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One oblong clay box, measuring 65 centimeters by 25 centimeters by 30 centimeters, had an engraving reading "Yeshua Bar Yohosef" (Jesus son of Joseph) and another box in the area was inscribed as "Mary," but they were not necessarily the burial repositories of Christianity's holy family, reported the Associated Press, among other sources.
Motti Neiger, the Israel Antiquities Authority spokesperson, dismissed the public allegations that the boxes excavated from a building site near Jerusalem had once contained the bones of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. Neiger considered the claim as "a nice news story for Easter."
The boxes had been discovered by a reporter from BBC1, Douglas Hogg, and his Heart of the Matter television program associates. The Sunday Times of London had published a report, which lured many correspondents to the basement warehouse of the Israel Antiquities Authority in order to view the coffins.
The box of "Yeshua Bar Yohosef" had been taken out of an East Jerusalem plot containing nine caskets during 1980, but its inscription had been hardly legible, so the Authority had not been sure what it had. The bones that had been within the caskets were buried fifteen years ago, after being put in the care of rabbis.
An unrelated other ossuary discovered elsewhere, that dated from the same period, had a label of Jesus son of Joseph. In addition, a quarter of the women in that civilization were named Mary during the first century A.D. Zvi Greenhut, an Israel Museum archeologist, said there was insufficient evidence "to show this is the family" as he lifted the lid of the Israel Antiquities Authority casket of Jesus before the media.
Many famous names from the Gospels have shown up in recent excavations, but, as in the above cases, were popular appellations at the time. The usually presumed final places for the Biblical Joseph, Mary and Jesus are respectively Galilee (Northern Israel), Jerusalem, and Heaven.
Dr. Pahlvon Duran, who speaks with perhaps a trace of a Scottish accent, testified at a mid-July 1995 hearing at Arizona's Coconino County Superior Court before Judge Michael Flournoy.
Judge Flournoy spoke to the Arizona Republic newspaper of how it was his job to assist people in the settling of "their differences" and said that Duran's appearance "was interesting."
What was fascinating about Duran's appearance was that he claimed to have been a 15th-century Britisher. Forty-seven-year-old Trina Kamp, the head of the Church of the Immortal Consciousness, channeled the fellow in a court sΘance.
The sΘance did not keep active a two-year-old slander lawsuit, however.
Kamp had been angered by lurid rumors spread by opponents about her church.
(Nasty rumors have been falsely levelled against many non-mainstream religions, one should note.)
The unusual court testimony was allowed because the judge believed that the church and its opponents both needed to express their concerns.
Koutsentsov contends that the famed 1988 carbon dating of the shroud as being 700 years old was wrong, indicating that fire damage--which bound airborne carbon to the fiber--was not taken into account. There was, he theorizes, much new carbon involved which made the date seem younger. The Russian scientist dates the shroud as being, at minimum, 1800 years old. Jackson's wife, Rebecca S. Jackson, said that if the shroud were a forgery, then the medieval Christian forger would have been well versed on the subtleties of Jewish culture--a most unlikely prospect.
Like other religions, Star Trek has:
* a "canon" of writings.
* a hierarchical organization.
* fanatical followers.
* a sense of persecution (since some believe Trekkers are weird).
* created tremendous wealth for a chosen few.
Jeffrey Mills, a teacher of Trek at several colleges, was quoted in the March 27, 1994 Washington Post, saying, "What the Bible does in 66 books, Star Trek does in 79 episodes." What other media immortals may generate similar fervor? Consider this: the Baker Street Irregulars claim that Sherlock Holmes really existed. This is the same Holmes who "died" at Reichenbach Falls and "rose again" to a kind of eternal life, just like Spock died and came back to life. Praise St. Martha (Hudson) and pass the collection plate.
Clovelly in England was again devil-free. To achieve this enviable state, the village children, as per their annual wont, performed the ancient Lanshard ceremony on March 1, 1994. They dragged hundreds of tied-together tin cans along cobbled High Street. The resultant noise frightened the Devil into the seaïat least until Lent's end.
According to an O Globo report of August 26, 1993 (translated by Humberto Teles), Roman Catholics from various places in Alagoas, Brazil, went on pilgrimages to Maceio in order to see the weeping statuette of the Virgin Mary of Mystical Rose. This statuette was in the Araujo Bivar Street house of Carlos Antonio dos Santos, 26, an employee of the state's Company of Human Resources Development. One visiting worshipper described how the object wept tears which smelled like blood.
Carlos recalled the initial August 22, 1993 incident, witnessed by worshippers and relatives: "First, the Virgin started weeping in only one eye. Later it wept abundantly until the whole statuette was moist. The liquid had a smell of blood." He spoke of how it started weeping just as his prayers to the Virgin asked for "the sinners' repentance." He believes that the miracle was a demonstration for those who lacked faith.
The Catholic Church itself did not take objection, but Maceio's Archbishop Dom Edvaldo do Amaral considered it all very strange. He said he would request that the statuette be lent for study and scientific research--as it was too early to come to any conclusions. The Catholics who crowded Carlos's place on August 25, 1993, were convinced that the miracle was real. Most thought the weeping to be a proof of sanctity, and concern about the miserable situation in which Brazilian people live.
The Wall Street Journal of May 19, 1994 told how it is not easy to write ad copy these days, because there are so many interest groups. In a speech scheduled for May 19, 1994, Lawrence R. Riciardi, RJR Nabisco's president, said, "Utter a word. Write a piece of ad copy. There's at least one group of people you will offend."
