Holy Blood, Holy Grail

[phildonnia]

Started reading it yesterday. Here's my impression so far:

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The introduction to the new edition apologized for the accusation that the authors were attacking a fundamental tenet of christianity. They asserted in their defense that the core of christianity was found in the teachings of Jesus.

As a former good catholic, I know that the core of christianity is considered to be the salvation of man through the resurrection. I cannot believe that the authors would be ignorant of this.

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I certainly wouldn't claim to have the historical background necessary for a real critique, but the authors come across as very credulous.

For example, much is made of a "secret" publication that they were unable to obtain because someone else had checked it out of the library. I was unable to get HBHG for three weeks for the same reason, and I didn't think for a second that some secret society was supressing it.

And speaking of "secret" publicatons, the authors do gratuitously use scare quotes.

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It's a page-turner anyway. Very exciting writing, and that's saying something in the "historical non-fiction" genre.

Reading on...

 

[Virgil]

I enjoyed the book but more as fiction that fact. it is an intersting premise.


I keep the copy and will re-read in the future


Virgil

 

[Dancing David]

It is a hoot, especialy the stuff about the king of France.

 

[Zep]

Take a very small set of facts and extrapolate as fast and as far as you possibly can. Use conspiracy theories if necessary. Publish.

 

[Soapy Sam]

"I was unable to get HBHG for three weeks for the same reason, and I didn't think for a second that some secret society was supressing it."

Hah! Just shows how gullible you are!



Is this the Rennes-le -Chateau, Templars, Christ and the masons thing?

Try Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum" if you want a laugh. It's a complex send up of all that sort of thing.

nb- The Sinclairs' chapel at Roslin is worth a visit by the way. Just down the road from the birthplace of Dolly the Sheep.

 

[ceo_esq]

This book has been promoted by Sylvia Browne - surely a dubious endorsement.

 

[Virgil]

This book has been promoted by Sylvia Browne - surely a dubious endorsement.

Why did you have to say that...now I feel dirty.




Virgil

 

[phildonnia]

It is a hoot, especialy the stuff about the king of France.

Therein lies part of the twisted reason that I ended up reading this book. I was intrigued by a character in _the matrix_ called "the merovingian", and I went on the web to find out what kind of a name that was. The rest is, well, um, history?

 

[headscratcher4]

merovingian

The silly part is that it is my recollection that the Merovingian dynasty died out pretty early on -- the 9th or 10th Century? The Capets, Valois and the Burbons have almost no link to those earlier kings...so what's the big deal even if it were possible/credible (which it isn't).

 

[phildonnia]

So I'm about halfway through now. I got lost around the second quarter, with endless biographies and secret connections and things. I may have skipped a few sections.

But I definitely picked up again at a discussion of the infamous "protocols of the elders of sion"; always a fascinating topic. (Yes; I have read it.) The authors seem to feel that while it is definitely a forgery, it is based on some real document with esoteric connections. That seems like a real stretch.

Here's another persistent habit of their research: whenever something seems blatantly wrong, it is taken as evidence that it is not a forgery, since a forger would avoid putting blatantly wrong things in his work. Possible, but if the authors (and their readers) could play these kind of mind games, then why couldn't a forger; by his very nature a deceptive individual?

There's also something quite distateful about citing sources of unknown authorship "intended for limited publication".

I'm aware of a certain amount of bunkery in today's culture regarding occult societies; from reading Jack Chick tracts and visiting cuttingedge.org. I wonder how much of that predates the publication of HBHG? Because many of the details in the book presented as surprising and revealing have been old-hat on the internet for some time. I wonder if the book was originally published in the same kind of cultural stew regarding these matters.

 

[Morwen]

"I was unable to get HBHG for three weeks for the same reason, and I didn't think for a second that some secret society was supressing it."

Hah! Just shows how gullible you are!



Is this the Rennes-le -Chateau, Templars, Christ and the masons thing?

Try Umberto Eco's novel "Foucault's Pendulum" if you want a laugh. It's a complex send up of all that sort of thing.

Yes! I wholeheartedly agree. Marvelous book. Skeptical to the hilt, funny in unexpected ways, well-written. Then go on and read "Baudolino"; even better.

About the RlC thingie, you can also play the graphic adventure "Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the damned". Excellent story, very well researched, and with lots of stuff from the Rennes-le-Château affair. You will feel you've been there, and have fun.

I haven't read the Da Vinci Code book, but if it deals with the hollow pillars in the altar, Le Serpent Rouge, the "strange" church, and such and such, I think I've had enough of that for a while, thankyouverymuch. However, the adventure is very good; funny, very very difficult, and surprisingly rich.

Beware the chicken, though.

 

[phildonnia]

Finished the book in one marathon session this weekend. The good part is definitely the attempted reconciliation of various contradictions and non-sequiturs in the christian gospels. I am even inclined to think the authors may be correct in their hypotheses in this respect.

Here's a question that has troubled me; much of the main hypothesis is developed from "reading between the lines" in various stories, myths, and scriptures. My gut reaction to this technique is that it's just inviting the personal predjudices of the authors to creep in to the conclusions.

