by Colin Wilson
Two centuries later, Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, and it was his generals, known as Seleucids, who then ruled. But when the Greek conquerors were rash enough to place a statue of Zeus on the altar of the Temple, the Jews under Judas Maccabeus, began a highly successful guerrilla campaign, and finally rededicated the Temple to Jehovah in 164 BC. The Maccabees became kings, as well as high priests, of Jerusalem.
This caused outrage among the descendants of Zerubbabel, who regarded the Maccabees as upstarts, and around 187 BC, many withdrew to the wilderness near the Dead Sea, and became the Qumran community. They lived in tents, and used the caves as store houses. They were also known as the Essenes, and were led by a man who was referred to simply as the Teacher of Righteousness. Lomas and Knight argue that the rituals of the Essenes bore many resemblances to those of the Freemasons.
In the Jewish revolt of AD 66, the Essenes hid their scrolls and manuscripts in the Dead Sea caves, and – Lomas and Knight believe – in Solomon’s Temple, which was reserved for the most valuable.
These, Lomas and Knight argue, is what the Templars were actually seeking. This was the “treasure” that they found. They went on during the course of the next two centuries, to achieve an enormous amount of wealth and influence. The documents they had found in the Temple were, according to Lomas and Knight, the title deeds that authorized them to become the founders of a new religious order.
The most controversial part of the argument of Lomas and Knight is that the leader of the Essenes in the first century AD were Jesus, who became known as Jesus Christ, and his brother James. Jesus, they claim, was actually known as Jesus the Nazorean, not the Nazarene. Nazareth, they say, did not even exist in Jesus’ time.
According to Lomas and Knight, it was Jesus’ younger brother James, also known as Ya’cov, who was the leader of the Essenes and the “Teacher of Righteousness”.
The Roman Catholic Church has denied that Jesus had brothers or sisters, although this is actually contradicted by the Gospel of Matthew (13: 55): “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Simon and Jude? And his sisters, are they not all with us”?
Lomas and Knight argue that Jesus was not simply a preacher of universal love; he wanted to get rid of the Romans, and was prepared to lead a revolt to do it. A large number of the Essenes preferred Jesus’ less radical brother James.
Both Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist were regarded as “messiahs”.
After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus took up his ministry (which only lasted one year) gathering followers and preaching in remote places. Then he made what, historically speaking, was his great mistake – he rode into Jerusalem on an ass, to fulfill the prediction of the prophet Zachariah that the king would arrive on a donkey. Then he caused a riot in the temple and attacked the money changers.
The Romans issued a wanted poster for Jesus which still survives, describing him as short, (about 4ft 6ins), bald-headed and humpbacked. His brother James was arrested first, then Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane.
It seems highly probable that Jesus was hoping that his act of rebellion would cause an uprising that would bring people flocking to his banner. He had announced that the end of the world would occur within the lifetime of people who were then listening to him. He was mistaken on both counts. Instead, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Lomas and Knight argue that Barrabas, the “thief” who was acquitted was Jesus’ brother James – Barrabas is a title meaning “son of the Father”. An early manuscript of Matthew gives Barrabas’ surname as Jesus.
So Jesus was crucified, while James returned to being the leader of the Qumran community. Thirty years later he would be murdered by priests, who threw him from the top of the temple then stoned him to death.
Jesus’ body disappeared from the rock tomb, and so began rumours that he had not died on the cross, but had been seen alive.
It was St Paul–Saul – who plays the central part in the early story of Christianity.
When Saul became a Roman citizen, he changed his name to Paul and was given the job of stamping out the remains of the Jewish freedom movement. This was ten years after the death of Jesus, in AD 43. And it was seventeen years later that Paul had his experience on the road to Damascus, and was suddenly converted to Christianity. Lomas and Knight state that this would not have been the Damascus in Syria, where he would have had no authority, but probably Kumran, which was also referred to as Damascus. And it was probably on the way to Kumran to persecute the Essenes that Paul received his revelation. He became temporarily blind, and when he recovered, became romantically enthralled by the doctrine that would be later labeled Christianity. This doctrine, of Paul’s own invention, declared that Jesus had died on the cross to redeem humankind from the sin of Adam, and that all who believed in Jesus would become free of Original Sin.
James and the other Nazoreans must have been astonished and delighted to discover that their persecutor had suddenly become Jesus’ chief admirer. But when, in due course, they learned the details of the Christianity that had been invented by Paul, they were enraged, and habitually referred to him as “the spouter of lies”.
Now in fact, these two versions of Christianity – the militant version of James, and the “gentle Redeemer” version of Paul – might well have continued to be rivals for centuries to come. But the Jewish revolt put an end to that, James was murdered, and most of the rebels were slaughtered or driven into exile.
Paul, who was abroad preaching to the Gentiles, survived, and so did his version of Christianity.
The immense popularity of Christianity was due to the fact that it preached the end of the world within a decade or so – say, by the end of the first century – and by the time that that came and went without any sign of Armageddon St Paul’s version of Christianity was so well established that no one noticed.
