French Israelism (also called Franco-Israelism) is the French nationalist belief that people of Frankish descent in general, and the Merovingian dynasty in particular, are the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, specifically, the descendants of the Tribe of Benjamin.
One of the earliest scholars who claimed that he could trace the ten lost tribes of Israel to France was the French Huguenot writer, Jacques Abbadie, who fled French Roman Catholic persecution and later settled in London, England. In his 1723 work, The Triumph Of Providence, he wrote:
God opened, as one might say, the tomb of the Ten Tribes by the conversion of the Northern Peoples… Certainly, unless the Ten Tribes have flown into the air, or been plunged into the center of the earth, we must look for them in the North, and in that part of the North, which at the time of Constantine was converted to the Christian faith… The Ten Tribes have since seen conversion into Christian nations, which they are, having thousands of God-fearing ministers in their midst, a people marked by physical possession of the Gospel as servants of God, and reunited with many of their brethren of Judah in the Christian church. This explanation allows us to see the historical fulfillment of the prophetic picture in the Gothic warriors, prepared for conquest, destined for empire, and ancestors of the tribes who inhabit this nation [France].
— Translation from the French by M.F. Bennett, The Servant People. [1]
The claim became one of the foundational elements for the Priory of Sion hoax created by Pierre Plantard and Philippe de Chérisey in the 1960s, and it was fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularized in 1982 by the authors of the speculative nonfiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail , [2] and in 2003 by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code . [3]
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Merovech was the ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty. He was reportedly a king of the Salian Franks, but records of his existence are mixed with legend and myth. The most important written source, Gregory of Tours, recorded that Merovech was said to be descended from Chlodio, a roughly contemporary Frankish warlord who pushed from the Silva Carbonaria in modern central Belgium as far south as the Somme, north of Paris in modern-day France. His supposed descendants, the kings Childeric I and Clovis I, are the first well-attested Merovingians.
British Israelism is the British nationalist, pseudoarchaeological, pseudohistorical and pseudoreligious belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the 16th century, British Israelism was inspired by several 19th century English writings such as John Wilson's 1840 Our Israelitish Origin. From the 1870s onward, numerous independent British Israelite organizations were set up throughout the British Empire as well as in the United States; as of the early 21st century, a number of these organizations are still active. In the United States, the idea gave rise to the Christian Identity movement.
Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or people of the Aryan race and people of kindred blood, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people". It is a racial interpretation of Christianity and is not an organized religion, nor is it affiliated with specific Christian denominations. It emerged from British Israelism in the 1920s and began to take shape during the 1940s-1970s. Today it is independently practiced by individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs.
A Bible conspiracy theory is any conspiracy theory that posits that much of what is believed about the Bible is a deception created to suppress a secret or ancient truth. Some such theories claim that Jesus really had a wife and children, or that a group such as the Priory of Sion has secret information about the true descendants of Jesus; some claim that there was a secret movement to censor books that truly belonged in the Bible, etc.
Daniel Gerhard Brown is an American author best known for his thriller novels, including the Robert Langdon novels Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013), and Origin (2017). His novels are treasure hunts that usually take place over a period of 24 hours. They feature recurring themes of cryptography, art, and conspiracy theories. His books have been translated into 57 languages and, as of 2012, have sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and Inferno, have been adapted into films, while one of them, The Lost Symbol, was adapted into a television show.
Robert Langdon is a fictional character created by author Dan Brown for his Robert Langdon book series: Angels & Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Lost Symbol (2009), Inferno (2013) and Origin (2017). He is a Harvard University professor of Religious Iconology and "symbology".
Throughout history, various groups of people have considered themselves to be the chosen people of a deity, for a particular purpose. The phenomenon of a "chosen people" is well known among the Israelites and Jews, where the term originally referred to the Israelites as being selected by Yahweh to worship only him and to fulfill the mission of proclaiming his truth throughout the world. Some claims of chosenness are based on parallel claims of Israelite ancestry, as is the case for the Christian Identity and Black Hebrew sects—both which claim themselves to be the "true Israel". Others claim that the concept is spiritual, where individuals who genuinely believe in God are considered to be the "true" chosen people. This view is common among most Christian denominations, who historically believed that the church replaced Israel as the people of God.
The Hebrew Bible makes reference to a number of covenants with God (YHWH). These include the Noahic Covenant, which is between God and all living creatures, as well as a number of more specific covenants with Abraham, the whole Israelite people, the Israelite priesthood, and the Davidic lineage of kings. In form and terminology, these covenants echo the kinds of treaty agreements in the surrounding ancient world.
The Bnei Menashe is a community of Indian Jews from various Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups from the border of India and Burma who claim descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel; some of them have adopted Judaism. The community has around 10,000 members.
Michael Baigent was a New Zealand writer who published a number of popular works questioning traditional perceptions of history and the life of Jesus. He is known best as a co-author of the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
The Da Vinci Code, a popular suspense novel by Dan Brown, generated criticism and controversy after its publication in 2003. Many of the complaints centered on the book's speculations and misrepresentations of core aspects of Christianity and the history of the Catholic Church. Additional criticisms were directed toward the book's inaccurate descriptions of European art, history, architecture, and geography.
Richard Harris Leigh was a novelist and short story writer born in New Jersey, United States to a British father and an American mother, who spent most of his life in the UK. Leigh earned a BA from Tufts University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris causes them to become involved in a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.
The Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of the historical Jesus has persisted, possibly to the present time. The claims frequently describe Jesus as having married, often to Mary Magdalene, and as having descendants living in Europe, especially France but also the UK. Differing and contradictory Jesus progeny scenarios, as well as more limited claims that Jesus married and had children, have been proposed in numerous modern books. Some such claims have suggested that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to another location such as France, India or Japan.
Edward Hine was an influential proponent of British Israelism in the 1870s and 1880s, drawing on the earlier work of Richard Brothers (1794) and John Wilson (1840). Hine went as far as to conclude that "It is an utter impossibility for England ever to be defeated. And this is another result arising entirely from the fact of our being Israel."
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail is a book written by Margaret Starbird in 1993, claiming Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married, and that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail.
The Prieuré de Sion, translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organization founded in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that his self-styled order was the latest front for a secret society founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon, on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, under the guise of the historical monastic order of the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As a framework for his grandiose assertion of being both the Great Monarch prophesied by Nostradamus and a Merovingian pretender, Plantard further claimed the Priory of Sion was engaged in a centuries-long benevolent conspiracy to install a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. To Plantard's surprise, all of his claims were fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularised by the authors of the 1982 speculative nonfiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, whose conclusions would later be borrowed by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code.
Margaret Leonard Starbird is the author of seven books arguing for the existence of a secret Christian tradition that held Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, calling it the "Grail heresy", after having set out to discredit the bloodline hypothesis contained in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
Henry Soskin, better known as Henry Lincoln, was a British author, television presenter, scriptwriter, and actor. He co-wrote three Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and — starting in the 1970s — inspired three Chronicle BBC Two documentaries on the alleged mysteries surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château — and, from the 1980s, co-authored and authored a series of books of which The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was the most popular, becoming the inspiration for Dan Brown's 2003 best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. He was the last living person to have written for Doctor Who in the 1960s.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.