicolas Fatio de, see Fatio de Duillier, N,
Du Moulin. Pierre, 453
Dundee, John Claverhouse, Viscount of, see Claverhouse, John
Dury, John, 454
Edward II, King of England, 74
Eleazar, 397
Elisachar, Abbot, 411
Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Russia, 198
Encausse, Dr Gérard, see Papus
Ermite, Antoine l', see Antoine l'Ermite
Eschenbach, see Wolfram von Eschenbach
Essenes, 393-5, 398
Este, Anne d', Duchess of Gisors. 173
Estoire dou Saint Graal, Roman de l', see Boron, Robert de
Eustache, Count of Boulogne, 419
Evreux, Blanche d', 133, 445
Fakhar ul Islam, 99
Fatio de Duillier, Nicolas, 150, 455-6, 458
Fédération des Forces Françaises, 240
Ferri, Lord of Sion-Vaudémont, 448
Feugère, Pierre, 100, 102
Fidelité, L'Ordre de la, 447
Filipepi, Sandro. see Botticelli
Flamel, Nicolas, 133, 134, 155, 313, 430,445-6, 457
Flanders, Philippe d'Alsace, Count of, see Alsace, Philippe
Flegetanis, 308
Fludd, Robert, 133, 134, 137, 145, 452-3
Fludd, Sir Thomas, 452
Forces Françaises, Federation des, see Federation des Forces Françaises
Fouquet, Charles, Archbishop of Narbonne, 180, 185
Fouquet, Louis, Abbé, 38, 185 -6
Fouquet, Nicolas, 39, 185-6
Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, 145-6
Freemasons, 76-7, 151, 153 'Scottish Rite', 149, 205, 'Strict Observance', 151, 201; excommunicntion, 192: origins, 276
Fronde, 178, 427
Fulques, Count of Anjou, see Anjou, Fulques, Count of
Gaulle, Gen. Charles de, 232
Gellone, Guillem de, Count of Razès, 272-4, 296, 317, 413, 416
Gentleman's Club of Spalding, 150, 154, 456
Girard, Abbot of Orleans, 127
Gisors, 105, 121, 126, 156, 170, 187, 444
Gisors, Anne d'Este, Duchess of, see Este, Anne d'
Gisors, family of, 107, 442
Gisors, Guillaume de, 128-9, 133, 135, 443
Gisors, Jean de, 123, 127, 133, 135, 441
Gnosticism, 384, 399-404
'Gnostic Gospels', see Nag Hammadi Scrolls
Gonzaga, Claire de, 449
Gonzaga, Ferrante de (Ferdinand de Gonzague), 133, 144, 173, 450-1
Gonzaga, Louis, see Nevers, Louis de
Gonzague, Ferdinand de, see Gonzaga, Ferrante de
Gospels: disparity between New Testament Gospels,33Z- 3; suppression of sections of, 334; history of 343-6; Mark's Gospel, 344; Luke's Gospel, 344; Matthew's Gospel, 344; John's Gospel, 345, 358; Gospel of Peter, 389-90; Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, 390; Gospel of Thomas, 402; Gospel of Mary, 403; Gospel of Philip, 404
Gospels, Gnostic, see Nag Hammadi Scrolls
Goth, Bertrand de, see Clement V, Pope
Goth, Seigneur de. 93
Gothie, Marquis of, 274
Grail, 295-330; connection with Cathars, 34, 41, 56; Templars guardians of, 78; brought to France, 102; René d'Anjou and, 140, 430; romances, 297-317; 'Sang Real', 320
Grail family, 312-17
Grande Lodge Alpina, see Alpina, Grande Lodge
Grimoald, 259
Grousset, René, 111
Gruter, Janus, 452
Guaïta, Marquis Stanislas de, 159
Guercino, Giovanni Francesco, 188-9
Guise, Charles, Duke of, 177,453
Guise, François, Duke of, 173
Guise, Henry of Lorraine, Duke of, see Lorraine, Henry of
Guise, house of, 173-5, 427
Guise, Marie de, 145
Guzman, Dominic, 50
Haak, Theodore, 147
Habsburg, house of, 207. 428
Habsburg, Johann von, Archduke, 29, 36, 429
Habsburg, Leopold Wilheim von, 248
Habsburg, Maximilian von, see Lorraine, Maximilian de
Habsburg, Dr Otto von,107, 434
Habsburg-Lorraine, house of, 107, 434
Hartlib, Samuel, 147, 454
Hautpoul de Blanchefort, Marie, Marquise d', see Blanchefort, Marie, Marquise d'Hautpoul
Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, see Lorraine, Henry of
Henry II, King of England,121-2
Henry III, King of England, 66-7
Hermit, Peter the, see Peter the Hermit
Hiéron du Val d'Or, 206-8
Hisler, Anne Lea, 231
History and Practice of Magic, see Pitois, Jean B.
