1970

William E. Phipps publishes Was Jesus Married? The Distortion of Sexuality in the Christian Tradition.

1971

Shaft 10-X

 Dan Blankenship lowers a camera into a new shaft (10-X) on Oak Island and captures pictures of wooden chests, tools, and possibly a human head and hand.  The video reveals a cavern 12x18x7 feet but it is too dangerous to send divers.  Various attempts to reach the cavern by other means fail. 

George Williams University Professor of Religion Charles Davis (dies 1999) publishes an article called Was Jesus Married? based on the Gospel of Phillip.
Robert Charroux publishes One Hundred Thousand Years of Man’s Unknown History.

1972

Desmond Seward

 Pierre Plantard takes on the name de Saint-Clair, claiming title of the Count of Saint Clair, an area northwest of Paris.

In February, based on de Sède’s 1967 book, Le Trésor Maudit, producer Henry Lincoln (a.k.a. Henry Soskin, born 1930), produces The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem for BBC Chronicle, the first of three documentaries on Rennes-le-Château. 

In October, Mathieu Paoli (real name Ludwig Scheswig) produces a series of radio programs in Geneva on the Prieuré de Sion’s ambitions to restore the Merovingians to power in France. 

Desmond Seward publishes The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders.

Rupert Furneaux publishes The Money Pit Mystery about Oak Island.

1973

In February, Mathieu Paoli publishes Les Dessous d’une ambition Politique (a.k.a. Behind the Scenes of a Political Ambition), again on the Prieuré de Sion’s political ambitions.  After this point, he disappears.

 Gérard de Sède publishes his most unusual book yet, La Race Fabuleuse (a.k.a. The Fabulous Race:  Extraterrestrials and Merovingian Mythology, claiming the Merovingians descended from alien visitors.

Morton Smith publishes The Secret Gospel, proposing that the sections of the Gospel of Mark he discovered in 1958 were deleted by Bishop Clement of Alexandria because they did not match his orthodox beliefs.  Bishop Clement was indeed a consummate spin-doctor, writing: “For, even if they should say something true, one who loves the Truth should not, even so, agree with them.  For not all true things are the Truth; nor should that truth which seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith.”

1974

Henry Lincoln (born 1930) produces The Priest, The Painter, and the Devil, his second BBC program on Rennes-le-Château, featuring Professor Christopher Cornford, formerly of the Royal College of Art discussing Poussin’s painting and pentagonal geometry.

Australian Donovan Joyce (1910-1980) publishes The Jesus Scroll, a dubious account of his encounter with a scroll telling that Jesus survived the crucifixion and lived until he was in his 80’s.

Hugh Schonfield publishes The Jesus Party, a sequel to The Passover Plot.

René Descadeillas publishes Mythologie du Trésor de Rennes: Histoire Veritable de L'Abbé Saunière, Curé de Rennes-Le-Château (a.k.a. Mythology of the Treasure at Rennes:  The True History of Father Saunière, Priest of Rennes-Le-Château), concluding that Abbè Bérenger Saunière got his wealth not from mysterious sources but simply from selling indulgences.

1975

 Gérard de Sède responds to René Descadeillas that indulgences would have never generated enough funds for all that Saunière built and purchased.

1976

Rudolf Bultmann

 Death of Rudolf Bultmann (born 1884), Professor of New Testament studies at Marburg University who pioneered the “form-criticism” method of analyzing the gospels. “I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, and are moreover fragmentary and often legendary.”

 According to the International Herald-Tribune, monks at the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia discover eight missing pages from the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete Bible in existence. 

1977

Andreas Faber-Kaiser

 David Tobias pays 125,000 Canadian dollars for additional land on Oak Island.

 Death of Sir Anthony Hugh Francis Harry St. Clair-Erskine, 6th Earl of Rosslyn (born 1917).  His son Peter becomes the 7^th Earl.

 Pope Paul VI re-asserts excluding women from the priesthood “because our Lord was a man.”

Gérard de Sède publishes Signe Rose + Croix:  The Enigma of Rennes-le-Chateau.

