Were the Templars digging for the Sangreal treasure? Dr. Barton.

No. Simple answer. Because there never was any Sangreal treasure. But Dr. Trevelyan expects me to write more than that.

When the Poor Knights of Christ arrived in Jerusalem they were, as their title suggests, poor. They petitioned the King to give them somewhere to live and he gave them his old palace on the Temple mount. It was a conversion job from a mosque, and he preferred his newer palace. Sir Leigh Teabing seems to think the king just gave them the stables, but he's wrong.

I'd write more, but I still have classes to teach.

Knights Templar: Introduction by Dr. Trevelyan

Dr. Langdon and Sir Leigh Teabing are only two representatives of a number of popular modern writers who regale the modern public with all manner of strange remarks concerning the Kingts Templar. Unfortunately I am inclined to agree with Templar expert Helen Nicholson when she writes, "Modern 'discoveries' about the Templars are really a form of fantasy writing, with less basis in actual historical events than most historical novels." (The Knights Templar: a New History (Stroud: Sutton Publications, 2004) P. 245.

The facts about the Knights Templar are these: The Order of the Poor Knights of Christ was founded in the early 12th Century(probably 1119). They were a small group of noble knights who bound themselves under the three monastic oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience. They were given King Baldwin II's palace on the south side of the Temple mount in Jerusalem as a base, and they recieved a small income from the king of Jerusalem, his nobles, and the Patriarch. The order started small, by the ninth year of its existence it consisted of nine knights.
Originally the knights had wanted to devote themselves to a monastic lifestyle, but it was on the advice of the Church that they became a military order. They were poor at first, but the great theologian Bernard of Clairvaux mounted a sort of publicity drive on their behalf in Europe. In 1129 the Church formally recognised the Order and gave them a religious habit of a white cloak.
While the Templar had a Rule that regulated their life, it was not secret. They wrote little, probably because most of them were not very literate people. While they held their Chapters in secret, that is hardly surprising. Chapters were business meetings, and every organisation has its sensitive information; the Templars were no exception. Indeed, the Church I belong to holds its Session meetings in private.
But that is quite enough introduction. What is important to note is that the Templars started small, and from very early in their existence were linked to the Catholic Church.

Dr. Barton: Did Leonardo paint Mary Magdalene?

My short answer to the question is, no. I have read all the arguments, and looked at copies of the Last Supper, even at enlarged photographs, and I simply cannot see what Langdon thinks I ought to see. What I do see is St. Peter whispering in the ear of St. John the Divine. Leonardo varied the appearances of the men in his painting, so that each apostle looks different. St. John is represented as a young man, and therefore beardless. A similar depiction was adopted in a painting in a Church in Plymouth, by Rev. W. Haslam, in 1855. Haslam adorned the chancel of his Church with twelve niches, and in each he painted an Apostle, "after a true Mediaeval pattern." I will let Haslam say the rest. He is criticizing a newspaper reporter's description of the pictures: "My favourite figure, St. John, upon which I bestowed extra pains, the provoking man would have it, was St. May Magdalene, leering at the apostle next to her, or at the one opposite - it did not seem clear to him which; but her head was down on one side in a bewitching attitude." (Rev. William Haslam, From Death into Life (London, Morgan and Scott, no date) P. 235)
Leonardo is in good company!

In addition it ought to be pointed out that the Last Supper is in a terrible state, so that very little can be made out clearly.
'What of the 'M'?' some have asked. Well, the Last Supper was painted in Milan, and Leonardo's patron was nicknamed Il Moro. That's enough 'M's for me!

Dr. Barton Explains why Leonardo didn't paint the Grail

One of my students, taking an argument from one of Dr. Langdon's books, asked me 'Why didn't Da Vinci paint the Holy Grail in his Last Supper. I answered him:

Firstly, his name was Leonardo. Calling him Da Vinci is just wrong.
Secondly, the Holy Grail legend had very much had its day by the Renaissance. It was never that popular in Italy anyhow. The best Grail romances come from France.
Thirdly, the Last Supper was painted in a monastic refectory, and the Church disliked the Grail legends, never conferring any approval on them.
Fourthly, expecting to find the Holy Grail in Leonardo's painting is our projecting a modern view on to a Renaissance source. Until the revival of interest in the Arturian romances in the Romantic period, the Grail was all but forgotten.
So, I concluded, it was really unreasonable to expect to find the Holy Grail in Leonardo's The Last Supper. My student agreed with me.

Sir Richard Arcos and the Sacred Feminine

I'm mostly a preacher, so I ought to say (for the fans at least) something about the Sacred Feminine in the Bible. It may surprise those who swallow Dr. Langdon's books whole (a most uncomfortable experience, take it from me) that there are references to the Sacred Feminine in the Bible. There are, especially in the Old Testament, but they are not positive, nor do they teach it as doctrine. Here are two of them, one from the Old Testament, the other from the New Testament: 'And Samuel spake unto all the House of Israel, saying, If ye do return to the LORD with all your hearts, put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you...' (1 Sam 7:3) Some commentators have rendered this 'put away Baal and Ashtaroth.' Whichever it is, this is one of many negative references to female deities in the Old Testament. Further, it has been suggested that the reason why Ashtaroth is singled out here is because of a special attatchment to Ashtaroth on the Part of the Israelites. Maybe the Israelites looked at the nations around them, saw the worship of the sacred feminine and decided to import it into Israel. Whatever the case, God clearly didn't approve. Just so, when Tamar 'played the harlot' in 'an open place' (Gen 38:13-30) this action is condemned, as is Judah for straying. Since Kendall and others are of the opinion here that the 'place' mentioned in this passage from Genesis was a shrine of some sort, this may be where the 'ritual sex in the Temple' balderdash comes from (I can't think of anywhere else, unless one takes the Prophetic condemnations of this sort of thing). Yet here, too, it is condemned. Equally, this happened while the descendants of Abraham were wanderers in the promised Land, where all sorts of others dwelt, the shrine (if so it was) would then have belonged to one of the idol cults that would so displease the Lord as to cause him to smite the Caananites through Israel.

