Jesus Bloodline - History of The Hypothesis

History of The Hypothesis

The 13th-century Cistercian monk and chronicler Peter of Vaux de Cernay claimed it was part of Catharist belief that the earthly Jesus Christ had a relationship with Mary Magdalene, described as his concubine.

Early Mormon leaders Jedediah M. Grant and Orson Hyde stated it was part of their religious belief that Jesus Christ was polygamous, quoting an apocryphal passage attributed to the 2nd-century Greek philosopher Celsus: "The grand reason why the gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ was because he had so many wives. There were Elizabeth and Mary and a host of others that followed him".

The French 19th century socialist politician, Louis Martin, in his 1886 book Les Evangiles sans Dieu described the historical Jesus as a turned atheist, who had married Mary Magdalene, and that both had travelled to the South of France, where they had a son.

The Jesus bloodline hypothesis which held that the historical Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child with her was brought to the attention of the general public again in the 20th century by Donovan Joyce in his 1973 book The Jesus Scroll. In his 1977 book Jesus died in Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and the ten lost tribes of Israel, Andreas Faber-Kaiser explored the legend that Jesus met, married and had several children with a Kashmiri woman. The author also interviewed the late Basharat Saleem who claimed to be a Kashmiri descendant of Jesus. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln developed and popularized the hypothesis that a bloodline from Jesus and Mary Magdalene eventually became the Merovingian dynasty in their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in which they asserted:

The symbolic significance of Jesus is that he is God exposed to the spectrum of human experience – exposed to the first-hand knowledge of what being a man entails. But could God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the human condition? Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity? We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children. The Jesus of the Gospels, and of established Christianity, is ultimately incomplete – a God whose incarnation as man is only partial. The Jesus who emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what Christianity would have him be.

Their thesis was alluded to in the second “The Matrix Trilogy” film.

In her 1992 book Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking the Secrets of His Life Story, Barbara Thiering also developed a Jesus and Mary Magdalene bloodline hypothesis, basing her historical conclusions on her application of the so-called Pesher technique to the New Testament.

In her 1993 book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, Margaret Starbird developed the hypothesis that Saint Sarah was the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and that this was the source of the legend associated with the cult at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. She also claimed that the name "Sarah" meant "Princess" in Hebrew, thus making her the forgotten child of the "sang réal", the blood royal of the King of the Jews.

In his 1996 book Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed, Laurence Gardner presented pedigree charts of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the ancestors of all the European royal families of the Common Era. His 2000 sequel Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Explosive Story of Genetic Cloning and the Ancient Bloodline of Jesus is unique in claiming that not only can the Jesus bloodline truly be traced back to Adam and Eve but that the first man and woman were primate-alien hybrids created by the Anunnaki of ancient astronaut theory. The 2000 book Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-Le-Chateau and the Dynasty of Jesus, Marylin Hopkins, Graham Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy developed the hypothesis that a Jesus and Mary Magdalene bloodline was part of a shadow dynasty descended from twenty-four high priests of the Temple in Jerusalem known as "Rex Deus" – the "Kings of God".

The 2003 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown accepted some of the above hypotheses as being valid. Elements of some Jesus bloodline hypotheses were propounded by the 2007 documentary film The Lost Tomb of Jesus by Simcha Jacobovici focusing on the Talpiot Tomb discovery, which was also published as a book entitled The Jesus Family Tomb. In 2007 psychic medium Sylvia Browne released the book "The Two Marys: The Hidden History of the Mother and Wife of Jesus", in which she tries to further validate the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene producing a family.

The 2008 documentary Bloodline by Bruce Burgess, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on the Jesus bloodline hypothesis and other elements of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Château since 1999; Burgess claims Ben has found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: a mummified corpse, which they believe is Mary Magdalene, in an underground tomb they claim is connected to both the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion. In the film, Burgess interviews several people with alleged connections to the Priory of Sion, including a Gino Sandri and Nicolas Haywood. A book by one of the documentary's researchers, Rob Howells, entitled Inside the Priory of Sion: Revelations from the World's Most Secret Society - Guardians of the Bloodline of Jesus presented the version of the Priory of Sion as given in the 2008 documentary, which contained several erroneous assertions, such as the claim that Plantard believed in the Jesus bloodline hypothesis. By 21 March 2012 Ben Hammott confessed and apologised on Podcast interview (using his real name Bill Wilkinson) that everything to do with the tomb and related artifacts was a hoax; revealing that the actual tomb was now destroyed, being part of a full sized set located in a warehouse in England.

The disclosure of a fourth century papyrus fragment which was revealed at the International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome on 18 September 2012 by Karen L. King might bring about a revival of the theory. It's called the Gospel of Jesus' wife and is a small piece of ancient papyrus with writing in Egyptian Coptic that includes the words, "Jesus said to them, 'my wife...'". The fragment is a fourth century copy of what is thought to be "a gospel probably written in Greek in the second half of the second century." Professor Karen L. King and her colleague AnneMarie Luijendijk named the fragment the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife" for reference purposes. But King has insisted that the fragment, "Should not be taken as as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married". But on September, 28th the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian: "Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery, In any case, it's a fake."