The book “Holy Blood – Holy Grail” by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, talks about the blood-line of Jesus, through his wife Mary Magdalene who escaped to Marseilles, France with their children after Jesus’ crucifixion. The story is highly speculative and offended many Christians, especially the Vatican. It does not shock me, and I don’t much care if it really happened like that.

The blood-line is sometimes called “the Red Snake”, extending through history. The author discusses it mainly as a claim to the inheritance of the throne as a king, since Jesus’ ancestry goes back to King David (unless he was fathered directly by God). So Jesus could rightfully claim to be King of the Jews, and his descendants were for a time kings in France, the Merovingian kings, later displaced by Charles Martel and Charlemagne from another royal line. Jesus’ line is said to continue to this day.

But so what? We don’t have kings, hereditary monarchies, any more. The people in the Middle Ages and early modern era were greatly concerned about claims to the throne through blood-lines, sometimes only through the male line (which makes it much simpler). Even today, patriachally oriented men are eager to have sons who would “carryon the family name”. (Cf. Henry VIII getting rid of his first two wives because they did not produce a son.) However, this type of inheritance, because of a claim to something like the throne or a name, is something much less “holy” or significant than the real incredible miracle of biological reproduction.

I tend to think of a blood line biologically as a set of inherited genes. But then a long line of ancestors and descendants dilutes the genetic inheritance very rapidly, in species like ours which reproduce sexually. Even a grandchild shares only 1/8th of its genes with a grandparent. In my perception, there is no “line”, only a tangled network, especially if we do not ignore descent along the female line, which we should not ignore. In any case, Jesus’ genius and significance was in his message, not in his genes.

The author distinguishes the two concerns, the people and institutions concerned with spreading and perpetuating the message, like the Roman Catholic Church and before it the Church fathers, and the people, like Jesus’ family, concerned with inheritance and the blood-line, with its . claims to fame, power and glory. (It means preserving memes rather than genes.) Intermarriages were made with other royal families for political and dynastic reasons. Powerful organizations, like the prieury of Zion and the Knights Templar, Freemasons and Rosicrucians, backed the claims of Jesus’ family, while keeping it as a secret in order to avoid the Inquisition.

I don’t think that Jesus would have been too concerned about such political machinations, though the author thinks otherwise. I think that Jesus would concentrate on the message. In this, strangely enough, I agree with the Vatican, though not its Inquisition.

There is no Red Snake, only a common gene pool. It’s more like a lake rather than like a river. We are all related.