Holy Blood, Holy Grail

by Baigent, Michael

  There are other anomalous aspects of the Crucifixion that point to precisely such a stratagem. According to the Gospels Jesus is crucified at a place called Golgotha, "the place of the skull." Later tradition attempts to identify Golgotha as a barren, more or less skull-shaped hill to the northwest of Jerusalem. And yet the Gospels themselves make it clear that the site of the Crucifixion is very different from a barren skull-shaped hill. The Fourth Gospel is most explicit on the matter, "Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid." (John 19:41) Jesus, then, was crucified not on a barren skull-shaped hill or, for that matter, in any "public place of execution." He was crucified in or immediately adjacent to a garden containing a private tomb. According to Matthew (27:60) this tomb and garden were the personal property of Joseph of Arimathea— who, according to all four Gospels, was both a man of wealth and a secret disciple of Jesus.

  Popular tradition depicts the Crucifixion as a large-scale public affair accessible to the multitude and attended by a cast of thousands. And yet the Gospels themselves suggest very different circumstances. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Crucifixion is witnessed by most people, including the women, from "afar off" (Luke 23:49). It would thus seem clear that Jesus’ death was not a public event but a private one—a private crucifixion performed on private property. A number of modern scholars argue that the actual site was probably the Garden of Gethsemane. If Gethsemane were indeed the private land of one of Jesus’ secret disciples, this would explain why Jesus, prior to the Crucifixion, could make such free use of the place.27

  Needless to say, a private crucifixion on private property leaves considerable room for a hoax—a mock crucifixion, a skillfully stage-managed ritual. There would have been only a few eye witnesses immediately present. To the general populace the drama would only have been visible, as the Synoptic Gospels confirm, from some distance. And from such a distance it would not have been apparent who in fact was being crucified. Or if he was actually dead.

  Such a charade would, of course, have necessitated some connivance and collusion on the part of Pontius Pilate—or of someone influential in the Roman administration. And indeed such connivance and collusion is highly probable. Granted, Pilate was a cruel and tyrannical man. But he was also corrupt and susceptible to bribes. The historical Pilate, as opposed to the one depicted in the Gospels, would not have been above sparing Jesus’ life—in exchange for a sizable sum of money and perhaps a guarantee of no further political agitation.

  Whatever his motivation, there is, in any case, no question that Pilate is somehow intimately involved in the affair. He acknowledges Jesus’ claim as "King of the Jews." He also expresses, or feigns to express, surprise that Jesus’ death occurs as quickly as it apparently does. And perhaps most important of all, he grants Jesus’ body to Joseph of Arimathea.

  According to Roman law at the time a crucified man was denied all burial.28 Indeed, guards were customarily posted to prevent relatives or friends removing the bodies of the dead. The victim would simply be left on the cross, at the mercy of the elements and carrion birds. Yet Pilate, in a flagrant breach of procedure, readily grants Jesus’ body to Joseph of Arimathea. This clearly attests to some complicity on Pilate’s part. And it may attest to other things as well.

  In English translations of Mark’s Gospel Joseph asks Pilate for Jesus’ body. Pilate expresses surprise that Jesus is dead, checks with a centurion, then, satisfied, consents to Joseph’s request. This would appear straightforward enough at first glance; but in the original Greek version of Mark’s Gospel, the matter becomes rather more complicated. In the Greek version, when Joseph asks for Jesus’ body, he uses the word soma — word applied only to a living body. Pilate, assenting to the request, employs the word ptoma—which means "corpse."29 According to the Greek, then, Joseph explicitly asks for a living body and Pilate grants him what he thinks, or pretends to think, is a dead one.

  Given the prohibition against burying crucified men, it is also extraordinary that Joseph receives any body at all. On what grounds does he receive it? What claim does he have to Jesus’ body? If he was a secret disciple, he could hardly plead any claim without disclosing his secret discipleship—unless Pilate was already aware of it, or unless there was some other factor involved that militated in Joseph’s favor.

  There is little information about Joseph of Arimathea. The Gospels report only that he was a secret disciple of Jesus, possessed great wealth, and belonged to the Sanhedrin—the Council of Elders that ruled the Judaic community of Jerusalem under Roman auspices. It would thus seem apparent that Joseph was an influential man. And this conclusion receives confirmation from his dealings with Pilate and from the fact that he possesses a tract of land with a private tomb.

  Medieval tradition portrays Joseph of Arimathea as a custodian of the Holy Grail, and Perceval is said to be of his lineage. According to other later traditions he is in some way related by blood to Jesus and Jesus’ family. If this was indeed the case, it would, at the very least, have furnished him with some plausible claim to Jesus’ body—for while Pilate would hardly grant the corpse of an executed criminal to a random stranger, he might well do so, with the incentive of a bribe, to the dead man’s kin. If Joseph—a wealthy and influential member of the Sanhedrin—was indeed Jesus’ kin, he bears further testimony to Jesus’ aristocratic pedigree. And if he was Jesus’ kin, his association with the Holy Grail—the "blood royal"— would be all the more explicable.

