I'm reading this book again and falling in love with it all over again. If you're not familiar, HBHG is a non-fiction book of speculative research that has been in print for several decades now. In fact, it was Dan Brown's inspiration for writing The DaVinci Code (a great airplane or beach book if you haven't read it). HBHG basically posits the theory that Jesus did not die on the cross as so many of us have been led to believe and that a secret society called "The Priory of Scion" posesses "incontrovertible proof" that Jesus' had children and that his bloodline still exists today.
In any case I find myself wondering--supposing the author's theory is correct--what could possibly constitute this "incontrovertible proof" of Jesus' bloodline? It would have to be something solid and lasting, because several individuals and organizations throughout western history have supposedly used this "incontrovertible proof" to blackmail the Papacy to gain fabulous wealth and power, including the Knights Templar, the Freemasons and a 19th century priest named Berenger Sauniere.
So I ask you all: assuming this conpiracy theory is proven correct sometime in the future, what could the "incontrovertible proof" of Jesus' bloodline possibly be?
TS
Outside use of time machine or direct divine intervention...none.
IIRC female lines can be tracked reasonably well using mitochondrions for numerous generations, but otherwise...
IIRC female lines can be tracked reasonably well using mitochondrions for numerous generations, but otherwise...
Not to mention that DNA sciences didn't exist until the past century and even if today we had a supposed descendant of Jesus to take DNA from, we have nothing to test it against.
Anyway I've been thinking the last few days. It is incredibly unlikely that this "incontrovertible proof" exists, but I did come up with a couple ideas for things that may have been used to blackmail the church. While these things aren't what we today would call "proof", a pope in the middle ages may have thought twice about allowing them into public light:
1. A descendant of Jesus may be the "proof" themselves. I'm no biblical scholar, but I know two things about Jesus: he was supposedly born with the stigmata and he must have been an incredibly charismatic man. Maybe there's some genetic defect that leaves a distinctive mark on the hands and feet and maybe Jesus' charisma came from his genes. If so, it is theoretically possible that through careful breeding, Jesus' line has kept either or both of these traits to the present day. Just imagine: a person with the charisma and personality of Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other great people all rolled into one. That's not really proof, but I bet anyone would think twice about crossing such a person.
2. A statue or tomb that is old enough and distinct enough to convince the middle ages community of its authenticity and reads something like: "Here lies Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, and his wife Mary." I'm thinking of something made of gold or other highly durable metal that has of course been well taken care of through the centuries. Such an object could of course be forged, though with knowledge and crafts the way they were in the middle ages, it might not even matter. If enough people saw it and believed it, the Catholic church might have a serious issue to deal with. I can easily imagine a pope deciding that throwing money at anyone possessing such an object is less risky than letting the object become public knowledge.
Yeah they're both long shots, but it's fun to theorize!
TS
I read this book back in the 80's. Thought to write a screenplay based on it. Began. Did not finish. It would not have been DaVinci Code by a longshot though... so no sour grapes. My plot was sexually hardcore and altogether absurd.
It looks like the entire theory could very well be the work of one rather brilliant hoaxter who slipped "evidence" into the library back in the 70's. I don't want to explain the entire controversy, but the controversy over legitimacy is in itself as interesting as the theory.
Can someone point me to the potential hoaxter in question? I forget his name. He came under fire in the UK over it all.
IIRC female lines can be tracked reasonably well using mitochondrions for numerous generations, but otherwise...Not to mention that DNA sciences didn't exist until the past century and even if today we had a supposed descendant of Jesus to take DNA from, we have nothing to test it against.
Yeah, that's the main issue, we don't have anything reliable to make comparisons with, so we would need a time machine to get a sample from Jesus or Mary.
And DNA tests are problematic over time due to mutations...those mitochondrions are the best method available for studying several generations back because they are usually inherited from mother -> less mutations and more reliable matches. That would give us info about descendants of Mary, if we only had original sample...
