Reply #124: Glad to see that old rogue Pierre Plantard

[fedsron2us]

getting some credit. I remember seeing him in the original BBC Chronicle documentary about this subject back in the 1970's. One of the producers of that program went on to contribute to the 'Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'. At the time I was quite impressed. Later when I studied the world of Late Antiquity at university I realised that were a wide variety of different beliefs about the humanity or divinity Jesus within the early Church. Plantard had just happened to pick up and embroider upon one of them. There is no doubt that the early Church fathers did actively seek to suppress the literature that suggested that Jesus nature was entirely human. However, they also persecuted those who believed Christ was entirely divine as well as sundry Gnostic and other heretics. Of course their views were often more esoteric and did not possess the sexual frisson of a possible relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, so they were never going to make good copy for a modern writer seeking to make a fast buck out of a credulous public.