The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar Read online

  Paul influenced the Church greatly, but three hundred years later the Church sought to remove James from the historical records and raise the status of Mary to a virgin. One explanation of the concept of Mary as virgin is that it was done to answer the needs of converts from the Mediterranean, to whom the Greek mystery religions had appealed. Jesus was not the first god to be born of a virgin. The Greeks had Jason, Perseus, Miletus, Tammuz, and Adonis. Another explanation of Mary as virgin was that it was simply an error in translating. A word that meant “maiden,” it more correctly referred to a woman of marriageable age, but in translation it ended up as “virgin.” This explanation is less likely.

  A third explanation is that it was a political compromise. The brothers and sisters of Jesus are referred to both in the Gospel of Matthew and in Paul’s letters to the Galatians. In the early history of the Christian Church, the descendants of the family of Jesus are said to have lived well into the second century A.D.32 Why, then, deny their existence? To the Pauline Church, not intent on crowning an earthly king and wishing to avoid what Rome might misconstrue as a threat, the family and descendants of Jesus were a topic to be avoided, and soon denied. Jesus was the Son of God and not a son of man, who might have heirs.

  It would have been very unusual for a Jew in the time of Jesus to be unmarried. There is even circumstantial evidence in the surviving Gospels that Jesus had a wife. Jesus was addressed as “rabbi,” which implied that he was a teacher who had been taught by the elders—a suggestion confirmed in the Gospels. A rabbi would begin his ministry at age thirty, which is also substantiated by the Gospels. This title also implies that he took a wife; being married was a necessary condition to becoming a rabbi. A teacher had to be a married man.

  As further evidence, proponents of this theory say that the marriage at Cana was actually the wedding of Jesus.33 If, they ask, it was not the wedding of Jesus, why would his mother be so concerned that their host was running out of wine? She was concerned enough to induce Jesus, her son, to work a miracle. The responsibility for providing food and drink was that of the host of the wedding, who would be the bridegroom. But such evidence is circumstantial. It may have been a sister or brother of Jesus whose wedding took place at Cana, and in the absence of their father, Joseph, the responsibility would fall to the older brother, who may have been Jesus. Similarly, being addressed as “rabbi” may have been a show of respect for the man who was his group’s teacher, ordained or unordained.

  The debate over the possible marriage of Jesus and the question of potential heirs has strong advocates on both sides. Those who deny the possibility of marriage consider the suggestion tantamount to heresy. At the same time, priests and laypersons alike have commented that being married not only would not detract from Jesus’ message but would strengthen it, since as a husband, and possibly a father, he bore more human responsibilities. When the marriage of Jesus was left out of the Gospels, it was not because the Church was against marriage or women; that stance would come later. Two thousand years ago the marriage was not being debated as a religious issue—it was a political question. The Christian Church had to make itself acceptable to a militant Rome, which needed no new rivals. A wedding of Jesus, or even a brother of Jesus, implied potential heirs, and heirs would be a threat to Rome’s earthly kingdom.

  Holy Blood, Holy Grail expands further the theory of Jesus being married to encompass the likelihood that his bride was Mary Magdalene.34 There is little evidence for this claim. Mary did travel with Jesus and was present at his execution; she was also the first to see his empty tomb. None of this, however, proves such a claim. She was simply a devoted follower. On the other side of the debate there are stories of a relationship between Jesus and Mary in the Gnostic texts. The strongest argument in favor of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus is the Church’s campaign against her. Her story seems to have grown over the years—she has been said to have had “devils” and been exorcised and to have been a prostitute. In the Gospels, Mary was not the same woman mentioned as the prostitute in the passage where Jesus saves her by instructing the one without sin to throw the first stone. In Church lore, however, she somehow took on that mantle.

  Without the political overtones, the issue of a married Jesus might also have been affected by the way Paul preached. The Pauline Christian doctrine was filtered through a Hellenistic screen. Jesus was represented as a shepherd, like the Greek god Tammuz, whose job was to tend his flock. The Greek mystery religions had some taboos, but sexuality was not a sin because fertility was important. The religion, however, had originated from an area where sex was taboo, or at least considered unclean, and was reserved only for the necessity of procreation. Paul tried to preserve the moral tone of the Jews who followed Jesus while making the message acceptable to his fellow non-Jews.

  Celibacy, however, was not a requirement of the followers of Jesus or of those he appointed as his apostles and guardians of his Church. Peter was most definitely married, and his wife’s martyrdom is recorded. For reasons of its own, the Church forced priests to give up their wives one thousand years later; it had never been a requirement of the founder. The Church soon lost its roots entirely in its assimilation into the Roman world. Constantine, the emperor of Rome, was an adherent of the cult of Sol Invictus, the victorious sun—a male-dominated warrior cult, decidedly pagan, that celebrated the “birthday” of the sun on December 25 (on or near the solstice).35 At the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, the Church, in its new role as state religion of Rome, had to make modifications. December 25 was taken as the birthday of the Son of God as well as the sun itself. The day of rest, the Sabbath, which had always been a Saturday, was changed to Sunday (the day of the sun). In the new and improved Roman version of the religion, women were given less of a role, and the pope took a much greater role. The message of Jesus had been love; the message of the Roman Church was power.

