h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is a book called 'Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' (can't remember the authors), written some time in the '80s, which suggests that the search for the Holy Grail (San Greal) was actually a search for Christ's bloodline (Sang Real = Royal Blood). This book also suggests that various gospels were suppressed (e.g. the gospel of St. Thomas), that Saints Thomas and James were Jesus's brothers, that Jesus was married (probably to Mary Magdalene) and that the miracle of turning water to wine took place at his wedding, but that the incident was edited to remove evidence of this.

During one debate with a very religious colleague who felt that the Bible should be treated as 'Gospel truth', I remarked that I found it hard to accept any work as the 'word of God' when it had so obviously been tinkered with by man. He couldn't answer that, and I haven't found anyone who can. I do believe in God, but not in any orthodox sense, so it's not a case of me pooh-poohing the beliefs of others. I just find the Bible too inconsistent to take seriously.

As the Gospels were written some considerable time after Jesus' death (hence "according to") they must have been passed by word of mouth for several generations. This could cast a wee bit of doubt on the absolute accuracy of the truths propounded by Christ.

The Christian beliefs also included reincarnation in the early centuries. This was eventually suppressed. After all it must be difficult to control people who know they will have another crack at it.

As the Gospels were written some considerable time after Jesus' death (hence "according to") they must have been passed by word of mouth for several generations. This could cast a wee bit of doubt on the accuracy of the truths propounded by Christ.

The Christian beliefs also included reincarnation in the early centuries. This was eventually suppressed. After all it is difficult to control people who know they will have another crack at it.

I'd heard about the reincarnation thing, another fine piece of editing........

Don't Coptics use one of the other gospels as the basis of their religion?

The Revised Standard Bible is supposed to be the official "word of God". Even in church, they teach that no one's exactly sure of the original bible text. Scholars try to go back to the oldest texts they can find to be credible. Even in recent years its been edited. I can't really accept that as absolute truth. No that it's bad, there are things to be got out of it. I'm not particularly Christian either though.

The oldest available texts of the gospels are dated to the 4th century. The Council of Nicea met in the 4th century. Coincidence? In light of the letter by Clement of Alexandria discussed in this article, I think not.

Emperor Constantine was the first person to ever apply the logical device which would eventually become known as Pascal's Wager. He was the leader of the cult of Sol Invictus his entire life, but on his deathbed, he consented to be baptized as a Christian.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Followed up by " The Messianic Legacy " by the same three. Good reads for those interested in this subject.

I recently saw a programme on Discovery about this subject (san greal/sang real debate) and it was talking about the positioning of certain churches in France as being part of a giant pentangle in the landscape. Shame I can't remember who was the presenter, but it wasn't a new programme.

I've read both "Holy Blood" and "Messianic Legacy." Although I find a lot of their arguments very convincing, and some of their study enlightening, I have a lot of trouble buying into the whole conspiracy thing. I get the feeling that the authors are being taken in by some hue Masonic prank on that one. Even if the descendant of Jesus did suddenly appear... who cares? The world has gotten over rule by kings and divine right and lineages and things. Descent from the Merovingians isn't going to change the perception, either, since they were rather inept.

It is my belief that the "Holy Grail" is in fact a document, or a set of documents, that were recovered beneath Herod's Temple by the Knights Templar. The Knights, and the Masons that followed, have always had inexplicable heretical (Gnostic and Hermetic, mostly) undertones in their beliefs, and those have been totally without basis until the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scroll discoveries in the middle of the last century. Those beliefs must have some basis, and that is what I think that basis is.

I recommend everyone read "The Hiram Key" by Knight and Lomas. They believe, as I do, that what the Templars found were secret documents, and they give fantastic basis for this (namely, that among the Dead Sea Scrolls was found a sort of treasure map to the treasures of the Temple, and it explicitly states that another copy of it is in the bowels of the Temple, where the Templars were known to have dug!). Among the treasures were a mountain of documents. They then go further to give a well-supported hypothesis that they have found the resting place of these documents, in the bowels of a Masonic church in Scotland that is an architectural copy of the Temple of Solomon.

Ha! Even my postings are reincarnating.

Another whoops for me I think.

*wanders off muttering "I WILL get the better of this machine"....*

The Muslims would debate the authority of bloodline v 'word'line - in fact they do, rather bloodily. The major split among them is between those that champion the true Caliphate as having descended by blood from Mohammed (the Shi'ites) and those who take more of the Christian path of descent by the right-thinking or divine will (the Sunni). THe descendents of Mohammed have a name which presently escapes me, but the Sharif of Mecca was always among them. Actually 'sharif' might BE the name indicating Mohammed's descendents. The King of Jordan today is from this line. Oiginally, after WWI when the British and French were divvying up the Middle East, in a gesture to self-determination of peoples, they threw the barren bone of Arabia Deserta to the Sharif. Bad move for the Brits on two points - one, the Sa'ud family kicked the Sharif's ass out and took over with understandable resentment toward the Brits (except for a close friend of Abdulaziz al-Sa'ud named, interestingly enough, Shakespeare), thereby giving this area the name Sa'udi Arabia; and worse, the bone thus thrown to the Arabs was rich with the marrow of oil, which the pissed-off Sa'ud's allowed the Americans to develop, rather than the Brits - hence, Aramco. But I digress.

