holy blood, holy grail

a belated "holiday" piece....
I've been reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I just finished a few days ago. The book has been getting some attention these days because the authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, recently lost a plagarism lawsuit against Dan Brown, the author of the Da Vinci Code. Certain themes from the Da Vinci Code were pretty clearly inspired by Holy Blood, Holy Grail except The Da Vinci Code admits that it is fiction while Holy Blood, Holy Grail is presented as non-fiction. (It seems like a basic Catch-22. If Baigent and Leigh are just doing history, then the Da Vinci Code is just an example of historically-based fiction. But if Baigent and Leigh want to take credit for their story and say that Dan Brown stole their work, on some level, it means admitting they more or less made it up.)

Baigent and Leigh argue that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and their descendents became part of European royalty (specifically the Merovingian dynasty). Furthermore, a secret society called the Priory of Sion has an elaborate master plan to place Christ's descendants into positions of political power in Europe (and possibly the world).

Some of the details of their theory are of special interest to Muslims:

1. Baigent and Leigh suggest that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion.

2. They suggest that Jesus did not claim to be God but was a human Messiah. So instead of following the typical Christian interpretation that Jesus was killed because his theological claims were blasphemous to monotheistic Jews, they argue that his claim to be the messiah, (a human hereditary priest-king) was a political threat to Imperial Rome (which is why he would have been sentenced to crucifixion in the first place).

3. In order to make Christ's message more popular in the Roman Empire, the political message was de-emphasized and replaced with anti-semitic elements. (Blaming the Jews instead of the Romans)

4. The Priory of Sion was also behind the founding of the Templars who had a long term goal of trying to unify Jews, Christians and Muslims under one system; an actual theocratic government ruled by the descendants of Jesus. As they put it:

For if Jesus were acknowledged as a mortal prophet, as a priest-king and legitimate ruler of the line of David, he might well have become acceptable to both Muslims and Jews. As king of Jerusalem, his lineal descendant would than have been in a position to implement one of the primary tenents of Templar policy - the reconciliation of Christianity with Judaism and Islam.

The authors try to bring together various threads to weave a complex story, but to be honest, they aren't always very rigorous in terms of making their argument and so some of the pieces don't hold. For example, the Priory of Sion was probably a hoax. (It seems the 'real' Priory of Sion is not a 1000 year old secret society but was founded in the 1950's by a French con artist as part of an elaborate scam). Nevertheless, the book was an interesting read, and provided some food for thought. (I was most persuaded by the idea that Christ's mission was more political than is usually acknowledged).

the da vinci code
the (real) da vinci code
angels and demons
the black stone