  If Roman Christianity altered the message of God, what became of the followers of Jesus the man? Jesus had not wanted a revolution and a crown for himself, but many of his followers searched for a more earthly kingdom. These followers went into the hills as the Roman persecution and ensuing warfare led to more war. Thirty years after the execution of Jesus, hostility between the occupied Jews and the Roman overlord came to a head. The Jewish revolts in A.D. 65–67 and in A.D. 133 started a reaction that led to the destruction and mass deaths at the Essene fortress at Masada on the shore of the Dead Sea. Many surviving sects traveled in four directions, and some survived under different names. Medieval texts tell another story.36

  Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy supporter of Jesus, was a merchant whose fleet sailed as far away as England to trade for such commodities as tin. He was single-handedly responsible for procuring the body of Jesus from the Roman Jewish authorities. He wanted Jesus to be buried in a worthy tomb, and in this single act, he exposed himself to the authorities as a supporter. Knowing that this revelation could easily cost him his wealth if not his life, he gathered those closest to Jesus and sailed away on his own ship. Medieval texts may be novel in the telling of this story, but the Bible fails to provide an alternative. Outside the medieval texts and Grail romances, we have no record of the death of Mary Magdalene or of Joseph of Arimathea.

  Tradition and these texts say that Joseph of Arimathea took the family of Jesus to Marseilles in France and then traveled alone to England. It is said that Joseph came to Glastonbury and founded the first Christian church in England. Calling Joseph a “secret disciple,” even a renowned historian such as Barbara Tuchman, in asking about the connection between the abbey at Glastonbury in England and Joseph of Arimathea, says, “Perhaps the answer is that he actually did make his way from Palestine to Britain.”37 Historians who scoff at finding any truth in literary tradition often find themselves being proved wrong. Heinrich Schliemann, the “amateur” German archaeologist who found Troy, disproved the claims of establishment historians that Troy was just a story. In his lifetime he was criticized for his belief, and
he is still criticized today for his methods. Historians of the establishment do not like to be proved wrong.

  Today we accept that Troy and the Trojan War were real, but we still deny the accounts of those who returned home from that long conflict. If Homer’s first tale, the Iliad, is now accepted, why is his second tale, the Odyssey, considered fiction? Medieval stories of wandering refugees from the leveled cities of Trojan shores are regarded as total fabrications. Trojans reputedly settled in Italy, France, and other parts of Europe. In France, it is claimed that the city named Troyes was founded by Trojans, and a certain Priam is reported to have taken twelve thousand settlers there. We accept that Phoenician trade reached northern Europe and Britain. Why is it unthinkable that people from the Mediterranean traveled to western Europe? And why should it be difficult to believe that Joseph, a merchant, could have sailed there?

  Eusebius, one of the earliest writers on the history of the Christian Church, tells of the official persecution of the direct descendants of the family of Jesus and others in the Davidic bloodline before such history was censored.38 Rome had reason to take seriously the threat of a king emerging from the bloodline of David—the hostilities were real. James himself was executed by the Sanhedrin in the year A.D. 62. After his death, Clopas, brother of Jesus’ earthly father Joseph, may have taken over the leadership of the group. Certainly the son of Clopas, Simeon, who was a cousin of Jesus, became the first bishop of Jerusalem. Other surviving members and family would surely have sought safe refuge from the Roman suppression that is unrecorded by the Gospels but documented in both Church and non-Church histories.

  In A.D. 65 Simeon led his followers, who called themselves Nazoreans, away from Jerusalem. They may have founded the town of Nazareth. In the year A.D. 66, we know they were forced into hiding. In another town called Nazara, and in Cochaba, the family of Jesus, known as the “Heirs,” lived and survived persecution. The Nazarean Church became completely separate from the Pauline Christian Church. Later, the emperor Vespasian sought to ferret out the descendants of Jesus and his followers, although the threat against them appeared to diminish as Jewish Christianity slowly died out. Eusebius was scornful of this group of Jewish followers of Jesus because they had never accepted Jesus as a god, only as a man inspired by God, a prophet. Even after Vespasian there were further references to the descendants of the family of Jesus. Jude, another brother, had two grandsons who were brought before the emperor Domitian. They were leaders in the Church and had borne witness to the life of Jesus, but Domitian dismissed them as not being a threat to Rome.

  Despite the writings of Eusebius and other early texts, which included the Gnostic Gospels, the Church ignored the descendants and treated much of the writings at best as unimportant and at worst as hoaxes. When the Christian Church decided two hundred years later at the Council of Nicaea just which texts would be admitted into what became the New Testament, they allowed much that had been adopted from Essene teachings to remain. Activities such as the communal feast, baptism, the celebration of the Pentacost, and the exorcism of devils remained from the early days of the Church. The term “New Covenant,” proclaimed by the Essene teachings, came to be applied to the teachings of Jesus. Another Essene doctrine, that the poor would inherit the Earth, also was adopted, but the Church was by that time attracting a better class of followers. A doctrine applying just to the poor was no longer acceptable. The church that Jesus founded had appealed to the underclasses. Now the Roman-sanctioned Church had to take on a new character to accommodate the ruling class as well.