My point is the bloodline is just one more thing to kill about, and would have been superfluous to the Christians, whose blood lust knows few bounds to this day. The great struggle between James, who may have been Jesus' brother, and who saw Christianity as a Jewish only sect - sort of a reformed Jewish sect, and Paul who championed the independence of Christianity from Judaism and the entry of non-Jews to the sect, was won by the latter who truckling shamelessly to the ruling Romans.

A more interesting and modern example of blood v divine word - and one that shows the American genius for reducing all religious issues to the mercenary (e.g. televangelists), is the Mormon split between those of Missouri - a minority who claim that only a blood heir to Joseph Smith can lead the faithful and the Utah lot who have a more 'Catholic' or 'Sunni' approach. I have read that a diary or other writing was found farily recently in the proverbial attic, but in Utah, that was unquestionably by J. Smith himself, wherein J. stated unequivocably that the leadership must be in the hands of his direct descendants. Having a better eye for the main chance than the Fathers at Nicaea had, which is further evidenced by ownership of part of Coca Cola - which is best known for producing a drink forbidden to the Saints, the majority happily solved the matter by trading this document to the Missouri crowd for some artifacts that were more to their liking. Thus everyone has gained temporarily at least, until one group is dominant to kill off the other.

No wonder God loves mankind: they share the same sense of humor.

I recently read a book about King Arthur and the Holy Grail. In this book the author, John Matthews, looks at the legend of King Arthur and concludes that there was no such king, but there was probably a war leader (what we would call a general) of that name. Legends grew around this man or, more likely, were grafted on. He then looks at the various grail legends and concludes that most of these can be traced back to Celtic legends of a wonder-working vessel that were Christianised over time. So, not a document relating to the Templars. Not the cup Christ drank from at the Last Supper, or the vessel that caught his blood when he was crucified. Just a pagan story taken over by Christians, as they took over so much of pagan origin.

Please please please, stop this rubbish. the Holy Grail is a figment of everybodys' imagination. It first appeared in a book of fiction.

I am a mason. The chapel of Killwinning in scotland is a curiosity, nothing else. There is no great secret. There is no God.

If you look closely at my last posting, it says exactly that. The Holy Grail was a pagan myth that was 'Christianized'.

Mind you, since my posting a few years ago where I said I was a Christian, I have read the Bible cover to cover and am now a confirmed atheist. The Bible is too contradictory to accept it as the basis of my faith. Also, over the years I have felt less need to believe in some 'supreme being'. There's nothing on Earth that needs a deity to explain it, IMHO, so why should I believe in one?

Who said anything about Kilwinning?

miracles do happen - after all this conversation has sprung to life after 4 years...

Kilwinning is the chapel that is said to have Masonic/Templar influence. What other scottish church is modeled on King Solomons temple??

Rosslyn.

sorry your right I was getting mixed up. Kilwinning was (is) the Mother Lodge of scotland. But I still stand by my comment that rosslyn's connection with all things esoteric is in the eye of the beholder. Scotland was different to England in that it had proper Lodges for Stonemasons, and a lot of History . It is only when the Enlish who invented Freemasonry, and tied it to much of scottish Masonry (Because its inventors were Scots in england, do we get all the nonsense about templars, and Prior de sion or whatever.

I've said earlier in this thread, but not in so many workds, that I think the Priory de Sion is a load of bunk.

The amazing rise to power of the Templars in the first place can have only one explanation... that they found something of incredible value to the Church during their excavation of the temple in Jerusalem. Their heretical beliefs that appear to lack a source indicate to me that their beliefs stemmed from whatever it was they found under the Temple. The evidence of a direct link between the Scottish Masons and the destruction of the Templar order is too strong to dismiss. It only makes sense that fleeing Templars would have taken their most valued treasures with them.

The Sinclair family had 4 knights on the field at Bannockburn, where renegade Templars turned the tide. They served as early grandmasters in the new Masonic order. The Sinclairs built Rosslyn on their own property, covered it with the same heretical symbology typical of the Templars and nobody else, and matched its dimensions and architecture precisely to the Temple of Solomon. In and of itself, that practically screams that the historian has traced the threads to their proper conclusion. It shouts, "Yes, we Sinclairs are descendants of prominent Templars who successfully fled France."

Even if that's all Rosslyn means, that's still a monumental discovery. However... *if* the Templars unearthed important documents in Jerusalem (hardly questionable), and *if* they escaped with them to Scotland (highly likely, as they failed to turn up during Phillip IV's persecution), then what other purpose would a copy of the Temple of Solomon be, other than to act as a hiding place for those documents? And for those with the inside knowledge, those who learned the original story through word of mouth, the hiding place would be completely obvious.

Only one way to find out, though.