History of Secret Societies in the Army under Napoleon, see Nodier, Charles
Hoffet, Emile, 26, 37, 38, 159, 197, 464, 498
Holy Grail, see Grail
Holy Roman Empire, 207
Hospitallers of Saint John, 74, 75
Hugo, Jean, 162
Hugo, Victor, 133, 134, 156, 195, 200, 462-4
Hugues, Count of Champagne, 85, 86, 89, 90, 11fi, 118
Hund, Karl Gottlieb von, 151-3
Infancy of Jesus Christ, Gospel of the, 390
Innocent II, Pope, 64
Innocent III, Pope, 50, 76
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses), 384
Islam, Fakhar ul, see Fakhar ul Islam
Isle Adam, Philippe Auguste Villiers, Comte de l, see Villiers, P. A.
Ivanhoe, see Scott, Sir Walter
James III, King of Scotland, 148
Jeanne d'Arc, see Arc, Jeanne d'
Jerusalem: Temple of Solomon, 34, 87, 424: Templars in, 62; fall of Temple, 68; map, 84; 'Stables of Solomon', 87; treasure, 87, 90; Abbey of Notre Dame du Mont de Sion, 112
Jesus Christ: Cathar view of, 47; blood-line, 329; birth, 332; crucifixion, 333, 366-8, 371-6; marital status, 346-55; dynasty of, 362-6; Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, 390
Jewish War, The, see Josephus Flavius
Jews: in Languedoc, 50; members of Prieuré de Sion, 234; in Arcadia, 285-9; diaspora 400; under Merovingians 410-11; under Moors in Spain 413-14
Joan of Arc, see Arc, Jeanne d'
Johannites, 80
John, Gospel of, 345-6. 358
John XXIII, Pope (Angelo Roncalli), 164-5
Joinville family, 88
Joinville, Jean de, 52, 485
Joly, Maurice, 200
Joseph ben Matthias, see Josephus, Flavius
Joseph of Arimathea, see Arimathea, Joseph of
Josephus, Flavius (Joseph ben Matthias), 395-6, 398; The Jewish War, 396
'Josephus, Slavonic', 399
Journal Officiel, 209
Joyeuse, Henriette-Catherine 177-8
Judaea, 339
Junge Titurel, Der, see Wolfram von Eschenbach
Killiecrankie, Battle of, 74
Knights of Christ, 75
Koker, Gaston de, 100, 102
Komensky, Adam (Comenius), 147
Koran, 409
Labouisse-Rochefort, Auguste de, 156
La Fontaine, Jean de, 182
Languedoc, 43-5, 69
Lawrence, Louis, 40
Lazarus, 336, 354-62
Lefebvre, Marcel, Archbishop 220-13, 501
Lénoncourt, Cardinal of, 143
Lénoncourt, Count of, 447
Lénoncourt, Henri de, Count, 99, 105; see olso Lobineau, Henri
Leo XIII, Pope. 197
Lévi, Eliphas, 155, 463
Lévrier Blanc, L'Ordre du, 447
Lhomoy, Roger, 170. 1
Lichfield, Earls of, 191
Life of Saint Rémy, 255
Lilley, Canon Alfred Leslie, 38, 197
Lobineau, Henri (Dossiers secrets), 98, 105, 111-12, 131-2, 216; see also Lenoncourt, Henri de
Locke, John, 454
Lohengrin, see Wolfram von Eschenbach
Longueville, Duke of, 146, 178
Longueville family, 145
Lorraine, 74; map, 172
Lorraine, Charles de. 133, 136, 153-4, 458-9
Lorraine, Charles de, Cardinal, 173
Lorraine, Cross of, 174, 431, 447, 494
Lorraine, François de, Holy Roman Emperor, 154, 456
Lorraine, Henry of, Duke of Guise, 420
Lorraine, house of, 168, 173-5
Lorraine, Jean de, 494
Lorraine, Maximilian de, 133, 459-60
Louis VII, King of France, 66 119
Louis XI, King of France, 429
Louis XIV, King of France, 39, 183
Louis Philippe, 'Citizen King'. 464
Luke, Gospel of, 344
Luxembourg, house of, 443
Lyons, Irenaeus, Bishop of, see Irenaeus
Mobinogion, 82, 297
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 27, 159