Theorisations are funny, and of course since we can't really have scientific data to back anything up, a lot depends on what people are willing to believe (and considering how several people seem to be taking DVC at face value...)
That said, there are several points there which have been made by others too. Like the point that it was highly unusual for Jewish man of that time to be unmarried at 30 (even if Paul later was obviously such a case). However, other researchers have suggested something considerably less dramatic, that Jesus was a widower. Apparently his nomadic lifestyle would suit much better a widower than a married man...
I read this book back in the 80's. Thought to write a screenplay based on it. Began. Did not finish. It would not have been DaVinci Code by a longshot though... so no sour grapes. My plot was sexually hardcore and altogether absurd.
It looks like the entire theory could very well be the work of one rather brilliant hoaxter who slipped "evidence" into the library back in the 70's. I don't want to explain the entire controversy, but the controversy over legitimacy is in itself as interesting as the theory.
Can someone point me to the potential hoaxter in question? I forget his name. He came under fire in the UK over it all.
Henry Lincoln wrote the book; Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh were his co-researchers.
And yeah, I've been thinking of writing short stories and/or novels about the historical possibilities that Henry presents. ;)
TS
That said, there are several points there which have been made by others too. Like the point that it was highly unusual for Jewish man of that time to be unmarried at 30 (even if Paul later was obviously such a case). However, other researchers have suggested something considerably less dramatic, that Jesus was a widower. Apparently his nomadic lifestyle would suit much better a widower than a married man...
I've never heard the widower theory; do you happen to recall what the evidence is for that idea?
TS
Director of Sales
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And yeah, I've been thinking of writing short stories and/or novels about the historical possibilities that Henry presents. ;)
Preacher goes pretty far astray of this core idea, thought... but the "Grail-as-bloodline-of-Jesus" plot is used here in a very funny way. Considers the implications of keeping one bloodline sacrosact for 2000 years (or so).
I've never heard the widower theory; do you happen to recall what the evidence is for that idea?
TS
No other evidence except that childless widower would be most easily in the position Jesus was in the beginning of his "career" and such status would allow more nomadic lifestyle.
The theologician from whom I read that suggestion did also have entertaining examination of the events of Easter as told in Gospels, going through piece by piece and weighing if they made sense or not, and when it did not suggested what might have happened and why was such texts there...
You don't say...
Humperdido!
Turn water into wine! Turn water into wine!
I love the Preacher series.
I read this book back in the 80's. Thought to write a screenplay based on it. Began. Did not finish. It would not have been DaVinci Code by a longshot though... so no sour grapes. My plot was sexually hardcore and altogether absurd.
It looks like the entire theory could very well be the work of one rather brilliant hoaxter who slipped "evidence" into the library back in the 70's. I don't want to explain the entire controversy, but the controversy over legitimacy is in itself as interesting as the theory.
Can someone point me to the potential hoaxter in question? I forget his name. He came under fire in the UK over it all.
Henry Lincoln wrote the book; Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh were his co-researchers.
And yeah, I've been thinking of writing short stories and/or novels about the historical possibilities that Henry presents. ;)
TS
The book writers were not the alleged hoaxster.
Possible "evidence" that could emerge that could be used to blackmail the Church could be documentary rather than scientific. Remember at the time of the Sauniere discovery at Renne-le Chateau documents were considered more reliable evidence than artifacts. As such, some possibilites could include:
-correspondence or notes from Jerome about changes he was asked ot make when "translating" the Old and New Testament from the Greek Septuagint to the Latin Vulgate.
-correspondence from bishops attending the Council of Nicea where the canon of the New Testament was set that may have indicated that gospels excluded were more historically accurate (like the Gospel of Mary Magdeline or other Gnostic gospels) than the 3 synoptic gospels and the gosepl of John that were included.
