[PenultimateManStanding]

I started to read the book to see what all the fuss was about. I'm halfway through it and I come to this section that says Da Vinci's Last Supper has a portrait of Mary Magdalene, supposedly Jesus' wife. So I went and looked at it, and sure enough, there she is! Holy smokes! She's supposed to be the "Holy Grail". The church is supposed to have eradicated all worship of feminine divinity. The Nicene Creed is supposed to have been a decision what to do about the rise of the new religion. They deliberately stifled teachings about the "real" Jesus who was a mere man and crafted a new hybrid religion which raised him to a divine status. I don't know about this part, but have a look at the painting in question. There she is, right next to Jesus. I wonder how much else in this book is true?

link to image

[rogerhb]

There is a lot of symbolism in medieval art, remember this was:

1. when most people could not read - the picture had to be telling a story

2. you only had one image, not a film - the image had to be information rich

3. you wanted to express subversive ideas - remember the religious wars and persecutions

4. you wanted to show who the person really was - for instance Leanardo had different hand shapes for specific individuals

Although I am happy with the idea that Jesus existed, that does not require a virgin birth nor the idea that he died on the cross. Many of the stories in the bible and the gospels can be found in other traditions. Also with art, the halo originated from pictures of Alexander the Great. Virgin briths were two a penny stories, compare Jesus's birth with Mithras. Similarly, his death had to be made special in order to reinforce his specialness. Alas the majority of Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus but more to do with Paul. US Christianity has nothing to do with Christianity except a framework to justify some pretty ugly ideas.

My take on the life on the former carpenter is:

1. he was a maverick
2. he was a jew who was well trained in the law
3. he was more concerned with the welfare of the flock rather than the priesthood
4. he was a rabble-rouser and thorn in the side for the priest hood and through that seen as a threat to stability and hence a threat to Roman rule
5. the individual who followed these same principles (apart from number 2) was Mahatma Ghandi

He is more likely to have married than not, to not have been married would have been reported. Virgin birth, death and then rising are all irrelevant to the story or the message, they are merely punctation for effect.

[PenultimateManStanding]

The Catholic Church is really mad about the movie version that's coming out. I can see why. The big conspiracy to exterminate feminine deities described in the book makes them look very evil. That would make an interesting subject for consideration: why did the ancient world, in it's crumbling years, wage a campaign against the feminine principle? I recall reading what Freud had to say about the sexual aspects. The promiscuity of the ancient world produced a devaluation of love. The backlash was inevitable, the result being sexual inhibitions raised to a Grand Cultural Principle as the pendulum swung to the opposite extreme.

[Doly]

It's actually protestants that erradicated all femininity from Christianism. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of worshipping Mary.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'I')t's actually protestants that erradicated all femininity from Christianism. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of worshipping Mary.

[Madpaddy]

Hey PMS,

Try reading this - it is very informative.

THE MAGDALENE LEGACY
Laurence Gardner
From his privileged access to centuries of suppressed Templar, Vatican, and monastic archives, Laurence Gardner presents documented evidence of Mary Magdalene's true role and secret marriage to Jesus, her connection to the Knights Templar and the real relationship between the Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Gardner’s detective trail takes us from Mary’s marital relationship with Jesus to her subsequent exile from Judea, and the documented persecution of her heirs by a succession of Roman emperors. The Magdalene Legacy goes far beyond the controversies stirred up by The Da Vinci Code

[PenultimateManStanding]

It's in my local library, I think I will look at it. Thanks Madpaddy.

[Madpaddy]

I daresay,

If even a fraction of the world's billion+ catholics realise what patsies they have been taken for over the last 2000 years, Christ's Vicar will be dangling by a rope from that balcony in St Peter's square.

BTW - I'm a catholic myself and I believe in some form of higher power but the church is a self serving joke - no,joke is the wrong word, they have hurt too may people to even be identified as a joke.

[PenultimateManStanding]

The man with his hand up against Mary's neck is supposed to be St. Peter. There is something strange there, too. To the left of Peter, next to the apostle in the dark (Judas?), there is a hand that is holding a knife. It could belong to Peter, but it doesn't seem to fit his position. So who does it belong to? At any rate, the thesis that this represents the hostility of the church to Mary Magdalene is convincing. Was she really a prostitute? I feel motivated now to read up on Da Vinci. Maybe the Gardner book that Madpaddy mentioned will have something to say about this as well. Intriguing.