Magdala, Tour (Rennes-le-Château), 28, 30, 204
Magdalene, Mary: 'Notre Dame', 101-2; brings Grail to France, 299, 423; possible wife of Jesus Christ, 329, 349-52; place of death, 362; Gospel of Mary, 403-4; cult of, 417
Malachi, 166
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 27, 159, 465
Malory, Sir Thomas (Le Morte d'Arthur), 298
Mani, 407
Manichaeanism, 45. 406, 407 482
Map, Walter, 81
Marcion. Bishop, 401
Marcionites, 45
Marie, Countess of Champagne, 299
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, 428
Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples and Sicily, 461
Mark, Gospel of, 335-8, 343-4
Martel, Charles, 266, 414
Mary, Gospel of, 403
Mary Magdalene, see Magdalene, Mary
Mary of Bethany, see Bethany, Mary of
Masada, 378, 396-8
Mathers, MacGregor, 159
Matthew, Gospel of, 344
Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal, 178, 179
Medici, Cosimo de', 141
Memphis, Oriental Rite of, see Oriental Rite of Memphis
Mérovée, King, 246-7, 251-2, 329
Merovingians, 106, 215, 216 245-81, 322; origins, 248-50, in Gaul, 251; Mérovée, 251; polygamy, 253-4; Clovis I 254-7; pact with Roman Catholic Church, 256; Dagobert II, 257-65; end of dynasty,266-7
Michelet, Jules (Le Procès des Templiers), 195
Midi libre, 212-13
Miron 'le Lévite', Count of Besalou, 411
Mithras, cult of, 387
Molay, Jacques de, 72, 73, 76; see also De Molay Society
Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 183
Montbard, Andre de, 87- 89, 91, 116, 118, 130, 491
Montdidier, Nivard de, 116
Montfort, Simon de, 50
Montpensier, Charles de, Connétable de Bourbon, 133, 173, 450
Montpézat family, 434
Montpézat, Henri de, 281
Montsalvat, 57
Montségur, 51, 53-5, 312, 482
Moors, 413
Moray, Robert, 147
Moulin, Pierre du, see Du Moulin, P.
Nag Hammadi Scrolls (Gnostic Gospels), 401-2
Nantes, Georges de, Abbé,500
Napoleon, Emperor, 248-9
Nopoléone, The, see Nodier, Charles
Narbonne, 415, 418
Navarre, Blanche de, see Evreux, Blanche d'
Nazorites, 341, 411
Nevers, Louis de (Louis de Gonzaga), 133, 144, 174, 451-2
New Templars, Order of the 77
Newton, Sir Isaac, 133, 134, 150, 454, 455-8, 516: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, 456
Nibelungenlied, 321-2
Nicea, Council of, 388, 408
Nilus, Sergei, 199
Nodier, Charles, 133, 154-8, 461-2, 463; A History of Secret Societies in the Army under Napoleon, 157, The Napoléone, 462
Nostradamus, 176, 494-5
Olier, Jean-Jacques, 180
Omar, Mosque of, 160
Ordenstaat, 69
Order of the Catholic Rose-Croix. the Temple and the Grail, see Catholic Rose-Croix
Order of the Crescent, see Crescent, Order of the
Order of the New Templars, see New Templars, Order of the
Order of Saint Lazarus, see Saint Lazarus
Ordre de la Fidélité, see Fidélité, Ordre de la
Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas, see Rose-Croix Veritas
Ordre du Levrier Blanc, see Levrier Blanc
Oriental Rite of Memphis, 192, 497
Orleans, 119-20, 127, 171; Abbot Adam of, 127; Abbot Girard of, 126
Orléans, Gaston d', 177-8
'Ormus', 123, 192, 200
Ornolac, 57
Orval, 114, 117-8, 127, 176
Pagels, Elaine 514
Palestine: map, 64; in time of Jesus, 338-43
Paoli, Mathieu (Les Dessous d'une ambition politique), 237-44, 269, 504
