by Steven Sora
An angry Jesus decried the use of the sacred temple as a place for the stands of merchants and currency changers, overturning their tables and expelling them from the holy ground.14 The action, to some, was the most politically charged threat made by Jesus and may have contributed to his execution. Roman invaders continued to loot the temple and carry as much of the treasure back to Rome as they could. The greatest defilement by Rome came in their effort to quell the Jewish rebellions in A.D. 66, leading to the mass murders and expulsion of the Hebrew citizens of Jerusalem. Today there is not a single trace of the original temple, the location of which is marked by the Islamic Dome of the Rock.15
A theory presented in Holy Blood, Holy Grail is that there was an actual treasure sought by the secret Ordre de Sion (also called the Prieuré de Sion), the order that remained hidden under the guise of the Templars. The treasure itself may be much more significant that the monetary wealth of Jerusalem. The authors are not the only ones to have studied the mysterious order behind the founding of the Templars. Graham Hancock, in The Sign and the Seal, says it was the Ark of the Covenant that brought this small group of men to the Temple of Solomon. In a most fascinating work, Hancock tells of the remarkable Ark and its powers. Moses was instructed by God to build the Ark to exact specifications. In chapter 25 of Exodus the precise instructions are found including shafts of acacia wood, rings of gold, and a slab of pure gold as a cover. After Moses initiated Joshua in its powers, the Ark was used to win battles, kill people, and cause sickness. Its source of power came from two stones that fell from heaven. These are alternately the stones on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed, or even stones of a more mysterious origin that were reputedly brought to Earth from heaven. Only those who were mystically trained and knowledgeable in its secrets were safe from its destructive ability. A special priesthood grew up around the Ark, and only Levites, a religious caste among the ancient Hebrews, were allowed to possess it.
The Ark soon disappeared from history recorded in the Bible. Josiah (circa 609 B.C.) instructed the Levites to return it, but it never reappeared.16 Hancock believes this magical object was taken to Ethiopia for safekeeping and is still there today. In his research he discovered that the Ethiopian Jewish community has claimed to have possession of the Ark, which is called the “tabot.” In many of their round, Templar-like churches there are tabot replicas, but there is only one Tabota Zion, the Ark of the Covenant.
Hancock claims that the early Templars, the representatives of nine families from the north of France, were in search of the ark. Both works agree that the original Templars could be better compared to archeologists than to an army. The actual “foundation” of Salem on the tablelike rock is called Shetiyyah in the Hebrew language. This foundation was in place before the construction of the temple in 950 B.C. Legends from medieval times told a story of the Ark being hidden in a cavern within this foundation before the Babylonian captivity. It was such legends that brought the Templars, who tunneled their way through the foundation in search of it. But the Ark was never located.
Hancock compares the Grail to the Ark.17 Like the Ethiopian protectors of their tabot, who believe the living guardian must find a new guardian, the Templars appointed themselves guardians of the Grail. The Ethiopian guardian’s other job was to protect the laity from the Ark, which the Bible states can cause much damage to the uninitiated. In 1 Chronicles 15:2 it is said that “none ought to carry the Ark of God but the Levites” and in Deuteronomy 10:8, “At that time he separated the tribe of Levi, to carry the Ark of the Covenant.” The warnings are clear.
There is no evidence that the guardian families in Scotland ever had the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. In 1768 James Bruce, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce the king, made his own search. His expedition to find the Ark took him to Ethiopia. Also a Freemason and steeped in the speculative (read “religio-mystical”) side of Masonry, Bruce returned home with the Book of Enoch. This book was sacred to the Masons because Enoch is identified as Thoth, the Egyptian god who originated the art of building.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail hypothesizes that the treasure that was sought by the early Templars was not the Ark. They sought a record of the continuation of a line of kings that extends from Solomon and David through Jesus and then to the descendants of Jesus. Holy Blood, Holy Grail says the Grail represents the sacred bloodline.18 The treasure may be the evidence that this bloodline survived the Crucifixion and is somehow alive and intact in France. This theory, if substantiated, might be damaging to a church structured on rigid truths. It would be seen as evidence that the Arian concept of Jesus-as-man is more correct than the Roman Church’s concept. Arius was a religious man from Alexandria who preached from A.D. 318–355. He preached that Jesus was a mortal, not a son of God, or divine. While he had no conflict with a Supreme God, he regarded Jesus only as a messenger from that God. The theory fit well with the Judaic concept and also was seen as more acceptable to monarchies and military who had no room fo a weak or meek god. But just why such a “truth” would be rewarding to a Catholic order, like Bernard’s Cistercians, remains unexplained. And a monetary value, possibly derived from blackmailing the Church, was also unlikely, since the Church had more forceful ways of protecting its dogma.
