Religious Quests

Some of those writers who construct what I refer to elsewhere as ‘Alternative Histories’ appear to be driven by a religious impulse. There are those who, like Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979), believe that the Hebrew Bible must be broadly (or even wholly) correct in its presentation of the Ancient History of the Middle East and that the histories of neighbouring areas must be adjusted to match it; others must reconcile the Book of Mormon with American archaeology. These attitudes are dealt with in appropriate chapters. Here, though, I would like to look at some notorious ‘Alternative Histories’ that take certain religious beliefs and use them in novel ways.

Ahmed Osman, Akhnaten/Moses and Tutankhamen/Jesus

An Egyptian scholar, Ahmed Osman (born 1934) has produced a radical thesis about the identity of the pharaohs Akhnaten and Tutankhamen. In part this is based on Freud’s speculations in Moses and Akhnaton, and in part the influence of Velikovsky can be seen, but his work is unusual in the way he pushes an historical Jesus back into the Egyptian Bronze Age.

More to come…

Bérenger Saunière, Rennes-le-Château and the Prieuré de Sion

In 1982, a book was published in which its authors claimed to have uncovered a massive conspiracy, involving the church, cultural and military leaders, a bloodline descended from Jesus of Nazareth and a secret society, the Prieuré de Sion. The book – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – built on three television documentaries researched by one of its authors, Henry Lincoln (real name Henry Soskin, born 1930). These, in turn, had been based in part on a 1960s book by the French writer Gérard de Sède (1921-2004), and proved an international success. It began with an investigation into a minor local mystery first brought to a wider public attention in France by de Sède – why an obscure country priest, Bérenger Saunière (1852-1917), was apparently able to spend vast sums of money in the years around 1900, refurbishing his parish church at the obscure village of Rennes-le-Château in Languedoc, south-west France – and developed the thesis that he had stumbled upon a secret that could rock the very foundations of western civilisation. The secret? That Jesus had fathered at least one child and that his descendants continue to operate behind the scenes, influencing the course of European history through the machinations of a secret religious order, the Prieuré de Sion, a secret society originally founded in Jerusalem during the First Crusade. In a follow-up book, The Messianic Legacy, the authors claimed that the then Grand Master of the Prieuré, Pierre Plantard (de Saint Clair, 1920-2000), was aiming for a restoration of the Merovingian dynasty to rule not just France, but to take on a monarchic role in the running of the European Union. This was to be achieved by popular consent, with Pierre Plantard or some other Merovingian claimant taking the responsibility for ruling.

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s works bear a superficially impressive critical apparatus, with extensive endnotes and bibliographies, demonstrating a huge amount of research, much of it using obscure documents and sometimes popularising the work of serious academics, such as the biblical historian Robert Eisenmann. Their research deals with characters who were once famous but who are now little-known outside specialist histories, such as Godfrey de Bouillon or René d’Anjou. Their statements are well documented, so why would any historian disagree with their conclusions?

Like all such adventure stories, it unravels very quickly. We know the source of Saunière’s ‘wealth’: he was suspended from his priestly duties after being found guilty of selling masses. Through a series of advertisements in predominantly royalist newspapers and magazines, he solicited money for the promise of saying a mass on behalf of the ‘donor’. Several of his account books have survived, showing that it would have been impossible for anyone to say even a fraction of the masses he was being paid to deliver. The failure of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln to recognise the source of money is symptomatic of their research.

Firstly, the research may have been wide ranging, but it was scarcely critical. In particular, the documentation they cite for the Prieuré de Sion is based entirely on some documents deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris between 1956 and 1969. These documents turn out to be typescripts and scrapbook collections, emanating from a small group of people who are implicated in the ‘conspiracy’ the authors believe they have uncovered. At only one point do they stop to ask themselves if they are the victims of a hoax only to conclude that they are not, on the grounds that such a hoax would have to be carried out over many years and was too elaborate to be plausible. It is difficult to believe that many people would agree with their analysis: the sheer implausibility of the information these dubious documents are supposed to contain (for instance, that the Grand Masters of the Prieuré de Sion have included such characters as Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci and Claude Debussy) is such that any careful historian would search for evidence to back up these assertions, but they have been unable to find any whatsoever. The whole thing comes down to trusting the typescript documents.

Nazi occultism

Trevor Ravenscroft (1921-1989) and The Spear of Destiny; text to come…