Papus (Dr Gérard Encausse), 159, 198, 200, 498
Parzival, see Wolfram von Eschenbach
Pavillon, Nicolas, Bishop of Alet, 180
Payen family, 442
Payen, Hugues de, 61, 63, 64, 65, 80, 86, 113, 116, 118, 483, 486, 490, 491
Péguy, Charles. 431
Péladan, Joséphin, 160
Pepin the Fat, 263
Pepin III, King, 266, 267-8, 414-15
Peraud, Hugues de, 486
Pereille, Raimon de, 57
Perlesvaus, 302-5
Peter, Gospel of, 389-90
Peter the Hermit, 114, 117, 489
Philadelphes, 157, 492
Philadelphians, 150
Philip, Gospel of, 404
Philippe, Monsieur. 198
Philippe II, King of France, 121
Philippe IV (Le Bel), King of France, 70-1, 73, 76
Pidoye, Guillaume, 128
Pierre l'Hermite, see Peter the Hermit
Pilate, Pontius, 339, 375
Pinchon, Abbé (François Dron), 249, 505
Pitois, Jean Baptiste (Paul Christian), 155, 194, 497: History and Practice of Magic. 155
Pius X, Pope, 197
Plantagenets, 316
Plantard family, 107, 184, 188, 189, 271, 279, 434, 496
Plantard, Hugues de, 279, 419, 508
Plantard, Jean des, 443
Plantard de Saunt-Clair, Pierre 96, 212, 224, 230-7, 501
Plantavelu, Bernard, 271, 273
Poher, Alain, 213
Poher, Arnaud de, Count, 213
Poher family. 107
Pontifical Biblical Commission, 197
Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, Order of the, see Templar, Knights
Poussin, Nicolas, 27, 38, 185 'Les Bergers d'Arcadie', 27, 39,143, 186, 188, 191
Procès des Templiers, Le, see Michelet, Jules
Prophets of Cévennes, see Camisards
Protocols of the Elders of Sion, 199-203, 431, 499
Provins, Guiot de, 308
Public Safety, Committees of, see Committees of Public Safety
Queste del Saint Graal, 322
Radclyffe, Charles, 133, 148-50, 456, 458
Rahn, Otto, 483
Ramsay, Andrew, Chevalier, 150-1, 456
Razès, Comte of, 33, 271, 276
Razès, Giselle de, 260-1
Razès, Guillem de Gellone, Count of, see Gellone, Guillem de
Rémy, Saint, 255, 256
Rennes-le-Château: general description in 1885, 24; Church of Marie-Madeleine,25, 27, 29-30, 204; Tour Magdala, 28, 30, 204; Villa Bethania, 28, 31, 170, 204, 361; map, 31; history, 32-3; Rhedae, 33, 257, 261; Un Tresor mérovingien a Rennes-le-Château, see Antoine l'Ermite
Rennes-les-Bains, 156
Rhedae, see Rennes-le-Château
Richelieu, Cardinal, 176
Revue de l'Orient Latin, 195
Rey, Emmanuel, Baron, 195
Richard I, King of England, 122, 484
Ridefort, Gérard de, 68, 120 490
Roman de l'Estoire dou Saint Graal, see Boron, Robert de
Roman de Perceval, Le, see Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte del Graal
Roncalli, Angelo, Cardinal, see John XXIII, Pope
Rose + Croix, Salon de la, see Salon de la Rose + Croix
Rose-Croix, see Rosicrucians
Rose-Croix Veritas, Ordre de la, 124-5
Rosenkreuz, Christian, 125, 144; Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, see Andrea, Johann V.
Rosicrucians (Rose-Croix), 1256, 134, 182; 'Rosicrucian Manifestos', 144-8; see also Catholic Rose-Croix, Order of
Rosslyn, 190, 441
Roussillon, Solomon, Count of, see Solomon
Roux, S., 218-19, 500
Royal Society, 148,492
Sacred Book of Abraham the Jew, The, 313, 430, 445
Saint-Aignan, Archambaud de. 116
Saint-Clair family, 107, 442
Saint-Clair, Jean de, 133, 444-5
Saint-Clair, Marie de, 133, 441
Saint-Clair, Pierre Plantard de, see Plantard de Saint-Clair, P.
