Scott Wolter Makes More Claims about Holy Bloodline Templar Conspiracies and Jesus' Daughter3/19/2014 Scott Wolter has been on quite a media tour for someone who doesn’t have anything new to promote between seasons of his H2 program, America Unearthed. He’s taking the opportunity, though, to push his more extreme speculation about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and secret Holy Bloodline and Knights Templar conspiracies in advance of the show’s third season, which he had previously announced would return to Templar Bloodline conspiracies, specifically in France. What I find most interesting is Wolter’s assertion that his speculation is somehow changing the historical record and rewriting the past. Wolter told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he views each America Unearthed investigation as an “opportunity to get the history of the country corrected … that doesn’t come along very often.” The Star Tribune article, by freelance writer Anna Pratt, includes no quotations or interviews with mainstream scholars who oppose Wolter’s views. Instead, it uses only generalizations of mainstream views provided, apparently, by Wolter and his friends. The profile is overwhelmingly positive, occasionally factually inaccurate (wrongly giving the air date for Holy Grail in America as 2013, confusing it for the America Unearthed episode “Hunt for the Holy Grail), and uninterested in factual foundations for Wolter’s claims. Wolter told the Star Tribune that he feels better qualified than historians and archaeologists to determine the truth about America’s past because he uses “hard” science to examine rocks rather than the “soft” sciences that involved texts. His producer, Maria Awes, told the Star Tribune that while Wolter’s ideas may seem extreme ““when you really dive into it and the legends, a lot seems plausible.” This, of course, reveals the flaw in Wolter’s method: Far from sticking to the “hard” facts, Wolter constructs castles on foundations of sand specifically because he places far too much weight on myths and legends whose origins he neither knows nor understands. This is more than evident in another recent article, from the Bangor Daily News, which details Wolter’s efforts to inject himself into the alleged controversy over the Spirit Pond rune stones, which experts have dismissed as “clumsy fakes” for decades. Wolter needs these stones to be authentic in order to support his claims to a Templar conspiracy because the Spirit Pond stones’ inscriptions were modeled on those of the Kensington Rune Stone and therefore include another instance of the otherwise non-standard variant-A rune, which Scott Wolter has trademarked under the name the “Hooked X®.” “It’s the greatest story that’s never been told,” Wolter told the Daily News. “What you guys have in Maine are some of the most important historical relics in the history of the country. … Those stones that you have up there are priceless. They make Plymouth Rock look like a pebble on the beach. […] These archaeologists have all been programmed [to believe the stones are fakes] and they can’t think outside the box.” He believes that the runes were carved by the Knights Templar while securing the Holy Bloodline of Jesus following the suppression of the Templar order. In a bit of news, Wolter told the paper he believes that Jesus’ child was a daughter. In contrast to Pratt, Daily News writer Seth Koenig provides a balanced article that includes expert viewpoints from mainstream scholars along with an evaluation of the evidence Wolter provides. He also gets right the air date for Holy Grail in America. It’s important to note that neither the Kensington Rune Stone nor the Spirit Pond stones say anything about the Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene, or a secret bloodline of Jesus. If we “let the rocks speak,” then even accepting the Kensington Rune Stone at face value, we have the following story: 8 Götalanders and 22 Northmen on an exploring (or acquisition) expedition from Vinland west. We camped by 2 skerries one day’s journey north from this stone. We were a-fishing one day; after we came home we found 10 men red with blood and dead. A.V.M. (= Ave Maria) Save from evil. Wolter sees a secret code in the runes, one tied to his belief about the Holy Bloodline of Jesus and the Templar voyages to America. But these two beliefs come from texts Wolter has never read and does not consider in his thinking about the Templars. The only evidence of a Templar voyage across the ocean is the June 1308 interrogation under torture of Templar brother Jean de Châlons, who told Vatican inquisitors a series of provable lies, which culminated in the following discussion of what transpired during the 1307 raid on the Templars, which I translate directly from the Latin: Then he [Jean] said that, learning beforehand about this trouble, the leaders of the Order have fled, and he himself met Brother Gerard de Villiers leading fifty horses, and he heard it said that he had set out to sea with eighteen galleys, and Brother Hugues de Châlons fled with the whole treasury of Brother Hugues de Pairaud. When asked how he was able to keep this fact secret for so long, he responded that no one would have dared reveal it for anything, unless the Pope and the King had opened the way, for if it were known in the Order that anyone had spoken, he would at once be killed. Jean, as we