  THE SCENARIO

  We had already sketched a tentative hypothesis that proposed a bloodline descended from Jesus. We now began to enlarge on that hypothesis and—albeit still provisionally—to fill in a number of crucial details. As we did so, the overall picture began to gain both coherence and plausibility.

  It seemed increasingly clear that Jesus was a priest-king-an aristocrat and legitimate claimant to the throne—embarking on an attempt to regain his rightful heritage. He himself would have been a native of Galilee, a traditional hotbed of opposition to the Roman regime. At the same time, he would have had numerous noble, rich, and influential supporters throughout Palestine, including the capital city of Jerusalem; and one of these supporters, a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, may also have been his kin. In the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany, moreover, was the home of either his wife or his wife’s family; and here, on the eve of his triumphal entry into the capital, the aspiring priest-king resided. Here he established the center for his mystery cult. Here he augmented his following by performing ritual initiations, including that of his brother-in-law.

  Such an aspiring priest-king would have generated powerful opposition in certain quarters—inevitably among the Roman administration and perhaps among entrenched Judaic interests represented by the Sadducees. One or both of these interests apparently contrived to thwart his bid for the throne. But in their attempt to exterminate him they were not as successful as they had hoped to be. For the priest-king would seem to have had friends in high places; and these friends, working in collusion with a corrupt, easily bribed Roman procurator, appear to have engineered a mock crucifixion—on private grounds, inaccessible to all but a select few. With the general populace kept at a convenient distance, an execution was then staged—in which a substitute took the priest-king’s place on the cross or in which the priest-king himself did not actually die. Toward dusk—which would have further impeded visibility—a "body" was removed to an opportunely adjacent tomb, from which, a day or two later, it "miraculously" disappeared.

  If our scenario was accurate, where did Jesus go then? So far as our hypothesis of a bloodline was concerned, the answer to that question did not particularly matter. According to certain Islamic and Indian legends he eventually died, at a ripe old age, somewhere in the east—in Kashmir, it is claimed most frequently. On the other hand, an Australian journalist has put forward an intriguing and persuasive argument that Jesus died at Masada when the fortress fell to the Roman
s in A.D. 74—by which time he would have been approaching his eightieth year. 30

  According to the letter we received, the documents found by Bérenger Saunière at Rennes-le-Château contained "incontrovertible proof" that Jesus was alive in A.D. 45, but there is no indication as to where. One likely possibility would be Egypt, specifically Alexandria—where, at about the same time, the sage Ormus is said to have created the Rose-Croix by amalgamating Christianity with earlier, pre-Christian mysteries. It has even been hinted that Jesus’ mummified body may be concealed somewhere in the environs of Rennes-le-Château—which would explain the ciphered message in Saunière’s parchments "IL EST LÀ MORT" ("He is there dead)." We are not prepared to assert that he accompanied his family to Marseilles. In fact, circumstances would argue against it. He might not have been in any condition to travel, and his presence would have constituted a threat to his relatives’ safety. He may have deemed it more important to remain in the Holy Land—like his brother, Saint James—to pursue his objectives there. In short, we can offer no real suggestion about what became of him—any more than the Gospels themselves do.

  For the purposes of our hypothesis, however, what happened to Jesus was of less importance than what happened to the holy family— and especially to his brother-in-law, his wife, and his children. If our scenario was correct, they, together with Joseph of Arimathea and certain others, were smuggled by ship from the Holy Land. And when they were set ashore at Marseilles, the Magdalen would indeed have brought the Sangraal—the "blood royal," the scion of the house of David—into France.

  13

  The Secret the Church Forbade

  We were well aware, of course, that our scenario did not concur with established Christian teachings. But the more we researched, the more apparent it became that those teachings, as they have been passed down through the centuries, represent only a highly selective compilation of fragments subjected to stringent expurgation and revision. The New Testament, in other words, offers a portrait of Jesus and his age that conforms to the needs of certain vested interests—of certain groups and individuals who had, and to a significant degree still have, an important stake in the matter. And anything that might compromise or embarrass these interests—like the "secret" Gospel of Mark, for example—has been duly excised. So much has been excised, as a matter of fact, that a sort of vacuum has been created. In this vacuum speculation becomes both justified and necessary.

  If Jesus was a legitimate claimant to the throne, it is probable that he was supported, at least initially, by a relatively small percentage of the populace—his immediate family from Galilee, certain other members of his own aristocratic social class, and a few strategically placed representatives in Judaea and the capital city of Jerusalem. Such a following, albeit distinguished, would hardly have been sufficient to ensure the realization of his objectives—the success of his bid for the throne. In consequence he would have been obliged to recruit a more substantial following from other classes—in the same way that Bonnie Prince Charlie, to pursue a previous analogy, did in 1745.

