Who's the closest living relative to Jesus?

DrDeth · August 13, 2004, 2:21am

Do their crowns go over their tinfoil hats, or under them? :dubious:

BrainGlutton · August 13, 2004, 3:00am

You might want to check out this GD thread – “Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Were Gospels omitted from New Testament?”

From the Disinformation website – http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id96/pg1/:

‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ is a powerful example of investigative journalism meme-spliced with religious conspiracy theory, a ‘fictive arcanum’ whose provocative thesis continues to undermine the Catholic Church’s institutional reading of Judeo-Christian history. Its trash literature veneer has introduced memes that have led readers to subsequently study the scholarly work of Robert Eisenman, Barbara Thiering and the Dead Sea Scrolls researchers that reveal the suppression of early schisms within Christianity. The book’s central hypothesis - that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and together with Mary Magdalene founded a bloodline that later became the Merovingians in France (protected by the Knights Templar and later by the Freemasons) amounts to a stunning re-write of Western history. Banned in Catholic-dominated countries including the Phillipines, the book remains an incendiary example of why culture-jamming official ‘grand-narratives’ is the frontline of new information wars.

<snip>

Embarking on the ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ mystery means exploring where Pop Culture and the Sacred intersect in an infinite regressing nest of quantum combinations. The original book spawned several television documentaries and brought contemporary occult subcultures into the mainstream (even influencing conspiracy theorists like Robert Anton Wilson), foreshadowing the impact of the ‘X-Files’ television series with a combination of foreboding and wonder that entranced audiences worldwide. If many early conspiriologists feel that armchair conspiracy theorizing has become too popular and too mainstream, then the ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ phenomena may be seen in retrospect as the critical turning point where a Culture exploded beyond previous thresholds and began to devour itself.

From the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Blood%2C_Holy_Grail:

Holy Blood, Holy Grail is a nonfictional work of pseudohistory and New York Times bestseller written by BBC producers and authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln and published in 1982 by Dell (ISBN 055212138).

It details their own quest for the Holy Grail by investigating the mysteries of Rennes-le-Château and constructing a conspiratorial view of the history of the Western world.

After a decade of research, Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to the following controversial conclusions:

There is a secret society known as Priory of Sion that has a long and illustrious history dating back to the First Crusade starting with the creation of the Knights Templar as its military front.

It had a large role in partaking in and promoting the “underground river of esotericism,” the Alph, in Medieval Europe.

It is devoted to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem.

It protects these royal claimants because they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his alleged wife Mary Magdalene.

The Roman Catholic Church tried to kill off all remnants of this dynasty and their guardians, the Cathars and the Templars, during the Inquisition, in order to gain power through the apostolic succession of Peter instead of the hereditary succession of Mary Magdalene.

Author Dan Brown, in his bestseller The Da Vinci Code, makes reference to this book, and uses the above claims as key plot elements.

These theories have not been accepted by many historians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion:

There was much speculation as to just what the Prieuré de Sion is. In its English translation it is usually rendered as Priory of Sion, or even Priory of Zion. It was an elusive protagonist in many works of both non-fiction and fiction, and it had been characterized as anything from the most covertly powerful secret society in Western history to a modern Rosicrucian-esque ludibrium but in fact it has been exposed as an elaborate hoax.

Under Article III.c of the original 1956 Statutes of the Priory of Sion, the association was named after the nearby mountain called Sion by the French town of Annemasse. It was devoted to opposing gentrification in the area through its journal, Circuit. The 1956 Priory had its headquarters in Pierre Plantard’s house in Annemasse and was officially registered at the sub-prefecture in Saint-Julien-en-Genevoise on May 7th, 1956, by André Bonhomme and Pierre Plantard. It was dissolved sometime after October 1956 but intermittently revived by Plantard between 1962 and 1993 as an initiatory order and crypto-political vanguard party dedicated to the restoration of chivalry and monarchy in France to further his impostor royalty bid.

