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From a lecture presented
by
Sir Laurence Gardner,
Kt St Gm, KCD
Extracted from Nexus
Magazine
Volume 5, Number 2
(February-March 1998)
from
NexusMagazine Website
The early Christian
Church leaders adopted scriptures and teachings
that would obscure the truth about the royal bloodline of Jesus |
Contents
Return to
Laurence Gardner
Return to
Verdadera Historia de Los Nazarenos y La Biblia
Return to Temas
/ Misticismo
I did not decide to write the book
Bloodline of the Holy Grail.
The book happened by accident, not by design. It happened by virtue
of the fact that for about the last ten years I have been the
appointed historian and sovereign genealogist to thirty-three royal
families. It happened because during those early periods I was
documenting evidence on the history of those royal families and
their noble offshoots, and the chivalric archives of those noble and
sovereign families.
What I was doing was putting together written chronological accounts
of things that these families knew the substance of but did not
necessarily know the detail of. It is the reason why in Britain and
Europe I necessarily spend far less time on this biblical aspect,
because there’s a lot of what we’ll talk about tonight that in
Europe is taken as read. It was never any secret when my book came
out, for the majority of these people, that Jesus was married
and that
Jesus had heirs, because it was written as such in very
many family archives, not necessarily just private but in the open
domain. The published papers of Mary, Queen of Scots talk
about it at length. The papers of James II of England, who
was wasn’t deposed until 1688, talk of it at length.
In putting together the detail, generation by generation, of this
story, we were actually compiling something for posterity that, at
that point in time when I began the work, was locked away in boxes
and cupboards, and I was actually in a position where I was
presented with things and said, "Look, this says, ’Last opened in
1732!". So, some very, very old documentation, not only last opened
in seventeen-whenever, but actually documented and written down
hundreds of years before that.
The book happened by accident. Over a period of time-probably, looking
back now, ten or twelve years ago-I began this work with separate
commissions from separate families, doing work on these genealogies.
What happened was they began to converge. It became very
apparent-and it took a long time because genealogies have to be done
backwards, put together backwards and constructed backwards-but what
was happening was that a triangle, from a large top base with
numerous family lines, was pulling in to a point.
I suddenly realized what this point was, and I said, "Wow, do you
realize what I’ve found here?"; and they said, "Ah, you know the
father of so and so?"; and I said, "No, no, no; I’m actually finding
that this comes out of the House of Judah in the first
century"; and they said, "Oh, yeah, we know all that; what we wanted
you to do was for you..."; and I said, "Well, there are millions of
people out there who do not know about it, so let’s turn this
triangle upside down and turn it into a book!". So that’s how the
book happened.
On top of that, for the last six years I have been Britain’s Grand
Prior of the Sacred Kindred of Saint Columba, the royal
ecclesiastical seat of the Celtic Church. So I had,
also, access to Celtic Church records dating back to AD 37. Because
of my attachments to the families, to the knightly orders, I also
had access to Templar documents, to the very documents that the
Knights Templar brought out in Europe in 1128 and confronted the
Church establishment with, and frightened the life out of them with,
because these were documents that talked about bloodline and
genealogy, and we’ll get on to that.
So tonight we’re going to embark on a time-honored quest. Some have
called it the ultimate quest. The Christian Church has condemned
it as
a heresy, and it is, of course, the quest for
the Holy Grail.
A heresy is described in all dictionaries as,
"an opinion which is contrary to the orthodox dogma of the Christian
bishops",
and, in this regard, those other quests which comprise much of today’s
scientific and medical research are equally heretical. The word
"heresy" is, in essence, nothing more than a derogatory label, a tag
used by a fearful Church establishment that has long
sought to maintain control of society through fear of
the unknown. A heresy can therefore define those aspects of
philosophy, research, which quest into the realms of the unknown,
and which from time to time provide answers and solutions that are
quite contrary to Church doctrine.
