What if everything you think
you know about Jesus is wrong? Author Michael Baigent makes controversial
assertions in his new book. Michael Baigent is investigating a grisly crime.
He’s tracking down leads, digging for clues, and trying to shed new light on a
cold case— a case that is 2,000 years old. And this isn’t just any case: It is
perhaps, the most well known story in history—the crucifixion of Jesus. Sara
James, Dateline correspondent: You believe that much of what we think we know
about Jesus is a lie?Michael Baigent, author: It’s a lie. It’s an obvious lie.
Hard to imagine? Author Michael
Baigent has captured readers’ imaginations before with a provocative non-fiction
work in which he claimed Jesus was married. Some of the same ideas appear in
“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. In fact, he sued Brown’s publisher for
copyright infringement. Brown and his publisher strongly deny they did anything
wrong. A decision is pending in the case. Now, Baigent has a new book, “The
Jesus Papers,” with an even more controversial premise which challenges the
conventional story about Jesus.
James: So basically, you’re
asking anybody who is a Christian to question their fundamental beliefs?Baigent:
Absolutely. James: Some might call your position heresy. Baigent: I should hope
they would. While he considers himself an investigator bent on exposing the
truth, scholars say the tale he weaves is fiction— fantasy, rather than fact.
Elaine Pagels, religious scholar, Princeton University: It’s imaginative to say
the least. Craig Evans, evangelical New Testament scholar at Acadia Divinity
College: It’s voodoo scholarship, it shouldn’t be taken credibly. It’s criticism
Baigent has heard before, back in 1982, when he and two co-authors wrote “Holy
Blood, Holy Grail.” The book’s popularity has soared since the “Da Vinci Code.”
Thanks to that book and the soon-to-be released movie, devoted fans around the
world can recite a key story line— that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not only
married but had a child, and the descendants live on to this day...
Introduction:
Zecharia Sitchin's The 12th Planet purports to contain "indisputable documentary proof" that all of humanity was created by a group of aliens who visited this planet between roughly 450,000 BC and 13,000 BC. The aliens created humanity by combining their DNA with that of the proto-humans the found on Earth in a scheme to create somewhat intelligent workers for the mining enterprises they were founding on Earth. This work is intended to be an analysis of Sitchin's book in light of mainstream archeological thought about ancient Sumeria and mainstream science in other fields such as aerospace engineering, astronomy, evolution, Bible research, and so on.
Abstract:
Sitchin's work is a masterpiece of linguistic maneuvering and allegorical interpretation. He is clearly well-read in the archeology and mythology of ancient Sumeria and related lore. His work conflicts, however, with mainstream archeological opinion. In fact, in Usenet discussions of Sitchin's work, several well-published, respected archeologists familiar with this period have called Sitchin a fool and an idiot (but in less polite terms). While he's well-read, he lives in his own little world when it comes to translation of ancient texts. He also takes certain liberties in his translations and interpretations that are not usually allowed by the scientific community. His work completely falls apart, also, when modern science is brought to bear. Sitchin's interpretations of Sumerian Epics and other writings describe events that simply couldn't have happened.
The first thing that confronts a reader of The 12th Planet is an Author's Note. The note talks about the translations of biblical verses quoted within the book. The second paragraph says: In the final version quoted in The 12th Planet, I have compared the available translations against each other and against Hebrew source and the parallel Sumerian and Akkadian texts/tales, to come up with what I believe is the most accurate rendering. (Sitchin, Authors Note)...
The Da Vinci Code and the madness that surrounds it is indicative of one
thing – the fact that in the 21st century mankind is still in the dark about a
great many things. We may have sent rockets into space; we may be able to
develop nano-technology and we can even heat up food with micro-wave
radiation, but we are still no closer to the truth about our own religions and
the secretive organisations that surround them. The most powerful of them all
is of course the Catholic Church and it is this Empire building religion that
lies at the heart of the book.
