Bloodline: The Evidence

Legend of Mary Magdalene

2009-09-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

Screen capture. Hugh Montgomery, The God-Kings of Europe. Image courtesy of Google Books.

Hugh Montgomery cites this story in his God-Kings of Europe (2006:124) and also God-Kings of Outremer (2008:Appendix C).

"Now it came to pass in those days that a Priestess of the Goddess from the village of Bethany of the Tribe of Benjamin and a keeper of the Sacred Doves was affianced to a man called Jeshua for she had served her six years. Now Jeshua was of the House of David the King and they were married.

And Jeshua rebelled against the oppressors against Rome and was defeated, but many Romans were devotees of the Mother and were unwilling to kill her priestess who was with child. So Miriam took ship and was secretly smuggled into Gaul where she was delivered and there she abode many years. Now she bore a daughter who was exceedingly fair and the King of that place looked upon her and demanded that she be his wife but she was promised to the Goddess. But the King would not have it so and took her and made her his wife and she bore him a son and a daughter.

But the Goddess was exceeding wrath for his rape of her daughter and cursed him saying, 'Thy seed shall be estranged from me and thine inheritance taken from thee. Thy seed shall end by the piercing of an eye and so shall thine inheritance cease.

Yet for the sake of my priestess whom thou ravished shall I forgive thee and thy seed if they fulfil those labours which I shall give to them.

They must fight and capture that which was lost to the oppressors of thy wife though they shall not hold it for they shall suffer betrayal (as thou betrayed me). Unless one of thy seed shall end the House of their betrayers by piercing the eye of its Liege. To this family shall I award greatness if they return to me and from this time to that shall be four and one hundred generations.'"

Montgomery states that "the document . . . was around the south of France in various forms at the time of the Albigensian Crusade (1209)." He believes Jacobus de Voragine may have written the Magdalene account in the Golden Legend to refute this one. The English translation is from the 17th century.

Evidence for the Judaic Marriage Imperative

2009-08-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Genesis 1:27-28

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Genesis 2:18

The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper [The Hebrew azar is also translated as partner.] suitable for him."

Genesis 9:1

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth."

Sirach 36:24-26 (2nd c.)

A man with no wife becomes a homeless wanderer. . . . So who will trust a man who has no home, and lodges wherever night finds him.

Talmud, Kiddushin 29a (2nd-3rd c.)

He must circumcise him, redeem him, teach him Torah, teach him a trade, and find a wife for him.

Talmud, Yebamoth 64a

Whoever renounces marriage violates the commandment to increase and multiply; he is to be looked upon as a murderer who lessens the number of beings created in the image of God.

Jewish Encyclopedia, Marriage Laws:

Age for Marriage.

The first positive commandment of the Bible, according to rabbinic interpretation (Maimonides, "Minyan ha-Miẓwot," 212), is that concerning the propagation of the human species (Gen. i. 28). It is thus considered the duty of every Israelite to marry as early in life as possible. Eighteen years is the age set by the Rabbis (Ab. v. 24); and any one remaining unmarried after his twentieth year is said to be cursed by God Himself (Ḳid. 29b). Some urge that children should marry as soon as they reach the age of puberty, i.e., the fourteenth year (Sanh. 76b); and R. Ḥisda attributed his mental superiority to the fact that he was married when he was but sixteen years old (Ḳid. l.c.). It was, however, strictly forbidden for parents to give their children in marriage before they had reached the age of puberty (Sanh. 76b). A man who, without any reason, refused to marry after he had passed his twentieth year was frequently compelled to do so by the court. To be occupied with the study of the Torah was regarded as a plausible reason for delaying marriage; but only in very rare instances was a man permitted to remain in celibacy all his life (Yeb. 63b; Maimonides, "Yad," Ishut, xv. 2, 3; Shulḥan 'Aruk, Eben ha-'Ezer, 1, 1-4; see Celibacy ).

Dynasty of the Holy Grail

2009-07-27T15:47:00.001-07:00

Figure 1. Dynasty of the Holy Grail (2006). Vern G. Swanson. Image screen capture courtesy Amazon.com.

This book by Vern G. Swanson promotes the bloodline theory from an LDS perspective. I'll post a chart from the book now (above) and give further updates later.

See also: Royal Lines from Zarah and Pharez Judah

God Kings Continued

2009-07-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

The following images are screen captures from the DVD, God Kings. The first shows a copy of the document in the possession of Professor Hugh Montgomery that he calls Document 1 referred to in the previous post.

In the film he reads and translates Document 1. Three lines from the bottom or to our left, one can barely make out (I had to freeze frame the DVD at 27:33) "...IESU GENUIT EX UXORE MARI DE BETH*ANI ... SAULUS FILIA ... QUE MARI AETHIOPIA FILIUS ... ET"

This document essentially claims that Jesus had two wives or a wife and a concubine. These were Mary of Bethany and Mary of Aethiopia who Montgomery believes is Mary Magdalene.

Document 1. God Kings (2009). Screen capture at 27:33.

What Montgomery refers to as Document 2 is shown below. The Latin text reads as follows:

Maria et Jesu Maria genuit. Maria et Sigismundus Ruth et ejus frater genuit. Ruth et Osmeus Elchasius genuit. Elchasius Marthana et Martha genuit. Maria ex semene sancto Elchasius viro Ata nubit. Maria et Ata Clodomirus genuit. Clodomirus Merovus genuit.

This document is showing a line of descent from Jesus and Mary of Bethany to what appears to be the ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty. Montgomery believes there are generations missing as he shows in his charts in the previous post.

"House of Bethany" (Document 2). God Kings (2009). Screen capture at 28:04.

Hugh Montgomery's Theory

2009-06-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: Hugh Montgomery, "Family of Jesus from all sources - 1 House of Saul (Benjamite)," The God-Kings of Europe (San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 2006), p. 144.

SOURCE: Hugh Montgomery, "Family of Jesus from all sources - 2," The God-Kings of Europe (San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 2006), p. 145.

SOURCE: Hugh Montgomery, "Nabatean Royal House," The God-Kings of Europe (San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 2006), p. 146. NOTE: These genealogies are provisional and further research continues which may result in changes.

SOURCE: Hugh Montgomery, "Family of Jesus 5," The God-Kings of Europe (San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 2006), p. 147.

One of Professor Montgomery's sources is a document he refers to as Document 1. Montgomery believes that it is a "complete or extended version of St. Matthew's Gospel written in Syria around 150 A.D." The following is an English translation of the relevant portions of Document 1. The sections in parentheses are by Montgomery and are not in the original.

And David the King begat Solomon on the wife of Uriah the Hittite and Solomon begat Roboam, who begat Abia . . . (it goes on in this vein with several fragments missing until) -- And Jacob begat on . . . Joseph who begat on his wife Miriam, Jeshua, Judah and Jacob and Jeshua begat on his wife Miriam of Bethany (of the house) of Saul, a daughter . . . and on Mirium . . . (of the house) of Æthiopia a son . . . and (a daughter) and Joseph of the House of Arimathea begat on . . .