Quests are by their very nature intriguing; history and historical
research are enlightening; but the findings from neither are of any
use whatsoever unless there are present-day applications which, like
science and medicine, can sow the seeds of a better future.
History is no more than recorded experience-generally, the experience
of its winners. It makes common sense to learn from the experience
of yesterday. It’s that very experience which holds the moral,
cultural, political, social keys of tomorrow, and it’s in this
context that
the Holy Grail supports that which we call "the
Messianic Code". This is the code of social practice
instituted by Jesus when he washed his apostles’ feet at the Last
Supper. It pertains to the obligations of giving and receiving
service; it determines that those in positions of elected authority
and influence should always be aware of their duties as
representatives of society, obligated to serve society, not to
presume authority over society. It is the essential key to
democratic government. This is defined as government by the people,
for the people. Without the implementation of the Grail Code, we
experience the only-too-familiar government of the people. This is
not democratic government.
Now, in the course of our journey we’ll be discussing many items which
are thoroughly familiar, but we’ll be looking at them from a
different perspective to that normally conveyed. In this regard it
will appear that we are often treading wholly new ground, but in
fact it was only the ground that existed before it was carpeted and
concealed by those with otherwise vested interests. Only by rolling
back this carpet of purposeful concealment can we succeed in our
quest for the Holy Grail.
So our quest will begin in the Holy Land of Judaea in the time of
Jesus and we’ll spend a good while there. I will not move from that
era until we break, because it will take that long to set the
emergent scene for the next 2,000 years of history.
We’ll be traveling through the Dark Ages then, to spend some time in
mediaeval Europe. The Grail mystery will then be followed into
King Arthur’s Britain and, eventually, in time, to the United
States of America where the American fathers were among the greatest
exponents of the Grail Code. Eminent Americans such as George
Washington,
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Thompson,
Thomas Jefferson were as much champions of the Holy Grail
as were King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Galahad.
Bloodline of the Holy Grail, the book, has been
described as "the book of messianic descent". It was a radio
interviewer who called it that; and it’s an apt description because
the book carries the subtitle, The Hidden Lineage of Jesus
Revealed. This of course indicates that Jesus had children and,
by implication therefore, that he was married. So was he married?
Did Jesus have children? If so, do we know what happened to them?
Are there descendants alive today? The answer to each of these
questions is yes. We shall be looking at the emergent
family in some detail. We will follow the story, their story,
century by century; the story of a resolute royal dynasty, the
descendant heirs of Jesus who struggled against all odds through the
centuries to preserve the Messianic Royal Code down to
date.
Tonight’s story will be a conspiracy: usurped crowns,
prosecutions, assassinations, and the unwarranted concealment of
information from the people of the Western world. It’s an account of
good government and bad government; about how the patriarchal
kingship of people was supplanted by dogmatic tyranny and the
dictatorial lordship of lands. It’s a compelling journey of
discovery, a view of past ages, but with its eye firmly set on the
future. This is history as it was once written but has never been
told.
Let’s begin with the most obvious of all questions. What is the
Holy Grail? How is the Holy Grail connected with the
descendant heirs of Jesus? The fact that Jesus had descendants might
come as a surprise to some, but it was widely known in Britain and
Europe until the late Middle Ages, just a few hundred years ago.
In mediaeval times, the line of messianic descent was defined by
the French word Sangréal. This derived from the
two words, Sang Réal, meaning "Blood Royal". This was the Blood
Royal of Judah, the kingly line of David which progressed through
Jesus and his heirs. In English translation, the definition,
Sangréal, became "San Gréal", as in "San" Francisco. When written
more fully it was written "Saint Grail", "Saint", of course,
relating to "Holy"; and by a natural linguistic process came the
more romantically familiar name, "Holy Grail".