Andreas Faber-Kaiser (1944-1994) publishes Jesus Died in Kashmir.

1978

 
Malcolm Barber

James M. Robinson

Pope John Paul I

Death of Deodat Roche, born 1877, last of the neo-Cathars in Arques, France.  Roche was an expert on spiritual history and tried but failed to re-establish the Cathari.

An “International Conference on the Deliverance of Jesus from the Cross” is held in London.

 Pope Paul VI dies and is succeeded by John Paul I (born 1912).

 On September 28, Pope John Paul I dies after a reign of only one month and three days. 

Malcolm Barber publishes The Trial of the Templars about Templar suppression in France.

Morton Smith publishes Jesus the Magician, explaining Jesus' "miracles" as illusions he would have learned as a young man in the mystery schools of Egypt.

James M. Robinson publishes The Nag Hammadi Library, the English translation of Gnostic scrolls discovered in 1945 outside the Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi.   A common theme in this collection is the Gnostic belief that Heaven and Hell are internal states, not some places beyond Earth, or requiring a savior.

D’Arcy O’Connor publishes The Money Pit: The Story of Oak Island.

William Crooker publishes The Oak Island Quest.

 According to the National Geographic’s The Gospel of Judas, a farmer discovers a leather-bound codex in Egypt’s desert.  He sells it to an antiquities dealer named Hanna.

1979

Jean-Luc Chaumeil

Hans Kung

Edward Schillebeeckx

 The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith excommunicates Catholic Hans Kung (born 1928) for his book Infallible? An Inquiry which questions the absolute authority of the Pope on spiritual matters.   Pope John Paul II (born 1920) forbids Kung to publish as a Catholic theologian. Kung responds, “I have been condemned by a pontiff who has rejected my theology without ever having read one of my books and who has always refused to see me.  The truth is that Rome is not waiting for dialogue but for submission.”

French journalist Jean-Luc Chaumeil (born 1944) publishes Le Trésor du Triangle d’Or where   Philippe de Chérisey confesses he, Gérard de Sède, and Pierre Plantard invented the Saunière parchments. 

Henry Lincoln with help from Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent produces The Shadow of the Templars, his third BBC documentary.  Lincoln interviews Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair, alleged Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion; implies Templars at Bezu were the only ones to escape in 1307; establishes a link between the pentagonal Earth-centered orbit of Venus and castles around Rennes-le-Château; and shows the Church of Notre Dame de France in London containing a crucifixion mural painted by Jean Cocteau, alleged Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion before Plantard.

 According to Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair declares to the authors that the Prieuré de Sion holds a relic of the Temple of Jerusalem and will return it to the Holy Land at the right time.

 Jean Harris and her husband discover on their property the remains of what is later claimed by author Michael Bradley as a 14th century Templar castle at New Ross in Nova Scotia.

 In December, Edward Schillebeeckx (born 1914), a Belgian Catholic of the University of Nijmegen, is called before the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on charges of denying Jesus’ divinity.   Schillebeeckx holds the New Testament is not factual history but simply people’s expression of their beliefs in Jesus.

1980

 During a salvage dig in the Armon Hanatziv (Talpiot) area of Jerusalem, workers discover a family tomb containing individual ossuaries with the following names:  Jesus, son of Joseph;, Mary; Joseph; Jude (one of Jesus’ brothers); and Mary (one of Jesus’ sisters).   The artifacts are put into storage until 1996.

 According to the National Geographic’s The Gospel of Judas, the codex is stolen from Hanna.

Janet Bock publishes The Jesus Mystery concerning Jesus’ early adult years and alleged travels through Tibet and India.  However, on page 5, she says, “Of course, the truth about the missing years in Jesus' life cannot be historically proven and therefore will always be subjective for each individual who explores it, which is the way it should be. We have no need to prove anything about this story.”

1981

Fred Nolan

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

 On April 11, Wearing an Israeli army uniform and carrying an M-16 automatic rifle, Alan Harry Goodman (born 1945) enters the Al-Aqsa Mosque and kills two Palestinians in an attempt to clain the Temple Mount for Judaism.  He is sentenced to life but gets out on parole in 1997.