SOURCE: Montgomery (2006), 162.

God Kings

2009-06-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

The above is a trailer for the movie documentary, God Kings. I'm amazed I had not heard of this film. Here is the product description at Amazon:

Based on decades of research and the aid of scholars from around the world, God Kings for the first time brings a scholarly and educated look into the world of Royal bloodlines. The implications of this work are enormous as they involve a lineage traced back to Odin, once believed to be a Norse god, whose lineage then merged with the bloodline of Jesus Christ himself.

As Professor Hugh Montgomery explains, many royal families around the globe know that they are indeed descended from Jesus and the Davidic line, and yet this incredible story has remained a secret for centuries.

Discover why the line of David was so important and where it originated. Venture back to the time of Mesopotamia and the great God-Kings of antiquity.

Find out how widespread this bloodline is today and how even George Washington was a member of this elite lineage.

Professor Hugh Montgomery has steadfastly refused to be part of the Da Vinci Code debate feeling the real facts have never been properly studied and accepted. Other authors, such as Michael Baigent, have consistently referenced Montgomery as a source for their own work, stating they had "been presented important documents." These documents are owned by Professor Montgomery and are represented here in God Kings for the first time.

Join us as we trace the hidden secret of the real Bloodline.

Click the image below to purchase the DVD from Amazon.com.

Montgomery also has a trilogy of books available.

More links:

Hugh Montgomery - The God-Kings: Babylon, Ulvungar & Oden
The God-Kings - Holistic Channel

The God-Kings of Europe By Hugh Montgomery (Excerpt from Google Books)
Da Vinci Code is claptrap, says man who claims to know Gospel truth

Templars and Talpiot

2009-06-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Margaret Starbird posted the following on the Da Vinci Code forum:

On the "Priory of Sion" list, Clay posted this very interesting comment:
...the oldest existing Masonic catechism, the Edinburgh Register House Manuscript of 1696, contains this question and answer:

Where lies the key? In a bone box.

The traditional interpretation is that this is a sort of riddle, that the key is the tongue and the bone box is the skull and jaw.

But a "bone box" could be an ossuary.
My reply:
I'm interested to know that the "Key is in the bone box"!

I was fascinated to learn in 2006 of James Tabor's research regarding the "Talpiot tomb" and the speculation that the Templars had been shown the site during their sojourn in Jerusalem. I can well imagine a scenario where Templar leaders were shown the tomb and its ossuaries and became convinced that it was the actual tomb of Jesus and his family. That would account for the rumors about their alleged power which had to do with the body of Jesus, so aptly illustrated (IMO) by the "charioteer" card in the Tarot deck erroneously named "Gringonneur/Charles VI" which shows a military man with a battle ax astride what looks like a hearse. His feet are standing on decorations that resemble the letters I and C (the intials IC stand for Iesu Christi in many medieval watermarks).

This card appears to depict the rumor that the Templars were custodian of the "great secret" that Jesus (at least his skull and crossed shin bones?) was not ascended body and soul as proclaimed by Roman Catholic doctrine, and seated on a throne in heaven. In my Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail (2000) I postulated that the rumors persisted in Europe that the Templars had discovered "written materials and perhaps even the grave or ossuary of Jesus." It's always seemed to me an acute synchronicity that the Jewish people in Jerusalem were using ossuaries to store the bones of their dead precisely at the time when the Christian story appears there--a practice that only lasted until the fall of the city to the Romans in AD 70.

The Talpiot tomb is unique in the percentage of ossuaries bearing inscriptions (6 of 10, when the average is about 20%). That alone suggests that there was something very special about this particular family and tomb--not to mention that amazing
concurrence of family names with those of Jesus' family in the Gospels.

I can't prove that the Talpiot tomb is that of the family of Jesus, but it would not surprise me in the least to learn that the Templars who were shown that tomb in the 12th c believed that it was, and that it was that belief that spawned the "Grail" stories that bloomed soon afterward in Western Europe.

In an extant document from 1213, Pier Vaux de Cerney, a chronicler of the Albigensian Crusade and the brutal burning of the Church at Beziers on Magdalene's feast day (22 July 1209) where the townspeople had sought sanctuary from the French troops who invaded their town, states that this holocaust was "Divine Providence" to punish the Cathars for their slanderous belief that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were lovers. I believe this tenet was indigenous to the region, where Mary Magdalene was alleged to have fled as a political exile from Jerusalem, bringing with her the "Holy Grail." The "fishes" painting from Metz, posted on my website is from c. 1250 (shortly after the fall of Montsegur). Clearly medieval Europeans believed something significant about the "partnership" of Jesus and Mary Magdalene--
"avatars of Pisces"?
Peace and well-being,
Margaret
"The Woman with the Alabaster Jar"
http://www.margaretstarbird.net/

Jesus Coat of Arms

2009-05-29T14:16:00.001-07:00

Jesus as a medieval armiger (c. 1450). Hyghalmen Roll, College of Arms. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

Note the blood from the wound of the Lamb in the image above is flowing into a chalice or grail.

Jesus as a medieval armiger (c. 1450). Hyghalmen Roll, College of Arms. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

According to the description, "Medieval officers of arms thought it important that notable individuals from before the heraldic age should have arms attributed to them."

The Holy Grail & The Grail-Kings

2009-05-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

David Hughes' list of Grail Kings is interesting. He admitted in an email to me that he does not consider the list to be historical. Hughes has done a lot of genealogical research, but unfortunately in my opinion at least, he also admits he has little patience for footnotes.

01. Joshua (Jesus), first Grail-King, circa AD 100; 43rd generation in male-line descent from King David of Israel; died unwed without issue.

02/(43B) Alain "Li Gros" ["The Large"], 2nd Grail-King, his younger brother = [his cousin] Elis, daughter of Bran "The Fisher-King" & Enygeus, Joseph of Arimathea’s daughter.

03/(44A) Josue, Grail-King, had a bro, (44B) Isaiah.

04/(45) Alphanye, Grail-King.

05/(46) Aminadab, Grail-King.

06/(47) Catheloys (Carcelois), Grail-King; founded the religious-order of the "Castellors", which was later suppressed by the Catholic Church; built Corbenic Castle to house The Holy Grail & as the home of the Grail-Kings & the religious order.

[Note: The name "Corbenic", is derived from "cors benoit" [= "blessed body"], whence the town of "Corbeni" in Picardy, France, got its name]. The order of the Grail-Kings was removed to Britain in the early 500s, and left "Corbenic Castle" empty, which was later razed by Charlemagne, circa 800].

07/(48) Emanuel, Grail-King, son, the father of:

08/(49) Titurel, Grail-King; founded military-order of the Grail-Knights, circa AD250; the father of:

09/(50) Enfertez [a.k.a. Anfortas I] (275), Grail-King, the father of:

10/(51) Frimutel, Grail-King (300), the father of:

11/(52) Mazadan [Ahura Mazda], Grail-King (325) = Terdelaschoye.

