Sunday, February 06, 2005
HERE WE GO AGAIN...
An interview at Beliefnet:
Is the history of the Knights Templar disputed?
Oh, yes it is. There are two totally different views on this. One is that it was founded by devout Catholics to defend the faith—a view that I’m afraid we would dispute quite vigorously. The other is the view we’ve just given you, that it was founded for heretical reasons, by families trying to reclaim their patrimony--which was in their view the Holy Land, because they claimed descent from the high priesthood of Jerusalem.
Tell me about this family trying to keep its patrimony.
It wasn’t one family--it was a series of them. There were 24 hereditary high priests in the temple of Jerusalem, and after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 they scattered throughout Europe and the Far East. Their descendents kept in touch and only married within that group of families—keeping the bloodline pure and passing down their teaching in secret. Now, they knew that Jesus wasn’t God and that he had taught a form of spirituality which was totally in conformity with Judaic tradition and with the Egyptian tradition that preceded it.
How does that story connect with Gnosticism?
These families were Gnostics. The church required you to believe in a set of fixed dogma and accept it as fact. It said that if you are not a good boy down here then you’ll burn in hell for eternity; or you could conform to church belief and join the feathered choir in heaven. The Gnostic is a different animal. He follows a teacher who teaches an ascending path of initiation, whereby more and more is revealed until ultimately you attain union with God. Examples would be Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Egyptians or the Jewish Kabbalists. And the families we’re talking about were following something very closely akin to the Kabbalah and the Egyptian tradition.
You've heard the story before if you've read The Da Vinci Code or Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Naturally the authors fail to cite any authoritative source for their claims.
Sigh. I guess the money tree is just too good to resist.