can see, was repeating a secondhand story—but one that said nothing whatsoever about Templars crossing the ocean or taking a Holy Bloodline with them. It’s also important to note that in 1308 the medieval Latin word used for the ships--galea (ablative plural: galeis), from the Byzantine Greek usage—meant a small oared vessel propelled by rowing, not an oceangoing sailing ship. The idea of them as large sailing ships derives from usage after 1700, when they word became applied to some types of large warships used by the European powers. The Latin text does not immediately support the idea of a trip across the ocean. And lest you think I made this text up, you can find it yourself in Heinrich Finke (ed.), Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, Vol. 2: Band: Quellen (Vorreformationsgeschichtlighe Forschungen, no. 5) (Münster: Aschendorff, 1907), p. 339, citing the Vatican Archives’ Registra Avenionensia 48, Benedicti XII, Book 1, folios 448-451. This is the entirety of the textual case for a Templar trip to America, and so far as I can tell Scott Wolter knows nothing of this text and never addresses it in his written work on the Templars. The Holy Bloodline of Jesus conspiracy is even more poorly documented since there is not a scrap of medieval material making any mention of a child of Jesus, much less a daughter specifically. You have a possible Gnostic reference to Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the mouth (Gospel of Philip 59), but the papyrus has a hole where the word “mouth” may or may not have been, and at any rate it wasn’t really sexual in context. You have a Cathar reference to an evil earthly Jesus, of whom “Mary Magdalene was his concubine” (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis 2 [old system] or 10 [new system]). And you have a French legend that Mary Magdalene lived in France for a spell, a legend created in the High Middle Ages to justify claims of various churches to hold her relics, as the oldest such reference attests: A persecution having arisen after the stoning of Stephen proto-martyr, Maximinus, one of the seventy disciples of Christ, crossing to Gaul, took Mary Magdalene with him. Furthermore, he buried her body in the city of Aix, over which he presided. Verily, the city of Aix was despoiled by the Saracens, so the body of Mary herself was transferred by Gerard, count of Burgundy, to the monastery of Vézelay, which had been constructed by him. And yet some people write that this woman rests in Ephesus, having no covering over her. The last line refers to the older story, given by Modestus in Photius, Biblioteca 275 and Gregory of Tours in his In gloria martyrum 1.30, that the Magdalene lived and died in Ephesus, from which the Orthodox claim her relics were later removed to Constantinople.
None of this says anything about kids, and that is an invention from the Holy Bloodline school of fringe history inaugurated by the poorly-sourced and largely fictional Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Wolter’s ultimate source, and its imitators. So why do we trust high medieval legends over late antique and early medieval texts? Scott Wolter doesn’t tell us and in fact doesn’t cite any of the primary sources about the Magdalene legends but rather fringe history books that in turn have only a passing acquaintance (or less) with the medieval and antique texts that fail to support their claims. If you’re going to demand that history be “corrected,” you had better be conversant in the history you claim to want changed. His claim to letting the “rocks” speak for themselves isn’t even true if we take his claims at their word, for the rocks say nothing about Templar voyages or Holy Bloodline conspiracies. That’s the “soft” interpretation he’s imposing on incomplete and inaccurate data points.
50 Comments
Only Me
3/19/2014 07:34:52 am
I wrote these thoughts some time ago concerning Scott:
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Chimera
3/23/2014 08:07:46 am
"Stone Whisperer": gotta love it !
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Dan Brown on Speed
3/19/2014 07:38:12 am
Simcha Jacobovici, Barrie Wilson, "The Lost Gospel: Jesus’ Marriage to Mary Magdalene, Bride of God" (Pegasus, 2014)
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3/19/2014 07:57:37 am
I'll be interested to see what type of "evidence" these authors use to document all of these claims. I imagine it would surprise Tacitus to know that Jesus was chummy with the highest Roman officials!
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Byron DeLear
3/19/2014 09:18:28 am
Here's the further unpacking of what is most likely upcoming... if you hadn't seen it... Richard Bauckham compares the allegorical interpretation with Barbara Thiering's largely discredited 'pesher' technique which she applied to generate a fanciful reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Ghost of Pseudo-Zacharias
3/20/2014 12:20:05 am
I never mentioned anything of the sort in any of my writings
KIF
3/20/2014 12:22:53 am
We know Pseudo-Zacharias didn't mention anything about the bloodline etc in his writings - he's just using that author as a hook on which to hang their beliefs upon
KIF
3/21/2014 12:32:22 am
The continuing and on-going success of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". Never been out-of-print. Never been corrected. A type of infallible alternative Holy Bible.