The New Testament reference is from the Acts of the Apostles, after the Apostle Paul's sermon on Mars Hill in Athens: 'Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, what will this babbler say? Other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Christ and the Resurrection.' (Acts 17:18) Our hellenic mugs seem to have gleefully seized the wrong end of the stick, and thought that Paul was taking about a god called Christ and 'his powerful female equal' Anastasia (Gr. for 'resurrection', feminine noun).

Sir Richard Arcos and 'Syncretism'

One notes that in Norfolk Green men can be found in Buxton and Scottow Churches, as well as the particularly fine example in the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral. Within England, especially the arable regions thereof, the Green man is almost ubiquitous in churches built in the decorated or perpendicular styles. Indeed, figurative carving reached its height in the decorated period, hence the name. Those green men visible in Perpendicular churches are hangovers from this, usually taking the form of corbels (as at Buxton) or bosses in vaulting (Norwich cathedral cloisters). In the cathedrals, we can find the strangest carvings, for example the Lincoln imp or the strange narrative cycles at Wells cathedral. These are not coded messages. Most of them are way too obvious to be this (you'd ask what these carvings meant).
On the appropriation of pagan symbols, we have a statue of St. Peter in Rome that has been alleged to have actually been Jupiter originally (not 'the Jew Peter' to make a silly pun), and the fact that a fair number of Churches have been built on the site of pagan ritual sites, e.g Earsham, Suffolk; The Hanging Church, Cairo; the Pantheon, Rome (conversion to church). But this does not mean a continuation of pagan worship, just the reverse. I mean, does anyone actually think that Islamic worship was being fused with Christian worship in the cathedral (formerly Great Mosque) at Cordoba, or that Mass was said during Friday Prayers at Aya Sophia or the Great Mosque at Damascus? I sincerely hope not! The act of conversion in these cases was an act of triumphalism over the vanquished religion, an appropriation of site and symbolism for the express purpose of destroying the former meaning, not an act of syncretism. Sort of like the erection of a temple to Venus on the top of the Holy Sepulchre. This is spitting on the grave of your enemy, like the transformation of the mausolea of Galerius and Diocletian into churches. Syncretism was the sin of Israel and, for that matter of Rome, does anyone but the sort of loony who believes he's a poached egg honestly think early Christians would have played ball meekly over syncretism? After all, if they'd accepted Emperor worship, there would have been no persecution.

Dr. Barton on Christian appropriation of pagan symbols

Dr. Langdon has done a great deal of very interesting research into the symbolism of the sacred feminine. He has discovered symbols that many of us have missed in the past. As a researcher he is quite brilliant.

It's what he does with that research that's so maddening. Dr. Landgon has forgotten that, when a smbol is appropriated by one religion from another, its meaning is often completely changed. My favourite is the Green Man. I wrote a paper on the Green Man for a conference a few years ago, where I actually managed to step on Dr. Langdon's foot. It's the only time I've ever spoken to him, and I think all I said was 'sorry'. He didn't recognise me, but why should he?

The Green Man is a symbol found just about everywhere, particularly in Britain. He usually appears in the form of a human face with foliage growing out of both corners of his mouth. Pagan in origin, the Green Man represented, in pre-Christian times, the height of the growing season, the peak of fertility and fecundity. The symbol was generally expressive, therefore, of the eternal cycle of the seasons. When Christianity appropriated the Green man its meaning was altered to represent orthodox Christian notions of everlasting life, resurrection and the immortality of the soul. Viewed from this Christian point of view the Green Man becomes a quite acceptable motif and it is only on that basis that Green Men are found within Christian Churches. Some, such as Dr. Langdon, have suggested that the Green Man remains a pagan symbol even when found in a Christian building and this, or course, is quite incorrect. After all, why would Constantine's repressive religion want to use the Green Man? And, even if we suppose that every stone-mason who ever carved a Green Man belonged to the Priory of Sion, why weren't the Green Men, in the Cathedrals at least, defaced by the Church?