12/(53) Laziliez, Grail-King (350), the father of:

13/(54) Zamphir (Zamfir; Zambor) (Zamvirz), Grail-King (375).

Issue of (54) Zamphir (above), was:

(55A) Lambor, Grail-King (400).
(55B) Galegant (Garlon; Galant), father of (56A) Tampenteire [father of (57) Kardeiz [I], father of (58) Condure (dau), [3rd] wife of Parzival (below)], (56B) Gurnemanz [father of (57) Gurzgar, father of (58) Gandiluz], & (56C) Manpfilkjot [who, by wife, Schoysiane, begot (57A) Trevrizent "The Hermit" & (57B) Sigune (dau), wife of ... ]
(55C) Addanz (below)

14/(55) Lambor, Grail-King

Issue of (55A) Lambor (above) was:

(56A) Pellam [Pellehen], Grail-King

(56B) Yglais (Eglise) (dau), [3rd] wife of Amlawd "Wledic", King of Britain, the father of (57) Ygerne, mother of (58) King Arthur of Britain]

15/(56) Pellam, Grail-King

issue of (56A) Pellam (above) was:

(57) Pelles of Corbenic Castle

16/(57) Pelles of Corbenic Castle, Grail-King

issue of (57) Pelles (above) was:

(58A) Amfortas [II] "Grail-King"

(58B) Herzeloyde (dau), [2nd] wife of Gahmuret, &, the mother of Parzival (below)

(58C) Elaischoye [note: the post-Vulgate changed her name to "Elayne"], wife of Lancelot, mother of [Sir] Galahad, a knight, later, "Keeper of The Grail", who died celibate

17/(58) Amfortas [II] "Grail-King", the last of the main-line = Orgeluse and had issue:

(59) Elayne (dau), who died unwed and childless.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

issue of (55C) Addanz (above) was:

(56) Gaudin, who, by wife, Schoette, begot three sons,

namely:

(57A) Gaheviez, the father of (58) Ither "The Red-Knight"

(57B) Galoes, who, by wife, Flurdamur, begot two or more sons, including (58a) Antikonie & (58b) Vergulaht, as well as several daughters, including (58c) Rischoyde [wife of Kaylet], (58d) Repanse de Schoye [wife of Feirefiz]; & (58e) Riautrise [wife of Guerin]

(57C) Gahmuret

18/(57) Gahmuret, Grail-King; was contemporary with his cousin Amfortas II (above), the last of the main-line, and appears as the next male-line heir

=1 Achefleur
=2 Belakane, Queen of Zazamanc [Africa]
=3 Herzeloyde (above)

issue of (58C) Gahmuret (above) by 1st wife was:

(58A) Aglovale
(58B) Lamorat (Lamerocke)(Lischoise)
(58C) Schenote

issue of (58C) Gahmuret (above) by 2nd wife was:

(58D) Feirefiz; = Repanse de Schoye [Repense de Joie], & begot of (60) John "The Prester"

issue of (58C) Gahmuret (above) by 3rd wife was:

(58E) Parzival (Perceval) (Parsifal) (525), posthumous son, is made the story’s hero in the medieval romance "Li Conte del Graal" (1190), by Chretien de Troyes. Parzival is identified with Sir Percy in Medieval Arthurian Romance. Wolfram von Eschenbach says that he wrote "Parzival" (1220) to correct the version Chretien de Troyes gives. The "son" of Parzival is said to have been Lohengrin, but "descendant" is what is meant here, for Lohengrin has been identified with Warin of Lorraine (1025), who lived 500 years after Parzival’s time. The name "Lohengrin" [="Loherenc Garin"] is a corruption in medieval romance of the name "Warin of Lorraine".

19/(57) Kardeiz [I], Grail-King

20/(58A) Aglovale, Grail-King

21/(58B) Lamorat (Lamerocke)(Lischoise), Grail-King

22/(58C) Schenote, Grail-King

23/(58E) Parzival, Grail-King

=1 Lafamur
=2 Sangive
=3 Condure

issue of (58E) Parzival (above) by 1st wife was:

(59A) Oriantix (Oriante), who, by wife, Elouse, was the father of triplets

issue of (58E) Parzival (above) by 2nd wife was:

(59B) Houdourans

Issue of (58E) Parzival (above) by 3rd wife was:

(59C) Kardeiz [II]

24/(59A) Oriantix (Oriante), Grail-King

25/(59B) Houdourans, Grail-King, who, by wife, Matabrunne, begot sons & daus

26/(59C) Kardeiz [II] had issue:

(60) Charlot, 60th in male-line descent from Israel's King David.

Issue of (60) Charlot (above) was:

There are 16 generations missing in the pedigree here.

(77) Otto "of Lillefort", 77th in male-line descent from Israel's King David, the father of:

(78) Warin of Lorraine [a.k.a. "Loherenc Garin", whose name was corrupted in medieval romantic literature into "Lohengrin"], one of "The Conqueror's Companions" (1066) (died c. 1071).

[Note: His parentage is confused in medieval writings. Warin of Lorraine was the son [or grandson] of one of three contemporary counts or dukes who each had the name "Otto", who were: (1) Otto "of Lillefort", the "descendant" [not "son"], of Parzival, who descended through a 1000-year-old-line of "Grail-Kings" from Joseph of Arimathea, the uncle of "The Virgin" Mary, and, a scion of Israel's Davidic Dynasty; or, (2) the posthumous son of Otto, Duke of Lorraine (d1012), the son of Charles of Lorraine (d994), the Carolingian heir, which would make him descended in the male-line from Charlemagne; or, (3) the grandson of [another] Otto, Count of Chiny [Warcq], whose male-line ancestors were [also] descendants of Charlemagne. The fact that his son, Helyas "The Swan-Knight", had the Holy Grail in his possession would indicate that the father of Warin of Lorraine was Otto "of Lillefort", a descendant of the Grail-Kings.]

Warin of Lorraine, by wife, Biautris, begot:

(79) Helyas, "The Swan-Knight", epic-hero of the First Crusade (1096-99), the 40th and last Grail-King, who, upon entering Jerusalem [accompanying his son, Geoffrey of Bouillon, the Crusade's leader] following the First Crusade (1096-99) returned The Holy Grail to The Church of The Holy Sepulchre and placed it himself on the high-altar (1099).

Helyas "The Swan-Knight" married thrice, and, by each wife had a son: his eldest son inherited the French fiefdom of Bouillon from his mother; his second son married the heiress of Oldenburg [Oldcastle] and inherited the Dutch county through her; and, his third son inherited the German fiefdom of Kleve (Cleves) from his mother, hence, founding three great families.

The legend of Helyas "The Swan-Knight" takes place during the last half of the eleventh century. He arrives on the scene when the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (1056-1106) held court at Neumagen to decide a claim by the Count of Frankfort for the duchy of Bouillon, then held by Ida of Louvain, the widow of the Duke of Bouillon, its duchess. The matter was decided by hand-to-hand combat between the Count of Frankfort and Helyas of Lorraine, who championed the duchess, who legend says sailed up the Meuse on a boat drawn by a swan by means of a silver chain, whence his epithet. He won the battle, married her, and became the Duke of Bouillon in right of his wife, by whom he begot Geoffrey of Bouillon, Leader of the First Crusade 1096-99; Protector of The Holy Sepulchre 1099-1100.