The Da Vinci Code and the madness that surrounds it is indicative of one
thing – the fact that in the 21st century mankind is still in the dark about a
great many things. We may have sent rockets into space; we may be able to
develop nano-technology and we can even heat up food with micro-wave radiation,
but we are still no closer to the truth about our own religions and the
secretive organisations that surround them. The most powerful of them all is of
course the Catholic Church and it is this Empire building religion that lies at
the heart of the book. To begin with we do need to take a look at the claims made in the Da Vinci
Code in relationship to the Holy Grail in-order to understand what the reality
of the matter really is.
The Da Vinci Code Fiasco:
One question regarding the Holy Grail that the early medieval writers asked
was "who does it serve?" Well, let's have a look at the current Grail world and
see if it is serving us, or are we serving it?
Very briefly and for those among us who have been on the planet Sanity for the
last few of years, the Da Vinci Code is a fiction based around a man who
discovers a code that reveals the true identity of the Holy Grail to be nothing
more than the very bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
Unfortunately the author, Dan Brown, claimed his now infamous book to be based
upon real factual organisations and events. This however could not be farther
from the truth.Lets take it apart starting with the:
Priory of Sion: This supposedly ancient and enigmatic group allegedly once had Leonardo da
Vinci himself as a Grand Master, not to mention several other notables such as
Nicolas Flamel and Isaac Newton. However, there is no truth in it at all. Sion
was the name of a hill nearby the residences of Pierre Plantard and Gerade de
Sede – two of the original creators of the Priory of Sion hoax.
The documents of the Priory secreted in the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris have
been proven to be forgeries...
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood,
Holy Grail in the United States) is a controversial book by authors Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was first published in 1982 by
Jonathan Cape in London. The book followed on from a BBC TV documentary, and was
followed by a sequel, The Messianic Legacy, in 1987. It was reissued in an
illustrated hardcover version in 2005. The book was a key source for the
bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. In summary, the authors argue that there is
a possibility that Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalene, and that
their possible child or children emigrated to what is now southern France. Once
there they established what became the Merovingian dynasty, which is championed
today by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. An international bestseller
upon its release, Holy Blood spurred interest in a number of ideas related to
the authors' thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however,
was all but universally negative. Critics argued that the bulk of the claims,
mysteries and conspiracies presented as fact were concocted by the authors,
making Holy Blood a work of pseudohistory by those critics.
Overview: Holy Blood
details the authors' own quest for the Holy Grail by investigating the alleged
mysteries of the village of Rennes-le-Château dating from the 1950s in southern
France. After a decade of research and speculation, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln
came to the following conclusions: There is a secret society known as Priory of
Sion (PS) 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 PS 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 CE, 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.
It is generally presumed the authors knew these claims to be at best unprovable,
or false. In fact, Richard Leigh has stated on television that they only set out
to offer a plausible hypothesis, but "never believed it to be true."
Books on this subject with a better historical foundation include Malcolm
Barber's two essential volumes, The Cathars and The Trial of the Templars;
Malcolm Lambert's overview, Medieval Heresy; and Michael Costen's The Cathars
and the Albigensian Crusade...
Here is an
idea worth considering: Thousands of years ago humankind had attained a
high-level of technological achievement. They understood laws of nature that are
unknown to us today. They explored Antarctica and mapped the entire globe. They
made monuments that we would have difficulty recreating with our modern
techniques and equipment.
Then tragedy struck in the form of a global
cataclysm. They were not expecting it. The disaster was so terrible that most
humans perished and many animal species became extinct. Those humans that did
survive were forced to live like animals while the Earth recovered. Memories
faded, and knowledge disappeared. Society began again from scratch, returning to
pagan beliefs and simplistic lives. But there were some that survived who
somehow managed to remember more, that retained some of the advanced techniques
and ideas that others had forgotten – and had the foresight and dedication to
warn future generations of the next cataclysm. Knowing that it would be more
than 10,000 years before the cataclysm re-occurred, they had to allow for
certain possibilities: that in the year 2012 we could be speaking a brand new
language, following unpredictable religions and using any sort of numbering
system. If they were to leave us clues to help us survive, those clues would
need to be big and solid enough to last 10,000 years; and coded so as to be
unambiguous - regardless of the culture that interpreted them. Some modern
humans, of various backgrounds and disciplines, are working towards deciphering
what they have left us.