From the Middle Ages there were a number of chivalric and military
orders specifically attached to the Messianic Blood Royal
in Britain and Europe. They included the Order of the Realm of
Sion, the
Order of the Sacred Sepulchre; but
 the most prestigious
of all was the
Sovereign Order of the Sangréal - the Knights of the
Holy Grail. This was a dynastic Order of
Scotland’s Royal House of Stewart.
In symbolic terms the Grail is often portrayed as a
chalice that contains the blood of Jesus; alternatively as a vine of
grapes. The product of grapes is wine, and it is the chalice and the
wine of Grail tradition that sit at the very heart of the Communion,
the Mass, the Eucharist; and this sacrament, the Sacred Chalice,
contains the wine that represents the perpetual blood of Jesus.
It is quite apparent that although maintaining the ancient Communion
custom, the Christian Church has conveniently ignored and elected
not to teach the true meaning and origin of that custom. Few people
even think to enquire about the ultimate symbolism of the chalice
and wine sacrament, believing that it comes simply from some gospel
entry relating to the Last Supper. Well, it’s the significance of
the perpetual blood of Jesus. How is the blood of Jesus, or anyone
else for that matter, perpetuated? It is perpetuated through
family and lineage.
So why was it that the Church authorities elected to ignore
the bloodline significance of the Grail sacrament? They kept the
sacrament. Why was it they went so far as to denounce Grail lore and
Grail symbolism as heretical?
The fact is that every government and every church teaches the form of
history or dogma most conducive to its own vested interest. In this
regard we’re all conditioned to receiving a very selective form of
teaching. We are taught what we’re supposed to know, and we are told
what we’re supposed to believe. But for the most part we learn both
political and religious history by way of national or clerical
propaganda, and this often becomes absolute dogma, teachings which
may not be challenged for fear of reprisals.
With regard to the Church’s attitude towards the chalice and the wine,
it is blatantly apparent that the original symbolism had to be
reinterpreted by the bishops because it denoted that Jesus had
offspring and therefore that he must have united with a woman.
But it was not only sacraments and customary ritual that were
reinterpreted because of this: the very gospels themselves
were corrupted to comply with the male-only establishment of
the Church of Rome, much like a modern film editor will
adjust and select the tapes to achieve the desired result, the
result of the vested interest of the film-maker.
We’re all familiar with the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
but what about the other gospels? What about the Gospel of
Philip, of
Thomas, of Mary and of Mary
Magdalene? What of all the numerous gospels and acts and
epistles that were not approved by the Church councils when the New
Testament was collated? Why were they excluded when the
choices were made?
There were actually two main criteria for selection of gospels for the
New Testament. These were determined at the Council of
Carthage
in the year 397. The first criterion was that the New Testament
must be written in the names of Jesus’ own apostles. Mark was not an
apostle of Jesus, as far as we know; nor was Luke. They were
colleagues of the later St Paul. Thomas, on the other hand, was one
of the original twelve, and yet the gospel in his name was excluded.
Not only that, but along with numerous other gospels and texts it
was destined and sentenced to be destroyed.
And so throughout the mediaeval world, Thomas and
numerous other unapproved books were buried and hidden in the
fifth century. Only in recent times have some of these
manuscripts
been unearthed, with the greatest find being at
Nag Hammadi
in Egypt in 1945, 1,500 years after the burial of these documents.
Although these books weren’t rediscovered until this present century,
they were used openly by the early Christians. Certain of them,
including the gospels mentioned, along with the Gospel of
Truth, the
Gospel of the Egyptians and others, were actually
mentioned in writings by early churchmen. Clement of Alexandria,
Irenaeus of Lyon,
Origen of Alexandria - they all mention these other gospels.
So why were the gospels of Mark and Luke selected if they were not
Jesus’ own apostles? Because Mark and Luke actually were apostles of
Jesus, and the early Church fathers knew this. In those days
before the New Testament was corrupted, they knew full well that
Jesus survived the Crucifixion. In these early gospels there
was no story of Resurrection; this was added later.