Sir Richard Arcos talks about Rosslyn

Further research has picked up this little gem from James Jackson of Penicuik.It seems there may have been a treasure at Rosslyn, consisting of ancient manuscripts. No surprise here, after all Rosslyn was a Collegiate church. In 1836, an Italian Count by the name of Poli removed this treasure from Rosslyn and went back to Italy with it. The great joke is that these manuscripts are now to be found in the Vatican Library! And no, these have nothing whatsoever to do with Mary Magdalen, but they do include a history of Scotland from the creation of the world to 1535. The reference to trunks seems to have come from a reference to the St. Clair Archives, kept at the Castle until a great fire in 1447 forced their removal to the chapel. Oh, and the reason why Rosslyn chapel has a gaunt West Front is that it is the CHANCEL of a much larger building that was never finished. Sort of like the castle, although this has been hidden somewhat by later Victorian builders. Equally, it has 0 to do with the Templars, who had been dissolved prior to its erection (although, as noted, the Scottish Templars just melted away). Just down the road there is a real Templar Church, located in a village with the give-away name of Temple. Just like every Templar church in Wales, this church is a plain rectangle and contains no references to the Sacred Feminine, except to a loony. Although it is stylish, unlike the one on the Gower which looks just like almost every other church in West Wales. Very few Templar Churches were round, as round is hard to do, and those that were are to be found in posh areas, and the attempt to see 'fortifications' on the ones in Wales is laughable, as the towers look exactly like the towers of the churches at Llandovery, Carmarthen, and other places.

Who was Baphomet? By Dr. Trevelyan

Later on I and my fellow scholars will be discussing the Knights Templar. but right now, I should like to say a few words about 'Baphomet.'

Dr. Langdon has written (Internation Journal of Symbology, Vol. 12 P. 317) that the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping the idol of Baphomet, a pagan fertility god. Baphomet's idol was, according to Dr. Langdon, a large stone head with horns and a beard.
Quite apart from the question as to whether or not the Templars were guilty as charged (they were not) Dr. Langdon's account of Baphomet is horribly garbled. No mention of horns is ever made in the Templar trial records that we have, all that is said is that the Templars worshipped 'a bearded head', said by some to be 'Baphomet'.
Who was Baphomet? Well, to use Dr. Langdon's own language, perhaps you are more familiar with him under a different spelling. 'Baphomet' is an old French transliteration of a semitic name. In later writers his name is spelt 'Mahomet'. Today his name is usually spelt 'Mohammed'. Those who follow his teachings add 'peace be upon him' after saying the name.

Baphomet is just old French for Mohammed. Images of Mohammed are (as we know) strictly forbidden in Islam, but in Medieval France people did not know this. In fact, Muslims were accused of being idolaters. One of the accusations brought against the Knights Templar was that they had turned Muslim, and the accusation concerning 'Baphomet' was a part of this. Since it makes the Templar act like the mythical fairy-tale Muslims of legend, it is also patently false.

A German anti-Masonic author, Von Hammer, was the first writer to identify Baphomet as 'a Gnostic god', in 1818. Later scholarship has completely debunked him claims

Dr. Barton talks about Rosslyn

Rosslyn Chapel (Built 1446) is one of the most splendid buildings in the world for anyone interested in religious symbolism. My own personal field of study is Victorian Gothic Revival Churches (particularly in relation to the Catholic Apostolic Church), but to understand the Gothinc Revival we have to study buildings such as Rosslyn. Lucky symbologists, you reply! Well, maybe, but it would take a lifetime to analyse all the symbolism of Rosslyn. There is still no real agreement as to what many of the symbols mean - there are just too many of them. What I emphasise to my students is that Rosslyn must be understood as a building, not as a pointer to something else.

Rosslyn is a riot of symbolism. My personal favourite is the Green Man. There are over 100 Green Men at Rosslyn, but what does he mean? Symbologists are not agreed, but I favour the opinion that the Green Man is actually a representation of Christ. In Christian typology the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden is seen as a type of Christ. In the Green man we have an image of Christ as the Tree of life. Woven in with this is the idea that the Green Man represents the Creator being manifested through the creation, for according to the Bible creation was performed through Christ.

Is it Templar symbolism? There is the question, because we do not yet have a definitive list of Templar symbolism. The Green Man, however, is far too widespread to be called Templar symbolism, being found in hundreds of Churches in the United Kingdom, including the great cathedrals of Norwich, Ely and Exeter. The image is so dominant in medieval Christian art that is can really only be called a Western Catholic symbol.

What is more, the Templars were suppressed in the early fourteenth Century. The Templars were never very strong in Scotland, and in 1298 the Scottish Grand Master and his Lieutenant were killed fighting alongside William Wallace at Falkirk. Only two Knights Templar were present in Scotland in 1309, when the accusations that led to the dissolution of the order were brought. Both were let go (see this account of the trial of the Scottish Templars).

Rosslyn was built in 1466, by which time both surviving Scottish Templars would have been long dead. It is actually impossible for Rosslyn to have been a Templar Church. We know who built it, Sir William St Clair, third Prince of Orkney. It was built as a collegiate Church, a secular* foundation intended to spread intellectual and spiritual knowledge. There are some thirty-seven such churches in Scotland, ranging from small and plain to the riotous extravagnce of Rosslyn. The extravagance of the construction of these churches depended on the wealth of their founder. In some ways it was a method of showing off your wealth. The real purposes of these Churches were however on or more of the following three: as centres of learning; as places for theological study; and as places where masses could be said for the souls of the benefactor and his family.

Despite its ornate carvings, Rosslyn was never finished. There were probably no more than four Canons at Rosslyn at any one time, making it one of the smaller Collegiate Churches.


Anyone interested in Rosslyn Chapel really ought to visit the Rosslyn Templars website. It's one of my favourites. The section on the Knights Templar is brilliant, drawing on the most reputable authorities.

*Note: 'Secular' in this context is a technical term. It distinguishes those priests who worked in the community from those who lived in monastic foundations.