Saint Jean le Blanc, 119
Saint John, Hospitallers of, see Hospitallers of Saint John
Saint Lazarus, Order of, 127
Saint-Maxent, Louis, 100, 102
St Omer, Bisol de, 116
Saint-Rémy, Jean de, 141
Saint-Sacrement, Compagnie du, 179-83
Saint-Samson, Priory of (Orleans), 119, 171
Saint Sulpice, Seminary of (Paris),180, 182, 196
Sainte-Colombe, 223
Sainville, Thomas de, 127
Salic Law, 412
Salon de la Rose + Croix, 161
Sannazaro, Jacopo (Arcadia), 143
Satanicum, see Stenay
Saunière, Bérenger, 24-32, 204, 429,481
Schidlof, Leo, 99, 216-18, 238
Schonfield, Professor Hugh, 361
Scotland, Templars in, 74, 152
Scott, Sir Walter (Ivanhoe), 59
Sède, Gérard de, 95, 111, 113, 501
Septimania, 412-18
Serpent rouge, Le, 100-1
Sforza, Francesco, Duke of Milan, 447
Sforza, Ludovico, 449
Shugborough Hall. 191
Sigisbert, Saint, 432, 516
Sigisbert IV, King,100, 270, 271
Sigisbert VI, 'Prince Ursus' 274 -6
Simon of Cyrene, see Cyrene, Simon of
Sinclair family, 100, 190, 434
Sinclair, Lord James, Earl of Caithness, 160
Sion (Switzerland), 252, 317, 330
Sion, Abbey of Notre Dame du Mont de, 112-13
Sion, Mount, 112, 118
Sion, Order of, see Sion, Prieuré de
Sion, Prieuré de, 106, 111-243; founding,112,116; at Orleans, 119, 127; rift with Templars, 120, 126-7; 'Ormus', 123-4; Grand Masters ('Nautonniers'], 133-67, 219-20, 224, 441-65; commanderies, 170; Protocols of the Elders of Sion, 199-203; statutes, 210-12, 225-8; membership, 210; hierarchy, 210-12, 227; modern schism, 228-9; political ideas, 240-3
Sion, Rock of, 193-4
Sion, Saint Amatus, Bishop of, see Amatus, Saint
Sion-Vaudémont, 448, 451
Sion-Vaudémont, Ferri, Lord of, see Ferri
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 297
Smith, Professor Morton, 334, 357
Société de l'Orient Latin, 195
Sol Invictus 386-7, 513
Solomon, Count of Roussillon, 411
Solomon, King of Brittany, 411
'Solomon, Stables of', see Jerusalem
Solomon, Temple of, see Jerusalem
Soloviov, Vladimir, 199
Spalding, Gentleman's Club of, see Gentleman's Club of Spalding
Steiner, Rudolf, 77
Stenay, (Satanicum), 106, 145, 170, 178, 263, 443
Stuart dynasty, 146, 149, 434
Stuart, Elizabeth, 146
Sulpice, Saint, 30
Tafurs, 488-9
Templar, Knights (Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon), 59-93, 116-19, 120-2; treasure, 34, 72; in Jerusalem, 61; Council of Troyes,63-4; rules of conduct, 64; expansion, 64; wealth, 65- 67; international power, 65-7; links with Cathars. 69-70; attacked by Philippe IV, 70-3; survive outside France, 74-5; occult powers, 76-7; 'Baphomet', 79; bearded head, 79-82; foundation date, 85-6; Grand Masters, 129-32, 153, 491: Le Procès des Templiers, 195; in literature, 303, 309
Temple, William, 197
Templecombe, 80
Teniers, David, 26, 26
Teutonic Knights, 69, 75, 127, 459
Theodoric (Thierry), 272,416
Thomas, Gospel of, 402
Torigny, Robert de. 189, 496
Toscane, Mathilde de. 114
Tour d'Auvergne Frédéric-Maurice de la, 178
Tour d'Auvergne, Henri de la, Duke of Bouillon, 145, 454
Trencavel family, 44
Trencavel, Raymond-Roger, 484-5
Trésor du triangle d'or, Le, see Chaumeil, J..L.
