HOLY BLOOD & HOLY GRAIL AND THE SIGN & THE SEAL A Dual Book Review When Sister Colleen Maxwell came to Beijing with her husband Elder Neal Maxwell in 1993 she brought with her a copy of F.A.R.M.S. Update #83 New Light on the Shining Stones of the Jaredites. I had just finished reading a book by English author Graham Hancock called The Sign and the Seal , providing a similar, somewhat speculative treatment of the Ark of the Covenant story. In this review, I will also refer to a third interesting, but speculative, book which appeared while I was in France in 1982 under the French title Sang Real et San Greal (Holy Blood and Holy Grail) maintaining that a secret brotherhood known as the Priory de Sion has through the ages since Christ been trying to establish His posterity as heads of His Kingdom on Earth. Not quite as wild as it sounds when one ploughs through the evidence. And it fits well with LDS doctrine (and surprised me since I thought no one else in the world believed as we do that Christ was married, had children, was legitimate heir to the throne of Israel/Judah, and to the Kingdom of God on Earth). Holy Blood and Holy Grail argues that the Holy Grail legend was a deliberate concoction by the Priory de Sion , based on a punning confusion of Christ's heirs (the Holy Blood, or Sang Real , and the Cup used during the Last Supper to introduce the Sacrament to the disciples (the Holy Grail or San Greal ). The story of Parsifal's search for the Holy Grail was in fact the carefully covered story of the Priory's careful oversight of and attempt to install Christ's blood heirs on the thrones of the world. Indeed, the claim is made that the earliest French king Merovis was such heir -- and that through intermarriage his blood (and Christ's blood) did in fact reign over much of Europe until quite recently in world history. Compare this with early LDS teachings that the Prophet Joseph and many of his associates were heirs to the priesthood through blood lineage and, indeed, direct descendants of Jesus (see also paper on The Rod of Jesse and the Root of Jesse). While living in Paris some years ago, out upstairs neighbors were a young LDS couple who had a considerable library of genealogical books compiled by an LDS scholar tracing the lineage of any number of old Church families to connections with the British, German, French, and Spanish royalty -- all eventuating in the Merovis blood line. Hancock's book puts forward the alternative notion that the Ark of the Covenant was in fact the Holy Grail. I don't think any LDS could accept this. The grail was, most would agree, by tradition the chalice Jesus used during the Last Supper and which Joseph of Arimithea (Jesus' uncle) allegedly used to catch some of the Holy Blood from Christ's side as he hung on the cross. But the Ark was clearly one of the several strange devices described in scripture which seem to have been quasi-machines of a highly advanced type -- possibly created by (or under instructions from) beings of advanced intelligence to provide special services needed by Adam's children at more primitive stages of earth life. Among other such devices may be listed Aaron's rod, which could perform miraculous feats; Jared's shining stones, which lit his sealed barges as they crossed the ocean to the New World; the liahona , which provided directions to Lehi and his followers as they, too, sought the New World, the Urim and Thummim which were used by the prophets of Israel in seeking the will of the Lord -- and which were later used (at least initially) by Joseph Smith in undertaking translation of the Book of Mormon. Referring to the fact that the Ark was lined both inside and out with pure gold and had a five inch thick pure gold lid on top, was carried with dry wood staves, and was always swathed in thick wool and leather, Hancock talks of the "fire" which appeared between the cherubim on the lid of the Ark when it was unswathed and placed in the tabernacle (or, later, the Holy of Holies of the Temple). Hancock also refers to the prohibition on bringing anything metallic near it, and recalls how when an uninstructed priest approached it with a brass vessel "fire" came out of the Ark and consumed him. He suggests this may well have been an electric, or nuclear, process and that perhaps the Stones of the Law contained therein may have been of meteoric origin and much more powerful than ordinary lodestones. Seems many of the peoples of the region commonly worshipped found meteorites as messages from God (the gods). Hancock points out that several individuals, not only Miriam. are recorded as having caught "leprosy" from gazing unguarded upon the Ark, suggesting that their skin may have peeled because of radiation: most became well again after their misdeed. The Ark book seems just as extraordinarily offbeat as the Grail book until one gets into the arguments and evidence. As noted, we Mormons who are also acquainted with the Liahona , the Jaredite light-giving stones, and the Urim and Thummim , have three more extraordinary examples of "machines" which talk, give directions, interpret from one language to another, provide illumination, and give insight into the future. Living in an age of light bulbs, computer screens, nuclear energy, translation programs, radios, TV, holography, space stations, and inter-planetary travel -- and knowing (as the authors of neither book do) that "worlds without number have I created, and the inhabitants thereof [many of whose civilizations are hundreds of thousands if not millions of years older than outs], are sons and daughters to me", we should not be astonished to find that each of these strange devices might be fully understandable in terms of today's science were we to have them before us for examination. And then again, they might still be light years ahead of our understanding. None of this is to say that one should accept either San Greal and Sang Real or The Sign and the Seal whole cloth. But they make a good read and advance some interesting evidence suggesting that things we LDS accept and take for granted are not wholly out of line with what others, including some people with pretty good scholarly credentials, are coming to find not too outrageous to talk about publicly. It seems we LDS have ourselves quit talking publicly about Christ's marriage. And speculation about the origins of Nephi's name, the Jaredite stones, or pre-Columbian use of metals in the New World is now