The legend was embellished by medieval romance that says before their marriage Helyas warned the duchess that if she ever asked his identity he would have to leave her. As the story goes she later tempted disregarding her husband’s warning asked him his identity. [The wife's desire to know her husband's "true self" appears here to parallel the myth of Cupid and Psyche.] He rebuked her sorrowfully, and, instantly the boat drawn by the swan re-appeared on the river next to where they were, Helyas stepped into the boat, and the swan swam off with him in the boat out of sight of his sorrowing wife.

That is medieval romance, but the fact is Helyas divorced Ida of Louvain, soon after the birth of their son, Geoffrey, and she married thirdly Eustace II, Count of Boulogne. Helyas, meanwhile, had come to the aid of Elsa of Brabant, divorced wife of Regnier, Count of Hainault, against a suitor, Frederic de Telramund, who claimed she had promised to marry him. Instead, Elsa of Brabant married Helyas of Lorraine. It was his second marriage, as well as hers. The marriage produced a son, Elimar [Egilmar], who married Rixa [Rikissa], the heiress of Oldenburg, and became the Count of Oldenburg ["Oldcastle"] in "right of his wife". Helyas divorced Elsa of Brabant soon after the birth of their son, Elimar, and, she married thirdly Hajo, Count of Uprustringen. Helyas, meanwhile, married thirdly Beatrix of Cleves [identified with Belayne of Lizaborye in medieval romance], daughter of Rutger II, Count of Cleves, and, widow of the Count of Lizaborye. The marriage produced a son, Dietrich [II]. Soon after, Helyas divorced Beatrix of Cleves, who married thirdly Dietrich I, Count of Cleves.

Hence, Helyas “The Swan-Knight”, the last in the long-line of “Grail-Kings”, was the ancestor of three great noble European houses, those of Oldenburg [Oldcastle], Bouillon, and Cleves. Legend says that Helyas was murdered by armed men sent by his ex-wife [not by her parents as one romance says, who had already dead by that time], circa 1100. The three sons of Helyas, all born out of wedlock & were reared by their mothers, who were:

(80A) Geoffrey of Bouillon, Leader of the First Crusade 1096-99, &, "Protector of The Holy Sepulchre" 1099, called "First" Grand-Master of the Knights-Templars, whose mother, Ida of Louvain, widow of the Duke of Bouillon, married 3rdly Eustace II, Count of Boulogne.

(80B) Egilmar I, Count of Oldenburg [Oldcastle], 1091, [by virtue of his marriage to Rixa, the heiress of Oldenburg] (d1108), whose mother, Elsa of Brabant, divorced wife of Regnier, Count of Hainault, married 3rdly Hajo, Count of Uprustringen.

[Note: Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince-Consort of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, is a male-line descendant of Helyas "The Swan-Knight" through the Counts of Oldcastle (Oldenburg), though his official genealogy is traced through the royal house of Greece, which may trace its descent from ancient Greek kings.]

(80C) Dietrich II, Count of Cleves 1085/92 (d1114/19?), whose mother, Beatrix (Belayne) of Cleves, daughter of Rutger II, Count of Cleves, widow of the Count of Lizaborye, married 3rdly Dietrich I, Count of Cleves (d1056)

Rediscovering the Pearl of Ancient Wisdom

2009-05-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

JZ Knight channeling Ramtha states:

And you have yet to know the inside story of the man, because Paul made him a supernatural person. You don't know that he was married and he had two children. He was a married man. He had lust and passion for his wife and she for him. They had two little children that would become the kings of Europe, the royal families of Europe. . . .

SOURCE: JZ Knight (Ramtha), A Master's Reflection on the History of Humanity Part II: Rediscovering the Pearl of Ancient Wisdom (Yelm, WA: JZK Publishing, 2002), p. 280.

Echoes of Da Vinci Code at National Library

2009-05-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

This article was at WalesOnline:

. . . scholars at a Welsh college believe they have unearthed their own version of the Da Vinci code with the discovery of a 400-year-old book. Entitled The Genealogy of Jesus Christ, it has spent the past 70 years locked in the dusty depths of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. . . .

The leather-bound, hand-written book by William Spenser has nearly 600 A3-sized pages, split into two sections.

One is about, "the names, people and empires recorded in the old and New Testaments".

The other is titled "biographical reference of old Bible stories".

It is an alphabetical way to find a seemingly endless list of religious characters.

Mr Hogan said, "It has details on everybody in the Bible, who they were married to where they came from and their family trees. . . .

SOURCE: Sam Burson, "Echoes of Da Vinci Code at National Library," WalesOnline (28 April 2005).

Lord and Lady of the Age of Pisces

2009-05-09T15:16:00.001-07:00

Lady and Lord of the Fishes (c. 1250). Metz, Alsace-Lorraine, France. Image courtesy of Sacred Union in Christianity.

Margaret Starbird writes on her website:

This unusual image from c. 1250 is displayed in a regional history museum in Metz, a town located in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Ancient legends come together in this painting from the seat of the Merovingian power in Alsace-Lorraine. It appears to be an ancestral portrait of the Lord and Lady of the FISHES (Pisces). A recent discovery of a mosaic depicting two fish at a 3-4th century church in Megiddo confirms that the "partnership" of the Fishes was an early emblem of Christianity. The mandala is reminiscent of the Zodiac symbol of Pisces, the "Fishes"--the New Age dawning at the time of Jesus. The linking of the geometric square and circle depicts the "marriage of irreconcilable opposites" in geometry, the square represents Earth/matter and the circle, Heaven/spirit.

SOURCE: Margaret Starbird, "Lord and Lady of the Age of Pisces," Sacred Union in Christianity (Retrieved 9 May 2009).

Of interest is the similarity of the original Starbucks logo to the mermaid above left:

Original Starbucks Logo (1971). Image courtesy of Synthstuff.

New Starbucks Logo (1992). Image courtesy of Synthstuff.

It's interesting to note that on the new logo the ends of the tails and the crown form double "MMs."

For more information on the evolution of the Starbucks logo see: "How the Starbucks Siren Became Less Naughty," Deadprogrammer's Cafe (17 June 2005). The author shows how the original logo was derived from a 15th c. woodcut of Melusine found in J. E. Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols. I first read about this connection in Starbird's article, "The Little Mermaid and the Archetype of the Lost Bride."

Madonna and Child - Chartres

2009-04-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

Madonna and Child (c. 1150). James R. Johnson. Stained Glass window, Chartres Cathedral. Image courtesy of TIME (24 December 1951).

Enthroned Virgin and Child as part of an Adoration of the Magi scene. Unusually, Mary is dressed in red instead of blue. Detail of the Life of Christ Window, the center lancet beneath the west rose. Dating from about 1150, it depicts the early life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Triumphal Entry.

Same as above. Color probably more realistic. Image courtesy of Sacred Destinations.

