"Jesus' Wife" Not a Modern Forgery

Back in 2012 a piece of papyrus that appeared to contain a fragment of an unknown Gospel was presented at a conference in Rome. The text was written in Coptic and, controversially, included a phrase in which Jesus refers to "my wife." According to official church doctrine Jesus was not married, and an editorial published in the Vatican newspaper declared that the document was likely a modern fake. However, recent testing of the papyrus and ink has found it to be far older than the editorial suggests.

Harvard Theological Review says in the article published Thursday:

"Over the past two years, extensive testing of the papyrus and the carbon ink, as well as analysis of the handwriting and grammar, all indicate that the existing material fragment dates to between the sixth and ninth centuries CE [Common Era]. None of the testing has produced any evidence that the fragment is a modern fabrication or forgery."

Testing by a research scientist at Columbia University, using a technique called micro-Raman spectroscopy, determined that "the carbon character of the ink matched samples of other papyri that date from the first to eighth centuries CE," the Theological Review says.

It is of course true that even the new dating of the text does not necessarily mean that the historical Jesus was actually married, only that the doctrine claiming he was not is more recent than previously thought and was not accepted by all First Millennium Christians. The various Gnostic Gospels contain many unsubstantiated claims about Jesus which may or may not be historically accurate. The "Jesus' wife" fragment also contains a number of phrases that appear in the Gospel of Thomas, a much more famous Coptic text that is part of the Nag Hammadi Library collection and which may be one of the oldest Gnostic Gospels.

"Noah" Flooded Out

The latest film adaptation of the story of Noah's ark, Darren Aronofsky's Noah, has courted controversy and protests since it opened, mostly due to fundamentalists objecting to changes in the story that differ from the Biblical account. At a British theater in Exeter, though, the opening of the film was not interrupted by protesters, but rather by flooding.

An Exeter cinema was forced to close due to flooding - on the same day Noah opened on the big-screen nationwide. Those wanting to attend the first viewing of the latest blockbuster at Vue cinema in Exeter on Friday could have been forgiven for thinking they got a little closer to the action than anticipated.

Staff discovered the excess water when they arrived for work just after 7am. The venue had to close to the public until 2pm - meaning the first showing of Noah at 12.15pm had to be cancelled. The scale of water may not have been as biblical as it was on the big screen - and it is unclear if any animals had to be rescued from the confines of the cinema – - but the irony wasn’t lost on cinema-goers.

It's tempting to think that someone or something out there has a sense of humor. Of all the movies that could have been flooded out, this one is by far the most amusing, even though the water apparently just came from a broken ice machine. In the overall scheme of things that's pretty unimpressive and certainly nothing requiring an ark or even a small boat. According to the theater, engineers are working on repairing the damage and they should be open for business as usual again soon.

Fairies in Lancashire?

Back in 1917 the world was stunned by photographs that purported to depict real fairies taken in the British town of Cottingly. The photographs turned out to be part of an elaborate hoax created with paper cutouts, but with the camera technology of the time the pictures looked quite real. Now a university lecturer named John Hyatt claims to have photographed the real thing in the county of Lancashire, and has created an exhibition at the Whitaker Museum in Rossendale showcasing his pictures. Skeptics, however, are not impressed with the photographs and believe they may simply be images of normal insects.

"I was just taking sunset through the trees and when I enlarged the photographs later in the studio, I saw these figures," he wrote. "They are not doctored apart from I increased the size of a detailed section of a larger photograph along with the DPI to stop them being just large pixels -- normal size enhancement techniques." He said that the creatures in his photos don't look like normal insects. “It was a bit of a shock when I blew them up, I did a double take," he told the Manchester Evening News. “I went out afterwards and took pictures of flies and gnats and they just don’t look the same."

Hyatt's photos have skeptics buzzing around him like flies. In fact, flies are what the photos actually show, according to one insect expert. Entomologist Erica McLaughlin writes in the British Natural History Museum's NaturePlus blog that the creatures that Hyatt photographed are most likely a small species of fly known as the "midge." "These tiny midges form mating swarms where the males will ‘dance’ around trying to attract the opposite sex," she writes. They have delicate wings and long legs which dangle down."

The pictures do seem to show creatures with vaguely human outlines, but there are a number of possible explanations that should be considered before jumping to the conclusion that these are in fact fairies. Midges are common in the area that the photograph was taken, and they do sometimes hold their legs in a position that when blown up might produce the human-like silhouette. On the other hand, it's also possible that this could be a new species of insect, and probably the easiest thing to do would be to catch a few and see for sure. If they're so easy to photograph, catching them shouldn't be that difficult. And if they do turn out to be tiny people with wings, that would be quite the discovery.