-surviving letters/epsitles of Paul or Peter that were excluded from the canon of the New Testament because their content discredited church teaching about Jesus or others
-actual surviving writing of Yeshua (Jesus Hebrew name)
-surviving texts of earlier translations of the Old Testament that date from before the Babylonian captivity of the Jews that contain alternate accounts and versions of the OT books
-copies of documents that many Church fathers wrote to condemn as heresies that only survive in the quoted form in the letters or treatises condemning them. Many copies were destroyed by the Church at the time of the condemnation.
-a supposed skeletal remains of Jesus as proof he was not bodily resurrected (though hard to be incontrovertable it could prove to be problematic, especially in the time of Saurniere which predated radio-carbon dating
-documents proving the Shroud of Turin and/or other relics of the Church to be frauds
-Roman and/or Jewish documents of the trial of Jesus that offer a different account of the crucifiction and death of Jesus than contained in the gospel accounts
-Roman/Jewish documents showing either other children of Mary (destroying the concept of the eternal virgin) or spouse/offspring of Christ as part of local census etc.
Now just as an aside, the destruction of the Library at Alexandria destroyed a huge amount of ancient documentation that has since been lost to us. For example actual copies of the Septuagint and earlier Hebrew versions of the OT/Torah than we currently have were thought to be held in the library based on mentions in surviving correspondence of scholars at the time. We don't know what else was lost so speculation can run rampant. Some of what was lost may be included in the cache of scroll recovered in the late 40's (both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammanadi documents) but those discoveries are still "under study" amd only bits and pieces have been released to the general public.
The Council of Nicea was a watershed event in shaping Christianity as we know it. It was here that the New Testament was codified. There were hundreds of gospels at the time, many of which dated to an earlier composition than the 4 selected for the NT. We know what was selected for inclusion, we don't know all of that which was excluded, nor do we know the why behind most of the choices made at the council beyond the party line given by the bishops at the time. How accurate that party line is has been a subject of scholarly debate (and fodder for speculative historians and conspiracy theorists as well as hoaxters) for years and years and years. Some feel if the hows and wherefores of the decisions made by the bishops attending that coucil were known, it would undermine the Church's credibility, so if Sauniere, the Templars, or others had discovered something of that nature it might have been what got the Church's attention, compliance, and/or payoffs.
excellent and informed post
That was quite enlightening, thank you.
Lots of points
Well, IIRC age determination for Shroud of Turin has been made, showing that it is several centuries too young...otherwise we could see if we could do DNA analysis out of that (and I know at least one scifi book where Jesus is cloned from Shroud of Turin).
Supposed skeletal remains of Jesus would be useless then and would be useless now. No way to prove them right.
That children of Mary part is tricky, as indeed Bible mentions James, brother of Jesus...who I believe has been explained to be from Joseph's earlier marriage. Couple of those apocryphal Gospels discuss this thing more, but do have some holes in their logic...
Speaking of which, several apocryphal Gospels have been translated to variety of languages, I have read about ten or so...they are amusing but at least I wasn't convinced of their truthfulness. And anyone who reads those can just laugh for those suggestions in DVC that in apocryph Jesus would be shown in more naturalistic, down-to-earth way...except for couple of mentions in gnostic Gospels that he enjoyed the company of Mary Magdalene, it is exactly the other way around, apocryphic Jesus brings to mind Superman from planet Krypton that real human being (which brings up some curious theological points of Jesus becoming human...there was nothing human in those).
Compare bloodline of descendants to residue on the Spear of Longinus. Of course, finding the "real" spear is a quest in itself.
The guy behind the Priory of Sion / Dossiers Secrets forgeries was Pierre Plantard. He and his co-conspiritors have long since admitted to planting the documents within the Bibliothèque nationale between 1965 and 1967 as part of an attempt to link Plantard as an heir to the Merovingian line. He and others were also behind the early promotion of the Sauniere myth (that he had discovered a treasure and hadn't just been selling masses). The coded documents that Saunere supposedly found in Rennes-le-Chateau were also faked by Plantard, and tests done on them confirmed that they were around 40 years old (in line with the timeline of his original hoax attempts).