Angelo Poliziano: "His disconsolate widow"

2009-04-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

Kathleen McGowan pointed out this passage in a post to the Magdaleneline Forum. She noted that it "was an excerpt from a 'layman's sermon' that [Angelo] Poliziano delivered on Holy Thursday in 1486, in the presence of his best friend and patron, Lorenzo de Medici, for a religious organization both were members of, known as the Confraternity of the Magi."

She further mentioned that it appears in many sources including Dale Kent's book on Cosimo de Medici. I was unable to track down that source on the internet, but found the Poliziano passage in a work by Douglas Kries, Piety and Humanity, where he cites Weissman below.

I invite you to cry with Him in His bitter pain, . . . to become His disconsolate widow; [Emphasis added.] to see His grieving mother whose heart was pierced with a knife; to cry together with the stones, the sun, with heaven and earth, with all the elements, with the whole world over His incomparable torment. . . . Let us cry tenderly at the death of sweet Jesus. . . . Let us do penance, and with devout contrition let us humiliate ourselves before God.

SOURCE: Ronald Weissman, "Sacred Eloquence: Humanist Preaching and Lay Piety in Renaissance Florence," Christianity and the Renaissance (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), p. 261.

Interestingly McGowan points out that no one questions the reference to "His disconsolate widow." Kries (1997: 36) is no exception. He discusses the "provocative" imagery of "His grieving mother whose heart was pierced with a knife," but ends up describing the passage as Poliziano urging his listeners to "engage in flagellation."

Pedigree of the House of Tudor to Henry VII

2009-04-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Table IX," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 359.

Descent of James I of England

2009-04-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Table VIII," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 358.

Descent of Edward IV from Lionel, Duke of Clarence and John, Duke of Lancaster

2009-04-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Tables VI & VII," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 357.

Descent of Edward IV from Henry II

2009-04-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Table V," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 356.

Family of Charlemagne and Counts of Flanders to Henry II

2009-04-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Table IV," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 355.

Pedigree of Henry II

2009-04-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Tables II and III," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 354.

Pedigree of Egbert from Cerdic

2009-04-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

SOURCE: George Russell French, "Genealogical Tables: Table I," The Ancestry of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and of His Royal Highness Prince Albert (London: William Pickering, 1841), p. 353.

Origins of the Stewarts

2009-04-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

STEWART, STUART, or Steuart, the surname of a family which inherited the Scottish and ultimately the English crown.

Their descent is traced to a Breton immigrant, Alan the son of Flaald, which Flaald was a brother of Alan, steward (or seneschal) of Dol in Brittany. This elder Alan, whose name occurs in Breton documents before 1080, went on crusade in 1097, and was apparently succeeded by his brother Flaald, whose son, the younger Alan, enjoyed the favour of Henry I, who bestowed on him Mileham and its barony in Norfolk, where he founded Sporle Priory.

By the daughter of Ernulf de Hesdin (in Picardy), a Domesday baron, he was father of at least three sons: Jordan, who succeeded to the family office of steward of Dol; William, who inherited Mileham and other estates in England, and who founded the great baronial house of Fitz Alan (afterwards earls of Arundel); and Walter, who was made by David I, steward (dapifer) or seneschal of Scotland. The Scottish king conferred on Walter various lands in Renfrewshire, including Paisley, where he founded the abbey in 1163.

Walter, his grandson, third steward, was appointed by Alexander II. justiciary of Scotland, and, dying in 1246, left four sons and three daughters. The third son, Walter, obtained by marriage the earldom of Menteith, which ultimately came by marriage to Robert, duke of Albany, son of Robert II.

Alexander, fourth steward, the eldest son of Walter, third steward, inherited by his marriage with Jean, granddaughter of Somerled, the islands of Bute and Arran, and on the 2nd of October 1263 led the Scots against Haakon IV, king of Norway, at Largs. He had two sons, James and John.

The latter, who commanded the men of Bute at the battle of Falkirk in 1298, had seven sons: (1) Sir Alexander, whose grandson George became in 1389 earl of Angus, the title afterwards passing in the female line to the Douglases, and in 1761 to the duke of Hamilton; (2) Sir Alan of Dreghorn, ancestor of the earls and dukes of Lennox, from whcm Lord Darnley, husband of Queen Mary, and also Lady Arabella Stuart, were descended; (3) Sir Walter, who obtained the barony of Garlies, Wigtownshire, from his uncle John Randolph, earl of Moray, and was the ancestor of the earls of Galloway, younger branches of the family being the Stewarts of Tonderghie, Wigtownshire, and also those of Physgill and Glenturk in the same county; (4) Sir James, who fell at Dupplin in 1332, ancestor of the lords of Lorn, on whose descendants were conferred at different periods the earldoms of Athole, Buchan and Traquair, and who were also the progenitors of the Stewarts of Appin, Argyllshire, and of Grandtully, Perthshire; (5) Sir John, killed at Halidon Hill in 1333; (6) Sir Hugh, who fought under Edward Bruce in Ireland; and (7) Sir Robert of Daldowie, ancestor of the Stewarts of Allanton and of Coltness.

James Stewart, the elder son of Alexander, fourth steward, succeeded his father in 1283, and, after distinguishing himself in the wars of Wallace and of Bruce, died in 1309.

His son Walter, sixth steward, who had joint command with Sir James Douglas of the left wing at the battle of Bannockburn, married Marjory, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and during the latter's absence in Ireland was entrusted with the government of the kingdom. He died in 1326, leaving an only son, who as Robert II. ascended the throne of Scotland in 1371.

SOURCE: "Stuart Stewart," Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) Vol. 25, p. 912. References for the article itself include: Sir George Mackenzie, Defence of the Royal Line of Scotland (1685), and Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland (1686); Crawfurd, Genealogical History of the Royal and Illustrious Family of the Stuarts (1710); Duncan Stewart, Genealogical Account of the Surname of Stewart (1739); Andrew Stuart, Genealogical History of the Stuarts (1798); Stodart, House of Stuart (privately printed, 1855); An Abstract of the Evidence to Prove that Sir William Stewart of Jedworth, the Paternal Ancestor of the Present Earl of Galloway, was the Second Son of Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley (1801); Riddell, Stewartiana (1843); W. Townend, Descendants of the Stuarts (1858); R. W. Eyton, History of Shropshire (1858), vol. vii.; Bailey, The Succession to the English Crown (1879); Skelton, The Royal House of Stuart (1890); J. H. Round, Studies in Peerage and Family History (1901); and S. Cowan, The Royal House of Stuart (1908). The best chart pedigree of the house is that which was prepared for the Stuart Exhibition by W. A. Lindsay.

Kathleen McGowan Theory

2009-03-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

The following is a little background from the author's website:

Kathleen McGowan has spent twenty years researching the legends surrounding the Gospel of Mary Magdalene on four continents. She has immersed herself in the culture and folklore of Mary Magdalene, which is primarily an oral tradition that features an ancient prophecy about the coming of "The Expected One," a special seeker who has been chosen by divine providence to bring Mary Magdalene's long-hidden message to the world. The author says that those guarding the tradition of Mary Magdalene opened their doors to her because of her connections to an ancient French family that traces its roots to Mary Magdalene, her birth date, and her possession of a special ring.