Why were other apostolic gospels not selected? Because there was a
second, far more important criterion - the criterion by which, in
truth, the gospel selection was really made. And this was a wholly
sexist regulation. It precluded anything that upheld the status of
women in Church or community, society.
Indeed, the Church’s own apostolic constitutions were compiled on this
basis. They state,
"We do not permit our women to teach in the Church, only
to pray and to hear those who teach. Our master, when he sent us
the twelve, did nowhere send out a woman; for the head of the
woman is the man, and is it not reasonable that the body should
govern the head?".
This was rubbish, but it was for this very reason that
dozens of gospels were not selected-because they made it quite clear
that there were very many active women in the ministry of Jesus.
Mary Magdalene,
Martha, Helena-Salome, Mary Jacob Cleophas,
Joanna. These were not only ministry disciples; they’re recorded
as priestesses in their own right, running exemplary
schools of worship in the Nazarene tradition.
In St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Paul makes specific mention of his
own female helpers: Phoebe, for example, whom he called a
sister of the Church; Julia; Priscilla, who laid down
her net for the cause. The New Testament is alive with women
disciples, but the Church ignored them all. When the
Church’s precepts of ecclesiastical discipline were drawn up, they
stated, "It is not permitted for a woman to speak in Church, nor to
claim for herself any share in any masculine function". But the
Church itself had decided that this was a masculine function.
The Church was so frightened of women that it instituted
a rule of celibacy: a rule for its priests, a rule that became a
law in 1138; a law that persists today. Well, this rule has
never been quite what it appears on the surface, because, when one
reads the rule, when one studies history, one
can see that it was never, ever sexual activity as such that
bothered the Church. The specific definition that made this rule
possible was priestly intimacy with women. Why? Because women become
wives and lovers. The very nature of motherhood is a
perpetuation of bloodlines. It was this that bothered the
Church: a taboo subject-motherhood, bloodlines. This image had to be
separated from the necessary image of Jesus.
But it wasn’t as if the Bible had said any such thing.
St Paul had said in his Epistle to Timothy:
Even though
the Roman Church authorities claimed to uphold the
teaching of St Paul in particular, they chose completely to
disregard this explicit directive to suit their own ends, so that
Jesus’ own marital status could be strategically ignored.
But the Church’s celibate, unmarried image of Jesus was fully
contradicted in other writings of the era. It was openly
contradicted in the public domain until the perpetuation of the
truth was proclaimed a punishable heresy only 450 years ago in 1547,
the year that Henry VIII died in England.
It’s not just the Christian New Testament that suffers from these
sexist restrictions. A similar editing process was applied to the
Jewish-based Old Testament, and this made it conveniently
suitable to be added to the Christian Bible. This is made
particularly apparent by a couple of entries that bypassed the
editors’ scrutiny.
The books of Joshua and 2 Samuel both refer to
the much more ancient
Book of Jasher. They say it’s very important, the
Book of Jasher. Where is it? Not in the Bible. Like so many
other books, it was purposely left out. But does it still exist?
Yes. The nine-foot Hebrew
scroll of Jasher still exists. It has been
historically important for a long, long time. It was the jewel of
the court of Emperor Charlemagne, and the translation of the
Book of Jasher was the very reason that the University of Paris was
founded, in the year 800. That was about a century before the Old
Testament that we know was actually put together.
Jasher was the staff-bearer to Moses. His writings are of enormous
significance. The accounts relate to the story of the Israelites in
Egypt, to their exodus into Canaan. But these stories differ
considerably from the way we know the story today. They explain that
it was not Moses who was the spiritual leader of the tribes who
crossed the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. The spiritual leader was
Miriam.
At that time the Jews had never heard of Jehovah; they worshipped
the
goddess Asherah. Their spiritual leaders were largely
female.