Sir Richard Arcos says something about Scrolls

Sir Leigh Teabing's writings on the 'alterations to early Christian belief' are of such a woeful and distressingly ill-researched character that it is with difficulty I have been restrained from bunging them out of the window each time I read them. I must restrain myself because otherwise I should hit the gardener, and then he might (and probably would) sue (or at least resign, and good gardeners are difficult to find). But I have been able to control myself long enough to write something about the bloke's characterisation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Teabing identifies these as 'Gospels,' despite their belonging to a Jewish community which had nothing to do with the early Christians. Not one of the scrolls speaks of Christ, unless one believes that a certain fragment is a part of one of the Synoptic Gospels. Indeed, the lack of any Palestinian equivalent of the Nag Hammadi Library should be worthy of note. The gnostics, in their blend of hellenistic philosophy and christianity, would seem to have had little support in the land of Christ's life. Moral? Jews are too sensible to believe Gnostic science-fiction. Sir Leigh Teabing isn't.

[Please refrain from personalities]
[No]
[Quite right]

Dr. Barton adds a supplement

I ought to add something on the probable sources of the Grail legend. Scholars are not agreed, but there are two basic options; a pagan Celtic and a Christian (the idea that it has an Oriental origin is not very convincing). These are not mutually exclusive, of course, and we may see a weaving together of Christian and pagan Celtic elements.
If the Celtic story came first, then the original Grail story contained no religious element at all, and was probably simply a revenge-tale in which a hero uses magic talismans to avenge a wrong done to some kinsman. Talismans, such as magic lances and food-giving vessels figure prominently in Celtic myths and folk-tales, and if the Grail legend is originally Celtic, the Grail was probably originally a dish that gave food magically. The religious element would have been introduced when the Grail legend was fused with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, which is a legendary account of the conversion of Britain.

If, however, the original source is Christian, it is undoubtedly the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which was very popular in 12th Century Britain. In this apocryphal work Joseph of Arimathea is imprisoned by the Jews without food and water, but is miraculously fed by Christ himself out of the Grail (this may be regarded as a sacramental legend derived, not from Celtic myth, but from popular Eucharistic piety). Joseph is liberated by Titus in AD 70 at the destruction of Jerusalem, and comes to Britain with the Grail. Celtic elements in the Grail story are then accounted for by this tale being taken up by British bards and woven into popular folk-tales.

The Church never countenanced the Grail legend, probably for two reasons. Firstly, it was based on an apocryphal book of uncertain date and origin (but certainly not written by Nicodemus), and made extravagant claims for the Grail. Secondly, it gave a high, ancient and illustrious origin for the British Church, an origin almost as glorious as that of the Church of Rome. Such a legend would tend to inflame any separatistic tendencies within the British Church, and Rome wouldn't want that.
In any case, the legend was late in orgin, and it conflicted with known history at several points. While the Medieval Western Catholic Church was not entirely averse to appealing to forgeries such as the Donation of Constantine, the Grail Legend was far too fanciful, and served no useful purpose. It was left to the bards and the poets.

Sir Richard Arcos is Sarcastic.

I read tonight in one of Dr. Langdon's books, "Countless grail-related works contain the hidden letter M - whether as watermarks, underpaintings, or compositional allusions. The most blatant M, of course, is emblazoned on the altar of Our Lady of Paris in London..." [Da Vinci Code P. 330, H.H.]

Now, I admit I am just a protestant pastor who never went to a seminary in his life, nor am I a great student of religious symbolism, but... isn't there more than one Mary in the New Testament? And isn't there a far more likely explanation for the M on the alar of Our Lady of Paris?

Just a wild guess. Talk about scotoma!!!

(Dr. Langdon says a lot about Scotoma in his books, of which the following is a sample, "our preconcieved notions... are so powerful that our mind... overrides our eyes" [DVC P. 328.] Seeing what you think you ought to see, rather than what is actually there. Of course, Dr. Langdon is wonderfully objective. I mean, talk about blue-based baboons with claw-and-ball feet!)

Sir Richard Arcos on the Grail

Further notes on the Holy Grail. Dr. Langdon states that the original division was Sang raal, but we note that this exists in only one late manuscript of friend Chretien. In all probability, this is a copyists error, and a common one at that, the last letter of one word migratng to the next. As for Royal Blood, one notes that the blood, not the bloodline of Jesus would have made perfect sense in the context of the Grail procession, where the holy lance dripped into the holy grail.

Oh, and I hear 0 about the Holy Lance from Langdon, although this relic is rather better attested. Or should that be because? You see, the Holy lance is a real relic, something that can be seen and handled (its is also a Carolignian forgery, but that's by the by), why then would the Grail be a metaphorical thing, given the real nature of the lance. Oh, and to the best of my knowledge, no real knights ever went searching for the Holy Grail, as King Arthur's knights had already found it. The Holy Lance and other relics, yes, the Holy Grail, no.

Dr. Barton on the Holy Grail

What is the Holy Grail? I sometimes get students bringing newly published books on the Grail to me, excited. Then I read the book, and I give it back to the student telling them that the book is about as factual as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and a lot less entertaining.