 On August 21, Muslims in Jerusalem barricade themselves inside an ancient Templar tunnel at the Temple Mount recently opened by Israeli authorities.  Eight days later, Muslims seal the tunnel with concrete fearing an Israeli incursion all the way under the sacred Dome of the Rock.

 French Presidential candidate Francois Mitterand and his close advisor Roger-Patrice Palat visit Rennes-le-Château, unusual because the town is so small and not near anything.

 Fred Nolan discovers a large man-placed stone cross on his portion of Oak Island, news not made public until 1993 in William Crooker’s Oak Island Gold. 

 Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (born 1927) condemn Masonry through the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

 
George A. Wells

Producer Henry Lincoln teams with Michael Baigent (born 1948) and Richard Leigh (born 1943), to publish the blockbuster Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  They investigate the Templars’ alleged involvement in keeping great “secrets” over hundreds of years.  The most controversial of these secrets:  Jesus did not die on the cross but lived to marry Mary Magdalene and father children whose bloodline continues to this day.   The authors names Frenchman Pierre Plantard de Saint Clair as the Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion, a spotlight he is all to happy to accept.  However, when the authors link the Prieuré de Sion to a Jesus bloodline, Plantard de Saint Clair tries unsuccessfully to distance himself, claiming to know nothing about a Jesus bloodline and offended to be linked to such a hypothesis.

Leigh, Lincoln, and Baigent

George Wells (born 1926) publishes The Historical Evidence for Jesus, arguing that Paul and the Gospel writers made up most of the information in the New Testament to politically advance their version of Christianity.

 The Duke of Edinburgh and Reverend Michael Mann convene a yearly series of interdisciplinary conferences involving high-level business, religious, government, and educational leaders.  Using Jungian psychologists facilitators, the Windsor Conferences create an environment fostering learning rather than debate, understanding rather than dispute.  The series ends in 1985.

Trevor Ravenscroft publishes The Spear of Destiny about the lance claimed to have pierced Jesus, based on information from Walter Johannes Stein, a friend of Hitler.  He also publishes The Cup of Destiny. 

Stephen Howarth publishes The Knights Templar.

Anne Gilmour-Bryson publishes The Trial of the Templars in the Papal State and the Abruzzi.

Johannes Fiebag

 
Peter Fiebag

Pope John Paul II

 In a property dispute, Triton Alliance sues Oak Island property owner Frederick Nolan and all treasure-hunting efforts come to a halt.  In court, both parties reveal the incredible sums of money they have spent searching the island – and fighting each other.

 Hanna recovers his stolen codex and invites Stephen Emmell and two other experts to Geneva to authenticate it.  Hanna demands $3M which the experts do not have and the meeting ends.

 In November, the Vatican stops the automatic excommunication of Catholic Masons.  However, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II still consider Masonic practices and beliefs “irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.”

The Discovery of the Grail (a.k.a, The Eternity Machine, Die Entdeckung des Heiligen Grals) by brothers Johannes (1956-1999) and Peter Fiebag, explores the possibility of a connection between the Templars and an extraterrestrial machine.  This machine, arriving here for reasons unknown, generated manna from a nuclear energy source to feed the people of Israel 3000 years ago.  The authors suggest the Templars were guardians of this secret during their heyday and voyaged to Canada to ultimately bury the machine at Oak Island.   

Jacques Rivière publishes Le Fabuleux Trésor de Rennes-Le-Château! Le Secret de L'Abbé Saunière (a.k.a. The Fabulous Treasure of Rennes-Le-Château!  The Secret of Father Saunière).

1984

Ian Wilson

Stephen Knight

 Hanna travels to the US and unsuccessfully tries to sell his codex.  He then places it into a Citibank safety deposit box in a Hicksville, NY.

 The US and the Vatican re-establish diplomatic relations after a break of 116 years.

Ian Wilson (born 1941) publishes Jesus: The Evidence. 