Miriam
posed, according to the Book of Jasher, such a problem
for Moses in his attempt to create a new environment of male
dominance that he imprisoned her; and the Jewish nation rose against
Moses with their armies to secure Miriam’s release. This is not
in the Bible.
So let’s move to where the Christian story itself began. Let’s look at
the gospels themselves and, in doing that, let’s see what they
actually tell us, against what we think they tell us, because we
have all learned to go along with what we are taught about the
gospels in schoolrooms and churches. But is the teaching correctly
related always? Does it conform with the written scriptures? It’s
actually surprising how much we think we know, but we’ve learned it
just from pulpits or from picture books, not from necessarily
studying the texts.
The nativity story itself provides a good example. It’s widely
accepted, and the Christmas cards keep telling us that Jesus was
born in a stable. The gospels don’t say that. There is no stable
mentioned in any authorized gospel. The nativity is not
mentioned at all in Mark or John, and Matthew says quite plainly
that Jesus was born in a house.
So where did the stable come from? It came from a misinterpretation,
really, of the Gospel of Luke which relates that Jesus was laid in a
manger-not born, but laid-and a manger was then, and still is,
nothing more than an animal feeding box. One only has to study
society history of the time to recognize the fact that it was
perfectly common for mangers to be used as cradles, and they were
often brought indoors for that very purpose.
So why has it been presumed that this particular manger was in a
stable? Because the English translations of Luke tell us that there
was no room in the inn. Must then have been in a stable!
But the pre-English translations of Luke don’t talk about any inn;
the manuscript of Luke does not say there was no room in the inn. In
fact, there were no inns in the East in those days. There are very
few inns there now; and if there are, they’re illegal! People lodged
then in private houses. It was a common way of life. It was called
family hospitality. Homes were open for travelers.
Come to that, if we’re really going to be precise about this, there
were no stables in the region, either. In fact, "stable" is a wholly
English word and it specifically defines a place for keeping horses;
horses of a particular stable. Who on earth rode around on horses in
Judaea? Oxen, camels; the odd Roman officer might have had a horse,
but even the mules and the oxen, if kept under cover, would have
been kept under some sort of a shed or out-house, not in a stable.
As for the mythical inn, the Greek text actually does not say there
was no room at the inn. By the best translation it actually states
that there was no provision in the room. As mentioned in Matthew,
Jesus was born in a house and, as correctly translated, Luke reveals
that Jesus was laid in a manger, an animal feeding box, because
there was no cradle provided in the room.
If we’re on the subject of Jesus’ birth, I think we ought to look at
the chronology here, because this is important as well; because the
gospels, the two gospels that deal with the nativity, actually
give us two completely different dates for the event.
According to Matthew, Jesus was born in the reign of King Herod, Herod
the Great, who debated the event with the Magi and ordered the
slaying of the infants. Well, Herod died in 4 BC, and
we know from Matthew that Jesus was born before that.
And because of that, most standard concordant Bibles and history
books imply that Jesus’
date of birth was 5 BC, because that is before 4 BC and Herod
was still reigning, so that’s a good date.
But in Luke, a completely different date is given. Luke doesn’t tell
us about King Herod or anything like that. Luke says
that
Jesus was born while Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, the
same year that the
Emperor Augustus implemented the national census, the census
which Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be a part of.
There are relevant points to mention here, and they are both recorded
in the first-century Jewish annals (such as The Antiquities of the
Jews). Cyrenius was appointed Governor of Syria in AD 6. This
was the very year recorded of the national census, put into
operation by Cyrenius and ordered by Emperor Augustus. As
Luke tells us, it was the first and only ever recorded census for
the region.
So Jesus was born before 4 BC and in AD 6. Is this a mistake? No, not
necessarily, because in the way it was originally portrayed we’re
actually looking at two quite specific births.
Both gospels are correct. We’re looking at Jesus’ physical birth,
and we’re looking at Jesus’ community birth. These
were defined at the time as the first and second births, and
they applied specifically to people of particular groups and
certainly to dynastic heirs.