You see, the Grail isn't an early Christian symbol at all. In fact it only appears on our cultural radar in a document by a Cistercian writer by the name of Helinandus (d. about 1230) describing a vision, said to have been seen by a hermit in 717, of the dish used by Christ at the Last Supper. The vessel is known by many names, Grail, Holy Grail, Greal, Graal, etc., and is variously identified with the chalice of the Eucharist or the dish of the Pascal lamb, and the theme of a famous medieval cycle of romance. In the romances the conception of the Grail varies considerably; its nature is often only vaguely indicated, and, in the case of Chrestien's Perceval poem, it is left wholly unexplained (owing to the sudden death of the author). The derivation of the word is mysterious, but it may come from the title of Helinandus' work, Gradale. "Gradalis or Gradale means a dish (scutella), wide and somewhat deep, in which costly viands are wont to be served to the rich in degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in different rows. In popular speech it is also called "greal" because it is pleasant (grata) and acceptable to him eating therein" the monk tells us. Notice that the derivation is from Gradale, not from sangraal, or indeed san- anything!

Apart from Heliandus' account of a vision that ocurred some 500 years before he was writing, the Gail only appears in Medieval Romances - in works of fiction! Most of these date from between 1180 and 1240, and most are French. They are of two kinds, some concerned with the Grail Quest, others with the history of the Grail itself.
In the earliest of the early history tales the Grail is (as Heliandus' account implies), not the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, but the dish from which Christ ate the Paschal lamb. The dish was used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ at the crucifixion, and therefore it became linked with the Eucharistic cup.

Since the origins of the Grail are in fiction, not in history, and it is not heard of until the late twelfth century, the chances of the Grail actually referring to anything other than a literal eating-dish are slim. Now I'm off to watch Indiana Jones again!

Dr. Rainy on the formation of the Canon

Dr. Langdon entertains (or seems to entertain) the misconception that at some Church Council or other (Nicea in his case) a group of men selected by who knows what criteria sat down with a great big pile of manuscripts and said, "Let's decided which of these we want to accept as authoritative and which we want to throw out." Such a view is woeful simplistic and unhistorical. There never was any such council. Constantine did not finance the construction of a new canon, he financed the production of copies of the existing Bible to replace Bibles destroyed in the persecution under Diocletian. The misconception runs deeper. Canonicity was not the Church giving authority to certain books, but recognising that those books were already authoritative.
It is of interest to note that the first recorded 'Canon' (From the Greek kanon, which it in turn derived from the Semitic qaneh, meaning a reed, and from that a measuring rod, from which is derived the metaphorical meaning of a rule or standard) of the New Testament is that of Marcion, a Gnostic heretic who began to teach in about 140AD. Marcion was so far from adding to Scripture that he reduced the New Testament to two books, the Gospel, a truncated version of Luke missing the birth-narratives, so that Jesus just 'appears' aged thirty or so; and the Apostle, containing most of Paul's Epistles, except for the Epistles to Timothy and Titus.
What is interesting about this is the reaction of the Churches. Every reply to Marcion insisted that the books recognised as authoritative were more than those included in Marcion's list. There were four Gospels, not just one, there was a book of Acts, and there were Epistles of some other apostles and 'apostolic men' in addition to Paul's Epistles.
Notice that, over 150 years before the Council of Nicea, the Churches recognised four Gospels and four only. Not 'eighty', as Dr. Langdon has unguardedly stated. And they did this without a Church Council of any sort.
The first Church Council to produce a list of the books recognised as authoritative by the Church was the Synod of Carthage in AD 397, a local council, after Nicea. the Synod of Carthage merely recorded that the following twenty-seven books were accepted as authoritative by the Church, as the Westminster Assembly did in the 17th Century..

Dr. Rainy speaks

Dr. Langdon and his friend Sir Leigh Teabing have a very... interesting view of the formation of the Canon of the New Testament. By 'interesting' I mean it's nonsense, as any of my students will tell you. The idea that any Church Council sat down and decided which documents should go in the New Testament is laughable. The idea that "The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great," [Da Vinci Code P. 313 - H.H.] is quite impossible. You see, until the time of Constantine, the Christian Church had been being persecuted by the Roman empire. The Church leaders, many of them Bishops bearing the marks of torture, were not going to capitulate to a radical re-writing of their Bible by the Emperor any more than our Scots Covenanters of the 17th Century were going to meekly capitulate to King Charles II or James VII.
The canon of the New Testament was complete before Nicea, as was the canon of the Old Testament. All that Nicea did was what the Westminster Assembly did - they recognised the Bible already in the possession of the Church.
Teabing says that our four Gospels were those that emphasised the divinity of Christ, and contrasts them with those 'gospels' that spoke of His humanity. The trouble is that our four Gospels speak of a Jesus who is born (as a man), who has to grow up (Luke 2.52), who is hungry (Luke 4.2), who is so tired that he sleeps in the middle of a tempest (Mark 4.38), who is "wearied with his journey" (John 4.6), and who, of course, dies. The Christian tradition is of Christ as the Theanthropic person, the person who is both God and man. The Gnostic Gospels of which Teabing is so fond, however, fail here. The Gnostic Jesus is not a true man. The Apocalypse of Peter describes a 'Jesus' who is a man indwelt by an 'Aeon' (Gnostic higher being) that left him before the cross. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth says that 'Simon' was substituted for Jesus; the Acts of John is the most telling of these Gnostic documents, in it Jesus is presented as only seeming to be human. This heresy, called Docetism from the Greek dokeo (I seem to be), was common among the Gnostics, who believed matter to be intrinsically bad.
And this is perhaps the place to address Dr. Langdon's claim that 'heretic' is derived from the Latin word haereticus, meaing 'choice'. It doesn't. For one thing, 'airetiko is Greek, not Latin. It means 'party', and is used in the New Testament itself, in Titus 3.10. It is also found in classical Greek literature, with the same meaning. It refers to those who set up parties or factions and therefore divide the Church. It therefore had reference to those who 'chose' the other 'gospels' not for the reason Dr. Langdon gives, but because they were dividing the Church.
I tell my students to read F.F. Bruce's book The Books and the Parchments to look into this matter in greater depth.