Plantard originally worked with the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail, and to their sad credit, they weren't aware for some time that he was completely pulling their leg. Eventually Plantard came clean and repudiated everything that he'd started, but by that point it had taken on a life of its own, and even though he was behind virtually every core part of the myth, every time an author ignored that fact or wasn't aware of it, the legend started to grow legs of its own. Plantard died in 2000, probably still giggling over the whole thing.
Also, w/ respect to the Merovingian Kings being part of a bloodline of Christ... there have actually been some DNA tests on the bones of at least one mainline member of the royal line, and there was nothing atypical found. Entirely western european stock, with no markers that would indicate any level of middle eastern/hebrew descent.
As cool of a treasure story and mystery the whole thing makes, virtually nothing is grounded in anything more than one man's self-promoting myth he cooked up 40 years ago.
the answer to my question
Endless thanks, Todd. That's the guy. I would have sprained something in my head trying to remember his name.
Compare bloodline of descendants to residue on the Spear of Longinus. Of course, finding the "real" spear is a quest in itself.I have the Spear of Destiny in my possession, but I still need it to remain invincible in battle, so I won't be loaning it out for DNA testing. Sorry about that, chums!
God, I hope that's a wang joke, in kansas. (I'm sorry, I've got a peculiar sort of dyslexia that automatically jumbles D&D character names into perfect English. That's why my wizard is named Stumble Razor and my warrior goes by Upend Goat. It's a curse.)
Well I'm learning a lot from this thread! I had no idea documents were more important to the middle ages than artifacts; I wonder why that is? And as for Plantard "admitting" to his hoax, well obviously the Vatican got to him and somehow coerced him to lie for them. ;)
TS
That children of Mary part is tricky, as indeed Bible mentions James, brother of Jesus...who I believe has been explained to be from Joseph's earlier marriage.
That theory, of course, rests on the premise that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, rather than fathering more children for Joseph after Jesus was born, as would be expected of her. Why Mary needs to remain chaste in a marriage after her miracle was one thing about the whole Church mythology I could never quite wrap my mind around...
That children of Mary part is tricky, as indeed Bible mentions James, brother of Jesus...who I believe has been explained to be from Joseph's earlier marriage.That theory, of course, rests on the premise that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, rather than fathering more children for Joseph after Jesus was born, as would be expected of her. Why Mary needs to remain chaste in a marriage after her miracle was one thing about the whole Church mythology I could never quite wrap my mind around...
True, and generally many of the gospels detailing what happened before tend to be a mess...one made Joseph and his sons so old that considering how James outlived Jesus, around the time James died he would have to have been something like hundred years...possible but maybe a tad improbable.
And also the stories telling about birth of Mary...if one wants to take those as theological issues, Jesus would have only a smidgen of mortal being in him and thus the whole crucifixion issue would be somewhat meaningless.
It would be easiest (and in the long run, perhaps the most meaningful) to wave that Occam's razor and dump the idea of Mary's eternal virginity.
IIRC, the brother was from his father's first marriage.
IIRC, the brother was from his father's first marriage.
Except in the original Greek (koine) there are separate words for brother of the same mother and brother by marriage. In the early Grek texts, the term used for brother is the brother of the same mother, so unless the author was near illiterate or writing in Greek as a second language, the diction shoots that rationalization out of the water.
Greek of the time was very exacting (with its seven words for love for example) and translations into less exact langiages (like English that only has one word for love that encompasses all 7 meanings of the seven different Greek words) tend to blur distinctions that were clear in the original texts.
I'm willing to bet it was less of a translation error and more of a "written by someone a couple generations after the event."
I'm willing to bet it was less of a translation error and more of a "written by someone a couple generations after the event."