The Theory

In The Expected One, McGowan (2006) maintains that Mary Magdalene's first child was John-Joseph whose father was John the Baptist. After the Baptist was beheaded, Mary married Jesus. She then had a daughter with Easa, (Sarah) Tamar, and was pregnant with son Yeshua-David at the time of the crucifixion. Joseph of Arimathea is Jesus' uncle.

At this time this is as far as McGowan goes.

External Links

Author page at Simon & Schuster.
"Book Excerpt: The Expected One." ABC News (August 2, 2006).
"Kathleen McGowan." Author Profile. Bookreporter.com. Contains August 2006 interview.
"Kathleen McGowan." Wikipedia.
Magdalene Line, The - Discussion group at Yahoo! Groups.
McGowan, Kathleen. "Author of 'The Expected One' Discusses 'The Last Supper'." ABC News (August 3, 2006). "Good Morning America" interview with Diane Sawyer.
________. "Mary Magdalene, Superstar." Secrets of Mary Magdalene (2006).
Memmott, Carol. "Is this woman the living 'Code'?" USA TODAY (July 18, 2006).
Rich, Motoko. "For Kathleen McGowan, a Reversal of Fortune at BookExpo America." New York Times Books (May 22, 2006).
theexpectedone.com - Official website for the book.

Jhesus - Maria

2009-03-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

Iesvs Maria stone, Glastonbury. Image courtesy of Glastonbury Magic.

On the southern outside wall of the Mary Chapel at Glastonbury is the stone shown above with the names IESVUS MARIA inscribed on it. These are the same names that appear on the standard of Jeanne d'Arc recreated below.

Jeanne d'Arc standard. Image source unknown.

Christian Allegory by Jan Provost

2009-02-06T00:36:00.001-08:00

Christian Allegory (1510-1515). Jan Provost. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Image courtesy of Web Gallery of Art.

The eye of God stares out at us from above Christ who wields the double-edged sword of the Word. On the right Christ's bride holds the Lily of Mercy and frees the dove of the Holy Spirit. The soul, with its thumbs forms a vesica pisces while gazing upwards. [Godwin, 84.]

Rex Deus Theory

2009-01-28T00:14:00.000-08:00

Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmons, and Tim Wallace-Murphy in their 2000 book, Rex Deus have the following theory:

The Rex Deus sagas recount how the children of Jesus were parted in an attempt to ensure their security and the continuation of his bloodline. James, his two-and-a-half-year-old son, was entrusted to the care of Judas Thomas Didymus, Jesus' twin brother. They sought immediate sanctuary with King Abgar of Edessa, who was a supporter of Jesus. Mary Magdalene, who was pregnant at the time, fled in the opposite direction, to a refuge of comparative safety among a community whose silence and protection could be relied upon, the Therapeutae in Egypt.

SOURCE: Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmons, and Tim Wallace-Murphy, Rex Deus (Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books, 2000), p. 79.

Kindle is Kool

2009-01-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy Wikimedia.

I got one of these for Christmas and have to say I recommend it highly for the next generation of book readers. If you are interested, click on the banner below to find out more.

Treasuries in Full: Malory's Arthurian Manuscript

2008-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

A detail from Le Morte Darthur, with 'Galahad' and 'Sankgreall' shown in red ink.

On the website of the British Library one may find sample pages from the manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory's stories about King Arthur, known as the Winchester Manuscript, later printed by William Caxton as Le Morte Darthur.

Malory's work had been known only through William Caxton's printed edition of 1485 for nearly 500 years. However in 1934 a librarian at Winchester College, Walter Oakeshott, discovered this manuscript in a safe in the Warden's bedroom.

The manuscript was written by two professional scribes working together, some time during the years 1470 to 1483. The most striking feature of the manuscript is its extensive use of red ink. Most of the proper nouns, some place-names and common nouns are written in red, as well as marginalia, Lombardic Capitals, some Explicits and Incipits, and some scribal corrections. Textual variants between the manuscript and Caxton's edition suggest that these two texts derived from a common original. That means that the Winchester Manuscript cannot have been used as the sole basis for Caxton's book.

Clues on the pages of the Winchester Manuscript, however, do suggest that it was kept in Caxton's workshop some time in the years 1480 to 1483, when Caxton was preparing his Le Morte Darthur. Pages fresh from his press were laid on the manuscript and the wet ink accidentally transferred reversed images of Caxton's type faces. This suggests that Caxton used the Winchester Manuscript together with another, now lost, manuscript.

In the colophon to his edition William Caxton says that this is the end of 'this noble and joyous book entitled Le Morte Darthur', and since then Le Morte Darthur has been used as the title of
the whole book. Malory, however, called his work 'the whole book of King Arthur and his noble Knights of the Round Table'.

How Winchester College acquired the manuscript is not known. It was purchased by the British Library from the Warden and Fellows of the College on 26 March 1976.

SOURCE: "Who Was Thomas Mallory?" British Library (Retrieved 30 Dec 2008).

Laurence Gardner's Bloodline Theory

2008-12-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

Gardner [1996: 236] proposes three children for Jesus and Mary Magdalene: Damaris (Tamar), b. AD 33 (in a later edition [2000: 174] she is married to St. Paul); Jesus II The Justus (Gais/Géso), b. AD 37; and Joseph The Rama-Theo (Josephes), b. AD 44. He also claims that Joseph of Arimathea is none other than Jesus' brother, St. James the Just. He appears to base this information on the controversial work of Dr. Barbara Thiering and her pesher technique of interpreting the scriptures.

Gardner shows no descendants for Tamar, and a son (Galains or Alain who died without issue) for Jesus II. The only line that continues is through Joseph, the younger son. His descendants become the Fisher Kings depicted in the chart below.

Chart 1. Derived from Bloodline of the Holy Grail. Image © 2008, Bloodline: The Evidence.

Of interest is that in L'Estoire del Saint Graal, the first part of the Lancelot-Graal cycle, the character Bron (who here is married to Joseph of Arimathea's sister) has the following line of descendants: Joshua-Aminadap-Carcelois-Manuel, etc.

Chart 2. House of Lancelot and the Fisher King. Click to enlarge. Image courtesy of Timeless Myths.

The Fisher Kings in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival are Titurel-Frimutel-Anfortas.

Chart 3. House of Parzival. Click to enlarge. Image courtesy of Timeless Myths.

Note the similarity in the names. It appears that to create a line of descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Gardner grafted together two separate lines of Fisher Kings from two medieval fictional Grail stories onto Thiering's theory.

It is interesting that Gardner says this information is available publicly. In a lecture (Yelm, WA, 30 April 1997) he is quoted as saying:

It was never any secret when my book came out [Bloodline of the Holy Grail], 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. [Nexus 5/2 (February-March 1998).]