Sir Richard Arcos corrects Dr. Barton!

I was going to append this in a comment to Dr. Barton's last post, but then I decided it was too long. Just to note that the link between the emple Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is more obvious when we remember that the Crusaders who conquered Jerusalem would have found a free standing rotunda, the 'Anastasis' of Constantine, rather than the current setting, where the rotunda is hemmed in by later building. I suggest that the polygonal churches were copied of the Dome of the Rock, while the round churches are copies of the Anastasis of Constantine (which the Dome of the Rock's architecture seems to pay homage to, remember the Dome was built by Greek and Syrian Christian builders for the Arabs).
On secret rituals. The ritual space referred to in Dr. Langdon's last book may have been used for Templar Chapters, which were held in secret. It was these secret chapters that the charges against the Templars alleged were the scene of much of the heretical activity, including the cats (which appeared magically in the closed space) and the idols. None of the charges alleged 'hieros gamos', the sexual activity mentioned in the charges being generally of a homoerotic nature, as in the charges against the Cathars. There is no verifiable evidence that these secret rooms were anything other than chapter houses in a few cases, and strongrooms in most cases. Remember, the Templars were simply dripping with boodle. An isolated report from Lincolnshire reported finding corpses and elements of esoteric ritual practices, but later investigation by archaeologists found none of this and identified the space as a treasure vault.

[Thanks, Sir Richard. Yes, I expect that the Temple Church in London is a copy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre]

Dr. Barton writes on the Temple Church symbolism.

Dr. Langdon seems to have a 'thing' about hieros gamos, ritual sex. It seems to me that he implies in one of his books that the Temple Church in London was designed with this rite in mind (I may be being unjust to him). However, the Temple Church is in fact (like other round Churches) designed as a Romanesque replica of either the Dome of the Rock at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also in Jerusalem. The Templars were certainly fond of the design (just do a Goole image search for 'Templar Church' if you don't believe me), but round Churches were not built exclusively for the Templars; which rather squashes any idea that the Temple Church was built for secret Templar rituals (as does the fact that not all Templar Churches are round, round being more difficult).
Some people have insisted that all round Churches are Templar, but I dispute the statement, and I am not alone in doing so, for Helen Nicholson, an authority on the Templars, has demonstrated that other military Orders built round Churches as well. The Hospitallers built a round Church at Little Maplestead, Essex some time before 1184, and while the Templars were practically absorbed into the Hospitallers after the dissolution of the order in 1314, in 1184 the two orders were still separate. There is also a possibility that the Teutonic Knights built some round Churches in Denmark.
While I like the Temple Church, and have spent may a happy hour examining the rich symbolism of its stonework, I would have to admit that it's not a very good copy of the original. Now, compare this photograph of the Templar Church of La Vera Cruz with this photograph of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Here is the Dome of the Rock up close. Pretty similar.
Mediterranean masons got their 'Temples' to look more like the original (here is the Templar Church at Eunate, Spain). The English masons somehow smoothed out the corners, and they couldn't really do domes.
The societies of the Middle and Inner Temple both keep alive Templar symbolism, employing the Agnus Dei (the Middle Temple) and the Pegasus (the Inner Temple) symbols of the ancient knights. The origin of the Pegasus symbol is rather funny. The Templars at one point used the symbol of a single horse with two knights on it, a symbol of their poverty. But a badly drawn version of this was mistaken for the Pegasus in a Templar manuscript, and the Templars adopted Pegasus as one of their symbols!
The restoration of the Temple Church after the Second World War has led to the introduction of a splendid East Window that contains much Templar symbolism, most appropriately the Virgin Mary, the 'sacred feminine' to whom the Templars were dedicated!
But I am afraid that Dr. Lagdon is quite in error when he refers to the square 'extension' to the Round Church as a 'nave'. It is a choir built in AD 1240 for the burial of King Henry III (who actually changed his will and now lies in Westminster Abbey). The original choir was a great deal smaller.
I would have thought that Dr. Langdon would have noticed the placing of the altar, but then his specialism isn't really Christian symbolism.

