I read Holy Blood/Holy Grail long before Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code came out and I thought it was a fasinating read. I was saddened to hear about Richard Leigh's Death. I put this thread here only because it may very well strike up a conversation of a religious/spiritual nature. If not, oh well. Either way, it was a great book by a couple of great authors.


Holy Blood / Holy Grail Author Dies
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - Richard Leigh, the writer of alternative history who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism over themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code," has died, his agent said Friday. He was 64.

U.S.-born Leigh, who had lived in Britain for three decades, died in London on Nov. 21 of causes related to a heart condition, the Jonathan Clowes Agency said.

Leigh was co-author of "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," a work of speculative nonfiction that claimed Jesus Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline continues to this day.

A best-seller on its release in 1982, the book gained new readers after Brown's thriller, which explores similar themes and has sold more than 40 million copies, was released in 2003.

Leigh and co-author Michael Baigent sued Brown's publisher Random House, claiming "The Da Vinci Code" "appropriated the architecture" of their book. A third "Holy Blood" author, Henry Lincoln, did not join the lawsuit.

The authors made a striking pair during the lengthy High Court hearing — Baigent professorial in a suit and tidy gray hair, Leigh sporting a leather jacket and thick sideburns.

In April 2006, High Court judge Peter Smith threw out the claim, saying the ideas in question were too general to be protected by copyright.

The prominent court case sent "Holy Blood" back up the best-seller lists, but Baigent and Leigh were left with a bill estimated at almost 3 million pounds (US$6.2 million; €4.2 million) after the judge ordered them to pay 85 percent of Random House's legal costs.

"We lost on the letter of the law. I think we won on the spirit of the law; to that extent we feel vindicated," Leigh said after the verdict.

That was an optimistic assessment. The judge harshly criticized the claimants, calling Baigent "a poor witness" and saying, "I am not sure what Mr. Leigh thought was the purpose of his evidence."

An attempt to appeal the ruling was rejected earlier this year.

Leigh, born in New Jersey in 1943 to a British father and Austrian mother, attended Tufts University in Boston, the University of Chicago and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a university lecturer in the United States and Canada before settling in Britain.

In the mid-1970s he met Lincoln and Baigent, and the trio discovered a shared interest in the Medieval order known as the Knights Templar. They developed a thesis linking the knights with the Merovingian dynasty allegedly descended from Jesus.

Baigent and Leigh collaborated on several other books, including "Holy Blood" sequel "The Messianic Legacy"; "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception," which alleged a Roman Catholic conspiracy to cover up the scrolls; and "Secret Germany," about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Leigh's first love was fiction, and he published a book of stories, "Erceldoune and other Stories," and the semi-autobiographical novel "Grey Magic."

He never married. A funeral was held Wednesday.

The history of The Knights Templars and Knights Hospitalars is the most amazing story of them all. Having studied Crusades in Oxford as part of my degree course I could tell you that this story is one of the most amazing things I have ever read. Specially the sudden disappearance of them within a short span of time when they fell out of favour of the King of France.

Regards

Bob

I can't believe he was unsuccessful in the plagiarism case. It seems pretty clear to me.

Indeed!

Ok - I'll claim ignorance. I didn't know there was pre-non fiction book on which the DaVinci Code was based. I guess that's another one I have to add to my "to read" list.

I wonder - if the claim that Jesus was God and was born through intervention - in other words, the virgin birth, wouldn't it be impossible for him to reproduce - seeing that Mary could only have provided half of the DNA required reproduction?.!

Actually there have been studies in which a female egg is forced to divide and begin development. What the reasearch found is that woman can indeed bear children without a male, but the childres will all be female.

Since the 'holy spirit' had no DNA to contribute, how did Jesus end up male in the first place?

Of course this all leads to the question, if God wanted this 'virgin birth' to be more believable, do you think that Jesus should have been a female? After all, at least that would back the reasearch and might be considered 'spontaneous' generation.

I know silly questions - after all, if a population is to be ruled by men, they needed to create a male god. At least that makes sense.

One concept is that the Holy Spirit is the femenine aspect of the Godhead and was in fact the "mother" of Jesus. In fact a book within the Nag Hammadi Library (I believe it's the book of james) says that Jesus himself calls himself a child of the Holy Spirit. Thus The Father God and The Mother Goddess (The Holy Spirit) created Jesus and the virgin Mary was merely the vessel. As for the specifics of the DNA... God created DNA... couldn't he and his consort, the Holy Spirit, come together within the womb of a woman and create their own human child if they so wanted?

Another concept (backed up by the Nag Hammadi Libray as well) is that Jesus was actually androgynous.

Iv always had a hard time with Jesus just hanging with men all the time. It would make much more sense if he was androgynous. Not that that necessarily relates to sexual preference, but I think it does make it more vague.

Magik then? For even Adam was made of clay or dirt or something tangible. DNA is tangible, the best guess is that God is not. So why bother taking the whole 'birth' route, why not simply use the Magik and appear in human form?

Not meant to 'challenge', simply taking a logical point of view.

Or make Joseph the one that is pregnant and has the baby Jesus. Now that would stand out much more like a miracle.

Don't be rediculous - then we'd all have to be fundies

perish the thought!