Stephen Knight (a.k.a. Swami Puja Debal, 1951-1985, follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) publishes The Brotherhood, with many sensational allegations about Masons, among them ties to the Soviet KGB.

Robert Payne publishes The Dream and the Tomb: A History of the Crusades.

Elizabeth Claire Prophet (born 1939), leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant (a.k.a. Summit Lighthouse), publishes The Lost Years of Jesus about his life between the ages of 12 and 30, based largely on the travels and writings of Nicolas Roerich (1874-1947). 

Millie Evans and Eric Mullen write Oak Island, Nova Scotia - The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt.

Ean Begg

Robert Funk

David Hatcher Childress

 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (born 1927) criticizes all reforms since Vatican II, stating “the freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent.”  

The Cult of the Black Virgin by former monk Ean Begg explores the meaning, veneration, and locations of black Madonnas across Europe and their connection to Jesus, Mary, and Mary Magdalene.   

Pierre Jarnac publishes Histoire du Trésor de Rennes-le-Château (a.k.a. History of the Treasure at Rennes-le-Château) featuring Phillippe de Chérisey’s 1974 letter confessing to forging the Saunière parchments. 

Jean-Luc Chaumeil publishes Du Premier au Dernier Templier (a.k.a. The First and Last Templar).  He writes of Roger Lhomoy, who in a 1974 interview with Robert Charroux said, “What I told Gérard de Sède (about crypts beneath Gisors) is not true.  The excavations I undertook led to nothing.”

Claire Corbu, daughter of Noël Corbu, and Antoine Captier (born 1937) write L'Héritage De L'Abbé Saunière.  They will later marry.

Robert Funk (1926-2005) starts the Jesus Seminar, a collection of scholars using science and history to paint a more accurate picture of Jesus than exists in the gospels.   By vote, the Jesus Seminar determines only about 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament are authentic, the rest being edits or additions over the last 2000 years.  They publish the results in The Five Gospels.

David Hatcher Childress (born 1957) publishes the Lost Cities of China, Central Asia and India concerning the life and death of Jesus in Kashmir.

Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama

Edward Burman

Jean Markale

 Pope John Paul II leads 100 world religious and political leaders in prayers for peace at Saint Francis’ Basilica in Assisi, Italy, including the Dalai Lama and the Duke of Edinburgh opens  a meeting of world religious leaders. 

 Pope John Paul II becomes the first Pope to visit a Jewish synagogue.  

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln write The Messianic Legacy, an extension of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, to explore Rennes-le-Château, the Prieuré de Sion, and the Jesus bloodline.   It will be the last book they will all write together, as Henry Lincoln moves on to study sacred geometry.

Edward Burman publishes The Templars: Knights of God, based on documents from the British Library on Templar history. 

Jean Markale (a.k.a. Jean Bertrand) publishes The Templar Treasure at Gisors (a.k.a. Gisors et L'Enigme des Templiers), concerning the rumors that lost Templar treasure resides in the tunnel system beneath Gisors.  He also publishes Montségur and the Mystery of the Cathars (a.k.a. Montségur et L'Enigme Cathare).

Robert C. Walton publishes the Chronological and Background Charts of Church History, a quick reference guide to religious groups.

Peter Partner publishes The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and their Myth, a traditional history of the Order.

Holger Kersten publishes Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion, concluding that the tomb of Jesus is in Kashmir.  Kersten believes that during their early adult lives, Jesus and Thomas traveled to the Essenes, Egypt and Ephesus and Persia then ultimately to India as seekers of available science and wisdom.

Matthew Fox

Burton Mack

Umberto Eco

Michael Anderson Bradley

Fida Hassnain

 According to Tim Wallace-Murphy in Rex Deus, by the end of this year there are over 473 books and articles devoted to Rennes-le-Château.

 On April 9, the owner of the Arques tomb, a Mr. Roussett, blows it up in frustration from trespassing on his property by treasure seekers.

 Israeli authorities complete a tunnel immediately to the west of the Temple Mount begun in 1970.