A more specific citation than "published papers of Mary, Queen of Scots" would have made it easier to corroborate these claims.

SOURCES: Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed (Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books, 1996). Illustrated edition (NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000).

"Genealogy: Houses of the Grail Keeper and the Grail Hero," Timeless Myths (Retrieved 23 Dec 2008).

Articles worth finding

2008-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

David H. Kelley, "Review of Holy Blood, Holy Grail," The Genealogist 3 (1982), 249-263.

Da Vinci Code Links

2008-12-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

Da Vinci Code, The - Official Site of the novel.
Da Vinci Code, The - Official Site of the film.
Da Vinci Code, The - Wikipedia (film).
"Da Vinci Code, The: Book Reviews," DanBrown.com. (Plot)
Da Vinci Code Truth
"Mona Lisa's Smirk: Was there a Da Vinci Conspiracy?" Y-Jesus.com. (.pdf English, Spanish)

The Da Vinci Code: Holy Grail

2008-12-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

According to The Da Vinci Code, the secret of the Holy Grail can be defined as follows:

It is not the chalice from Jesus’ Last Supper, but rather Mary Magdalene herself, who carried Jesus’ bloodline.

Grail relics are in actuality all of the documents lending credence to the bloodline, as well as the actual bones of Mary Magdalene.

These relics were hidden by the Priory of Sion in a secret crypt beneath the Rosslyn Chapel.

The Church covered up the truth about the Grail, and the Jesus bloodline for 2,000 years, mainly out of a fear that the power of the sacred feminine would challenge the supremacy of Simon Peter as an apostle.

Mary Magdalene was of royal descent (through the Jewish House of Benjamin) and was the wife of Jesus, of the House of David, and was not a prostitute, as the Church had asserted. She was pregnant during the Crucifixion, and afterwards fled to Gaul, where she was sheltered by the Jews of Marseille. She gave birth to a daughter named Sarah. The bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Merovingian dynasty of France. According to Teabing,

[I]t was not Mary Magdalene's royal blood that concerned the Church so much as it was her consorting with Christ, who also had royal blood…the Book of Matthew tells us that Jesus was of the House of David. A descendant of King Solomon–King of the Jews. By marrying into the powerful House of Benjamin, Jesus fused two royal bloodlines, creating a potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne and restoring the line of kings as it was under Solomon.
The existence of this bloodline was the secret contained in the documents discovered by the Crusaders after they conquered Jerusalem in 1099. The Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar were organized to keep this secret.

Indeed, Brown’s supposed conspiracy theory actually follows the same one adhered to by followers of esotericism, which also affirms that Mary was actually Jesus’ wife, with whom he had children. Whether or not Jesus died on the cross is not certain, they say, but it is true that Mary Magdalene fled for France, fearing persecution by the Romans. There, her children – legal heirs to the House of Judah – became Kings in France and Briton.

The Holy Grail, the esoteric doctrine affirms, is also comprised of documents and gospels that reveal Jesus and Mary’s union and offspring, and were suppressed by the Church after the Council of Nicea. More specifically, the misogynist Church sought to suppress Mary’s image, and spent centuries scandalizing and demonizing her until she was normalized as the prostitute and sinner espoused today. Fortunately, however, certain documents were recovered, and later re-discovered by the Knights Templar, who have since kept them hidden.

SOURCE: "The Da Vinci Code: Holy Grail," Jesus Family Tomb (Retrieved 22 December 2008).

Why We're All Jesus' Children

2008-12-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

Go back a few millenniums, and we've all got the same ancestors.

On Monday Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, testified in a London courtroom to defend himself against the charge that he stole from an earlier book the idea that Jesus has a secret line of descendants who are alive today. But no matter how the court case turns out, both books are confused. If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet.

That absurd-sounding statement is an inevitable consequence of the strange and marvelous workings of human ancestry. In the recent past, each of us is descended from a small fraction of the people who were then alive. We're descended from our parents one generation ago, our grandparents two generations ago, our great-grandparents three generations ago, and so on. We tend to think that the same exclusivity holds for the more distant past—that a European-American, for example, is descended from a few clusters of people who lived in Europe many centuries ago, or that an African-American has ancestors from just a handful of African villages.

But that presumption is wrong. Imagine that you could identify all of your great-great-great-great- … grandparents 20 generations back—from about the time Columbus stepped ashore in the New World. (You would never be able to, of course, because no paper records connect you to virtually any of those people, but pretend that God handed you a perfect genealogical record.) Assuming typical human mating patterns, your direct ancestors 20 generations ago consisted of somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 different people. Taking the lower figure, perhaps 480,000 of the ancestors of the average African-American were living in Africa in the year 1492, and approximately 120,000 were living in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. For the average European-American, more than a half-million ancestors were living in Europe, with the rest scattered through Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Now think about your direct ancestors living 40 generations in the past, in about the year A.D. 1000. The size of that group is harder to estimate. But as two co-authors and I explained in Nature in 2004, that group included many millions of people. Forty generations ago, almost everyone living today had ancestors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and many present-day Asians, Europeans, and Africans had ancestors in the Americas because of the continual exchange of mates across the Bering Strait.

It gets even stranger. Say you go back 120 generations, to about the year 1000 B.C. According to the results presented in our Nature paper, your ancestors then included everyone in the world who has descendants living today. And if you compared a list of your ancestors with a list of anyone else's ancestors, the names on the two lists would be identical.

This is a very bizarre result (the math behind it is solid, though—here's a brief, semitechnical explanation of our findings). It means that you and I are descended from all of the Africans, Australians, Native Americans, and Europeans who were alive three millenniums ago and still have descendants living today. That's also why so many people living today could be descended from Jesus. If Jesus had children (a big if, of course) and if those children had children so that Jesus' lineage survived, then Jesus is today the ancestor of almost everyone living on Earth. True, Jesus lived two rather than three millenniums ago, but a person's descendants spread quickly from well-connected parts of the world like the Middle East.

Keep these observations in mind the next time you read about people being linked to famous ancestors. Newsweek recently gushed that "one in five males in northwest Ireland may be a descendant of a legendary fifth-century warlord." In fact, virtually everyone with any European ancestry is descended from that man. One-fifth of Irish males may be descended from him in a direct male line—that is, through their father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on. That's what genetic tests can measure. But almost everyone else in Europe, and many people living elsewhere in the world, is descended from him through genealogical lines that include women. And of course, we're just as much descended from our mother's parents and from our father's mother as from our father's father.

In addition to Jesus and the warlord, we're also all descended from Julius Caesar, from Nefertiti, from Confucius, from the Seven Daughters of Eve, and from any other historical figure who left behind lines of descendants and lived earlier than a few thousand years ago. Genetic tests can't prove this, partly because current tests look at just a small fraction of our DNA. But if we're descended from someone, we have at least a chance—even if it's a very small chance—of having their DNA in our cells.

Geneticists like to point out that people don't get their DNA in equal proportions from our shared ancestors. From many of them, we have inherited no DNA. One genetic test can tell you how much DNA you might have inherited overall from your ancestors in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. But, as John Hawks points out elsewhere in Slate, the results are very approximate. And do people really care how much DNA they got from various regions, or are they more interested in the genealogical question of where their ancestors lived? The answer to that question is "virtually everywhere."

