"Now if anyone were to go within and learn the Holy Name, then the lions would begin to roar as he came out, so that out of alarm and bewilderment he would lose his presence of mind, and forget the Name.
"And Jesus left upper Galilee and came secretly to Jerusalem, and went into the temple, and learned there the holy writing, and after he had written the ineffable Name on parchment, he uttered it, with intent that he might feel no pain, and then he cut into his flesh, and hid the parchment with the inscription therein. Then he uttered the Name once more, and made so that his flesh healed up again.
"And when he went out of the door the lions roared, and he forgot the Nam.e. Therefore he hastened outside the town, cut into his flesh, took the writing out, and when he had sufficiently studied the signs he retained the Name in memory, 'and thus he wrought all the miracles through the agency of the ineffable name of God.'"[1]
Taking all these elements together we have here clearly all the properties assigned to the Grail: the precious stone, the centre of the temple, and further, the Keeper of the great secret, the mysterious words given to Joseph, and handed down by him to his descendants, the lions at the entrance against which Lancelot fought.
These are the primary elements for the lator developments by Christians and Mohamedans; as that stone was equally holy to both, and the primitive legends were adapted to the altered circumstances, so, as we shall see, it became the altar upon which mass was celebrated, and the table of the Last Supper, the primitive form from which the later spiritual one was derived.
Well known is the interpretation of the text of Isaiah from which I started. In the first Epistle of Peter, c, ii, v. 6, these very words are quoted, together with those from Psalm cxviii, 22, and Jesus is identified with the corner-stone, which in its turn was identified with the Eden Shatya, the
- ↑ Baring-Gould, Lost Gospels, p. 77-78.
