Lynn Picknett - The Secret History of Lucifer - And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

Why did Leonardo hate the Holy family so much that he risked a heretic's terrible death by incorporating outrageous and blasphemous symbols in his works? Why did he portray little Jesus apparently pulling the ears off the lamb that represented the Baptist, and depict Jesus' limb cutting across its vulnerable neck? And then there is the disciple in the Last Supper who is thrusting the John gesture into Christ's oblivious face as if hissing `Remember John'

Perhaps there is a clue in one of the passages excised from St Mark's Gospel, which resurfaced in the innocent Clement's letter found at Mar Saba. It is the one that seems to indicate the identity of Jesus' female Beloved: `And the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.'

However, there may well be a second, considerably more significant deduction to be discerned in those three lines. `Salome' is mentioned. Jesus is known to have had a female disciple of that name: indeed in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas she appears in a bizarre little scene in which she and Jesus exchange religious ideas while both lying with some intimacy on her couch.'05 Her name also crops up in the list of female disciples in the New Testament, but only once.

Of course there is another Salome connected with biblical events, although contrary to popular opinion she remains resolutely anonymous in the Gospels. In fact, Herod's step-daughter who dances the dance of the seven veils and demands the Baptist's head is only named in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews - which is strange, for if Josephus knew her identity, the Gospel writers must also have known it. Yet for some reason they not only omit to mention her name, but the redactors (or editors) of the New Testament thought to remove the otherwise innocent enough verse that ended up in Professor Morton Smith's hands at Mar Saba in which she is named as part of Jesus' inner circle, a friend of his mother and the Magdalene. But why was Salome's very identity deemed so potentially disastrous to the Christian cause as to be edited out of the New Testament?

Perhaps a resonance is found in her legendary (but sadly nonbiblical) Dance of the Seven Veils. As Barbara Walker points out, ` ... the Dance of the Seven Veils was an integral part of the sacred drama, depicting the death of the surrogate-king, his descent into the underworld, and his retrieval by the Goddess, who removed one of her seven garments at each of the seven underworld gates.' 106 This association with the sacred seven is repeated in Mary Magdalene's `seven devils', allegedly cast out of her by Jesus - and which the Gospel writers are keen to mention at any given opportunity. But we have seen how they, and the male disciples, had no idea about the significance of either the anointing or the anointer, and so the sacred drama, once again, becomes garbled and dismissively sexist. Because it involves female power, the sacred seven is transmuted into either a strip-tease or possession by demons. Jesus understood, but when did the likes of Saint Peter ever let their Master's wishes get in the way of their own god-making ambitions?

However, the concept of the ritual killing of John begs several key questions, the answers to which, once again, suggest a shocking reversal of what Christians consider good and evil. Was John himself involved to the extent that he knew the nature of his role, and his inevitable end? If so, did he accept this unenviable destiny?

We have seen how scholars now suggest that the biblical scene where the Baptist falls ingratiatingly at Jesus' feet, hailing him as `the Lamb of God' is unlikely to have happened because the two men were known to have been rivals. As the New Testament is essentially propaganda on behalf of the Jesus cult, obviously they would want to misrepresent John as the submissive, inferior sect leader - no matter how dignified and superior he might actually have been. Yet there is another, perhaps equally valid, interpretation.

In this hypothetical scenario John does fall at Christ's feet to acknowledge him as `the one who is to come' - a phrase as ambiguous as our modern equivalent, meaning either the prophesied one or one who is to follow as John's own successor. Of all his thousands of followers, the Baptist singles out Jesus Christ as the one who will carry on his work among both Jews and gentiles, perhaps running the international organization from the old headquarters in Alexandria, in Egypt. He baptizes the younger man to set the seal on the beginning of his mission, knowing that the Magdalene will similarly mark out the moment when the end is nigh by anointing him as Christ. In this scenario perhaps the older man deliberately provokes Herod in some way in order to get himself locked up and ritually slain at the hands of the ruling family, or perhaps Salome simply arranges it all. But then something happens. Something shocking and traumatic.

While in jail, John suddenly seems to have changed his mind about Jesus, sending a message out saying, `Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?'107 Significantly, however, he seems to have been inspired to harbour such doubts by something he had heard about Jesus' actions, for his words are preceded by `Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Jesus, he sent two of his disciples [to ask Jesus] ...'108 It is immediately after this - and in response to it - that Jesus stresses his superiority to the Baptist, saying: `What went ye out into the wilderness to see? ...109 A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet . . .' And it is then that he takes that sly dig at John as noted above, the almost incredible direct insult of `Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ...' 10 As we have seen, `born of women' was, and is, a well-worn MiddleEastern insult, meaning fatherless, or `bastard' - in both senses of the word, as in the modern British use. With the old prophet in jail, the last sacred king about to be slaughtered, was the successor taking the golden opportunity to insult and demean him? Was Jesus making John the Baptist a laughing stock? We have also seen how Christ gibed about not putting new wine in old bottles - as bottles were made of animal skins such as the Baptist was famously known to wear, this is another crack at his expense. So was John languishing in jail, about to meet his pre-planned demise, with the sudden fatal certainty that he had chosen the wrong successor? As we will see, his chosen successor was very different from Jesus Christ...

There are many other questions, most of them deeply disturbing. What, or whom, did Salome really want John's head for? It seems that the old prophet's death was by no means the end of him, and even his physical remains were to suffer a chequered history.

Of course it is enormously difficult to piece together the dramas of 2,000 years ago, but certain aspects of John's death still raise suspicions. He was a political prisoner of great status, yet apparently he was executed on the whim of a stripper who specifically asked for his head. As beheading was not a common method of execution in Judaea - the Jews tended to stone criminals and outlaws whereas the Romans employed the considerably crueller method of crucifixion - there is a distinct sense of ritual to the Baptist's death. For what purpose, or for whom, did Salome really want John's head?

After John's death, Jesus' mission began in earnest, but as his fame as a healer and exorcist spread, King Herod was afraid that he was possessed by the spirit of John, saying `... John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him'."' Bizarrely and shockingly, Herod may have had a point - at least as far as Jesus' own beliefs were concerned. For as biblical scholar Carl Kraeling wrote in the 1950s, `John's detractors used the occasion of his death to develop the suggestion that his disem bodied spirit was serving Jesus as the instrument for the performance of works of black magic, itself no small concession to John's power.' 12