Even Porky Pig is under fire from the National Stuttering Project in San Francisco. Ira Zimmerman, the advocacy chairman, said: "For 60 years, stuttering has been used for comic relief in Porky Pig cartoons. Perhaps that is the reason children continue to be teased for stuttering."
Aetna is sticking with its "witch ad." Kevin Malloy, the company's director of advertising, said, "This is a very strong advertisement. And we're using the universally known images of myths and fables."
On March 12, 1994, 32 women were ordained in the Church of England, the first to undergo the rite. But, as in Kennedy's case, some male priests disapproved.
The monks, from the temple north of Seoul, believe this is because Buddha is unhappy. The report quoted a monk as saying, "We think that Buddha is crying over the move."
While localized showers are scientifically explainable, it is highly coincidental in this case.
However, some parishioners gave the witch ú75 as a departure present, reported the October 16, 1992 Daily Telegraph.
Even in the blurry reproduction, printed in the May 22 Columbus Dispatch,the pattern of light and shadow in the poster's artwork is evocative of Jesus. But a Pizza Hut Inc. spokesman disclaimed any intent to have put subliminal messages into their ad, stating, "It's total coincidence."
The February 6, 1993
A voodoo leader present was equally diplomatic, yet criticized those officials of the church who attacked the voodoo religion.
As a chorus sang, and drums were beaten, the pope sat facing the robed voodoo worshipers, who were adorned in colorful velvet brimless hats. Apparently there were no converts that day--on either side.
The controversy broke on September 5, 1993, when the Birmingham News published a front-page story ennumerating the 1.86 million alleged "unsaved."
Other Christians, even including some Baptists, felt the Convention had gone over the line by doing go. Jack Denver, a "practicing Christian" of Homewood, said, "It is the pinnacle of presumptiousness to construct a formula for quantifying the unsaved."
Martin King, speaking for the Baptist's Home Mission Board in Atlanta, said, "We don't know who's lost and who's saved. All we know is that as we understand the doctrine of salvation, a lot of people are lost." He said he understood why people would be upset about hearing that they were not going to heaven.
While some people in other similar Christian creeds were accounted saved, the published index applied the Baptist view that Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, non-churchgoers, and many others were not among them, reported the September 19 Washington Post.
Some critics wondered why the Baptists were attempting to play God rather than preach the Gospel.
Needless to say, the theory is controversial. "It sounds a trifle farfetched to me," said James Crampsey, lecturer in bible studies at London University. "Could Jesus have been Confucius, for example?"
Others had more respectful reactions. "His theory is a very imaginative way of proceeding to deal with what are very serious questions about the historicity of Jesus...," said Robert Eisenman, a religious studies professor at California State University, Long Beach, who had yet to read the book, and who also commented, "Within the framework of his own ethnic background, Osman sees similarities, and he may be dimly perceiving a distant relationship."
Osman's new book was his third in half a decade contending that Christianity originated in ancient Egypt, where there were Hebrew settlements. The first tome suggested that Joseph was an Egyptian nobleman, whose mummy rests in the Cairo Museum. His second claimed that Akhenaten, the father-in-law of Tutankhamen, was the historical Moses.
Akhenaten had proclaimed one god in the place of the many Egyptian deities. Osman described how "Tutankhamen allowed the old deities back, but he held them to be saints and angels in the kingdom of the Lord. That was rejected by the Israelite priests in Sinai. When Tutankhamen went there to try to bring them back to the fold, I believe they killed him at the place where St. Catherine's monastery stands today at the foot of Mount Sinai." According to Osman, who studied law in Cairo and has been in Britain since 1965, increasing his knowledge of Egyptian language and history and Hebrew, Tut's mummy reveals "he met a violent death, probably by hanging." He says that Tutankhamen introduced the belief in resurrection.
He also contends that those among the Israelites who kept the faith in Tutankhamen did so in secret, until John the Baptist spread the word of the return of a redeemer. This made the Messianic movement public, and eventually the Gospel took disciples' claims of witnessing a living Jesus literally, according to Osman.
Kenneth Kitchen, Liverpool University's professor of Egyptology, was among the more skeptical of Osman's contention: "It is absolute nonsense and there is nothing more to add."
To some it looked like divine intervention. Local Catholics had prepared the Cherry Creek State Park for the half-million worshipers expected to show up for the Pope's celebration of the High Mass.
Many animals live in the park, but run from people. The gophers were expected to remain behind, and be endangered by trampling humans. But hardly any of the little animals were seen during Fall 1992, supposedly due to an outbreak of disease. Antoinette Delaura, a park worker, explained, "Plague is endemic in these animals. Once it hits a colony, the fleas thrive until all the animals have gone. The prairie dog issue is dead."
Other explanations were offered for the disappearance, recounted the December 27, 1992 Sunday Sun. Some animal rights activists worried that the creatures might have been poisoned.
According toReuters, on November 10, 1992, a Zinder court fined the marabouts the equivalent of $300 each, and sentenced them to four-month suspended sentences. The leaders were also ordered to pay a total of 10 million cfa ($37,000) to those harmed during the rampages, and to the damaged bars and restaurants.
Mondo Religioso appears occasionally in STRANGE MAGAZINE. Many of these clips have never been published in Strange Magazine.
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