In those times, few could read and write, and thanks to the Inquisition, knowledge of such “arts” could have a person branded a heretic.19 Owning a Bible, too, was not allowed by the Church, who kept their monopoly on the word of God. The populace knew of their religion only what they were told by priests at Mass. We know from the Gospels that Jesus descended from the Davidic line. It was a bloodline that did not die out; it simply lost the kingship during the captivity in Babylon. Like the English looking for the return of King Arthur, the Hebrews sought a day when a Hebrew king would again free them from the yoke of foreign oppression. The prophets had said the king who would be their savior would be from both the line of the house of David and the line of the house of Aaron.20 Matthew claims that Jesus was aristocratic in bloodline and that this bloodline had been recognized by the leaders among the Jews. His Gospel shows the birth of Jesus being attended by three kings. The final entrance of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem is greeted by the multitudes shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David.”
The other Gospels played down the lineage of this prince of David’s house and his claims to an earthly throne. Jesus, instead, was depicted as the son of a carpenter. But the term “carpenter” did not refer to a common laborer, just as the term “mason” implies more than its surface meaning.21 God himself was referred to as the “fashioner” and the “architect” in the Gnostic texts. That Jesus was the son of the “Architect of the Universe,” the carpenter, may have been intentionally laden with double meaning. Medieval and modern-day masons have created a folklore that sees them as descending from a line of builders responsible for the Temple of Solomon.
Builders in the ancient world had to have skills far above the average education of their fellows. In a day and age when writing was the skill of an elite few, a builder, who needed command of such higher mathematics as geometry, had to be very well trained. The architect would have had to be well versed in what many believed to be a field as mysterious as magic. That magic today is nothing more mysterious than science. Most of the construction of the ancient world, including the prehistoric slab construction of monuments like Stonehenge and medieval churches, was oriented to some type of celestial activity. Up until very modern times, sites of churches were always carefully chosen and carefully oriented. The architect knew the workings of the visible universe as well as any shaman or Druid. He had to. Distance was measured in the same way as time—by the sun and shadows. This is the “sacred geometry” that would be considered a mystery to those who were not initiated into the craft.22
The role of Jesus as “architect” or “carpenter” allegorically would be to restore the temple that Solomon had built. Jesus as king would restore the glory
of the Hebrew people as an earthly power. The carpenter, the architect, the mason would build their church on a rock. While the common Jew did look for a savior, the Saduccees and the Pharisees, the aristocratic class and the middle class, respectively, did not want a savior who would disturb the established order. Jesus was considered a Nazarene from Galilee, an area known for its rebels and highwaymen.23 He studied at an Essene community, where radical zealots sought to overthrow both the regime of the invader and the complacent and willing Jews who were their hosts. Qumran, (known today as Khirbat Qumran), the community where Jesus studied and lived, was far from the mainstream. The Qumran community attracted mystics and rebels alike, and while the historic Jesus was touched by the highly moral world of the Essenes, he did not adhere to their rigid discipline.
John the Baptist also visited the community of Qumran. It is likely there that John was first introduced to the Essene custom of baptism.24 The Essenes made baptism a daily practice, unlike the one-time sacrament accorded to John. John then “baptized” Jesus, in the custom of the Essenes. Or did he anoint him as “king”? In the later Gospels this anointing is said to be the basis for his title “Christos” in Greek: the “anointed one.” The Greeks molded the religion of Jesus into something different from the religion that the original followers of Jesus might have conceived. Luke, as a Greek physician, and Paul, as the “apostle” to the non-Jewish pagans, saw Jesus more in the role of a god than did his own family and the other apostles.25 The title that Jesus was given by his own people was “messiah,” which denoted a king in the royal bloodline of David, rather than simply any king or religious leader. A messiah had the distinction of being a priest-king.