Between 1961 and 1984 Plantard contrived a mythical pedigree of the Priory of Sion claiming that it had been founded in Jerusalem during the First Crusade by Godfrey de Bouillon. Research in the Rennes-le-Château mysteries led Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln to the pseudohistorical Secret Files of Henri Lobineau, compiled by “Philippe Toscan du Plantier,” that became the source for their book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in which they reported claims that

with a list of illustrious grand masters (see below), the Priory of Sion has a long history starting with the creation of the Knights Templar as its military front;
it had a large role in partaking in and promoting the “underground river of esotericism,” the Alph, in Medieval Europe;

it is sworn to returning the Merovingian dynasty, that ruled the Frankish kingdom from 447 to 751 C.E., to the thrones of Europe and Jerusalem; and

the order protects these royal claimants because they are the literal descendants of Jesus and his wife Mary Magdalene.

These authors further speculated that the ultimate goals of the Priory of Sion are

the founding of a ‘Holy European Empire’ that would become the next hyperpower and usher in a new world order of peace and prosperity;

the supplantation of the Roman Catholic Church with an ecumenical messianic state religion by revealing the Holy Grail and lost Herodian Temple relics which would prove Ebionite views and Desposyni claims; and

the grooming and installing of the anointed king of a Greater Israel.

Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln came to their own interpretation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, where they used the spelling “Sion” in the name:

The original version emanated from an irregular Masonic organization that used the name “Sion” but had nothing to do with an international Zionist conspiracy.
The original version was not intended to be inflammatory or released publicly, but was a program for gaining control of Freemasonry.

The person responsible for changing the text in about 1903 was Sergei Nilus in the course of his attempt to gain influence in the Court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. The presence of esoteric cliques in the royal court led to considerable intrigue. Nilus’ publication of the text resulted from his failure to succeed in wresting influence away from Papus and an otherwise unidentified “Monsieur Philippe”.

Since Nilus did not recognize a number of references in the text that reflected a background in a Christian cultural context, he did not change them. This fact established that the original version could not possibly have come from the Judaic Congress in Basle in 1897.

Although these authors recognised that the history of the Protocols may be linked to the Priory’s, they did not go so far as suggest that it proved anything about its continued existence.

Accepting these hypotheses as facts, some fringe Christian eschatologists viewed the Priory of Sion as a fulfillment of prophesies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions.

However, since modern historians do not accept Holy Blood, Holy Grail as a serious contribution to scholarship, all these claims are regarded as being part of an intriguing but dubious conspiracy theory. French authors like Franck Marie (1978), Jean-Luc Chaumeil (1979, 1984, 1992) and Pierre Jarnac (1985, 1988) have never taken Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion as seriously as Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh, always concluding that it was all a hoax in their respective books and outlining the reasons for their verdicts that these authors never reported comprehensively since their books were pro-conspiracy theory oriented.

In 1989, Pierre Plantard tried to salvage his reputation and agenda by claiming that the Priory had actually been founded in 1681 at Rennes-le-Chateau. This last revival did not succeed and in 1993, thinking he was dealing with a P2-like organization at first, Judge Thierry Jean-Pierre investigated and suppressed all activities related to the Priory of Sion hoax.

Most recently, due to Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, there has been a new level of public interest in the Priory of Sion.

Alleged Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion
Jean de Gisors (1188-1220)
Marie de Saint-Clair (1220-1266)
Guillaume de Gisors (1266-1307)
Edouard de Bar (1307-1336)
Jeanne de Bar (1336-1351)
Jean de Saint-Clair (1351-1366)
Blanche d’Evreux (1366-1398)
Nicolas Flamel (1398-1418)
Rene d’Anjou (1418-1480)
Iolande de Bar (1480-1483)
Sandro Filipepi AKA Botticelli (1483-1510)
Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519)
Charles III (Duke of Bourbon-Montpensier) (1519-1527)
Ferdinand de Gonzague (1527-1556)
Michel de Notre-Dame AKA Nostradamus(1556-1566)
Duc de Longueville & Nicolas Froumenteau (1566-1575)
Louis de Nevers (1575-1595)
Robert Fludd (1595-1637)
Johann Valentin Andrea (1637-1654)
Robert Boyle (1654-1691)
Isaac Newton (1691-1727)
Charles Radclyffe (1727-1746)
Charles de Lorraine (1746-1780)
Maximillian de Lorraine (1780-1801)
Charles Nodier (1801-1844)
Victor Hugo (1844-1885)
Claude Debussy (1885-1918)
Jean Cocteau (1918-1963)

A second List of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion that included the names of Roger Patrice Pelat and Thomas Plantard appeared in 1989 - but it should not be confused with the above list that belonged to a version of the Priory of Sion that Plantard rejected. When Plantard tried to make a comeback and a revival of the Priory of Sion in 1989 following his retirement in 1984 he claimed that the above list was bogus and a part of the “Secret Files”, which by then had been exposed as a fraud by French researchers and authors.

