Someone's been lighting the Grail-shaped beacon again...

Big Les

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I'd love to be able to dig deeper on this highly dubious claim, but as usual, you have to buy what he's selling in order to be able to! Short version is that there's a silver chalice from an ecclesiastical grave at Lincoln Cathedral in the UK that this chap believes is the Holy Grail...

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view...d-in-Lincoln,-really-the-one-used-by-Christ?/

The cathedral aren't convinced. And as the local archaeological Finds Liaison Officer points out, it's a very medieval-looking 'grail';

http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk...cathedral/article-2310355-detail/article.html
 
Balderdash. That cup is clearly medieval European in design, not 1st-century Judean. Does Coleman postulate that the materials were melted down and re-cast in the 13th century according to the style of the place and period?

And of course I haven't read Coleman's book, but the provenance of the item as described in the OP-linked articles hardly inspires confidence in the cup's identity as "the Holy Grail". The thing was described in medieval literature as, alternately, a stone, a cup, and an infant. Our modern conception of it as being definitely a cup is not necessarily supported by the literature from which the myth originally derived.

In brief: It's all made up. The Chief Executive of the Cathedral is right to say "some of [Coleman's] conclusions require a few leaps of faith."
 
Oh, pish-tosh. Everybody knows the Holy Grail is in Valencia:
http://www.catedraldevalencia.es/el-santo-caliz_historia.php
So there. Ahem. No other possible relic can be the Holy Grail, and that's that. Nope. Not at all. It says so in the web there, so it's final. Well, what they say is that a study saying it's contemporary was "never refuted" and that the fact that it didn't break or got lost shows that there was divine will at work. Which must be good news for all those Egyptian, Babylonian and such things laying around...
 
I've always liked tales of people searching for the holy grail, and the ark, and other biblical artifacts, but try to keep in mind it's like searching for the doors of Moria.
 
The Chalice of Valencia appears to be more authentic to the time and place of Jesus than other claimants to the Grail. In 1960, Spanish archaeologist Antonio Beltrán stated his opinion that the cup was produced in Palestine or Egypt between the 4th century BCE and the 1st century CE. Of course, that doesn't make it "the Grail" as the Cathedral of Valencia asserts, but it does make it more likely to have been used by Jesus at the Last Supper than the medieval one in Lincoln Cathedral.
 
Well, at least it points out to being old. And capable of holding a liquid. I guess that's two pros.

I kind like it because it's very pretty; the actual old part of the relic is made of agate, and has a very graceful shape. Then it got additions in gold and pearls and such. It's placed in a little, very beautiful chapel inside the Cathedral. It's kind of an inside joke here, you know "Poor Indy, he just should have come here for the Grail."
 
"Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight to our beacon, which, I have just remembered, is grail-shaped. It's not the first time we've had this problem."
 
lol, can someone tell me where in the bible it mentions Jesus using a grail at the last supper
:D
 
The Valencia one looks a bit high status for a preacher and his followers. I think a more typical model of that period would have been made of pottery or wood. The Lincoln one looks like something a medieval Bishop would own.
 
A medieval cup? He chose... poorly. Now to wait for the chap to drink from it, age rapidly and explode.
 
Vortigern99 said:
The thing was described in medieval literature as, alternately, a stone, a cup, and an infant.
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Or a dish, or royal blood, or a few others.

The truth is that nobody has a freaking clue what a "greal" was in those legends. The word doesn't appear anywhere else, and the likeliest etymlogy would make it a derivative of the Latin gradalis or gradale. I.e., "greal" would pretty much mean "gradual". As in, really, "stage by stage" or similar. If there is a connection to "cup" in that word, it's been eluding everyone so far.

The legends (until much, much later) never explain what a greal was. In a sense it's a McGuffin.

Perhaps more important is the pun value than the exact shape of the McGuffin. "San greal" = holy grail, while "Sang real" = royal blood. The relevant legends become a lot easier to understand when you understand the divine right mindset of the age that produced them. E.g., the "fisher king" is really "sinner king", and that in turn has negative consequences for the whole kingdom, the king's wound cripples the whole land, and the king's impotence (in the versions where he's wounded in the groin) nixes the fertility of the whole land and condemns it to famine. Nevertheless he is held alive and in power, at least in some versions, by the royal blood... err... I mean, holy grail.

It's practically an early political pamphlet in that form.
 
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sphenisc said:
Matthew 26:27
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Not really. Matthew 26:27 says he used a _cup_. It may seem like just a lexical difference, but it's not. The connection between grail and that cup is a very late retrofit, as an attempt to explain wth was a grail and why was it so powerful and important. The cup used by Jesus seemed like a suitably important relic to use as a grail. But in the end Matthew doesn't really say Jesus used a grail, it says he used a cup. For all we know, grail could still mean something completely different.
 
HansMustermann said:
Not really. Matthew 26:27 says he used a _cup_. It may seem like just a lexical difference, but it's not. The connection between grail and that cup is a very late retrofit, as an attempt to explain wth was a grail and why was it so powerful and important. The cup used by Jesus seemed like a suitably important relic to use as a grail. But in the end Matthew doesn't really say Jesus used a grail, it says he used a cup. For all we know, grail could still mean something completely different.
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Sure, but now it's been retrofitted - that's what the word means. So we don't know what it once meant, but it's usage now is what it is.
 
sphenisc said:
Sure, but now it's been retrofitted - that's what the word means. So we don't know what it once meant, but it's usage now is what it is.
Click to expand...

Actually, a team of expert linguists and scholars have studied the problem for many decades and, thanks to new archaeological discoveries and paleolinguistic breakthroughs, have determined that the word originally meant "lawnmower".

Unfortunately this leaves us with even more questions than before.
 
Accidental Martyr said:
"Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight to our beacon, which, I have just remembered, is grail-shaped. It's not the first time we've had this problem."
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What were the other girls named? I think one was called, "Piglet." Though I can't figure out why, that might be the funniest name they could possibly have chosen.
 
sphenisc said:
Sure, but now it's been retrofitted - that's what the word means. So we don't know what it once meant, but it's usage now is what it is.
Click to expand...

Tish tosh.

I'll choose to listen to the original King James English version. If it was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.
 
One thing I never understood: Why exactly do people think that the cup/grail/dish/whatever made it past the last supper? Wouldn't that simply be one of the pieces of tableware the owner of the inn would put out? Wouldn't the equivalent of a busboy have just collected it along with everything else on the table and washed it for the next party?
 
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