Graham Phillips: The Marian conspiracy

By PHILIP CULBERTSON*

The word "fallacy" derives from the Latin fallere, "to deceive" (intentionally or unintentionally). A logical fallacy is a reasoning process by which one comes to an erroneous conclusion. There are "sets" within the larger field of logical fallacies, one being "Fallacies of Explanation". And within that set, there is a subset called "Untestability".

A classic example of untestability is the claim, "I won Lotto because my psychic aura made me win."

To give another example, the premise of this book is that "the Virgin Mary was buried in Wales, because a stone was found there bearing the mark of Virgo; however, all other tangible evidence for that fact has disappeared."

The New Testament gospels tell us precious little about the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Her life before the birth of Christ, and after his Crucifixion, is shrouded in mystery.

Conflicting traditions confound the mystery further. On the one hand, there are church-enshrouded tombs in Jerusalem and Ephesus that purport to be her burial place. On the other hand, as of 1950, her bodily Assumption into heaven was declared Catholic dogma by Pope Pius XII, thereby making her tombs superfluous.

On the one hand, the gospels declare that Jesus was the firstborn of Mary's several children. On the other hand, since the fourth century the Church has taught that Mary was "ever-virgin".

Phillips sets out to unravel these enigmas (his website describes him as an "an investigator of unsolved mysteries"), challenged by an observation from a Vatican archaeologist in the 1950s that "The Holy Mother was the Holy Grail" - in other words, the body of Mary was the sacred vessel that contained the holy blood of Christ.

Thus the classic quest for the Holy Grail should be redefined as a search for the burial place of Mary, though Phillips argues that this was neither in Jerusalem nor Ephesus, but in Wales. And here the logical fallacies begin.

Flying in the face of accepted New Testament scholarship, Phillips argues that Mary was one of the several wives of Herod's son Antipater, who was Jesus' biological father.

When Antipater was framed for the death of his father, by his aunt Salome, Mary fled to Nazareth where she came under the protection of an older man named Joseph. After the Crucifixion, she fled again, protected by her son, Jesus' younger brother, Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph took her to the island of Anglesey, off Wales, where she died in 52 AD, aged about 75.

Biblical scholars have long questioned the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. Phillips makes a similar distinction, between the Mary of history (though his history is unorthodox, to say the least), and the Mary of faith, the latter an intentional confusion with Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, and the symbol of chastity and virginity.

Phillips' imaginative argument is based on coincidence and inference, a literal reading of biblical texts, various early Church documents whose authenticity is in doubt, medieval romances, will-o'-the-wisps and cobwebs, and a suspicious desire to make the "facts" fit his prior conclusion.

He even cites William Blake as one of his historical proofs: "And was the Holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?" is interpreted as a reference to the Virgin Grail-Bearer's ultimate resting-place.

Phillips' work is readable on more than one level. As a travel guide, it held my interest well. Tourists to Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Capernaum, Qumran, Caesarea, Ephesus, Walsingham, Widecombe, Glastonbury, Shropshire, or Llanerchymedd on the Isle of Anglesey could find parts of this book fascinating in its detail and colourful description.

That aside, I find myself more convinced by the comment of a friend in the book trade: "This is one of those things that hits the shelves and dies a thousand deaths."

Macmillan

$27.95

* Philip Culbertson is the director of pastoral studies at St John's Theological College, Auckland.