For the next two centuries, the fortunes of the Christians varied, but more often than not they were persecuted. Then, they suddenly achieved power. This happened in the year AD 312, when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire. It is usually assumed that Constantine was converted when he saw the sign of a cross in the sky, before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and the words “In this sign shall ye conquer”. But the truth is that Constantine never became a Christian – he remained a follower of the sun god Sol Invictus. There can be little doubt that his “conversion” was entirely political. It was basically an attempt to prevent the shaky Roman Empire from falling apart. What the Empire needed, he suddenly recognized, was not a vast army, but a new religion. His mother Helena, a British princess, had been converted to Christianity. And although the Christians were a long way from being a majority, there were probably a few of them in every town and village in his empire. If he handed them power, then he had a supporter in every town and village. If the Roman Empire could be compared to a British public school, then the headmaster had decided to hand over part of his authority to the prefects, who now had good reason to want to keep order.
It was true that, as soon as they gained power, these gentle, peace-loving Christians immediately began to quarrel and murder one another. But at least they held the empire together.
Lomas and Knight quote Pope Leo X as saying: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ”.
The Roman Catholic Church had every reason for supporting this new, authoritarian version of Christianity, based on St Paul’s inspired invention, but the older version – of the Nazoreans and Messianists – had not entirely died out. For example, Paul – in the days when he was still a persecutor of Christians – drove a group of Messianists known as Mandaeans – who regarded John the Baptist as the Messiah – to Iraq, where they still continue to flourish.
Lomas and Knight believed that it was this older version of Christianity, with its roots in the Kumran community, that one day became Freemasonry. And it is here that the story touches on the strange history of Rennes-le-Chat
eau. Henry Lincoln has argued that the order of the Priory of Sion, which was founded at the end of the first Crusade by Hugh de Payen and his knights, actually dates back many centuries, through the dynasty known as the Merovingians. (See Postscript to the article on Rennes-le-Chateau.)
During the twelfth century, the Crusaders lost what ground they had gained in the Holy Land; a second crusade ended in failure, and the Muslims under the leadership of Saladin recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. During the next century, seven more crusades failed to restore power to the Christians. The fall of Acre in 1291 completed their defeat, and the Knights Templar had lost their raison d’etre.
Their wealth – based on exemption from taxes – remained. But the French king Philip the Fair (1265–1314) was eyeing them like a cat watching a mouse. He had reason for feeling hostile, since the Templars were dedicated to the service of the pope, and Philip the Fair was in conflict with Pope Boniface VIII. Philip simply wanted an excuse to pounce on the Templars, and seize their wealth.
After being ejected from the Holy Land, the Templars had moved to Cyprus, but the island was insecure. The ideal solution would have been for the Templars to return to France. None of them was aware how deeply the king – who had once been turned down for membership – detested them.
Boniface VIII died; his successor, Boniface IX, soon followed him – probably poisoned by Philip. At that point – 1305 – Philip succeeded in having his own candidate appointed pope – Archbishop Bertrand de Gotte of Bordeaux. Bertrand and Philip disliked one another, but the prizes were too great to allow this to stand in their way. So Bertrand became Pope Clement V, and the king – now he had the pope in his pocket – decided to move the papal seat from Rome to Avignon, and to seized the wealth of the Templars.
It was an immense undertaking, since the number of Templars was now enormous, and they were among the most influential men in France. In spite of which, sealed orders went out in mid-September, 1307, ordering a swoop on the Templars on Friday, 13 October 1307. What is so amazing is that the coup actually worked, and most of the Templars fell into the trap. The exception were the Templars of Bezu, near Rennes-le-Chateau, who were almost certainly tipped off by the pope himself – it can hardly be coincidence that the chief Templar of Bezu was called de Gotte.
Philip’s excuse for having the Templars arrested was that they were actually a kind of satanist organization – they were accused of homosexuality, worshipping a demon called Baphomet, and spitting upon the cross. Most of this was almost certainly nonsense – except that the Templars probably did not believe in orthodox Christianity. If, as Lomas and Knight believe, they were descendants of the Essenes and the Priory of Sion, then they would certainly have regarded St Paul as a “spouter of lies”, and Pauline Christianity as a gross distortion of the truth.
Most of the Templars were subjected to appalling tortures, so that many confessed to these absurd charges. The Grand Master himself, Jacques de Molay, was among those who confessed, and so was his second-in-command, Geoffrey de Charney. But at their sentencing seven years later – on 18 March 1314 – Molay withdrew his confession, declaring it had been forced on him by torture. The king was so enraged at having his plans thwarted that he immediately ordered Molay and Charney to be roasted alive, over a slow fire. This happened the following day, on an island in the Seine called the Ile de Palais, and it is said that Molay, dying in horrible agony, summoned the king and the pope to meet him before the throne of God within a year. Whether this is true or not, both the king and the pope were dead within the year.
In fact, Philip’s main purpose in destroying the Templars was thwarted. The knights of Bezu and other Templars sailed out of La Rochelle in eighteen ships on the day before the arrest of the Templars, and they vanished from history. So Philip’s coffers were not replenished after all.