[katkinkate]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'H')ey PMS,

Try reading this - it is very informative.

THE MAGDALENE LEGACY
Laurence Gardner
From his privileged access to centuries of suppressed Templar, Vatican, and monastic archives, Laurence Gardner presents documented evidence of Mary Magdalene's true role and secret marriage to Jesus, her connection to the Knights Templar and the real relationship between the Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Gardner’s detective trail takes us from Mary’s marital relationship with Jesus to her subsequent exile from Judea, and the documented persecution of her heirs by a succession of Roman emperors. The Magdalene Legacy goes far beyond the controversies stirred up by The Da Vinci Code

[whatpeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'I')t's actually protestants that erradicated all femininity from Christianism. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of worshipping Mary.

[PenultimateManStanding]

A lawsuit in Britain by authors of a non-fiction account of the Mary Magdalene bloodline theory threatens the release of the movie in Britain in May. These are different authors than the ones mentioned by Madpaddy and Katkinkate. Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code acknowledges that he used the ideas in the plaintiff's book. This is all very interesting, since my assumption had been that the whole story was a fabrication grafted onto the original Pauline messiah cult of the first century.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/2 ... dxq5a.html

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A') lawsuit in Britain by authors of a non-fiction account of the Mary Magdalene bloodline theory threatens the release of the movie in Britain in May.

[bobcousins]

Dan Brown has been quite busy with lawyers. In a previous case, he was cleared of plagiarising another author's novel Dan Brown cleared of copyright infringement, which was a surprise, because the plots sound almost identical. The other author, Lewis Purdue, now appears to be penniless and bitter, judging from his anti-Dan Brown blogs, where he digs up all the dirt on Brown he can find. Like certain others, seems he wasn't quite straight on his resume...

So I doubt Brown will need to worry about this case.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobcousins', 'S')o I doubt Brown will need to worry about this case.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'H')ey PMS,

Try reading this - it is very informative.

THE MAGDALENE LEGACY
Laurence Gardner
From his privileged access to centuries of suppressed Templar, Vatican, and monastic archives, Laurence Gardner presents ...

[Madpaddy]

PMS wrote;
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oo bad I've come to discover Gardner also has books about ancient cloning, monatomic gold as a cure for cancer and space-time anti-gravity travel, etc.. Guy sounds like a loon.

[Free]

I read "The holy blood and the holy grail" (the book that Brown "stole" the idea from) years ago, after a friend recommended it.
He knew I was a notorious sceptic, so he insisted I gave it a chance if for nothing else than learning interesting history. And indeed I got sucked into this mystery, it was very fascinating. It was already written almost like a novel, and what a tangled web of speculation, facts and riddles they wove!

But alas, the story is too good to be true. Most of the "facts" don't even withstand the slightest closer examination, but the "story behind the story" is very interesting and funny as well:

Beginning with a corrupt priest in southern France (who allegedly found the "secret" and got rich with it, but in reality just had established a flourishing illegal business) and ending with a megalomaniac nutcase (Plantard) who pretends to be in the bloodline of Jesus and leading an ultra-secret conspiracy to reestablish monarchy in Europe.

It's hilarious how the church is so upset about this "urban legend" - this bears witness that they are telling nothing than an urban legend themselves...
Indeed the origins of Christianity are as crazy and foggy as the cult itself.

In fact it was just one of hundreds of similar weird sects at its time, and I wonder if it actually succeeded because it was the craziest one. Sort of like the advertising world today, competing for the attention of potential customers with breaking taboos...

[PenultimateManStanding]

Thanks for the extra info on Gardner's work, Free. And for Madpaddy, here's the book and title:
Gardner, Laurence. Genesis of the Grail kings : the explosive story of genetic cloning and the ancient bloodline of Jesus / Laurence Gardner.

When I saw that my B.S. detector started sounding off. So I googled him and read an interview for long enough to know I'm not going to waste time with infotainment like this, just like any crap you can hear on Coast To Coast AM. I think Art Bell owes the world an abject apology for the widespread credulity he has fostered in the public for outlandlish nonsense.

[entropyfails]

Since a Jesus character has no historic proof, I very much doubt that any alleged wives or children of Jesus have any more proof than the specious arguments given for his own existence. However, if he did exist and had a wife and child, I feel somewhat certain that the Catholic Church of that era would have covered up any evidence. They really got into making stuff up in the first, second, and third centuries. But that probably includes the Jesus character himself.