We are on the verge of
cloning humans, of aping God. Regardless of ethics and laws, it will happen –
for whenever scientists have had the ability to do something, they haven’t been
able to resist – it is in their nature. On the other side of the coin, when
there are not enough clues to solve a puzzle, when none of their predecessors
have made quality in-roads, they have rattled off stock answers and moved on to
something easier. These unsolved mysteries are typically of a historical nature
– our scientists have been unable to observe the processes in real-time, and
have chosen not to make unscientific guesses. The tasks have by default been
given to the independent researchers, the untrained pseudo-scientists, the men
and women with imagination, verve and daring...
The first human species to make it to Europe one and a half million years ago may have come from Asia, not Africa, according to an analysis of 5,000 fossil teeth.“It had been assumed for a long time that that the colonisation of Eurasia was the result of several out-of-Africa migrations,” said Maria Martinón-Torres, from the National Centre for the Investigation of Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. But Martinón-Torres and her team now present evidence that migration from Asia may have ha... Read More
Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Archaeologists working in Syria have unearthed the remains of dozens of youths thought to have been killed in a fierce confrontation 6,000 years ago. According to Science magazine, the celebrating victors may even have feasted on beef in the aftermath. The findings come from northeastern Syria, near Tell Brak, one of the world's oldest known cities. Tell Brak has been known for 30 years, but is only now revealing its sophistication and complexity. Studies by Britis... Read More
A study into the mysterious changing skull shape of medieval man casts serious doubt on current theories. The peculiar shift from long narrow heads to those of a rounder shape, and back again, which took place between the 11th and 13th centuries, has been noted at sites throughout western Europe. But a study of skulls found at the deserted village of Wharram Percy, near Malton, North Yorkshire, suggests that the anatomical blip was not down to an influx of Norman immigrants, or climate change, E... Read More
Is a perfect invisible cloak theoretically possible? Are there certain wavelengths—such as those in the visible spectrum—that can’t be made invisible? How will using imperfect materials affect the performance of a cloak? Scientists from Zhejiang University and MIT have recently analyzed the physics behind invisibility cloaks in an attempt to answer some of these questions. Hongsheng Chen, Bae-Ian Wu, Baile Zhang, and Jin Au Kong have published their research on invisibility cloaks in a recent i... Read More
It covers an area the size of Cambridge but so far only a tiny proportion of the site of the First Emperor of China’s underground palace for the afterlife has been excavated. Now Chinese archaeologists have used computerised imagery to complete a 3-D reconstruction of the giant tomb that lies 30 metres beneath a mound, with the Qinling mountains in the background. The dramatic imagery has been made available to The Times by the historian John Man, before he publishes pictures and a detailed desc... Read More
At an MIT lecture hall on Saturday, a convocation of 50 researchers and investors gathered to discuss a phenomenon that allegedly does not exist. Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research. Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3,000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence suggesting that small but promising amounts... Read More
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By
Sara James
By Rob Hafernik
A
Review by Philip Gardiner
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood,
Holy Grail in the United States) is a controversial book by authors Michael
Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which was first published in 1982 by
Jonathan Cape in London. The book followed on from a BBC TV documentary, and was
followed by a sequel, The Messianic Legacy, in 1987. It was reissued in an
illustrated hardcover version in 2005. The book was a key source for the
bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. In summary, the authors argue that there is
a possibility that Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalene, and that
their possible child or children emigrated to what is now southern France. Once
there they established what became the Merovingian dynasty, which is championed
today by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. An international bestseller
upon its release, Holy Blood spurred interest in a number of ideas related to
the authors' thesis. Response from mainstream historians and academics, however,
was all but universally negative. Critics argued that the bulk of the claims,
mysteries and conspiracies presented as fact were concocted by the authors,
making Holy Blood a work of pseudohistory by those critics.
Robert Bast, somewhere, May 2001
