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The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
(from Wikipedia) The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States) is a controversial non-fiction book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was based on Pierre Plantard's Priory of Sion hoax.
The book was first published in 1982 by Jonathan Cape in London. The book was a follow up of a BBC TV documentary. There was a sequel to the book called The Messianic Legacy, in 1987. It was reissued in an illustrated hardcover version in 2005. One of the books, according to the authors, which influenced the project was L'Or de Rennes (later re-published as Le Trésor Maudit), a 1967 book by Gérard de Sède.
In summary, the authors argue that there is evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had one or more children, and that those children or their descendents emigrated to what is now southern France. Once there, they intermarried with the noble families that would eventually become the Merovingian dynasty, which is championed today by a secret society called the Priory of
Sion.
An international bestseller upon its release, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail spurred interest in a number of ideas related to its central thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however, was nearly universally negative. Critics argued that the bulk of the claims, ancient mysteries and conspiracy theories presented as fact, are pseudohistorical.
Content
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail details the authors' investigation of the alleged mysteries of the village of Rennes-le-Château in southern France dating from the 1950s.
After a decade of research and speculation, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following conclusions:
Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego features prominently in the authors' quest
Enlarge
Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego features prominently in the authors' quest
* There is a secret society known as Priory of Sion that has a long and illustrious history dating back to the First Crusade starting with the creation of the Knights Templar as its military and financial front. The order is led by a Grand Master or Nautonnier.
* It is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 AD, to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem.
* The order protects these royal claimants because they may be the literal descendants of Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, or, at the very least, of King David and High Priest Aaron.
* The Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to maintain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.
These authors further asserted that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are:
* the founding of a "Holy European Empire" that would become the next hyperpower and usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity;
* the establishment of a messianic mystery state religion by revealing the Holy Grail, which would prove Ebionite views and Desposyni claims; and
* the grooming and installing of a "Rex Deus" pretender on the throne of a Greater Israel.
About the court case against Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown:
from The Telegraph (uk)
Jesus conspiracy novel has earned £140 million, but now
two academic writers say that their historical work preceded it by 20 years,
reports Elizabeth Day
It is the biggest-selling adult fiction book of all time and
has earned its author a reputed £140 million with its plot about a global
conspiracy to suppress Christ's marriage.
The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 12 million copies and has
been translated into 42 languages. But now two writers are suing its
publishers, claiming that it was copied from their bestseller that first
appeared more than 20 years ago.
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claim that Dan Brown, the
39-year-old former English teacher from New Hampshire, has "lifted the
whole architecture" of the research that they carried out for their
non-fiction work The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which they co-wrote with
Henry Lincoln.
They claim that the similarities between the two books are
such that they have no choice but to sue Random House, whose imprint Doubleday
is the publisher of Brown's novel.
Leigh told the Telegraph after issuing the writ: "It's
not that Dan Brown has lifted certain ideas because a number of people have
done that before. It's rather that he's lifted the whole architecture - the
whole jigsaw puzzle - and hung it on to the peg of a fictional thriller."
The Da Vinci Code tells the story of a Harvard professor who
stumbles across a conspiracy to suppress Jesus Christ's marriage to Mary
Magdalene and his fathering of a royal bloodline.
Baigent and Leigh claim that the novel's premise and chunks of
factual research are plagiarised from their original historical hypothesis,
which has sold more than two million copies despite being denounced by several
Church commentators as "pseudo-history". Baigent said: "Whether
our hypothesis is right or wrong is irrelevant. The fact is that this is work
that we put together and spent years and years building up."
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was based on six years of
research and hypotheses that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and founded a royal
bloodline protected by a series of esoteric societies including the Knights
Templar and the Priory of Sion, one of whose "Grand Master" heads is
claimed to have been Leonardo da Vinci.
The authors argue that Brown lifted their all-important list
of the Grand Masters, who supposedly guarded the secret documents pertaining to
Christ's bloodline, without acknowledgement.
The only mention of their book is when the villain of The Da
Vinci Code, an eccentric English historian called Sir Leigh Teabing, lifts a
copy off his bookshelf and says: "To my taste, the authors made some
dubious leaps of faith in their analysis, but their fundamental premise is
sound."
The name Leigh Teabing is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent, the
authors point out, while his physical description - he walks with the aid of
crutches - is allegedly based on the third author, Henry Lincoln, who walks
with a limp.
Lincoln has decided not to be part of the copyright action
because of ill health, but is said to support it.
"We are being lumped in with Dan Brown's work of fiction
and that degrades the historical implication of our material," Baigent
said. "It makes our work far easier to dismiss as a farrago of nonsense.
"Issuing the writ is not something we have done lightly,
but we feel that we have no choice."
