All adherents in the Rennes-le-Chàteau mystery believe in the “Historical” Jesus Christ. After all, this is what makes the belief in the Jesus Bloodline possible! Ask those very same believers in the Jesus Bloodline what precise date did the Gospels originate and they won't be able to provide the answer!

Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, Tim Wallace-Murphy, Dan Brown, Jean-Michel Pous. They all dance (or danced) to this same tune that was short of this most basic of information.

The contents of The New Testament may start off with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, leaving the Epistles and the Book of Revelation last. But the facts are the exact opposite. It was the Epistles that were written first, with the written Gospels appearing much later. The Gospels were just not referred to by the earliest Christians of the first century.

The German Protestant theologians were the first sceptical researchers of the New Testament during the 19th century. There was no consensus of 100% agreement among them, but they all agreed upon the distinction of “the Christ of faith and the Christ of history”, and they also knew when the Gospels suddenly appeared, out of nowhere, into the pages of history.

The 20th century responded with a special pleading theory – that the first Gospel was Mark first committed to writing in circa 70, and the Gospel of John was the last to be committed to writing in circa 90-100. It must be emphasised that these theories appeared as a response to the sceptical Protestant Theologians of the 19th century, and that they are presented as facts. It is not easy to find when the Gospels first appeared – as in when the Christians first began referring to them and when the Christians first began quoting from the Gospels. This information is only available by reading specialist secular and humanist books – revealing the level of embarrassment of Christians. For example, Bart Ehrman fancies himself as a Neutral Historian totally devoid of any Christian Bias – but even this information isn't found anywhere in any of his books.

The “evidence” of Tacitus is today universally given as proof of the Historical Jesus Christ, contained in his book “The Annals of Rome.” No original copies exist. John Wilson Ross has noted that the “Annals” were unknown in antiquity, with early Christian writers like Tertullian, Lactantius, Sulpicius Severus, Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo not referring to the persecution of Christians by Nero as given by Tacitus (John Wilson Ross, “Tacitus and Bracciolini: The Annals Forged In The XVth Century”, 1878). Another major obstacle to treating Tacitus’ “Annals” as authentic is his designation of Pontius Pilate as a Procurator, when in fact he was a Prefect (the Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41 to 54 AD, changed the title of Prefect to Procurator). Despite all these obstacles, the scholarly consensus is that Tacitus's reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate is both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.

The reference to Jesus Christ crucified by Pontius Pilate in the “Annals” of Tacitus is found in the “Second Medicean Manuscript” dating from the 11th century; in the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, Italy. The authenticity of the passage was challenged by Voltaire (1694-1778), Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet (1736-1794), John Wilson Ross (1818-1887), Polydore Hochart (1831-1916), Leo Wiener (1862-1939), Eugène Bacha (1864-1934) and Thomas Spencer Jerome (1864-1914).

However, the “evidence” of Josephus can be more easily dismissed – because previous copies of his works mentioned the “appearance of the Mother of God” (witnessed in Josephus by Andrew of Crete) and “the appearance of Jesus” (witnessed in Josephus by John of Damascus) – not found in our extant manuscripts of Josephus. There is also the “Slavonic Josephus” that is full of Christian propaganda. The oldest edition of Josephus exists in Greek dating from the 11th century (Ambrosianus 370 [F 128], preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (containing almost all of the second half of the “Antiquities of the Jews”).

The Gospels were only first mentioned by the Christians during the mid-second Century. The fact is that the longer that Christianity existed the longer it gradually evolved and shaped itself into being. I urge everyone everywhere to break the silence of the Christian scholars – and also the silence of the Internet – to find out for themselves the earliest Christian written text that mentions the existence of the Gospels.

The Epistles are the earliest written texts in the New Testament. They do not mention the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist or Mary Magdalene. They mention Peter, but it is to an entirely different Peter that is later mentioned in the Gospels. The treachery of Peter mentioned in the Gospels would have been mentioned by Paul had he known about it.

It could be that the very earliest “Jesus Christ” was simply the personification of the religious beliefs and values of Christianity, later transformed by later Christians into a Demi-God Incarnated into our world like some Alien from Outer Space (to one Christian sect in particular!).

This version of Jesus Christ was the exact opposite of the “Jesus Bloodline” – why else would an early Church Father proclaim that every time a woman menstruated that she was guilty of sin? It just doesn't fit!

Quoting I Corinthians 15:45: “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.”

This is all a far cry from “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” and the “Jesus Bloodline”. This is a far cry from Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Tim Wallace-Murphy, Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” – and the ramblings of Jean-Michel Pous.