Cryptic motto
*Et in Arcadia ego… * is supposedly the official motto of both the Plantard family and the Priory of Sion, according to a claim that first appeared in 1964. Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase, that most famously appears as a tomb inscription on the ca. 1630 classical painting, The Arcadian Shepherds, by French painter Nicolas Poussin. It literally means, “And I in Arcadia.” However, the addition of the ellipsis (which was not there in the Poussin painting), suggests a missing word. Although it would not be needed in Latin grammar, sum has been one suggested completion to mean: “And I am in Arcadia.” Furthermore, it has been theorized by Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger that the completed phrase Et in Arcadia ego sum is an anagram for Arcam Dei Tango Iesu which means “I touch the tomb of God - Jesus.” The implication being that the tomb contains the ossuary of Jesus, the mortal prophet of God. Regardless of the accuracy of this extraordinary claim, it is not considered part of the official history of the painting by Poussin that contains the phrase, which is well documented.

Cultural influences

The Priory of Sion has had several influences on popular culture, not all of them entirely accurate or serious:

The Priory, portrayed as more of a Goddess mystery religion, plays a large part in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code.

The Priory was the template for the Grail order in the Preacher comic book series and, more loosely, the Millennium Group in the Millennium television series.

See also:

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/poseur3.html

http://priory-of-sion.com/

Exapno_Mapcase · August 13, 2004, 3:23am

Wow. After those exhaustive and exhausting posts from BrainGlutton, dare I say that they’re all irrelevant because Jesus was - and is - a fictional character?

This is GQ, after all.

Walloon · August 13, 2004, 4:20am

Cecil Adams: Did Jesus really exist?

APB · August 13, 2004, 12:19pm

There is one other angle to this. Several sources do mention later generations of Jesus’ family. The best known of these is Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. He is discussing what is known about Jesus’ ancestry.

Writers of the Holy-Blood-and-the-Holy-Grail school of historical nonsense are usually quick to point to such sources as evidence for the existence of a ‘bloodline’. What however they invariably fail to point out is that, as these almost certainly refer to collateral descendants, these sources can equally be used as good circumstantial evidence against the existence of direct descendants. People clearly did claim to be related to Jesus and, in some cases, used that connection to gain influence, but no one ever tried to do so by claiming to be a direct descendant. Probably because there were no direct descendants.

Polycarp · August 13, 2004, 1:24pm

Not in GQ, you dasn’t! The question of the evidence for and against his existence, and whether he’s been “Arthurized,” is most definitely a Great Debate. (Would you believe that prior to editing, how I concluded that last sentence is “…most definitely a GD argument”? ;))

BrainGlutton · August 13, 2004, 6:15pm

Yeah, but then we couldn’t have this thread at all! What fun would that be?

Anyway, since this thread is about Jesus’ closest relatives – which would include collateral as well as lineal descendants – here’s another bit from the Wikipedia (don’t worry about copyright – the Wikipedia is “copyleft,” unlimited duplication expressly permitted) (url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desposyni):

The Desposyni (from Greek, “belonging to the Master”) was a sacred name reserved only for Jesus’ blood relatives including his mother Mary, his father Joseph, his unnamed sisters, and his brothers James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude.

It is questionable whether all their descendants up to twenty generations were to be counted among the desposyni or whether that would have rendered the term absurd.

If Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, a controversial belief held by some Gnostic Christian sects which is only corroborated by the Gospel of Phillip, their child or children would have been the most revered desposyni.

Every early community of Judean followers of Jesus, whether it was Nazarene or Ebionite, was governed by a desposynos as a patriarch, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus’ family but no one was ever named after him.

As the most lineal dynasty of king David and priest Zadok all male desposyni could have legitimately laid claim to both the throne and the office of high priest of Jerusalem. However, the Roman occupation of Palestine, with the collaboration of the Judean establishment, made any attempt by a desposynos to rise to or seize political and religious power impossible or limited in scope.