MRK
3/19/2014 08:54:32 am
That last one - a Church of Mary Magdalene - is possible. Christianity, at its beginnings, was quite varied and fractured. That said, I don't recall ever running across anything like it in any of my studies of early Christianity, so if it existed, it was small and ultimately not that influential.
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Byron DeLear
3/19/2014 09:07:58 am
http://ntweblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/jacobovici-and-wilsons-lost-gospel.html
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Mandalore
3/19/2014 09:35:47 am
Christianity was certainly very different before Paul. But that is because it was a sect of Judaism, not a 'Church of Mary Magdalene'. I assume he is using the late Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene which is no more authoritative than the infancy gospels where a young Jesus kills people.
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ralph ellis
11/10/2014 04:38:34 am
.
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Matt Mc
3/19/2014 08:06:53 am
I think Simcha Jacobovici is the same kind of "researcher" that Wolter is. He is someone who comes from a completely different background, used books and TV reality based docs to conduct research and as demonstrated in his show NAKED ARCHEOLOGIST thinks that he is uncovering great secrets that no one before him has. It appears like Wolter he approaches a subject with a preconceived answer and presents things in a manner that supports his answer and ignores the rest.
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J.A.D
3/19/2014 09:57:19 am
AU just rolled out 13 of the batch of 26 Eps
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Dr. Bryant Lister
3/19/2014 01:36:14 pm
Scott Wolter is a never ending source of comedy. I've been exchanging emails with him for the last month or so and it's been incredibly humorous. He repeatedly taunts me to posts on his personal blog site, and claims that I'm afraid to and that he 'will destroy me' on there. It's amazing that the History channel has given this charlatan a television show, he's mentally unstable and completely ignorant of the scientific method. However, his emails are a great source of comedy material.
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Dave Lewis
3/19/2014 02:27:00 pm
Wolter deletes posts from his blog that he doesn't like. It would be interesting to see if he would allow you to post anything.
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Steve St C
3/20/2014 05:43:48 am
1. Dr. Bryant Lister has been invited to post on Scott's blog. Being a coward, he turned that down and opted to post here instead.
Dr. Bryant Lister
3/20/2014 05:50:30 pm
Steve St C, I emailed Scott Wolter directly and I explained to him why I would not post on his personal blog. If he and you lack the reading comprehension skills to understand the reasons I explained to him, then I suggest you and he go back to school and gain those skills.
Steve St C
3/19/2014 05:24:58 pm
Dr. Bryant Lister has said above that Scott is "mentally unstable."
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3/20/2014 12:36:35 am
When Scott is asked if he can prove a claim is true, he asks if you can prove it's not. Can you prove he is not mentally unstable?
Dr. Bryant Lister
3/20/2014 01:50:12 am
Steve, I have roughly 40 emails from Scott that demonstrate he has some serious issues. If someone wants to file a suit against me for my comments, go ahead. It would be hilarious to go through his emails in court. However, we both know this is just more of the empty threats and childish bravado that is a favorite tactic of Scott Wolter. Just like Wolter's claims in his fictional books and comedy show, there is no substance to your threats.
Matt Mc
3/20/2014 01:59:06 am
Steve there was nothing Libelous about the statements made. Maybe just a slim slim maybe you could make that argument for a private person but would be very costly and difficult to prove that damage was done to character or reputation, if that was the case the internet would be a constant source of litigation for libel cases. 3/20/2014 02:12:26 am
The threat is childish and stupid since, much like the age of a stone carving, the meaning of "mentally unbalanced" is in the mind. No different from calling someone foolish or naive, hardly actionable.
Matt Mc
3/20/2014 02:18:48 am
Of course it is Lynn but Steve doesn't care he thinks that statements like that might actually scare someone.
Walt
3/20/2014 03:23:39 am
It's just amazing that the same handful of people can all be experts on every single subject ever discussed here. How lucky the rest of us are.
Matt Mc
3/20/2014 05:54:04 am
Walt,
Walt
3/20/2014 06:59:13 am
Scott Wolter is a licensed geologist, TV show host, creator of a new science he calls archaeopetrography, and has testified under oath in a court of law where he was deemed to be an expert witness. No attorney would give the advice that calling him "mentally unstable" is not libelous. That doesn't mean it was, but I wouldn't say it without reading the 40 emails.
Matt Mc
3/20/2014 07:11:41 am
My intention was not to give legal advice, Rather to point out that Steve was talking out his ass.
