Pilrig wrote:
Rex Deus - still haven't got round to reading it.
Here's a heads up for you mate...
2000 saw the publication of this new ‘startlingly original’ book, entitled
Rex Deus: Was Jesus Christ the founder of a dynasty that is still with us today? According to the authors Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmans, and Tim Wallace-Murphy, the book supposedly contained an ‘explosive revelation’ ‘that could rock the Christian Church to its foundations’ and expose ‘a conspiracy that spans the centuries involving a sacred bloodline’! The lucid reader might note that a centuries old conspiracy supposedly involving a sacred bloodline that could rock ‘the Church’ to its foundations was already old news in 2000. Perhaps Hopkins, Simmans, and Wallace-Murphy hoped people had simply forgotten about
Holy Blood, Holy Grail?! After all it had been written almost two decades earlier.
Wallace-Murphy, Hopkins, and Simmans simply go over the same ground as that covered nearly two decades before in
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but simplify the claims for people who wouldn’t normally read a weighty ‘non-fiction’ book. However they refuse to accept the claims of Pierre Plantard and his Priory of Sion, and condemn Baigent, Lincoln and Leigh for being foolish enough to do so. Instead Hopkins, Simmans, and Wallace-Murphy accept the claims of ‘Michael’, a ‘
rational, sane and totally sincere’ ‘
middle-aged man’ that Wallace-Murphy claims he supposedly met after a Saunière Society lecture. ‘Michael’ stated that he and others were, through Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, descended from the Jewish Davidic and Hasmonean royal dynasty and the twenty-four High-Priests of the Temple of Solomon. The hidden dynasty called itself the Rex Deus. The knowledge of this secret dynasty had been passed on ‘
from father to selected son or daughter’ since biblical times:
Quote:
‘When his father first broached the subject of Rex Deus, Michael was in his mid-teens and was therefore capable of understanding the broader terms of the story he was to hear and, more importantly, was of an age when an oath of secrecy would have some meaning. After taking the oath he heard, for the very first time, the story that [Hopkins, Simmans, and Wallace-Murphy] are now about to tell. He was informed that appropriate documentation in the form of family genealogies was hidden in a secret drawer in an old family bureau and that after his father’s death it would be Michael’s sacred duty to keep the genealogies up to date and to pass on the secret to the most suitable of his children. He was also to prepare himself and his chosen child to act in collaboration with other members of the Rex Deus families when asked to do so. His obedience to their requests was to be total and unquestioning. All this under an oath of secrecy, within which the penalty for transgression would be death. This was an enormous burden to lay on the shoulders of one so young. Sadly, Michael’s father died suddenly some years later and by the time he returned to the family home he found that the bureau and all it contained had been appropriated by a brother. Bound by his oath of secrecy, he could never explain why he wanted it back and, despite his best efforts, he has not seen that piece of furniture nor its contents from that day to this and he has reason to believe that his brother sold the bureau, an antique of some value, blissfully unaware of its contents’
Is it just me, or does this tale told by ‘Michael’ about the ‘lost genealogies’ seem utterly preposterous? This supposed descendent of Jesus Christ couldn’t think of anyway at all to get back ‘priceless genealogies’ that ‘proved’ this incredible bloodline, and instead let his ‘brother’ sell the cabinet in which the ‘genealogies’ were ‘hidden’. It beggars belief that any individual, much less three individuals, could believe such nonsensical drivel. A cursory glance at even those few sentences from Rex Deus reproduced here would seem to make it patently obvious that it is all complete fantasy. The knowledge of this secret dynasty was supposedly passed on ‘from father to selected son or daughter’ since biblical times. If the knowledge of the supposed ‘sacred bloodline of the Rex Deus’ was passed on to select son or daughter then the correct sequence would be ‘from father or mother to select son or daughter’. This may seem like a minor quibble but these are the type of mistakes that fantasists commonly make simply because the fantasy is not based on fact! ‘Michael’ also supposedly broke his sworn oath of secrecy ‘may his heart be torn out or may his throat be cut’ by spilling the beans about the so-called Rex Deus to Hopkins, Simmans, and Wallace-Murphy, yet couldn’t get back his supposedly priceless genealogies because he was ‘bound by his oath of secrecy’.

Regards,
Spartacus