carried out only in esoteric publications like F.A.R.M.S. Updates, not in Tabernacle addresses by General Authorities. Back to the Ark story: Hancock argues that the Ark was removed from the Temple about 650 B.S. (cf. date of Lehi's departure from Jerusalem) to avoid profanation by King Mannaseh, who was introducing the worship of foreign gods (and to escape possible eventual capture by the Babylonians who took all Jewish leaders back to Babylon as slaves shortly afterwards). The Ark was then taken to Elephantine Island on the Nile River (near Aswan) by a group of priests loyal to Yaveh, where they built a new temple. Here, it is maintained, the Ark rested for two hundred years before the arrival of Darius' successor Cambyses. The Jewish colony of Elephantine, well known to history because of the writings and correspondence of its elders with Jerusalem, chose to make common cause with Cambyses when he arrived with his conquering Persian host -- which spared their temple and the Ark -- for a time. But when Cambyses withdrew, the Egyptians, whose own temple had been destroyed, turned on the Jews as traitors and destroyed their temple. Seeing this about to happen, the Jewish priests fled with the Ark further south to the Sudan. The leaders knew enough about the situation back in Jerusalem not to return there, since Josiah was now in power and had banned sacrifice everywhere but in the Temple in Jerusalem (another step in the corruption of Hebrew worship, the initial step having been Solomon's centralization of temple worship in Jerusalem, making common cause with ambitious priests to bring about monopolization of both civil and religious power in the capital city. I personally see these as major elements in the religious apostasy of the time. What would it be like today is LDS people had to travel all the way to SLC from anywhere in the world in order to obtain all blessings?) So the earlier form of Judaism practiced in Elephantine would not have been welcome in Jerusalem. The Elephantine priests would have lost influence, or the Ark, or both. The Lord never commanded all high worship to be centralized in one location for the financial benefit of the priestly class (or king), This was an egregious political take-over of religion in support of a dynasty -- just the sort of thing God warned the people about when he told them kinds were not for Israel. But they insisted. An they got high taxes, wars, and the corruption of religion for political ends. After spending about 100 years at Meroe (still on the Nile) the priests are said to have followed the Atabara river east to its juncture with the Tannizi, and then followed the Tannizi into the highlands of Ethiopia -- where there were already substantial Jewish settlements (both Moses and Solomon had Cushite [Ethiopian] wives, and there'd been substantial trade in gold and ivory north to Palestine and of Mediterranean products south to Cush), There the Ark rested for another 800 years on an island in Lake Tana before being taken to the old capital when Ethiopia was Christianized. Story's getting too long to continue in details, but I remember running into some of the tale when I was writing my MA thesis on the early history of Kenya, an adjoining country. First kings of Ethiopia were both secular war leaders and Christian priests. The first of these, being named Johan, the name title for the kings of Ethiopia became Prester John (Priest John). The tradition of this Christian Kingdom in Africa spread throughout Europe. When Saladin threatened the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, a group of Knights Templar (the Order dedicated to protecting the temple in Jerusalem) were sent south to seek alliance with Prester John. But by the time they arrived, Jerusalem had fallen, the Templars were banned by the Church of Rome, and their power destroyed by Kings of France and England. The Knights discovered, moreover, that Ethiopia was not the Power they'd hoped it was. Indeed, the country was still almost a third Jewish (Falasha), but falling behind European culture year by year. (The Falashas have, by the way, recently been evacuated by airlift to Israel to save them from the Marxist, anti-religious, Ethiopian government which overthrew Haile Selassie, the 350th some odd successor to the first Prester John). At least some of the Crusaders, replenished from time to time by others, stayed on in Ethiopia for another eighty years or so. Hancock's major contribution (as I see it) is to have uncovered crusader crosses in a number of churches dating to the period 1200 A.D. or thereabouts, confirming that European Crusaders had arrived, if not that they'd re-discovered the route of the peregrinations of the Ark of the Covenant, as Hancock believes. He also cites writings of the time saying that "White skinned redheads (or blonds)" participated in the annual parade of the Ark during the period (see below). What could have been told in a hundred pages stretches our to 500 as Hancock details his attempts to get to Ethiopia in the middle of Desert Storm and the Tigray Revolutionary Liberations Army's attempt to overthrow the Haile Mariam government -- which had turned out the Haile Selassie bunch. Hancock finally got there. But he couldn't persuasively establish that the Ark is still there -- though he's convinced that it was there and may yet be. Interesting note: Hancock, who's more than something of a linguist and expert in Middle Eastern languages, tells how Falasha Jews still practice animal sacrifice (all but confirming they arrived in Ethiopia well before Josiah's time) and that they still parade the Ark (or replica thereof) much as Mediterranean Catholics still parade floats carried on the shoulders of confraderies at Easter. He sees this as a throwback to the priests bearing the Ark during the wanderings in the wilderness. And he confirms how they still give the Hallelujah cry -- el, el, el, el, el, el during the process. This is a form of the name of God (Eloi, Allah). Some may have experienced the womenfolk giving a similar call during springtime Fantasias in Morocco or other Arab countries, where the phenomenon is called ululation -- a continuous high whining al, al, al, al, al, al during which lips and voice box are stroked to vary the emission of breath. Fascinating that we Mormons engage in a similar cry to God with our Ale, Ale, Ale -- though briefly and with the restraint befitting our cold-climate heritage.