Dave Lewis
3/20/2014 12:51:57 pm
Steve St Clair called me a liar and an angry turd.
Sinclair
3/23/2014 11:41:25 am
As I stsarted to read this thread I thought GEE this would most likely be where Steve StClair would suddenly appear and as I got further down in the comments yup lo and behold there he is.And guess what with the same old arrogance and lawsuit threats as usual. The courts would not have room for all these cases that STClair has threatened in the past.
Walt
3/19/2014 02:00:11 pm
Wolter's ideas aside, nice job doing an article on Wolter without letting on that you guys can't stand each other. No personal attacks, snarkiness, or snide remarks! I'm impressed. Very civilized and professional.
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KIF
3/19/2014 02:58:57 pm
The historical Jesus is very important to the Bloodliners - of course such a Jesus Christ would be demythologised and shorn of his supernatural status. But what's so important about a married Christ to these people in the first place? Why invent such a thing?
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Walt
3/19/2014 03:33:03 pm
Jason can probably provide the full history of the fringe theory, but it's probably more information than you ever wanted to know.
Iggy
9/20/2022 02:01:51 am
There is an oral history of Jesus in the Americas from almost all the tribes. Only 2 of the tribes insisted on His name. "Geee zoos" is their oral tradition, which "I am" was pronounced "Gee" in ancient Aramaic or "Je" short for Jesus. So, if His name was not Zeus maybe that was why He told Moses to tell the Israelites "I am the I am"
The God of Snarkdom
3/19/2014 02:29:20 pm
This blog entry rated 0 on the snark scale.
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Shane Sullivan
3/19/2014 02:41:54 pm
"In a bit of news, Wolter told the paper he believes that Jesus’ child was a daughter."
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Shane Sullivan
3/19/2014 02:43:39 pm
Dammit...
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Dave Lewis
3/19/2014 02:50:26 pm
Good show, old chap!
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The Chosen One
3/19/2014 03:03:51 pm
Kathleen McGowan no longer parades the claim that she is a descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. She figured it sounded stupid.
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Iggy
9/20/2022 02:12:21 am
It doesn't sound stupid to me. I believe I am a direct descendant. Both my daughters and my granddaughters look like most of the paintings of Mary Magdalene. The price of Freedom is people can believe whatever they want and they are allowed to say it, too.
Cathleen Anderson
3/19/2014 05:03:34 pm
I have asked a couple of geologists what they think of Scott Wolter. Their responses aren't really repeatable in civil conversation. I think they find him to be an embarassment. Kind of a Michelle Bachman/Sarah Palin hybrid.
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Martin R
3/20/2014 03:35:34 am
Now there is a connection worth exploring.
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SDrew
3/20/2014 10:10:45 am
...though not nearly as irritating and put-offish as a Nancy Pelosi/Barbara Streisand hybird !!
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El Snarko Grande
3/20/2014 12:56:47 pm
I was thinking what would happen if Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid had a kid.......
BillUSA
3/23/2014 11:57:47 pm
I don't know much about Bachman, but I think Palin was correct in her predictions about some things. She is smarter than most lefties would give her credit for but since the blog is about a person who goes around making assumptions, I'm not surprised that someone from the left would post such a reference as yours.
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Former Minnesotan
3/25/2014 02:17:41 am
I wish more people found Scott Wolter and America Unearthed embarrassing. The concept for the show is interesting, but what has been done with it is another thing completely. Claiming "facts" based on fake artifacts and omitting truths is not unearthing anything. Had to stop watching after the episode with the Minoans just couldn't take it anymore. It's so embarrassing that entertainment or comedy is hard to pull out of it.
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Graham
3/19/2014 05:14:58 pm
For me the first question that came to mind is this, does Anna Pratt have any connection to the company that makes America Unearthed?
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Mick Youther
3/23/2014 11:39:10 am
I did not know that geologists were "licensed".
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From Jason: "His claim to letting the “rocks” speak for themselves isn’t even true if we take his claims at their word, for the rocks say nothing about Templar voyages."
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Julia Lewis
8/2/2016 10:10:35 pm
I spoke to a woman about what people have stated about the Bloodline of Jesus who was from Paris. She angered. Within a week of her returning home to Paris that supermarket blown up. The information that people had given me has been all correct and accurate against religious terrorists. I am reading the Bloodline of the Holy Grail and I have to admit that I am angered if these churches have known the truth for centuries and have made pun of so many people being lied to by them. How dare they?
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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