  Nazoreans and Ebionites, known as “Poor Christians” were by then just small sects hiding in southern Lebanon and near the Euphrates River. The Church itself no longer recognized the Essene community, nor did that community recognize the Church. The lives of the people who had played a part in the life of Jesus were recorded by Eusebius. Herod was deprived of his throne and exiled to France, where he made his home in Vienne. Jewish merchants and traders gave passage to both Jews and Christians, and both were found in France in the early days of the Church. (Eusebius refers to “the servants of Christ at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul.”) The family of Jesus survived in Roman Gaul, and they would have been forced to maintain a low profile, since they had been the hunted heirs to the Davidic kingship. They were the “sprouts” of the vine of David, the “scions” in his priestly line.

  The Hebrew name Levi literally means “scions” and, in its agricultural context (levy) “sprouts.” It became a code word surviving among the Templars and later among high-ranking Freemasons. It would be very important to those who believed in a Davidic line of kingship, specifically in a secret society—the Prieuré de Sion—that lay behind the Templars and Masons. The stated reason for their existence was to preserve and advance the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.39

  Holy Blood, Holy Grail was written using documents that this secret group (the Prieuré de Sion) provided for much of the source material. Some of these documents were unable to be verified; others were obviously historically incorrect. But other researchers have corroborated that the society exists and that it may have taken different forms at different times. Robert Anton Wilson believes that the group had been active from the nineteenth century but that their early history is not what they have suggested it to be.40 There is compelling evidence that an “underground stream” of knowledge has indeed been preserved by a group taking one name or another over the past thousand years. Some of this knowledge was to be held secret for only a chosen elite. The secrets of the Prieuré de Sion and their treasure was to be protected by those who inherited the task of keeping the sacred knowledge intact and the secret society alive. The Sinclairs in Scotland became its guardians.

  Chapter 8

  THE FRENCH CONNECTION

  At about the time that the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail started their research, a series of bodies, murders, and attempted murders surfaced in France. One publication, called Secret Dossiers, that provided information for the book was written by Leo Schidlof. It is possible that Schidlof was connected with espionage or some other clandestine activity because he was refused entry into the United States.1 What does twentieth-century espionage have to do with documents over two hundred years old? Holy Blood, Holy Grail does not answer this question, but soon after Schidlof's death his briefcase, reputedly containing documents relating to the Rennes-le-Chateau area of France, was in turn taken by Fakhar ul Islam, who was trying to reach East Germany but instead was hurled from a train outside Paris and killed. Three weeks later a privately published work entitled the The Red Serpent turned up at the National Library of Paris. It, too, contained information on the Rennes-le-Chateau area. The three authors of the work were all found hanged, at different times, between March 6 and March 7, 1967, two weeks after the death of Fakhar ul Islam. Obviously, someone wasn’t happy about researchers digging into the secret of Rennes-le-Chateau.

  The publication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail ignited a storm of controversy in 1982 at a time when the Catholic Church was already under siege. The backlash from the Church was expected, in light of the fact that the book suggested several controversial scenarios—Jesus as husband and Mary Magdalene as mother of his child, for example. Worse still to many, the book made the case that Jesus may have survived his execution. The concept that Jesus both plotted his own execution and survived the Crucifixion had already been reviewed in print, although the popularity, especially in Europe, of Holy Blood, Holy Grail brought the topic a great deal more attention.2 Could Jesus have orchestrated his own execution? Could the family of Jesus have escaped Jerusalem?

  The activities of Jesus the man were at the least able to incite a carefully planned stage in a revolt if not a complete revolt. He threw the bankers and money changers out of the temple not too long after two zealots had been executed for removing the Roman eagle. He challenged the Jewish puppets of the Roman state, the Sadducees, at every turn. He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling the prophecy in the Bible that decl
ared that the scion of David would enter the city in this manner. He denied being a king, but the cheering crowds left no doubt that they wanted him to be their king.3 These actions resulted in his death, an execution that history records and few challenge. Of the four accepted Gospels, the Gnostic Gospels, and one secular history, The Jewish War, by Josephus, all written in the first century, none hint that Christ survived his execution.

  The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles do record that the followers of Jesus fled Jerusalem. If Mary Magdalene had been married to Jesus and pregnant with his child, she would have had a very strong reason to escape Roman Jerusalem. History does not document the fate of others surrounding Jesus—the following scenario, corroborated only by legend, is possible. Under the leadership of Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, her companions, and possibly her unborn child might have fled by sea to France.4 The entrance of Jesus’ family into France could have been at or near the port city of Marseilles.