Historical Accounts

Hegesippus (ca 110 A.D. - ca 180) wrote five books of Commentaries on the Acts of the Church. They are lost, but a few fragments are quoted by Eusebius in Historia Ecclesiae, 3.20. Among them is the following relation, ascribed to the reign of Domitian, 81 - 96 A.D.:

There still survived of the kindred of the Lord the grandsons of Judas, who according to the flesh was called his brother. These were informed against, as belonging to the family of David, and Evocatus brought them before Domitian Caesar: for that emperor dreaded the advent of Christ, as Herod had done.

So he asked them whether they were of the family of David; and they confessed they were. Next he asked them what property they had, or how much money they possessed. They both replied that they had only 9000 denaria between them, each of them owning half that sum; but even this they said they did not possess in cash, but as the estimated value of some land, consisting of thirty-nine plethra only, out of which they had to pay the dues, and that they supported themselves by their own labour. And then they began to hold out their hands, exhibiting, as proof of their manual labour, the roughness of their skin, and the corns raised on their hands by constant work.

Being then asked concerning Christ and His kingdom, what was its nature, and when and where it was to appear, they returned answer that it was not of this world, nor of the earth, but belonging to the sphere of heaven and angels, and would make its appearance at the end of time, when He shall come in glory, and judge living and dead, and render to every one according to the course of his life.

Thereupon Domitian passed no condemnation upon them, but treated them with contempt, as too mean for notice, and let them go free. At the same time he issued a command, and put a stop to the persecution against the Church.

When they were released they became leaders of the churches, as was natural in the case of those who were at once martyrs and of the kindred of the Lord. And, after the establishment of peace to the Church, their lives were prolonged to the reign of Trajan."

Other known relatives of Jesus include Simeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem, who was the son of Joseph’s brother Clopas (mentioned by Eusebius, H.E. 3.11,32), and three Nestorian bishops of Seleucia on the Tigris in the 3rd century (according to the 13th century Syrian historian, Gregory Barhebraeus).

And here – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tree.html – is a fragmentary family tree of Jesus’ relatives up to the middle of the Second Century.

kniz · August 13, 2004, 6:43pm

As much as I and everyone else admires your opinion, I have to challenge this “dragon in every volcano” theory. I am not defending “Holy Blood/Holly Grail”, but as you state it is possible. Dragons in volcanoes are not possible, period. [sup]That’s a stretch.[/sup]

Dan_Norder · August 13, 2004, 8:22pm

Uh, Brain, that’s pretty excessive copying and pasting there, don’t ya think?

As far as the original question, I’m betting the closest living relative would have to be Santa Claus. There are a lot of links there, too many to be coincidence, I’m sure. Beard. Occupation. Philosophy. Miracles. Birthdays. Implausible and unconfirmed stories. Everyone having their own views and what he wants.

And since I dislike posts in General Questions threads just to make jokes, the previous paragraph isn’t exactly intended to be a joke, it’s intended to be the most serious way I know to answer that particular question.

Jpeg_Jones · August 13, 2004, 10:35pm

As in Harry Potter?

BrainGlutton · August 13, 2004, 11:24pm

It’s OK, it’s Wikipedia – unlimited duplication and republication expressly permitted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

The same. Nicholas Flamel was a real-life alchemist, and Rowling apparently knows about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Flamel

Dan_Norder · August 13, 2004, 11:56pm

OK, first up, only the most recent posts were from Wikipedia. You’ve yanked a bunch of stuff from a magazine earlier.

Secondly, you can’t just copy and paste Wikipedia content, you have to follow the rules of the license. As far as I can tell, you didn’t do that.

Third, even if you could legally repost all of that it still seems way overboard, which was my main point.

samclem · August 14, 2004, 12:33am

[Mod hat on]
I’m gonna close this one. It’s run out of gas, and maybe shouldn’t have been here in the first place. If anyone wants to debate issues, take it to GD in a new thread.

BrainGlutton. You, indeed, copied an excessive amount of copyrighted material in an earlier post. (Not talking about wiki–trying to read their website disclaimers makes my head hurt )

Don’t do that. The SDMB tries to respect the copyrights of other sites, and we hope they respect ours. Small bits are fine–huge chunks are NOT.

[Mod hat off]