Making Guitars in Spain and the Holy Grail

My son Nathan, master Luthier (violas and guitars specialty), in Spain, is offering summer courses for learning the craft. You can make your own guitar as part of the course. If you or someone you know might be invested, check out his website and email him–see links in image. I want to assist him in connecting with the right students, young or older. It is an amazing craft and Nathan is one of the best in the world. I usually try to fly through Madrid when I go to Israel, so maybe I will see one of you over there!

My only research interest in Spain at this point is the The Chalice of Doña Urraca, housed in the Basilica of San Isidoro in León, Spain. I seldom talk about this since various naysayers would exclaim–“Oh no, Tabor is now into the Holy Grail…Lost tomb of Jesus, John the Baptist cave, the Moses Scroll, the Jesus Hideout in Jordan, a first-century Jonah image, the Masada bones, the real Golgotha and on and on it goes. Is there any limit to his sensational claims?”

It is a simple onyx bowl, donated to the basilica in the 11th century by Infanta Urraca of Zamora, daughter of King Ferdinand I of León and Castile. In 2014, Spanish researchers Margarita Torres and José Miguel Ortega del Río published a book titled Kings of the Grail,  in which they identified this chalice as the Holy Grail—the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, that was housed on Mt Zion in the Byzantine period, then moved to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher until the Crusades, subsequently taken by Saladin to Egypt. He cut a piece off the lip as healing for his daughter, and this cup has that cut mark. There are of course dozens of other “holy grail” claimants, but none of them look like 1st century ceramics, most are elaborate, ornate, and can be dated easily by their style as to later periods. Dr. Gibson agrees that this one is the type we find in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, although he makes no professional claims about its history or provenance.

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