Trésor mérovingien a Rennes-le-Château, Un, see Antoine l'Ermite
Troyes, 86; Council of. 63
Troyes see Chrétien de Troyes
True History of Saint Sigisbert, The, see Vincent, Rev. Father
Turin Shroud, 80
Turmel, Abbé, 197
Tyre, Guillaume de, 60-2, 84, 115
Val d'Or, Hieron du, see Hieron du Val d'Or
Valentinus, 400
Vermes, Dr Geza, 346
Vespucci, Georges Antoine, 448
Villers, Gerard de, 486
Villiers, Philippe Auguste, Comte de l'lsle Adam (Axel), 159, 464-5
Vincent, Rev. Father (The True History of Saint Sigisbert), 432
Vincent de Paul, Saint, 180, 181
Vinci, Leonardo da, 133, 134, 144
Visigoths, 34-5
Voisins, Pierre de, 92
Wagner, Richard, 34
Wilfrid, Saint, 260-2
Wilkins, Dr John, 147, 454
Willehalm, 317
Willehalm, see Wolfram von Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 56, 76, 273, 296; Parzival, 76, 305-18; Lohengrin, 277, 295, 315; Der Tunge Titurel, 317; Willehalm, 317
Würzburg, Johann von, 87
Yates, Frances, 125, 126, 489
Zealots, 341-2, 370, 389-99
Zuckerman, Professor Arthur, 415-16
[Top of Page]
[2] BAIGENT & LEIGH & LINCOLN: THE MESSIANIC LEGACY [1986]
[Notes by Richard Ennals Sept 98:
35 Council of Nicaea
37 Sol Invictus reason for Sunday as Sabbath
37-40: Constantine: did not have spiritual conversion, as Christians claim
45-46: Mistranslations; e.g. 'Simon the Zealot' as Simon the Patriot in New English Bible. Judas 'Iscariot' 'the Sicarius' or daggerman 42, 75.
46 ref p 337 'Tacitus mentions Jesus' crucifixion'
60 Genealogical tree of three 'Abrahamic' religions
69 Paul's cult of Jesus as God
70-71 Jesus story made to work via Paul by incorporating aspects of other religions, e.g. Tammuz, Mithra
71 Diluting of Jesus for political reasons from rebel to spiritual, and blaming execution on Jews, not Romans
94-95 Nestorian Church
112 Fickleness of development of Christianity - 'historical accident'
138 Hitler quoted as saying he employed religious techniques
143 Nuremburg trials. Airey Neave says occult aspects of Nazism deliberately ruled inadmissible; he says because they were feared. (Baigent et al however are honest enough to include Reagan and US fanatics on Armageddon too).
162 Opus Dei
189-191 Caspar Weinberger (Christian Convert - presumably a Jew) on Armageddon]
[Top of Page]
[3] BAIGENT & LEIGH: THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE [?]
[Top of Page]
[4] BAIGENT & LEIGH: THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS DECEPTION [1991]
- Blurb on my paperback says: 'The Dead Sea Scrolls were found.. in 1947 and 1956. .. '.. the academic scandal par excellence of the 20th century': the story of how and why up to 75 per cent of the eight hundred ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.. have, until very recently, remained concealed from the world. .. these documents disclose nothing less than a new account of the origins of Christianity and an alternative and highly significant version of much of the New Testament.'
-Cf my tape of Prof Norman Golb's talk (late 1997) on who wrote these scrolls. (Golb thinks modern Israel represents a sort of resurgence from Biblical times.)
Some of the plates here (e.g. 31, 36) are very like slides shown by Golb, no doubt the camera position being determined by some high feature etc. I thought at first 13 was the water cistern, with steps down one side to get water as the level reduced, but on second thoughts this seems not so.
-33: '.. an entire section of the cliff-face had been removed..'
I.e the caves as they're shown on modern photos are a sort of cheat - originally there was just an opening from the top.
-158 ff account of the 'Ecole Biblique' (Catholic) getting in first and establishing a monopoly - though this seems not to have been known by many people. They edited Revue biblique & Revue de Qumran: 'The Ecole's editors could accept or reject articles as they saw fit, and were thereby enabled to exert a decisive influence on the entire course of Qumran scholarship. ..'
159: '.. secret, unclassified and still unassigned scroll material..'
-173 Catholic censorship, Papal 'infallibility', excommunication, 'errors of Modernism' in Roman Catholicism; by 1910 all this firmly in place.