Well the other problem is that Jewish culture at the time (and to certain extent now still) is matrilineal. SOns of the same father with different mothers are not truly "family" or brothers since they cannot trace their descent through the same line.
The tradition continues to this day in Orthodix Judaism, a child born of a Jewish woman, whether the father is gentile or Jew, is considered a Jew by birth. A child born of a Jewish father is not considered a Jew unless the mother is Jewish as well. Circa the first century, this matrilineal tradition applied ot bonds of kinship. It is unlikely a Jew writing the account would have called them borther unless they shared the same mother (not brother) and any Jew reading the account that read James brother of Joseph, would have read that as them having shared the same mother.
Depending which gospel it appears in, the original language may have been Aramaic later tanslated into Greek, and then later still into Latin (with the Vulgate by St Jerome c. 3rd century, and later still into vernacular languages like English.
The 3 synoptic gospels were compiled/redacted between 70 and 90 AD, with John coming later, and other rejected gospels apprearing a little earlier and continuing to appear until just before the Council of Nicea. So yes, there was some passing through oral tradition for a generation or two before the written versions were first redacted formt he oral tradition. However, studies of oral traditions in non-literate cultures (i.e. cultures that have not become dependent on written records)have revealed that they remain amazing consistent for long periods of time and only break down when literacy is introduced. Variations in style and minor details occur but the characters, and plot elements of stories passed laong those remain for the most part fairly consistent. See Albert Lord's Singer of Tales for an example of one such study of the oral folklore passed along for generations among the Slavic cultures of eastern Europe and then used to make some analysis of the Homeric cycle of stories.
If James was called the brother of Jesus in the original tales coming from the Jewish followers of the 1st century, he most likely was a child of Mary as well. If the sobriquet was added by later redactors, then we would have to look at their cultural and liguistic origin to determine what the likely intent was. Explaining the sobriquet away as being the child of Joseph's previous marriage doesn't fit the cultural or linguistic patterns or norms of either the Jewish or Hellenistic groups where these stories and texts originated. This means it is most likely a later commentary (post Vulgate when Latin/Medieval cutural norms prevailed) added to explain something which did not fit the accepted view of the story as it had developed by that time and not an error or oral transmission, since that oral transmission would have occured within the same cultural norms of matrilineal and liguistic traditions of Jewish/Hellenistic culture in the Near East and cosmopolitan Alexandria of the first and second centuries.
That is quite the soliloquy.
True, and generally many of the gospels detailing what happened before tend to be a mess...one made Joseph and his sons so old that considering how James outlived Jesus, around the time James died he would have to have been something like hundred years...possible but maybe a tad improbable.
There's a reason that the Infancy Gospel of James, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Arabic Infancy Gospel etc weren't included within the canon. For the most part they were written well after the time of the 4 primary gospels (the Protoevangelium of James was never mentioned prior to the 3rd century, and it appears to be the source of the notion that James etc were sons of Joseph from a prior marraige), and as such they had little claim to apostolic authority as a legitimate witness to the life of Christ.
As a bit of a historical quirk, it's curious to note that some of those stories/gospels declared as illegitimate early in the Christian church's development (though remaining in some cases as tradition if not actually present in the gospels) remained in circulation in parts of the arabian penninsula, and centuries later appear within the traditions of the Koran (including some interesting translational errors or misreadings in those documents that some scholars have found that remained through the transition from heretical/marginal Christian sources to early Islam, though in the face of that, many Islamic theologians reject the notion of inspiration from earlier sources).
Has anyone ready Laurence Gardner's Bloodline of the Holy Grail? Gardner expresses many of the same ideas as Holy Blood & Holy Grail, as do many other authors. Apparently the idea that Jesus had a family and descendants was quite popular back in the day (waaaay back, during biblical times and up to the Middle Ages). It seems to have gone by the way side until recently. I suppose with the internet, all sorts of old ideas seem new again...