Do myths, legends, etc., intended as fiction, or demonstrably false hold any value as historical artifacts? The name of Velikovsky comes to mind, and the authors of HBHG even bring him up as a cautionary note.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Take a very small set of facts and extrapolate as fast and as far as you possibly can. Use conspiracy theories if necessary. Publish.

This reminds me of what my Classicist friends would say about missing documents to do with ancient Greece, Rome, etc.

For example, there might have been a play by Aristophanes referred to by Thucydides that has been lost in the sands of time. Or has it? No, according to these people, it's in the Vatican.

There are very little written records about the Etruscans, by the Etruscans. Or are there? No, it's in the Vatican.

Why did Rome persue policy X during the time of Augustus Caesar? Could it be that we will never know because the reasons for these policies were lost during such-and-such an event? No, because the polices are...

These people seem to think that the Pope lives to annoy Classicists by hiding vital information in his vaults. Knowing Classicists as well as I do, I can understand the motive, but what are the means and opportunity?

 

[Ælfgifu]

I read HBHG several years ago and I have to say that it's one of the worst, if not the worst, books that I've ever read.

Why? Because their methodology is laughable. They disprove a point and two paragraphs later, say the opposite to prove a new point.

Example: Even though we've just shown that the Romans, who kept very detailed records, never held a census at the time when Jesus was reportedly born, and that if they had, in fact, held a census, Joseph would have had to have reported to the city where he worked, not where he was born, we're going to assume that the entire story of Jesus's birth as it was reported in the Bible (in different accounts that we've just shown are contradictory) is 100% accurate, lest our argument be bashed into little tiny pieces. (What a run on!)

Or: Even though we've just shown that "Mary" was a very popular female name for Jewish women at the time, we're going to assume that the "Mary" of "Mary and Martha" was really the same person as Mary Magdalene. And even though we've just shown that there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus and MM were married, this makes Lazarus Jesus' brother-in-law, which is why Jesus was so sad when he died.

Or: Even though we've just shown that the Romans never let the Jews decide on prisoners that could be set free at Passover or any other time, we're going to assume that the reason that the Jewish people wanted to free Barabas instead of Jesus was that Barabas was Jesus' son (an idea from way out in left field!) and that the Jewish mob made a collective, conscious choice that they would free the younger person, because he could carry on Jesus' teachings for a longer period of time.

And I think it's wise that I stop there.

(By the way, I have a master's degree in medieval history and I don't buy any of that crap about the Merovingians.)

Have a nice day,
Kelly

 

[phildonnia]

I can see how it would piss off a true scholar of history such as yourself; especially if the hypotheses attracted a widespread acceptance among the unwashed masses.

Fortunately, although I am among the unwashed masses history-wise, it all sounded like bunk to me. And for the same reason, I was able to enjoy it without being angered at the sloppy methodology.

But let me ask you, do myths, legends, and seriously doctored religious scripture have any usefulness to history as a science?

Suppose that a ten thousand years from now, humanity was extinct, and all that alien anthropologists were able to find was a DVD of _The Matrix_. Suppose further, that they knew it was intended as fiction. Would it be totally worthless as a historical artifact? And if not, are the Grail Stories and the Christian Scriptures also significant to the historian?

 

[Ælfgifu]

Fortunately, although I am among the unwashed masses history-wise, it all sounded like bunk to me. And for the same reason, I was able to enjoy it without being angered at the sloppy methodology.

You are among the "unwashed masses" maybe, but you also possess the ability to think, which is probably all anyone needs to realize that book was bunk.

But let me ask you, do myths, legends, and seriously doctored religious scripture have any usefulness to history as a science?

I remember a graduate student complaining that a professor was using "yet another novel" as a primary source for a class that he was taking.

I think it depends on how the source is used. For example, you mentioned "doctored religious scripture." I don't think that one could really ever use the King James Version of the Bible as a primary source to understand what was going on before King James doctored it for his own purpose.

Some people use the gospels as a primary source about the life of Jesus. I don't think you can do that. I think one could use the gospels as a primary source for how people understood the life of Jesus a generation or two after he died, since that's when they were written. (If he existed at all.) That said, Acts of the Apostles is generally considered to possess a fairly accurate record of early Christian history and is believed to have been written shortly after Jesus died.

After all, books that are written about slavery today differ greatly from books written about slavery in 1850.

One way to use a novel would be like this: What does Gone With the Wind say about slavery? Well, you couldn't use it to study attitudes about slavery during the Civil War, even though that's when the novel takes place. You could use it to examine the romanticized ideas that people living in the Southern States had about the Civil War. You could use it to examine African American stereotypes of the 1920's and '30's.

You can use Aristophanes' Lysistrata to understand gender roles in Ancient Greece, even though it's fictional and a comedy.

Sometimes, however, a lack of sources means that a historian can't be picky. (My degree is in medieval history after all!) So does that have to mean that the myth of Noah's Ark happened exactly like it is written in the Bible? Most likely not. (I say definately not, but I'm trying to be objective!) But when you find out that other nearby cultures of the same period have similar stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, then maybe that part of the world had a bit more rain than it usually did around then. (And archeologists should be called in to try to confirm it, though I personally wouldn't call people in to start looking for a wooden ark anytime soon.)

I hope I'm making sense. I've never seen The Matrix so I can't comment on it specifically.

Have a nice day,
Kelly