A handful of uncertainties could push back to some degree the times I've mentioned. Maybe we all had the same ancestors four or five millenniums ago rather than three millenniums ago. But that uncertainty doesn't change the basic conclusion, which is that all human beings are tied up in dense webs of genealogical connections.

The risk of today's genetic genealogy tests is that they tend to divide people into groups, whereas the real message that emerges from genealogy is one of connections. For centuries, scientists have tried to sort people into biological categories. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they pounced on the idea of race and used it to formulate hypotheses about human differences that had disastrous social consequences. In the 20th century, scientists began to explore the greater complexities of our biological histories, which are impossible to capture in a word as simple-minded as "race." If genetic genealogy tests explored and explained these complexities, I'd have no problem with them. But most of today's tests hark back to the bad old days of racial science.

People may like to think that they're descended from some ancient group while other people are not. But human ancestry doesn't work that way, since we all share the same ancestors just a few millenniums ago. As that idea becomes more widely accepted, arguments over who's descended from Jesus won't result in lawsuits. And maybe, just maybe, people will have one less reason to feel animosity toward other branches of the human family.

In 1999, Joseph Chang, a professor of statistics at Yale University, published a paper in Advances in Applied Probability showing that the most recent common genealogical ancestor in a randomly mating population of size n lived log2 n generations ago, where log2 n is the number of times you have to multiply 2 by itself to equal n. (Thus, log2 n of 1 million is about 20, since 2 to the 20th power is 1,048,576.) I read Chang's paper while I was writing my book, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, and he and I began working to extend his result to more realistic human populations where mates are not chosen at random.

About that time, I also was reading about small-worlds graphs, which is a branch of mathematics that flourished in the 1990s. In a small-worlds graph, subgraphs consisting of random connections among a cluster of points (random marriages within a population form such a subgraph) are connected to each other by occasional links. It doesn't take many of those occasional links for the entire collection of subgraphs to start behaving like one big randomly connected graph.

I realized that human ancestry could be modeled as a small-worlds graph. Even with very small rates of migration between populations that are separated geographically or socially, the entire population would behave in ways comparable to a randomly connected graph. Thus, ancestry for the population as a whole might conform roughly to Chang's observation about randomly mating populations. That conclusion gave me enough confidence to publish in my book some of the observations I've made in this article.

Meanwhile, Douglas Rohde, a computer scientist who was then at MIT and now works at Google, heard about the research that Chang and I were doing. He built an amazing computer simulation of the world's interlinked populations going back 20,000 years, which produced results comparable to those of Chang's theoreticical approach. The three of us worked together on the results published in the Nature paper.

Computer scientist Mark Humphrys anticipated some of our work on human ancestry in his fascinating "royal descents of famous people" Web site, which I wrote about in the May 2002 Atlantic. Douglas Rohde has summarized his work on human ancestry in an unpublished paper posted at his old MIT Web site. The esteemed geneticist Susumu Ohno also wrote about human ancestry in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I used Ohno's paper to conclude that each of us had between 600,000 and 1 million distinct ancestors 20 generations ago.

Steve Olson's book Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins was nominated for the National Book Award in 2002.

SOURCE: Steve Olsen, "Why We're All Jesus' Children," Slate (15 Mar 2006).

Jesus' Family Tree

2008-12-13T15:31:00.000-08:00

A recreation of Jesus' family tree based on references from the New Testament
and the ancient historians Josephus and Eusebius. Courtesy of Frontline.

SOURCE: "Jesus' Family Tree," Frontline (Apr 1998). Reproduced by Frontline with permission from Jesus and His World by John J Rousseau and Rami Arav, © Augsberg Fortress 1995.

Royal Lines from Zarah and Pharez Judah

2008-12-13T00:35:00.000-08:00

This simplified chart essentially agrees with the Genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II chart. The main differences are: (1) this chart includes Prince Philip's ancestors; (2) it includes a descent from Levi through Aaron and Simon the Just for Joseph of Arimathea; and (3) it shows a descent from Zedekiah for the Virgin Mary's husband, Joseph.

SOURCE: "Royal Lines from Zarah and Pharez Judah," (1937). http://www.angelfire.com/alt2/antichrist/royalgene.html. Retrieved 12 Dec 2008.

Royal House of Britain, An Enduring Dynasty

2008-12-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

The chart, "Genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II," is in part based on the work of Rev. W. H. M. Milner who wrote a book entitled, The Royal House of Britain, An Enduring Dynasty. The following charts come from pp. 21-22 of this book.

SOURCE: "Source Documents," Israelite.info (Retrieved 28 Dec 2008).

Genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II

2008-12-12T23:46:00.000-08:00

SOURCE: "The Genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II," (1938). http://www.angelfire.com/alt2/antichrist/royalgene.html. Retrieved (12 Dec 2008).

Kilmore Church stained-glass window

2008-12-11T23:50:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy of "Adam en Eva," Die Boervolk van SA (10-10-2008).

The picture above is a detail from a stained-glass window at Kilmore Church, Dervaig, Isle of Mull, Scotland. It is by Stephen Adam who died in 1910, long before Holy Blood, Holy Grail appeared in 1982.

The image shows Jesus and a pregnant Mary of Bethany holding right hands, a widely recognized symbol known as "hand-fasting," which essentially is synonymous with betrothal.

We know it is Mary of Bethany, because of the quote: "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her," (Luke 10: 42) that appears near the bottom of the image.

Click for a larger image of the entire window. Courtesy of Madeleine: A Destiny Begun.

Catholic Encyclopedia: The Holy Grail

2008-12-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

The online Catholic Encyclopedia has a very informative article on the Holy Grail from which I quote the following excerpt:

The meaning of the word has also been variously explained. The generally accepted meaning is that is given by the Cistercian chronicler Helinandus (d. about 1230), who, under the date of about 717, mentions of a vision, shown to a hermit concerning the dish used by Our Lord at the Last Supper, and about which the hermit then wrote a Latin book called "Gradale." "Now in French," so Helinandus informs us, "Gradalis or Gradale means a dish (scutella), wide and somewhat deep, in which costly viands are wont to be served to the rich in degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in different rows. In popular speech it is also called "greal" because it is pleasant (grata) and acceptable to him eating therein" etc. The medieval Latin word "gradale" because in Old French "graal," or "greal," or "greel," whence the English "grail." Others derive the word from "garalis" or from "cratalis" (crater, a mixing bowl). It certainly means a dish, the derivation from "grata" in the latter part of the passage cited above or from "agréer" (to please) in the French romances is secondary. The explanation of "San greal" as "sang real" (kingly blood) was not current until the later Middle Ages. [Emphasis added.] Other etymologies that have been advanced may be passed over as obsolete.

SOURCE: Arthur F.J. Remy, "The Holy Grail," The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06719a.htm. Retrieved 23 December 2008.