 After extensive testing, the Vatican determines that the Shroud of Turin is no more than 728 years old (putting it at 1260 or later) and is therefore not a relic of Jesus.

 The Vatican issues a one-year publishing ban on Matthew Fox (born 1940), an American priest. Fox calls for a “creation-centered spirituality,” the acceptance of women as priests, and an emphasis on choice as a freedom from the burden of original sin.

Burton Mack publishes A Myth of Innocence, which holds that the Gospels contain very little historically authentic information about Jesus.  Mack puts forward that Jesus was not with a divine being, but a wise, very human, sage.  Mack believes that after Jesus’ death his followers tried to keep the “countercultural” wisdom alive by attaching supernatural myths drawn from other belief systems familiar to Greco-Roman audiences.  

Gérard de Sède publishes Rennes-le-Château:  Le Dossier, Les Impostures, Les Phantasmes, Les Hypothèses and admits the Saunière parchments were forged and that no Jesus bloodline exists today.  He talks about how he was duped into believing that a Prieuré de Sion existed and explains how the whole hoax was conducted.

Umberto Eco (born 1932) publishes Foucault’s Pendulum, a novel about a six-hundred-year-old conspiracy started by the Templars.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh publish The Templar and the Lodge and connect escaping Templars to Scotland and the subsequent development of Masonry.

Michael Anderson Bradley and Deanna Theilmann-Bean write Holy Grail Across The Atlantic: The Secret History of Canadian Discovery and Exploration, asserting that Prince Henry Sinclair (1345-1400) hid treasure and artifacts in Oak Island's elaborate pit. 

D'Arcy O'Connor publishes The Big Dig about Oak Island.

Fida Hassnain (born 1924) and Dahan Levi (born 1920) publish The Fifth Gospel on Jesus in Kashmir.

German TV shows an episode of Sphinx: Geheimnisse der Geschichte (a.k.a. Sphinx:  Secrets of History) called König Artus, Die Suche nach dem heiligen Gral (a.k.a. King Arthur, the Search for the Holy Grail), featuring Geoffrey Ashe, historian Claudine Glot, Jean Markale,  archeologist Antonio Beltran, and historian Hans-Wilhelm Schafer discussing the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña, one-time home of the Valencia Grail.

Robert Eisenman

 Scholar Robert Eisenman goes public with translations of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, forcing the Ecole Biblique to relinquish its monopoly on scroll access and speed up their release. 

 Triton Alliance acquires a stock trading firm and renames it the Oak Island Exploration Company.  The next year, the firm sells shares overseas but fails to raise a target of $10,000,000 to fund further excavations at Oak Island.

 The all-white Masonic Grand Lodge of Connecticut recognizes all-black Prince Hall Masonry, inspiring 20 other Grand Lodges to follow suit.

 In an April interview in his own publication, Vaincre, Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair changes his story about the Prieuré de Sion, saying now that it started not with crusaders but on September 19, 1738 in Rennes-le-Château by Francois d’Hautpoul and Jean-Paul de Negre.  He now claims the “great secret” of the Prieuré de Sion is not a Grail or a bloodline but a “black rock” near Rennes-le-Château and Chateau de Blanchefort containing “great energy.”  He also alters the list of Grand Masters.

 In May, Claire Corbu-Captier, curator of the Saunière Museum at Rennes-le-Château, forms the historical Association Terre de Rhedae.

Bruno de Monts publishes Bérenger Saunière, Curé à Rennes-Le-Château 1885-1909.

Michael Howard publishes The Occult Conspiracy, tracing the occult influence of secret societies on politics and statecraft through the centuries from ancient Egypt to the present era, including the Templars and the Masons.

In September, Elaine Pagels (born 1943) publishes The Gnostic Gospels.

 In November, the Berlin walls falls.

Jean Markale publishes The Church of Mary Magdalene:  The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Rennes-le-Château concluding that a big part of the Rennes-le-Château treasure story came from Noël Corbu, an entrepreneur who purchased Sauniere’s properties in the 1950’s and ingeniously created a local enigma to drive business.