The distinctions of the titles of Jesus are lost to the modern reader, just as we do not understand that calling Jesus the “man from Galilee” was another way of saying he was a rebel. The hills of Galilee in Herod’s time were a hotbed for dissent and even a widespread guerrilla movement, as the iron rule of the dictator drove the antiestablishment Jews away. Reading the Bible leaves us wondering whether Jesus was from Bethlehem, Galilee, or Nazareth. The claim of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus was important in that it fulfilled the prophecy of the Bible that the Savior King, the Messiah would come from the city of David.
While Jesus could have come from Bethlehem, it is unlikely that he came from Nazareth—that town was not yet in existence in his day. Jesus was called the Nazarene only because it was a designation that alluded to a political affiliation. The Nazarenes were a sect that believed in guiding their own Hebrew faith properly through corrupt times. They also preserved a body of knowledge that was sacred to them and that was overlooked by both recorded history and conventional religion.
“Nazarene” derives from the Aramaic word Natzar, which means both “to guard” and “to watch.” The Nazarenes were more than the guardians of their own faith, they were guardians of a science that understood the relationship between the stars, the calculation of time and distance, and humankind’s relative place in the universe.26 They were both the custodians of the secrets of the universe and the guardians of their enlightened science. Their guardianship extends back in time to the Sumerians, whose civilization emerged suddenly in the fertile crescent known as Mesopotamia. In their language the gods themselves were the “watchers,” the overseers of the universe.
This guardianship was passed down through history—the Essene sect living in the desert lands of the Middle East had inherited the task. They believed that they were in the last generation, the time before the ultimate battle between the forces of light—the good—and the forces of darkness—the evil.27 Religious historians think that they had been directly influenced by the Persian religion of Zoroaster. Historians of the Masonic organization similarly trace certain traits of this group to the same Persian faith. Both the Essenes and the Masons included in their religious paraphernalia an apron and a small hatchet, the significance of which may have more to do with an inherited body of knowledge of the building arts than anything more magical.
Jesus himself may have rejected the Essene doctrine, at least in part. The life of Jesus, as preserved in the Gospels, does not appear to have the same emphasis on fanatical purity as history has colored the dogma of the Essenes. Jesus ate with the publicans, prostitutes, and sinners. At the same time, he was considered both pacifist and militant, as were those with whom he associated. Peter, the right-hand man of Jesus, was not actually named Peter. “Peter” meant “rock,” a nickname for his strength, his resolve. His historical name is given as Simon bar Jona, which signified a member of the Baryonim, a rebel force also called the Angry Men.28 Today he might be called a terrorist, although the label might not correctly apply.
“Judas Iscariot” is a mistranslation of Judas Sicari. Like the Baryonim, this name signified a rebel group, its literal translation is “dagger man,” a killer or assassin. John and James were two apostles called boanerges by Jesus, which in his native Aramaic meant “sons of the storm wind.” The other Simon in the original group was called the “zealot,” a name for those who were steadfast against the corruption of their Jewish faith by the Sadducees and Pharisees. The band that Jesus had recruited went beyond the original twelve apostles. Although the Greek influence in composing and preserving the history of Jesus played it down, the role of women was significant. Women like Mary Magdalene were a strong presence in the early group and traveled with the apostle, which also violated Jewish custom.
Jesus truly appeared to be creating a religion different from what the established religious custom had become. It is possible that he was more educated than most, having studied in a rabbinical school. It is also likely that he was unique and that while the Sadducees and Pharisees could not accept his message, neither could the political zealots and the Essenes. This may be why the fanatical John the Baptist sought out Jesus to address him for his violation of convention. A mutual baptism may have been significant in reconciling them and cementing the common bond they shared in fighting the establishment, which both believed to be corrupt.