Sir Richard Arcos talks about the Temple

It is plain from some of Dr. Langdon's statements that he believes ruins from the temple were standing when the Crusaders came to Jerusalem. As he does note, the second temple was completely destroyed in the reign of the Emperor Julian, some small portion of it having stood until this point. As I understand, in 1099, the Temple Mount looked much as it did today. The 'Temple of Solomon' the Templars were given room in was the Al-Aqsa Mosque. As this was also the Royal Palace, it seems highly unlikely the Templars making like moles would not have been spotted. Oh, and it seems he thinks the Holy of Holies was underground. For someone who researched his book, he didn't look very far. The Knights Templar were one of three major Knightly orders, the others being the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans (Teutonic Knights) and the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (Hospitallers). These groups were widely blamed for losing the Holy Land, as it was felt they could have done a much better job. The King of France, Philip the fair (typical French lies), suggested it would work better if there were just one group of Knights. Oh, and it would work even better if he were in charge. He invited the Grand masters of the three orders to France to meet him on urgent crusading business. Only one Grand Master, Jaqes de Molay, was mug enough to accept. All Templars in France were arrested too. You know the rest. In England, Edward II told the Templars he would arrest them in 12 months time, by which point all the boodle (and most of the Templars) had gone West. In Scotland, the king forgot about this completely, after telling the Templars to make themselves scarce. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Templars were let off after their leader claimed the right to trial by combat, and in Spain the kings laughed at the orders, the Templars gave themselves a Spanish name and, when the Papal officials came looking for Templars declared there weren't any Templars in Spain (they were called something else). Only in France were the Templars burned en masse. In England, they were told to confess, a number did, while the rest feigned ignorance and joined the Knights Hospitaller. In other words, there were hundreds of Templars runing about, even in France. Templars who confessed to all the crimes were allowed to live on in monasteries. If these guys had real dodgy knowledge the Pope wanted destroyed, why were most of them allowed to join other military orders, or form independent orders of crusaders? The fact is that Pope Clement knew the knights were innocen, but was too scared of the French to pronounce them so, thus he arranged ways out for all sensible knights. As is well known among historians of the period, the ceremonies the Templars were accused of, kissing cats' bottoms(!), each others' bottoms(!!), and worshiping heads (!!!) were ascribed to the Cathars too. And, before some mug yells, 'see, they were the same!' in the Albigensian Crusades, the Templars were commended for their zeal in slaughtering Cathari like cattle. The Hospitallers were dodgy on this issue, though... Again, a bad fact. Oh, and the Cathars denied the bottom thing too, as with the head thing. These were standard heresy charges, sort of like 'you're gay!' in the playground. There was no substance to them! The Knights Tempar were, however, a powerful and secretive order which possessed tons of boodle and direct approval from the Pope and the doctors of the Church. They were distrusted because they held their Chapters in secret, had their fingers in every pie in Euope, their members included English Ministers and they were rumoured to perform extreme acts of penance. Sort of like another organisation that Dr. Langdon has had dealings with, perhaps?

[The remark about the French is, of course, just Sir Richard's opinion]

Dr. Barton on the Gnostic Gospels

The Gnostics were purveyors, as their name (From the Greek gnosis, knowledge) suggests, of esoteric knowledge and mysteries. To expect them to write their beliefs in plain Greek or Coptic in their books is therefore surely asking too much of them! While the Gospels of the New Testament were written as genuine history (their historical details check out perfectly), the Gonostics deliberately wrote so as to conceal their beliefs under figures. Thus 'Peter' often stands for the Catholic Church (the undivided Catholic Church of the second century). The head of the Apostles, and a stickler for his position, and for the Catholic New Testament. 'Thomas', famed for his doubting, is the initiate, the would-be Gnostic seeking after the Truth. And Mary Magdalene is Gnosticism, misunderstood, disliked, but mysterious, a woman and a man at the same time. Properly understood the Gnostic Gospels are like a library of heretical versions of the Pilgrim's Progress. What a shame that Dr. Langdon pedestrianises them and misses all the wonderful symbolism in them!

Sir Richard Arcos does some preaching.

In his books Dr. Langdon makes a lot of an alledged re-writing of Christianity by Constantine the Great (to whom I am only very remotely related). Surveying the subject of Constatine's re-writing of Christianity, it occurs to me that God is truly sovereign over history, remember Julian the Apostate? Well, not only did he not mention this, fulfil the Lord's prophecy about the devastation of the temple and prove that Christianity had truly triumphed over paganism, he DID try to re-write a religion, namely paganism. Realising that Christianity beat paganisms of all sorts into a cocked hat, friend Julian tried to reform and centralise paganism, seeing in the institutional order of Christianiy its strength. Not only this, but he tried to change pagan belief and practice. Julian, who had professed conversion and even been appointed a lay reader, admired Christianity's doctrine of self-control, indeed, he saw in the doctrinal certainty of Christianity another reason why it was so powerful. Paganism was an indulgent set of religions, and this disgusted the sober middling sorts of the Roman Empire, just as the merchants and commoners of late medieval society detested the carnal indulgence of the papacy, the Puritans the luxury and vice of the Court and the Methodists the hypocrisy and formalism of much of the Church of England. Julian decided that pagans had to clean up their act or become extinct within a few decades (all those sexual rituals and bacchanalian frolics took their toll on the system, don't you know). So he proclaimed new doctrine at Antioch, where his army waited to attack Persia. From henceforth all pagans were to worship the immanent spirit of the earth, with the Olympian deities as lesser gods, and there were to be no more wild parties. He held a meeting and got some pagan priests to agree. Needless to say, the pagans at Antioch were not impressed. Julian was dismissed as a half-pagan, half-Christian dreamer by the pagans. His religious plans proved a disaster, men and women who had been pagans all their lives were not disposed to accept orders from a recent convert to paganism, emperor or no. Does anyone really think the Christian church would have rolled over and played dead in the same situation? Paganism had been rich and powerful before Constantine stripped it of its wealth and used said boodle to endow Churches. Paganism was crumbling and in crisis. Christianity was a poor religion, to become a Christian had long been dangerous, yet Christian churches were to be found in the Empire's farthest provinces. As I say, God, being God, foresaw the Constantine slur and raised up Julian to show it was wrong. Look at history long enough and you will find the hand of the Lord.

