"Jesus Christ - the genealogy code"?

May 2, 2005 6:25 PM

Echoes of DaVinci code? A scholar in Wales found (rediscovered?) a 400+ year old folio at Llandovery College in Wales that may shed light further light on the genealogy of Christ. Whether a hoax or not, 'tis always interesting what you may find hiding in the stacks when you're just perusing things. [via original article at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter]
posted by PeteyStock (16 comments total)

Ok, what am I missing? What insight does a book written 400 years ago have into the life of someone of 2000 years ago?

OT: Is the jury still out as to whether Christ actually existed?
posted by jikel_morten at 6:51 PM on May 2, 2005

Probably better written than TDC, at any rate.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:16 PM on May 2, 2005

jikel_morten writes " OT: Is the jury still out as to whether Christ actually existed?"

Yep.

Okay, I've read the article twice and don't really see how this is anything other than a smaller version of a Strong's Concordance.

One [section] is about, "the names, people and empires recorded in the old and New Testaments". The other is titled "biographical reference of old Bible stories". It is an alphabetical way to find a seemingly endless list of religious characters. Mr Hogan said, "It has details on everybody in the Bible, who they were married to where they came from and their family trees.

Mmmhmm. Sounds like a concordance to me. Or, if not, fabrication 1500 years after the fact.
posted by heatherann at 7:28 PM on May 2, 2005

jikel_morten: I was about to ask the same question.

The debate over the historicity of Christ was first brought to my attention when I was reading Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Up until that point, I had taken the existence of a historical Jesus as a given.

Most of what Barker has to say on the subject is summed up in this Wikipedia article, albeit in less detail.

My guess is that the jury will be out for a long, long time...at least until they can safely return without being shot.
posted by unsupervised at 7:28 PM on May 2, 2005

Maybe we'll finally find out what the "H." stands for.
posted by sharksandwich at 7:30 PM on May 2, 2005

Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 9:55 AM on May 3, 2005

"I knew we had some books squirrelled away so I went to see.
Their books are "nuts?"
posted by thomcatspike at 10:05 AM on May 3, 2005

I just want to know how to get chicks to "...minister into [me], of their substances."
posted by JeffK at 10:26 AM on May 3, 2005

sharksandwich: "Maybe we'll finally find out what the "H." stands for."

Haploid.
posted by Plutor at 10:26 AM on May 3, 2005

Come to Wales: We're Credulous as Hell
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:39 AM on May 3, 2005

Ugh. The Da Vinci code comparison is laying it on a little thick. But finding a new 400-year-old manuscript is pretty cool. It might not tell you The Ultimate Truth about Jesus, but it'll still give you some insights into how people thought about religion 400 years ago, and that's nice too.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:49 AM on May 3, 2005

There's a joke in here somewhere with the punchline "Llandovery Baptist."
posted by jack_mo at 11:22 AM on May 3, 2005

You can find genealogies of Jesus in any Bible, making it one of the worst kept secrets in the world. You know like the genealogies you find at the beginning of Matthew and Luke? It will be an early modern version of his ancestry, probably expanded a bit from the Bible by religious tradition. As for Mary Magdalene being one of the women who ministered to him from her substance, again this is a boringly biblical concept. And if every scoring out in a 17th century manuscript shows that there is a conspiracy going on, then why, I must have seen thousands of them in my time as an early modern manuscripts curator. Who knew there were so many conspiracies as opposed to sloppy scribes and authors changing their minds? It is, by the sounds of it, a nice 16th-17th manuscript which might tell us something about early modern religious thought and nothing whatsoever new or of any significance about Jesus.

What this article illustrates is that we've got to a state of such moronic illiteracy in some quarters of the media about basic Christian religious history and culture that they don't know what is in the Bible any more - not even basic stuff like like large chunks of the gospels. Hence they can't understand texts and manuscripts coming the predominantly Christian culture of 400 years ago.
posted by Flitcraft at 11:50 AM on May 3, 2005

Good point Flitcraft. Every xmas supermarket shelves bulge with newsmagazine stories ("Who was Jesus") posed as if centuries-old theology was discovered just last week.

Now, for the real news on Jesus.
posted by telstar at 12:42 PM on May 3, 2005

Good news, everybody!
posted by cosmonaught at 1:26 PM on May 3, 2005

Maybe we'll finally find out what the "H." stands for.

It's Hallowed. Hallowed be thy name.
posted by Specklet at 2:40 PM on May 3, 2005