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The actual story of the modern Priory of Sion was published in the book "Holy Blood Holy Grail", which drew some of its information from what would later be identified as a hoax (not the fault of the three author's), BUT, all of what was published was not part of a hoax, and only someone who carefully reads the book would understand that.
There was a continuing line of personal from 1099 onward that did protect the "Underground Stream" ...
Your only source of the Priory of Sion and this "Underground Stream" is from the pseudo history book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail,
"a work thoroughly debunked by scholars and critics alike...one of the all-time great works of pop pseudohistory"
-THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
So what were the qualifications of these authors that you have deemed as "well respected Templar historians" that wrote this pseudohistorical novel that long on conspiracy and short on factual evidence that the three authors admitted it was presented as a "plausible hypothesis" and that none of the three "actually believed it to be true".
Michael Baigent-New Zealand photo-journalist
Richard Leigh-American writer of fiction
Henry Lincoln- British television actor and co-screenwriter for the Doctor Who television series.
It is no wonder why Christian scholars, academic historians, and critics have deemed this work a baseless concoction of mangled facts assembled to create their "plausible hypothesis" which they believed not to be true.
"The "Holy Blood and Holy Grail", is a classic example of the conspiracy theory of history. It is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by scholarly debate...essentially, their whole argument is an ingeniously constructed series of suppositions"
-Richard Barber, Distinguished British Historian
"There is harm in strings of lurid falsehoods and distorted reasoning. The method bends the mind the wrong way, an insidious and real corruption"
-Marina Warner, American Historian, remarks concerning "holy Blood, Holy Grail" and the other pseudohistorical works of that genre.
"These kind of books do appeal to an enormous audience who believe them to be history-Robert McCrum, Editor of OBSERVER NEWSPAPER
The PRIORY of SION never existed until it was created by Pierre Plantard in 1956, and to quote it as a source of any kind of evidence or proof is acknowledging a belief in the created pseudohistory of non historians publishing fabricated conspiracy lore to that audience that needs to believe that it is real history that has been suppressed by Church and State.