Jesus bloodline

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The Jesus bloodline is the theory that Jesus Christ had a natural child with Mary Magdalene which was then taken to Egypt and then to France, either during Magdalene's pregnancy or as a young child, and whose blood descendants in later centuries founded the Merovingian dynasty of the early kings of France.

The theory has become famous through the works The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (published in 1982), a controversial book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was based on Pierre Plantard's Priory of Sion hoax, and The Da Vinci Code (published in 2003) by Dan Brown which closely follows the theory, presenting it as the basis for a fictional drama involving catholic conspiracy.

These authors further asserted that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are:

• founding a "Holy European Empire" that would become the next hyperpower and usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity;
• establishing a messianic mystery state religion by revealing the Holy Grail, which would prove Ebionite views and Desposyni claims; and
• grooming and installing a "Rex Deus"(King God) pretender on the throne of a Greater Israel.

[edit] Main elements of the theory

The main elements of the thesis are that:

• Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, with whom he was married. The descendants of this child became the Merovingian kings of France.

• The Church has suppressed the truth about Mary Magdalene and the Jesus bloodline for 2000 years.

• A secret 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 (the Davidic line) and High Priest Aaron.

• This secret society known as Priory of Sion 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 Priory is led by a Grand Master or Nautonnier.

• It is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from the fifth century to 751, to the thrones of Europe.

• 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.

A variation on the theory is that instead of dying on the cross, Jesus (in this story known as Yuz Asaf) fled to Kashmir where he died in old age, returning to Srinagar where he had originally been influenced by Hindu and Buddhist teachings. 1 This theory is lent credence by close comparisons of Jesus' sayings in the Gnostic Gospel of St Thomas, which are seen by some as closely paralleling classical Buddhist Sutras.

The Jesus Bloodline "theory" also has parallels with other "disciple flight to distant lands" stories, such as the one that Joseph of Arimathea travelled to England after the death of Jesus taking with him a piece of thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which he later planted in Glastonbury. Historians generally regard these stories as medieval inventions.

[edit] Criticism of the theory

The theory has been entirely discredited by mainstream historians, and in recent years by journalists and investigators such as Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has an extensive archive on this subject matter. For example, Plantard confessed in 1993 that the Priory of Sion was a hoax and that he had developed a long pseudohistory about the organization and had never taken it seriously. The notion of a Jesus bloodline is, in fact, without foundation in the historical record and its persistence rests exclusively on a well orchestrated publishing phenomenon, which deliberately ignores the principles of historical reasoning in favour of conspiracy theory, invalid documentary evidence and the deliberate confusion of much later legendary invention with authentic historical material. Few combinations of hoax, forgery and credulity have attained this status in modern times, leaving the notion of a Jesus bloodline as a genuine manifestation of pseudohistory worthy of study for what it reveals about the popular imagination in the information age.

In 2005, UK TV presenter and amateur archaelogist Tony Robinson edited and narrated a detailed rebuttal of the main arguments of Dan Brown and those of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, "The Real Da Vinci Code", shown on Channel 4. The programme featured lengthy interviews with many of the main protagonists. Arnaud de Sede, son of Gerrard de Sede, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Prieuré de Sion - to quote Arnaud de Sede in the programme, "frankly, it was piffle". The programme also cast severe doubt on the Rosslyn Chapel association with the Grail and on other related stories like the alleged landing of Mary Magdalene in France.

Some commentators see the thesis of Jesus having had children, and the "Sion hoax" as a deliberate piece of anti-Catholic propaganda; they compare it with Reformation period allegations such as the sexual misbehaviour of Popes, or see it as part of a long tradition of anti-Catholic feeling with deep roots in the Anglo-American imagination. 2