NOW FROM THE SIXTH HOUR UNTIL THE NINTH HOUR, precisely 12 noon until 3 pm in Roman time, Matthew records darkness over the whole land while Jesus hung on the device of His crucifixion. It was about the ninth hour, he wrote, when Jesus cried in a loud voice: “Eli,...
PONTIUS PILATE washed his hands of the entire affair. The trial of Jesus had likely been conceived by all parties involved, both His accusers and authorities, as a kangaroo court. Jesus was a non-citizen of Rome, which entitled him to no rights before the law...
THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR TRANSLATING the bulk of Hebrew Scripture into the Latin text we know today as the Vulgate never could erase the guilt of his lifelong love affair with Virgil, Plato, Cicero, and Homer. Like the sarcophagus of Heine’s dream some fifteen-hundred...
HEINRICH HEINE WAS NOT WELL. In May of 1848, the German-Jewish writer, known for his lyric poetry set to music by such composers as Schumann and Schubert, suddenly fell paralyzed. Heine would not recover. Further musings were confined to bed, a sickly pulpit for the...
“For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” (Psalm 6:5) LAZARUS WAS NOT WELL. BUT THAT’S SOMEWHAT of an understatement. Fact is, Lazarus was dying, and everybody knew it. His sisters Mary and Martha sent a currier...
A HUNDRED and fifty years ago Saul took his own life and now the wicked King Ahab of Israel has asked Jehoshaphat king of Judah if he would agree to join him at Ramoth-gilead for battle. Jehoshaphat is legally related through the marriage of his son to Ahab and...
“THEN SAMUEL TOOK THE HORN OF OIL, and anointed David in the midst of his brethren, and the Spirit of Yahweh came upon him from that day forward (1 Samuel 16:13).” Though we are not intimately told about the judicial sessions going on behind the scene in heaven, the...
IT IS A LITTLE KNOWN FACT THAT THE CELESTIAL HALO, which has adorned the portraits of so many heavenly-residing saints, did not originate with the Christian religion. For this we must first look to the Egyptian Mysteries; to the hidden knowledge of Zarathustra; to the...
LONG AGO TWO HUNDRED ANGELS DESCENDED upon Mount Hermon in order that humanity might learn the mysteries of heaven, and then one day, while Azazel, Semjaza, and the lot of their fellow transgressors were sitting around weeping, the Prophet Enoch met them. He had been...
SCRIPTURE DOES NOT INTRODUCE US TO NADAB AND ABIHU as malevolent men. Quite contrarily, they were the eldest sons of Aaron—priests of the one true God. Nadab was heir to the office of high priest. Abihu was next in line. Nobody else but their father and Moses their...
ON THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION THE LORD GOD FORMED man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God later caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. Upon opening his eyes, he beheld a woman near his...
IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED BY THE CLERIC that Paul the Apostle agreed with Saul the Pharisee, his fleshly counterpart, on any number of extra-Biblical doctrines, particularly the immortal soul; that the road to Damascus did little to reform his erstwhile faith in the...
WHILE PREGNANT WITH A SECOND CHILD, the 35 year-old Empress Poppaea Sabina was kicked to death by Nero, her third and final husband. Yet another antichrist in a succession of many reigned from Rome. Only one year earlier, on a muggy July night in 64 AD, over half of...
ONCE UPON A TIME THALES WAS OUT TAKING A WALK, counting the crystalline constellations without thinking so much as to observe his footing, when he stumbled headlong into a well. This in itself is not the great tragedy of the tale, as we are quickly informed it...
MOSES HAD MARRIED A BLACK WOMAN. More specifically, she was a Cushite—of Ethiopian descent. For this assault on their intellect, and his father-in-law’s constant mingling in Hebrew affairs, Aaron and Miriam succumbed to their pride and took umbrage. “Hath the LORD...
ISRAEL’S HUMILIATING DEFEAT IN 722 BC was simply not enough for her captors. The king of Assyria pressed the brunt monarchic weight of his eyesight upon Judah. Within twenty years, 701 to be exact, his successor had conquered every fenced city of the southern...