THE MAN AND THE SCAM

These passages are the last I have taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail to titillate your interest in, perhaps, reading the entire book. It was from this book that the book, The DaVinci Code, was made and upon that book, the movie was made. The following snippet briefly outlines how the Christian “message” and the man, Jesus, became separate. You have to read the entire book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, to understand some the references which are included in these paragraphs.

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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 realization 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 sizable 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 that 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' 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 sizable 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' 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 recognize 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 that, from time immemorial, has been of paramount importance to noble and royal families—preservation of the bloodline at all costs, 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 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 crystallized 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 toward a Roman or Romanized audience. Thus, the role of Rome in Jesus' death was, by 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 defying 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.
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JESUS WAS A POLITICO AND A FATHER

Time for a little more Holy Blood, Holy Grail:

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THE SCENARIO

We had already sketched a tentative hypothesis that proposed a bloodline descended from Jesus. We now began to enlarge on that hypothesis and—albeit still provisionally—to 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 
center 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.
 Toward 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.

According to the letter we received, the documents found hy Berenger Sauniere at Rennes-le-Chateau 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, 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' mummified body may be concealed somewhere in the environs of
 Rennes-le-Chateau—which would explain the ciphered message in Sauniere's parchments "IL EST LA 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 Magdalen would indeed have brought the Sangraal—the "blood royal," the scion of the house of David—into France.
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JESUS H. CHRIST!!! WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The following is on pages 326-27 in the book pictured to the left.

“Jesus' lifetime spanned roughly the first 35 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' 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.

“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' lifetime anticipation of the coming of such a Messiah attained a pitch verging on mass hysteria. And this anticipation continued after
 Jesus' 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.”