  How does one recruit a sizable following? Obviously by promulgating a message calculated to enlist their allegiance and support. Such a message need not necessarily have been as cynical as those associated with modern politics. On the contrary, it may have been promulgated in perfectly good faith, with thoroughly noble and burning idealism. But despite its distinctly religious orientation, its primary objective would have been the same as those of modern politics—to ensure the adherence of the populace. Jesus promulgated a message that attempted to do just that—to offer hope to the downtrodden, the afflicted, the disenfranchised, the oppressed. In short, it was a message with a promise. If the modern reader overcomes his prejudices and preconceptions on the matter, he will discern a mechanism extraordinarily akin to that visible everywhere in the world today—a mechanism whereby people are, and always have been, united in the name of a common cause and welded into an instrument for the overthrow of a despotic regime. The point is that Jesus’ message was both ethical and political. It was directed to a particular segment of the populace in accordance with political considerations. For it would only have been among the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, and the afflicted that he could have hoped to recruit a sizable following. The Sadducees, who had come to terms with the Roman occupation, would have been as loath as all the Sadducees throughout history to part with what they possessed, or to risk their security and stability.

  Jesus’ message, as it appears in the Gospels, is neither wholly new nor wholly unique. It is probable that he himself was a Pharisee, and his teachings contain a number of elements of Pharisaic doctrine. As the Dead Sea Scrolls attest, they also contain a number of important aspects of Essene thought. But if the message, as such, was not entirely original, the means of transmitting it probably was. Jesus himself was undoubtedly an immensely charismatic individual. He may well have had an aptitude for healing and other such "miracles." He certainly possessed a gift for communicating his ideas by means of evocative and vivid parables—which did not require any sophisticated training in his audience, but were accessible, in some sense, to the populace at large. Moreover, unlike his Essene precursors, Jesus was not obliged to confine himself to forecasting the advent of a Messiah. He could claim to be that Messiah. And this, quite naturally, would have imparted a much greater authority and credibility to his words.

  It is clear that by the time of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus had recruited a following. But this following would have been composed of two quite distinct elements—whose interests were not precisely the same. On the one hand, there would have been a small nucleus of "initiates"—immediate family, other members of the nobility, wealthy and influential supporters, whose primary objective was to see their candidate installed on the throne. On the other hand, there would have been a much larger entourage of "common people" —the "rank and file" of the movement, whose primary objective was to see the message, and the promise it contained, fulfilled. It is important to recognize the distinction between these two factions. Their political objective—to establish Jesus on the throne—would have been the same. But their motivations would have been essentially different.

  When the enterprise failed, as it obviously did, the uneasy alliance between these two factions—"adherents of the message" and adherents of the family—would seem to have collapsed. Confronted by debacle and the threat of imminent annihilation, the family would have placed a priority on the single factor that, from time immemorial, has been of paramount importance to noble and royal families— preservation of the bloodline at all costs, if necessary in exile. For the "adherents of the message," however, the family’s future would have become irrelevant; for them survival of the bloodline would have been of secondary consequence. Their primary objective would have been perpetuation and dissemination of the message.

  Christianity, as it evolves through its early centuries and eventually comes down to us today, is a product of the "adherents of the message." The course of its spread and development has been too widely charted by other scholars to necessitate much attention here. Suffice it to say that with Saint Paul "the message" had already begun to assume a crystallized and definitive form, and this form became the basis on which the whole theological edifice of Christianity was erected. By the time the Gospels were composed, the basic tenets of the new religion were virtually complete.

  The new religion was oriented primarily toward a Roman or Romanized audience. Thus, the role of Rome in Jesus’ death was, of necessity, whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews. But this was not the only liberty taken with events to render them palatable to the Roman world. For the Roman world was accustomed to defying its rulers, and Caesar had already been officially instated as a god. In order to compete, Jesus—whom nobody had previously deemed divine—had to be deified as well. In Paul’s hands he was.

  Before it could be successfully disseminated—from Palestine to Syria, Asia Minor, Greec
e, Egypt, Rome, and western Europe—the new religion had to be made acceptable to the people of those regions. And it had to be capable of holding its own against already established creeds. The new god, in short, had to be comparable in power, in majesty, in repertoire of miracles, to those he was intended to displace. If Jesus was to gain a foothold in the Romanized world of his time, he had perforce to become a full-fledged god. Not a Messiah in the old sense of that term, not a priest-king, but God incarnate—who, like his Syrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and classical counterparts, passed through the underworld and the harrowing of Hell and emerged, rejuvenated, with the spring. It was at this point that the idea of the Resurrection first assumed such crucial importance, and for a fairly obvious reason—to place Jesus on a par with Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and all the other dying and reviving gods who populated both the world and the consciousness of their time. For precisely the same reason the doctrine of the virgin birth was promulgated. And the Easter festival—the festival of death and resurrection—was made to coincide with the spring rites of other contemporary cults and mystery schools.