Dr. Trevelyan says a word about the Temple

Dr. Langdon has some funny ideas about the Jewish Temple. I won't deal with all of them right now, but just his first point. He believes that the Sangreal Treasure was buried beneath the Holy of Holies of what he calls 'Solomon's Temple'. Of course it wasn't Solomon's temple (that had been completely destroyed by the Babylonians), but the Temple built by Herod (although the Jewish people thought, and think, of it as Ezra's Temple improved and enlarged). Dr. Langdon has an advantage here, which is that the Islamic authorities will not allow any excavations on the Temple Mount. This irritates archaeologists like myself, because it means that the closest we can get to digging the Temple site is a few peripheral excavations around the Temple. However, we do know certain things about it, mostly from the Tanakh (The Hebrew Bible).
The Most Holy Place, or the Holy Of Holies, was in inner sancturay of the Jewish Temple where YHWH (The LORD) dwelt in a special sense, although Solomon himself said in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple, "heaven and the very heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built!" (I Chronicles 6.18, A.V.) Indicating that the Most Holy Place was not concieved as God's dwelling place in any sense of His being restricted.
The Most Holy Place was entered only once every year, on Yom Kippur, by the High Priest, who carried in the blood of the sacrifice to make atonement for the people. No other living being was allowed in to the Most Holy Place.

How, then, could the Sangreal Treasure have been buried beneath the Most Holy Place, when the High Priests were opposed to Christianity (as Judaism has been ever since)? Certainly it could not have been put there before the destruction of the Temple by the Roman armies in AD 70. After AD 70 Jewish people were prohibited from entering Jerusalem, which was made a purely pagan city. It is true that Julian the Apostate allowed Jews back into Jerusalem to behin rebuilding the Temple, but that scheme was stalled, and only succeeded in levelling the ruins of the Temple Mount. There was no window of opportunity. In any case, Julian lived after Constantine.
What is more, Israel and the surrounding country has many caves (as witness the Dead Sea Scrolls find) that could be used to hide sensitive documents in. Why Jerusalem? Why not a remote cave in Galilee?

Dr. Langdon's claims about ritual sex in the Temple of Solomon are laughable. The only Jewish writings we have of anything like that antiquity are the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and they are notably silent on this point. Ritual sex acts are in fact forbidden in the Torah and associated with the pagans.
Dr. Langdon claims that, "Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah." This is also an absurd statement (as well as incredibly offensive to Jewish people). Whereas the Sidonian Baal had his Consort Asherah, the Hebrew God is not a sexual being, and dwells alone, as summed up in the famous Shema, the Jewish Confession of Faith found in Deuteronomy 6.4, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." He is one, and he has no consort. The idea that Shekinah refers to a female equivalent to God is derived from medieval Kabbalism - about two thousand years after the age of Solomon.

While Dr. Langdon is well-read in symbology, his study of Hebrew is apparently wanting, as evidenced by his statement that, "The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH---the sacred name of God---in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgenous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah." Unfortunately for Dr. Langdon the derivation is the other way around. The Tetragrammaton is seen by Jews as so sacred that only the High Priest was allowed to say it, and that only in the Most Holy Place. In reading in the synagogues the word 'adonai (LORD) was substituted for it. When the Masoretes added the vowel pointing to our Hebrew Bibles about 1000 years after Christ they pointed YHWH with the vowels of 'adonai as a cue to warn the reader to substitute 'adonai in his speech (a tradition preserved in our English Bibles where the word LORD is put for YHWH). 'Jehovah' is derived from YHWH, not the other way around.

I shall have more to say on the subject, as shall my colleagues here.

Sir Richard Arcos makes another observation

Dr. Langdon makes a lot of anti-Feminism in the Bible. In this connection I am reminded of the story of the emperor and the beauty pageant. The Emperor Theophilos was unmarried, so he arranged for the most beautiful girls in the Empire to be brought to Constantinople, to the Sacred Palace. In the Audience Hall, the girls were lined up in beautiful robes, while the Emperor, in imitation of Classical legend, was given a golden apple, which would be presented to the successful girl, who would become empress. Pausing in front of the most georgeous of these beauties, Emperor Theophilos feasted his eyes on her loveliness. Then he felt bad about this. So, very softly, he whispered piously (he thought) to himself, 'sin entered the world through a woman.' But the girl was clever as well as beautful (not to mention sharp of hearing). She replied: 'but, sire, by a woman redemption entered into the world.' The emperor married another girl, but the point stands. Oh, and a slightly bright RC would also know. Mary the Mother of Christ was certainly a woman! Of course I think our Protestant tradition that emphasises that she was a real woman, is extremely helpful in this matter...

[In the interests of reasoned debate the rest of Sir Richard's remarks have not been posted.]

[Shame]

[Unfair censorship, I know, but Dr. Trevelyan thretened to send my e-mail address to the Vatican]

Dr. Rainy speaks out.

Sir Leigh Teabing maintains that "The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." In my days at New College the phrase used was "The Bible was not let down on a string from heaven." But who ever thought that it was? The Biblical text in question is that "holy men of God spoke, moved by the Holy Spirit" (II Peter 1.21). The technical name is concursus, God and man both working. That is why it is called 'Inspiration' in contrast to spiritistic 'automatic writing'.

There is an old error that says that the 'human element' in the Scriptures negates the possibility of inspiration. But now I must go and teach my class.