At least one of the Templar ships escaped to Scotland, and it was there that a knight named William St Clair built a chapel called Rosslyn, not far from Edinburgh, which is full of evidence that St Clair was a Templar.
The chapel of Rosslyn is certainly amazing enough. To begin with, it seems to be built on the plan of Solomon’s Temple. Second, some of its decorations show cobs of sweet corn, which at that time was only found in the New World, which would not be discovered for another half century – St Clair began to build Rosslyn in 1440. The decorations also include aloes, another American plant. It is difficult not to agree with Lomas and Knight that some of the eighteen missing Templar ships sailed to America. But would they take a voyage as dangerous as that if they had no idea of what lay across the Atlantic? The highly plausible suggestion made by Lomas and Knight is that the “treasure” found by the first Templars in Solomon’s Temple included maps which showed America. And this presupposes that the Templars had access to some ancient maps like the “maps of the ancient sea kings” discussed elsewhere in this book (p 91).
Now Lomas and Knight discovered a four-inch tableau hidden away at the top of a pillar in Rosslyn chapel showing a headless figure holding up a piece of cloth, on which there is the face of a bearded man. The head has obviously been cut off to prevent recognition. But none of the other figures has a missing head. Moreover, the faces are highly distinctive, as if they were portraits of living people. So it seems likely that the figure with the missing head may have had the face of William St Clair himself, or possibly of a member of the de Charney family, who now owned the Holy Shroud. Lomas and Knight are convinced that the cloth being held by the figure is the Holy Shroud.
They also argue strongly that the image on the Holy Shroud is Jacques de Molay, the Master of the Templars.
The argument they put forward in their book The Second Messiah – the sequel to The Hiram Key – is that it was, in fact, Jacques de Molay whose outline is still preserved on the Holy Shroud.
Now de Molay had not been tortured in the chamber of the Inquisition, but in the Paris headquarters of the Templars. The rack and suspension chains would not have been available in the headquarters. Lomas and Knight argue that de Molay was, in fact, tortured by being crucified, and that this was carried out by nailing him to a door in a chamber at the Paris headquarters. The inquisitor William Imbert a devout Catholic, would certainly have been horrified to learn that the Templars denied that Christ was the Son of God, and would have felt that it was highly appropriate to torture de Molay by nailing him to a door.
After Molay had confessed to whatever the inquisitors accused him of, he was taken down and wrapped in a piece of cloth which was probably there in the Paris Temple. He was laid on his bed in this “shroud”, his body streaming with perspiration, and with blood (with a high lactic acid content) and the authors introduce some interesting evidence to the effect that this mixture would have “photographed” de Molay’s image on the cloth of the shroud. (In an appendix to The Second Messiah, they introduce the evidence of Dr Alan Mills, a photographic expert, on the chemistry of this process.)
This cloth, they think, was returned to the home of Geoffrey de Charney, either before or after the two men were roasted to death. Less than forty years later, the shroud was put on display in a church at Lirey, near the home of Geoffrey de Charney’s grandson, who had the same name.
Thousands of people regarded Jacques de Molay as a martyr – hence the title of the book The Second Messiah. Four and a half centuries later, when Louis XVI was guillotined during the French Revolution, someone in the crowd shouted: “Jacques Molay is avenged”!
Lomas and Knight’s theory of the origin of the Holy Shroud is certainly one of the most controversial so far. It is, of course, supported by the carbon-dating of the Shroud. And the notion that the Shroud is a fake, propounded by Picknett and Prince, seems to have been disproved by the fact that chemical tests have shown that the Shroud was genuinely soaked with blood and perspiration.
It is true that the one weak point of the theory of Lomas and Knight is that there is no positive evidence that Jacques de Molay was tortured by being crucified. But if the man on th
e Shroud was not de Molay, then who was he?
23
Homer and the Fall of Troy
Are They Both a Myth?
Although Shakespeare is acknowledged to be England’s greatest poet, serious doubts have been expressed about whether he wrote any of the works attributed to him. In the case of Homer – the first great poet of Western civilization – many schoolars have gone even further and raised doubts as to whether he actually existed. A children’s book entitled How Much Do You Know? carries the following entry under the question: “Who Was Homer”?:
The traditional author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. No evidence exists that such a person ever lived, though every known test has been applied to the poems, and every possible source of information scrutinized. All the Lives of Homer are apocryphal. The best one can say is that an authoritative text of the two poems existed at Athens between 550 and 500 BC. According to tradition, Homer was blind, and conventional busts and pictures show him as sightless.
How could a famous poet be nonexistent? One widely held opinion is that various Greek bards (or rhapsodes) invented poems about the Trojan War and its aftermath and that these various accounts were later stitched together into the poems we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey. We can add to this question about the existence of Homer the question of whether the Trojan War really took place or whether – as many scholars have suggested – it was a purely mythical event, like the wars of the gods. However, no one who has actually read straight through these two poems can believe that they were written by a committee.