Response to Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the Magdelene/Merovingian Dynasty

I wrote this at the end of January with the intention of sharing it with people. Then I forgot about it. I found it this morning, and I am sharing it with you.

As I was reading the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, I was impressed by the amount of information and research that had been done by Leigh, Baigent, and Lincoln. However, I did not like their conclusions, and I had already known what their conclusion having heard about the book from my mother, and I had watched the DaVinci Code starring Tom Hanks. I, being a Bible-believing Protestant Christian, did not find their conclusions to be the only conclusion. I fact I believed that another scenario was equally likely. Given the knowledge that Kings in Europe believed in what was called ‘The Divine Right of Kings’, is it not likely that one or more of those monarchs may have chosen to claim the lineage of Jesus as their birthright. According to Baigent (I will refer to the collective trio using Baigent’s name for sake of brevity and because his is the first name on the book) and the source the Dossiers secrets, the Priory of Sion (Prieure de Sion) gave that claim to the Merovingian Kings of France of the 4th through 8th centuries. They claimed that the Merovingian line was still extant through the son of Dagobert II and presently Pierre Plantard. Baigent felt that the claim was genuine given the connections made by the Priory’s documents, and Baigent tied together several threads that got woven into the idea that Jesus, married to Mary Magdalene, had children who intermarried with the Frank Kings and led to the Merovingian bloodline.
I feel that the more likely story is that the Merovingians and the Priory, in order to establish their own means claimed, and created a forgery, that through this spurious bloodline, they could put one of their “Merovingians” on the throne. Baigent even goes so far as to say the Pierre Plantard has a rightful claim to the throne given his Merovingian ancestry; an ancestry that can only be confirmed through the Priory Documents.
Tell me, is it not possible that the Priory of Sion is nothing more than a group of people trying to bring about their own political goals, the establishment of their own King, a head of state that can do their bidding and legitimize their own belief structure. Can you think of a better way to do this than by claiming descent from Christ Jesus, the “King of the Jews”?
I can understand the standpoint of Beigent and the others when they “dissect” the Gospels and point out the “inconsistancies”. I can even buy their argument about Jesus and his marriage to Mary Magdalene, who they equate with the “woman who was a sinner” and Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Their argument that Jesus would have crucified because of crimes against Rome, and that the Gospels are playing nice for Rome is also plausible. However, consider a few things.
Pontius Pilate is known to have been a cruel man who was also corrupt. Why would he be portrayed in the Gospels as a “nice guy”? The answer is simple, fear. Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea from 26-36 AD. In 31 AD, the Commander of the Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, tried to depose Tiberius Caesar Augustus. Sejanus and all of his followers, were executed by Tiberius. It is possible that Pilate may have been someone who supported Sejanus. Pilate, if he had been found to be a supporter, would have been killed immediately like all of the others. It is possible that Pilate was not a supporter of Sejanus. However, whether or not he was, Pilate knew that the Emperor Tiberius did not like trouble. It is known that Tiberius had had to intervene in Pilate’s actions before, and if the Jews had been unhappy with Pilate’s decision, they may have taken their claim to the Emperor, and Tiberius would have had no problem removing Pilate and then crucifying Jesus.
The idea that Mary Magdalene can be identified with the other two women comes from a Catholic Pope who decided to equate these women himself. In Protestant belief, the three women are separate. This is a possibility, but it is based on highly questionable evidence. The idea that Jesus was married to Magdalene is one of great mystery and the debate will probably never be resolved adequately.
On January 31, 2008, I also found an article on Wikipedia stating that the Priory of Sion was a hoax perpetuated by Pierre Plantard in order to legitimize his own claim to the throne, and that all of the documents in the Dossiers Secrets were in fact a fraud and a hoax. Needless to say, I am not surprised.