Beyond The DaVinci Code: In Search Of The Holy Grail

Yesterday I posted a video about the Holy Grail to a friend's comment and watched it again (for about the 3rd time) myself. It raises the question, is there a Holy Grail and if so, what is it? By now nearly everyone has seen the movie, The DaVinci Code and knows the backstory...that the Grail is in fact the womb of Mary Magdalene which contained the bloodline of Jesus. Fact or fiction? Let's take a two-pronged approach.

First, was the Grail a cup? We know from the Gospels that Jesus said something to the effect: "Take this cup and drink, this is my blood." A very wise man once told me that, "a spiritual man is a practical man." Because this is a spiritual issue, let's take a practical approach. What kind of cup would Jesus be drinking from. Because we know that Jesus was a simple man and not wealthy, the cup was not likely to have been made of gold or silver encrusted with precious or semiprecious stones. What at that point in history did people drink from? I don't actually know, but an educated guess would be earthenware. Probably something similar to terra cotta. What would the likelihood of an earthenware cup surviving 2000 years be? I'm afraid, almost nil. So, although we can assume that there was a cup at the Last Supper, therefore a "Grail," it is almost certainly lost to posterity.

The second approach to the story is the one set forth by Dan Brown in The DaVinci Code. He, among others, asserts that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a child (a girl) and there is a bloodline that exists to today. One point of evidence given is the painting of The Last Supper, by Leonardo DaVinci. In particular, a feminine looking figure sitting at the right hand of Jesus. One fact that jumped out at me (and was apparently lost on our intrepid investigators in the film) was that it was a painting...an artist's interpretation of the Last Supper, not a photograph. Brown apparently based his book on "evidence" provided in another book, Holy Blood- Holy Grail.

Tony Robinson, known in the UK for his TV series The Time Team, set out to investigate the claims, both in Brown's book and in Holy Blood-Holy Grail, as well as the possibility of the Grail being a cup...with some very interesting results.