The Davinci Code

[Aenlic]

I didn't ask them as questions, my friend. I asked them rhetorically, to make a point about many other interesting aspects to the story without needing to give credence to the hoax perpetrated by Plantard et. al. which muddied the waters. I didn't mean to imply mystery, just interest.

As to your specific points. The number of Templars who came forward for clemency, were arrested, or were known to have fled does not come anywhere close to matching the known numbers of Templars in the very precise and, for the time, amazingly accurate financial records kept by the Templars themselves. The whole thing was mostly due to Philip's greed. And yet, after he "got his hands on" the Templar possessions, his debts didn't decrease in the least. There is no record that he ever acquired the Templar treasury. A treasury known to have been larger than that of any royal house in Europe. The Templars kept meticulous financial records. They began what amounted to the first international banking system. And the vast majority of that wealth is gone. No one acquired it. Philip certainly didn't. Where did it go? The pensions of some doesn't even make a dent in the monies we're talking about here.

The Templars didn't just quietly disappear and cease to exist as an organization. The idea that they did is ludicrous. The Nazi party didn't cease to exist after WWII, either - except in official name. Read up on the Odessa organization and what happened in South America after WWII. At one point, Uruguay was controlled by ex-Nazi Germans in all but name. Large, incredibly powerful organizations don't just cease to exist because someone outlaws them, a trial is held and a few of them are tried while the rest go free. It doesn't work that way.

Yes, the Masons tried to link themselves to the Templars. So did the Rosicrucians, the fin de siecle occultists, and many more. That doesn't detract from the fact that only 200 years after the official end of the Templars, an organization appeared with remarkable symbolic similarities in the one place in Europe in which the papal decree outlawing the Templars wasn't promulgated. And, by the way, Freemasons and Masons aren't the same thing. And in Portugal, where the Templars were found innocent by an ecclesiastical court, they merely changed their name under the auspices of King Dinis and continued on as the Order of Christ.

As for Mary and Jesus, you ignored my point about early Christian writers accepting the Jesus being married as fact. If you want to argue about it, argue it with Hippolytus and Origen and more. It wasn't until Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr in the 2nd Century took great exception to the concept that it became unacceptable to write about Jesus as married. It wasn't just the Nag Hammadi Gnostic manuscripts which talk about Jesus being married. It was early leaders of the Roman church like Hippolytus and Origen also. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts are contemporary with those two, which brings the later anti-female writings of Justin and Clement into question more than the writings of Hippolytus and Origen.

There are theological ties between the Cathars and Bogomils, certainly. It was Christian writers who tried to tie them together completely because of similarities of belief. Both had certain Gnostic similarities. So did the Manichaeans and Paulicians before them. Your point? Does the fact that Cathars were influenced by the earlier Bogomils who were influenced by the earlier Paulicians who were influenced by Manichaeists who were influenced by the even earlier Mandaeanists who were almost certainly Gnostics have anything to do with arguing my point? The connection seems rather to support my point, doesn't it? The connection between Cathars and Gnosticism?

I find those who dismiss things too easily just as credulous as those who believe things too easily. It's nice that you've read 11 books on the subject. I suspect we've both read them. When you read books dismissing questions, take close heed to the agenda of the writer; just as you would to the agenda of someone asking the questions.