John the Baptist was steeped in the Essene tradition and was a member of a very exclusive Nazarene sect. Michael Grant interprets Nazoraios as the word for “guardian,” but at the same time he considers netser to mean “shoot” or “branch.” The importance of this connection is that both Jesus and John belonged to a sect into which one had to be born. The “shoots” of the bloodline of David had preserved this unbroken line from one thousand years earlier. Both John and Jesus were members not only of the exclusive bloodline of David but that of Aaron the “magician,” the priest, as well. Grant says the Egyptian word NTR had the same meaning—“one who watches.” The language comes to us with no vowels. N(e)T(sa)R “netsar” might have been the pronunciation, as in Nazarean (with z as a ts sound). When Jesus is described as a Nazarean, we cannot assume it was of Nazareth as that town might not have existed at the time. It was a designation of a caste of priest-kings steeped in an ancient wisdom (Sophia). Jesus was a “watcher,” an observer of the ancient custom, a guardian of secret knowledge. It is Hebrew tradition that awaits a messiah from the houses of David and Aaron. Early Christian teachings and the Gospels place an emphasis on the genealogy of the Son of God, although in teaching the divine nature of Jesus, a human genealogy would seem insignificant.
There is further circumstantial evidence that Jesus and John were members of an elite group. They are both remembered as having un-trimmed hair. This, Grant says, is characteristic of the guardians; there was power in the hair, as the legend of Samson records. Belief in the power held in the hair is not confined to this sect. The word kaisear means “a crown of hair,” which is preserved also as “caesar” and in Russian as “czar.” The early Church writer Eusebius, in explaining that James, the brother of Jesus, was a very holy man, says, “no razor touched his head.”29
Characteristic of the guardians was the concept of purification through water. The Essenes practiced this ritual daily, and the early Christians prac
ticed it as a rite of initiation. John the Baptist was truly a voice crying out in the desert, the voice of a rabble-rouser who was so incensed by the second marriage of Herod that he called the very act illegal and the participants worse. He constantly plagued Herod, and the family of Herod. Such radical criticism led to his decapitation. As has been pointed out, his feast day of June 24 and the relic of the severed head came to play an important role in later Freemasonry.
In the year after the execution of John, Jesus, too, was martyred in a style reserved for those who sought to overthrow the government. He had declared himself “King of the Jews,” or so his accusers said. Roman law dictated that no one could be a god unless the senate decreed it.30
The followers of Jesus were forced into hiding, which took a great toll on the unity of the group and on the message Jesus had sought to teach. His own family, who had doubted him while he was alive, came to revere him, but only in the light of their own Hebrew religion. He was a messenger of the purity of the people of Israel, contaminated by the Roman and Greek presence. The message of James and the family of Jesus was that his teaching was only for the “chosen” people, who were Jews. Paul, once known as Saul, who had been a persecutor of Jesus and his early followers, became a convert. He believed that the message of the Messiah was intended for Jews and Gentiles alike. He had followed Jesus from the beginning and understood the radical concept of love being above the law, but the message was being altered by the family of Jesus to a more conservative concept of the purity of the law. Torn between James and Paul, Peter eventually went on the road to preach the message of Jesus.
Some of Jesus’ original followers and apostles literally headed for the hills and the safety of the Essene sects, which they might have considered more pure. Peter and Paul spread the word through the Mediterranean. But the concept of Jesus as king, the heir to the throne of Solomon, died on the cross. Or did it? The Gospels indicate that Jesus had brothers and sisters who also may have been in the same bloodline. In Mark, four brothers are listed: Jacob (also known as James), Joseph, Judas, and Simon.31 The most important was James, who inherited, or took over, the leadership of the small group. His goal was to preserve the kingship of a Jewish priest-king in the David-Aaron bloodline. He fought with Paul over the rite of circumcision, which Paul felt was a major stumbling block in converting Gentiles. James didn’t care to convert Gentiles. James eventually became an embarrassment to Paul, who would find converts whom James would refuse to admit. James and the family of Jesus, who had once denied Jesus’ role, seem to have capitalized on their status after his death, although more likely in a political rather than a religious sense.