I read Laurence Gardner's Bloodline of the Holy Grail about 10 years ago. It was a "liberating" experience for the very physical/sexual AND spritual woman that I was then and still am today. The "Virgin/Whore" archetypal split of the "Mary's" of the world I feel is one of the greatest tragedies all women face today in their attempts to be "whole" and to be HONORED for both their physical nature and their spirtual nature. Furthermore, I see men being "split" as well in the way they relate to women and their own physical and spiritual natures. It's really bad news all around.
I came to this site because I'm in a Creative Writing class and our last assignment is to write a screenplay. To follow the "rules" there has to be some "conflict". I am not one to "meditate on conflict" and I've been struggling with the assignment. Then I got to wondering about what I consider to be the "source" of so much conflict in the world; i.e. Western Religion and what I feel might be one of the key turning points of that ongoing conflict relative to the "virginity" of Mary the Mother of Jesus. I began to wonder if anyone had started writing a screenplay based on Gardner's book.
I don't have time to pin down the exact page, but I recall Gardner saying that part of the reason Mary the Mother of Jesus was characterized as a "virgin" was to equate Jesus to the Greek and Roman "Gods and Goddesses" who invariably were "born of virgins" in one way or another. In effect, there was "competition" for believers and to persuade those who were already believers in these "other" Gods and Goddesses, Jesus had to be shown to be "equal" to them.
There is also another dominant theme though - the idea of "Scapegoat". There was already a long-standing tradition of what can be referred to as "substitution" mythology where an object, animal, or person is put forth as a "substitute" for others and somehow, through the ritual sacrifice, everyone else's "sins" or "problems" are "magically" taken care of. I guess, when it comes down to it, regardless of the reality which followed, people would actually "feel better" about their lives, feel consoled, once these sacrifices were made. There is evidence (See: The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton) that there is A LOT to be said for the "placebo" effect when it comes down to the biochemistry of our bodies and the physical impact of our beliefs.
But, I'm off on another tangent there. I followed my study of Gardner's work with a research project on the way women are viewed via Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What became clear to me as I did most of my research on line was that people ultimately believe WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE. There were Islamic women pointing to texts in the Bible that they saw as degrading to women, there were Christian women pointing to the very same texts saying how they showed respect for women. There were also Christians pointing to texts in the Koran that they felt degraded women and Islamic women defending opposite points of view in reference to other passages in the Koran.
What I realized was that each tradition's religious texts are so vast as to contain passages that could be used to JUSTIFY an almost infinite number of POINTS OF VIEW. And where do those "Points of View" reside? Within each and every individual. So, when it comes down to it, as I said before, people Believe What They Want to Believe. Most people look to JUSTIFY their beliefs based on one source text or another. Very few people actually accept full responsibility for their beliefs, nor have any clue as to their personal motivations or vested interests in believing as they do.
Regardless of the "facts" - which have been "filtered" over and over again through the Points of View of relatively few individuals compared to the total number of individuals who have ever lived on this Earth, in the here and now, we are still "creating our own realities" through the (conscious or unconscious) choices we make about what we believe. In the end, I think that is what we need to be paying more attention to - although, understanding our "culture of belief" is good homework for everyone.
I don't have time to pin down the exact page, but I recall Gardner saying that part of the reason Mary the Mother of Jesus was characterized as a "virgin" was to equate Jesus to the Greek and Roman "Gods and Goddesses" who invariably were "born of virgins" in one way or another. In effect, there was "competition" for believers and to persuade those who were...I would be very leery of anyone making such a claim. There really aren't any Greek or Roman gods or goddesses born of virgins, unless you start stretching definitions of virgin to be almost unrecognizable.
According to Gardner (and others who I can't recall at the moment), the term 'virgin' was mistranslated from the original hebrew word for 'young woman'.
Could it be that the 'virgin birth' of Jesus was simply a mistranslation?
You're right. Gardner does make it clear that "virgo" referred only to a "young woman".
