Work on my book on suspicion, spies, conspiracies and the like continues apace (hence minimal blog posting) – but I’m wondering if some of you can help me a little bit. I’m currently working on some of the conspiracy theories that float around Christianity and the church. Perhaps the most notorious is the one popularised by Dan Brown in his Da Vinci Code. It’s been a while since reading it, but I wonder if any Dan Brown aficionados might check that I’ve done justice to the conspiracy that his heroes Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu expose. I’ve tried to summarise it as succinctly as possible, but if you can think of any aspects that I’ve overlooked, I would be hugely grateful if you could suggest them in the comments.
Thanks to the Knights Templar and their shadowy successors, the Priory of Sion, the truth about Jesus has remained concealed for centuries. But the secret is now out:Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had children! Their bloodline exists to this day. The Holy Grail (in old French, le san gréal) is actually a punning code for le sang réal, meaning ‘royal blood.’ Mary’s descendants are thus the grail: she carried and passed on Jesus’s bloodline. However, this fact was dangerous because it threatened the primacy of Peter as Jesus’s chief disciple and the “rock” on which Christ would “build his church.” (Matthew 16:18) According to the theory, the belief that Jesus was divine only developed much later. Christian worshipis therefore founded on a fraud.
Mary, on the other hand, personified the so-called ‘sacred feminine’, but this was blotted out and ignored by a patriarchal institution that evolved on Peter’s foundation. In the first centuries of Christian history, various strands of belief flourished, exhibiting wide doctrinal diversity, an appreciation for the sacred feminine, and multiple understandings about Christ (for example amongst the Gnostics). But matters came to a head in AD 325, when, as part of his Christianisation of Rome, the Emperor Constantine ordered the Council of Nicaea to ensure the vigorous muzzling of those who denied the divinity of Christ. Imperial cohesion apparently demanded dogmatic unity. Consequently, the worldwas deprived of an essential element of the human, as well as Jesus, story. But the Roman Catholic Church has since taken extreme measures to suppress any threat to the power it derives from the papacy’s unbroken succession from Peter.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts…
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Do you need to mention the Gospel of Thomas in relation to Mary? (saying 114)
good thought – I sense my précis getting longer and longer!
I write from a position of unlettered ignorance, but is it true that Rabbi’s at that time were obliged to be married before allowed to teach?
Christina, I don’t know about *having* to be married, maybe it just came natural at the time when you’re a 30-year old Jewish guy. It might have been so much the norm that no one would think about regulating it. Furthermore, we have no indication that Jesus was ‘allowed’ to teach in an formal way. In the Jerusalem Temple, he just did it 🙂 even against the ‘official’ teachers’ will and facing their opposition. In the synagogues, it was customary to let adult males read and say a word on it.
Mark, do mention the plagiarism if you can. That guy made a killing out of a story that wasn’t even his… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_The_Da_Vinci_Code (hmm although to be fair Brown did win the plagiarism court cases) I personally don’t like the DVC, too little storytelling, too much ‘Gnostic Sunday School’. Brown seems out to prove a religious point… or to ride the free publicity that comes from beating up the Christian Church (Catholics in particular, where he can expect some help from the Hottie Protties).
what I don’t get is this: the same people who vehemently believe in Sophie Neveu’s royal blood/or another Holy Grail Story (why royal or holy by the way, if Jesus was just another human being?) on the other side vehemently reject the virgin birth.
maybe Dallas Willard’s statement makes it clear: “the curse of our land is we have all those uneducated people with higher degrees..”
very good point!
Hi Mark,
Hope you’re well. I am assuming you’ve looked up Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which carries a lot of the conspiracy theories mentioned in the Da Vinci Code (not that I’ve read Brown’s book).
Yours
Jules
yes – a long time ago, and I have absolutely no intention of rereading it!
Probably for the best!