The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail - Influence and Similarities

Influence and Similarities

• The 1973 book The Jesus Scroll by Donovan Joyce was an early attempt by an author to claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married and had a son together.
• The 1987 OMNI short science fiction story 'Thy Sting,' by Damien Broderick, postulates an unknown number of children from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, creating a genetic line leading to the reincarnation of Jesus as a starving black girl in drought-ridden Africa.
• The 1988 novel Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco mentions the Jesus and Mary Magdalene hypothesis in passing (a quote from the book is in fact one of the chapter headings). However, Eco, a secular humanist, takes a negative stance on such conspiracy theories. Foucault's Pendulum was a strong debunking of themes found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail through the medium of satire.
• The 1991 controversial non-fiction book The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh promotes a conspiracy theory accusing the Roman Catholic Church of having suppressed the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• The 1994 novel Arthur War Lord and its sequel Far Beyond the Wave by Dafydd ab Hugh uses elements from the book as background for the time-travel story.
• The comic book series Preacher (1995–2000), by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, includes a secret organization called The Grail, which has been protecting the Jesus bloodline for millennia.
• The 1996 novel The Children of the Grail by Peter Berling incorporates the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as a central part of the plot.
• The 1996 video game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars references this book as well, in the form of dialogue when the player asks what a character knows of the Templars.
• The 1999 third installment of the Gabriel Knight series, Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, used the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children as one of the basic structures of the storyline, tying it together with a number of other myths in an original story. "Et in Arcadia ego" is also an important object, with the characters finding important clues in the picture.
• The 2001 film Revelation uses the Rennes-le-Chateau setting and parts of the Merovingian bloodline and Magdalene elements, within the search for a relic related to the Crucifixion of Jesus.
• The old legend that the Merovingian dynasty in ancient France claimed to be the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is alluded to in the second “The Matrix trilogy” film (2003) as well)
• The 2003 conspiracy fiction novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown makes reference to this book, also liberally using most of the above claims as key plot elements; indeed, in 2005 Baigent and Leigh unsuccessfully sued Brown's publisher, Random House, for plagiarism, on the grounds that Brown's book makes extensive use of their research and that one of the characters is named Leigh, has a surname (Teabing) which is an anagram of Baigent, and has a physical description strongly resembling Henry Lincoln. In his novel, Brown also mentions Holy Blood, Holy Grail as an acclaimed international bestseller (chapter 60) and claims it as the major contributor to his hypothesis. Perhaps as a result of this mention, the authors (minus Henry Lincoln) of Holy Blood sued Dan Brown for copyright infringement. They claimed that the central framework of their plot had been stolen for the writing of The Da Vinci Code. The claim was overturned by High Court Judge Peter Smith on April 6, 2006, who ruled that "their argument was vague and shifted course during the trial and was always based on a weak foundation." In fact, it was found that the publicity of the trial had significantly boosted sales of Holy Blood. The court ruled that, in effect, because it was published as a work of (alleged) history, its premises legally could be freely interpreted in any subsequent fictional work without any copyright infringement.
• One month later the release of the Da Vinci Code the old legend that the Merovingian dynasty in ancient France claimed to be the descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, was alluded to in the second “The Matrix Trilogy” film.
• The comic Rex Mundi, written by Arvid Nelson and published by Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics,(2003-2009) is set in an alternate timestream and utilises themes and names from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
• In 2007 Belgian author Christtian Stickx (pseudonym), published a book connecting the unsolved theft of the painting The Just Judges by the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck to elements from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
• The 2008 documentary film 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 to have found the treasure of Bérenger Saunière: several mummified corpses (one of which is allegedly Mary Magdalene) in three underground tombs created by the Knights Templar under the orders of the Priory of Sion. 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 existence of a fourth century papyrus fragment was revealed at the International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome on 18 September 2012 by Professor Karen L. King. It bears 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 King and her colleague AnneMarie Luijendijk named the fragment the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife" for reference purposes. King has insisted that the fragment "should not be taken as as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married". Nonetheless, on 28 September 2012 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."