From page 33 of Bloodline of the Holy Grail:
"...the Gospel text is based on numerous...misconceptions. The Semitic word translated as 'virgin' is almah - which actually means no more than 'a young woman'. The Hebrew word denoting a physical 'virgin' (that is virgo intacta) is bethulah. In Latin, the word virgo means no more than 'unmarried'; to imply the modern English connotations of 'virgin', the Latin word had to be qualified by a further adjective (intacta) denoting sexual inexperience."
I have now taken the time to find the passage I was hesitatingly referring to earlier about the "competition" involved with other "Gods and Goddesses" born of virgins:
On page 108 of Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Gardner writes speaking of Saul of Tarsus who was originally persecuting Jesus and his followers but was "converted" on the road to Damscus and took on the new name of Paul along with a particular mission from Jesus:
"Paul's alloted task was to further Hellenic-Jewish instruction among the Gentiles of the Mediterranean coastal lands, and to take Jesus's message to those Jews who lived outside the Near East. Instead he ignored the root objective and - as was perhaps inevitable - he contrived his own cult following. For Paul, the veneration and outright worship of Jesus was sufficient to ensure redemption and entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. All the social values professed and urged by Jesus were cast aside in Paul's attempt to compete with a variety of pagan beliefs.
"Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, there were many religions, whose gods and prophets were supposedly born of virgins and defied death in one way or another. They were all of supernatural origin and had astounding powers over ordinary mortals. To be fair to Paul, he certainly encountered problems that James and Jesus never faced in their native environment. Paul's route to success against such odds was to present Jesus in a way that would transcend even these paranormal idols. But in so doing he created an image of Jesus so far removed from reality that Jewish society regarded him a fraud. Notwithstanding any of this, however, it was the trascendent Jesus of Paul's invention who later became the Jesus of orthodox Christianity."
So - I was off a little in my memory relative to the association of Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses with virgin births. My apologies and my acknowledgment of a somewhat limited knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology. Hopefully this quote has corrected my error while retaining the import of the basic idea I was drawing on from Gardner's writing, which, by the way, makes as much good sense to me now as it did the first time I read it.
So I wrote the "first 10 pages" of my screenplay idea based on Gardner's book for my class assignment. If anyone here is interested I'll post it. It may seem like a lot at 10 pages but I'm using the standard screenplay format which keeps the dialogue close in the center surrounded by plenty of white space. It will be a quick read and I'm open to input from everyone. I would really like to see something like this become a movie-reality some day - hopefully within my lifetime! : )
I haven't done a lot of research for the historical details at this point. Keep in mind, this is really just a quick "write something and put it out there" experiment for me based mainly on Gardner's book. I am working full-time and will have two more classes starting September 8th so I won't have much time to work on this in the near future. However, if anyone in this discussion would like to contribute or collaborate with me, I am totally all-for-it. My highest intention is to communicate a story that I feel can correct some of the relevant errors that have had such a negative impact on "Western Culture" and (to the degree that is being spread everywhere) our current "world culture" both for men and women.
Ideally, reading The Bloodline of the Holy Grail would get us all on the same page to start, but I'm going to keep reading other books and would like to draw on as many other available resources as well to "fill in the blanks". I'm open to challenges and interjections. I would like to create a story that is as "authentic" as an account can be 2000+ years later. At the same time, it will simply be another "story" that people will judge for themselves - and - as I have said before, ultimately, they will still believe what they want to believe.
At this point, I feel there is something much better to believe about Jesus and Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene and OURSELVES than we have been taught and expected to believe up to now by the dominant "religious authorities". I just want to give more people the idea and the option to believe something different, if they want to, NOT to try to convince them of some "absolute truth" or to FORCE them to believe something else. I think it is very, very important to keep that orientation in mind. It really isn't about being "absolutely right or wrong". It's about having the freedom to consider and make choices and take responsibility for one's choices - especially with respect to how or what one chooses to believe.