Second births for boys were performed by way of a ritual of rebirth.
It was very physical: they were wrapped in swaddling clothes and
born again from their mother’s womb. It was a physical
ceremony. Second births for boys took place at the age of
twelve.
So we know that Jesus was twelve in AD 6. Unfortunately, the
latter-day transcribers of Luke completely missed the significance
of this, and it was their endeavor to somehow tie in this event
about swaddling clothes and being born then, that led to this
mention of the nonsense about the stable.
So if Jesus was twelve in AD 6, this means that he was born
in 7 BC, which ties in perfectly well with the Matthew
account that he was born during the latter reign of King Herod.
But we now discover what appears to be another anomaly, because Luke
says later in the gospel that when Jesus was twelve years old, his
parents, Mary and Joseph, took him to Jerusalem for the day. They
then left the city to walk home for a full day’s journey with their
friends before they realized that Jesus was not in their party. They
then returned to Jerusalem to find him at the temple, discussing his
father’s business with the doctors. Well, what sort of parents
can wander for a whole day in the desert, without knowing their
twelve-year-old son’s not there?
The fact is that the whole point of the passage has been missed. There
was a wealth of difference between a twelve-year-old son and a son
in his twelfth year. When a son, on completing his initial twelve
years-that is to say, when he was actually on his thirteenth
birthday-was initiated into the community at the ceremony of his
second birth, he was regarded as commencing his first year. It was
the original root of the modern bar mitzvah. His next initiation,
the initiation of manhood in the community, took place in his ninth
year, when he was twenty-one-the root of the age-twenty-one
privilege. Various degrees followed, and the next major test was in
his twelfth year-at the end of his twelfth year, at the age of
twenty-four, on his twenty-fourth birthday. When Jesus remained at
the temple in his twelfth year, he was actually twenty-four.
Not surprising that they expected him not perhaps to be wandering
around the desert with them!
So his discussion with the doctors related to his next degree. He
would have discussed this at the time with the spiritual father,
the father of the community; and indeed, he did. It was the
father’s business he discussed; his father’s business. The father of
this era is recorded. The spiritual father of the community at that
time was
Simeon the Essene, and if we look back a few verses in Luke we
see that it was exactly this man, the just and devout Simeon, who
legitimated Jesus under the law.
So
can we trust the gospels?
Well, as we can see, the
answer is,
yes, we can actually trust the gospels to a
point, but what
we can’t trust is the way that they’ve been convoluted and
distorted, and taught to us by people who don’t
understand what they actually said in the first place.
The present English-language gospels date back effectively to the
Authorized Bible, compiled for the Stewart King James
I of England in the early 17th century. This was published and
set into print no more than 165 years before America’s Declaration
of Independence; only a few years before the first Pilgrim Fathers
set sail from England.
The gospels of the early Church were originally written in second and
third century Greek. Along with the Bible as a whole,
they were translated into Latin in the fourth century, but it was
then to be more than a thousand years before any English translation
was made.
Bible translation was risky then, though. Fourteenth century reformer
John Wycliffe was denounced as a heretic for translating the
Bible into English. His books were burned. In the early 16th
century,
William Tyndale was strangled as a form of execution, in
Belgium, and then burned, just in case he wasn’t dead, for
translating the Bible into English. A little later, Miles
Coverdale, a disciple of his, made another translation; and by
that time the Church itself had split up quite nicely, so
Coverdale’s version was accepted by the Protestant Church-but he
was still a heretic in the eyes of Rome.
The problem was that as long as the printed text remained obscure (and
it wasn’t just ordinary Latin; this was an horrendous form of
Church Latin), as long as only the bishops could understand
it, they could teach whatever on Earth they wanted. If it
were translated into the languages that other people could
understand and maybe read for themselves, this would pose a problem
because the Church could be called to question.
(Go
to Part 2;
Go to Part 3)
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