Hazards of Massage Therapists

Silly me! I was under the impression that when you go to a massage therapist all you leave with is relaxed muscles. But leave it my Facebook feed to set me straight. It seems that a visit to the massage therapist can result in demonic possession. I wonder if that's what happened to the yoga guy from Friday's post. I imagine that demons probably enjoy throwing dead animals more than the rest of us.

~~~ MASSAGE THERAPISTS ~~~
Going to a massage therapist however innocent, for therapy or just for a relaxing thing to do with your girlfriends or hubby/guy friend....can transfer demons present in them, unto you! If they are practicing witches or using witchcraft, new age techniques in any way, it is an open door to receive this most deadly spirit of witchcraft, not to mention all the other demons they may carry! It's a "laying on of hands"!!! It's an open door to Satan to attack you! Believe me....this is how our family was infected years ago when my mother went for massage treatments to bring her womb up into position so she could conceive. The result....every demon that was in that woman was transferred unto her! Yes she became pregnant but the child ended up demon possessed! Those demons were transferred then unto the rest of us...destroyed our family!!! Thus God brought me through 12 yrs of spiritual warfare to break those curses...to rid us of all the demons and bring us out of the curse.....I minister to people all the time who have picked up demons from the massage therapist!..SO ONLY GO IF YOU COVER YOURSELF WITH ANOINTING OIL FIRST....OVER YOUR WHOLE BODY, ASK FORGIVENESS OF SINS BEFORE YOU GO IN AND FORBID SATAN TO TRANSFER ANY DEMONS FROM THEM TO YOU!!! ALSO BREAK ALL SOUL TIES WITH WHOMEVER GAVE YOU THE MASSAGE! IF YOU DON'T KNOW THEIR NAME..... SAY....THE ONE WHO WORKED ON ME TODAY LORD WEARING THE BLUE SHIRT (OR WHATEVER)

It would be interesting to see a real clinical study of this supposed case, since I have a hard time believing anybody who goes in for a massage really gets infected with demons, at least not the sort I'm familiar with. This just seems like more of the paranoia about the modern world that seems to infect certain fundamentalists. But maybe I'm wrong, and there really is a whole class of massage demons created by Satan for the express purpose of afflicting massage therapists. If so, given the popularity of massage the Teen Exorcist Squad really has their work cut out for them.

How Not to Do Yoga

Maybe the reason fundamentalists keep trying to ban yoga stretching in schools is that they imagine it's done something like this. United States Park Police officer Jared Tyng recently arrested a man named Bill Kachle on National Park Service property for “disorderly conduct/obscene acts,” which involved holding yoga poses, masturbating, and hurling a dead animal at passing cars. It should go without saying that this isn't any sort of yoga practice with which I'm familiar.

Two female witnesses pointed Tyng in the direction of Kachle, a Washington, D.C. resident who was “holding a yoga pose” nearby. The women said that they were walking along a bike trail when Kachle--who was waving his arms and “shouting odd statements”--dropped his pants and began masturbating.

“Thereafter, the subject then picked up a dead animal, ran into the northbound lanes of travel on the George Washington Memorial Parkway and threw the dead animal at a passing car,” according to a U.S. District Court complaint. After flinging the animal, Kachle “returned to the trail, pointed at both women and masturbated again,” Tyng added.

Since the article was posted on April 1st it might be fake, but at the same time weirdos commit crimes on April Fool's Day just like every other day. If real, Kachle's actions sound like they may be the result of dementia or some sort of untreated mental illness, and I hope that he gets the medical attention he likely needs. Because otherwise he's probably going to keep harassing passersby and giving yoga a bad name. Just to be clear, no part of yoga practice involves masturbating and throwing dead animals. If it did, I wouldn't want it in my kid's school either.

Today in Bad Magick

Some ideas about magical methods are so bad it's hard to see how anyone could take them seriously. A man in Malawi was told by a traditional healer that if he sacrificed body parts to a hyena he would become rich, so he went ahead and did so - with awful results. The hyena wound up eating three toes and his penis.

Chamangeni Zulu, in his early twenties, was discharged from the Chipata General Hospital this week, a senior nurse told AFP. "He was discharged on Monday after the relatives requested that he should be transferred to Muchinji in Malawi," said Sister Precious Matongo, referring to a town just across the border. "They should be constantly cleaning the wounds but he is stable," she added.

Local media reported that Zulu sacrificed his body parts after being told by a traditional healer that it would help him become rich. "I went to a bush where I was instructed to be naked and a hyena came to me and started eating my toes and eventually my manhood was eaten," he is quoted as saying by the Times of Zambia.

I seriously hope somebody debunks this and it turns out to be a hoax, because it's such a terrible story. But if not, it illustrates a fundamental problem that has corrupted many magical models - the just-world fallacy. The idea is that if you sacrifice something that you value, you will receive some equivalent benefit because the universe somehow "balances out." Only it doesn't. The only actual consequence of sacrificing your toes and penis to a hyena is that you no longer have toes or a penis and the hyena is a little less hungry.

While it's true that offerings can have a place in magical operations, the key to understanding how they work is that when you make an offering to a spirit, it doesn't matter how much you value it. What matters is how much the spirit values it, because spirits have their own independent spheres of consciousness. It's just like offering a gift to a person. If the gift isn't something that they want, it doesn't matter how much effort you put into obtaining it, it's still a lousy gift.

The Holy Grail?

A new book by two historians claims that a chalice held in a Spanish church is the mythical Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. With the book's publication, crowds of visitors have swarmed the church attempting to get a look at the Grail. On Friday the cup was taken off display as curators attempted to find a more suitable venue.

There are hundreds of chalices in European churches that are reputed to be the Holy Grail, and there was a time in European history when the forging of Christian artifacts was a highly profitable and booming business. But is there a chance that this could actually be the one?

The director of the basilica's museum, Raquel Jaén, said the cup was taken off display on Friday while curators looked for an exhibition space large enough to accommodate the crowds. "It was in a very small room where it was not possible to admire it to the full," she told AFP. Made of agate, gold and onyx and encrusted with precious stones, the object in León is formed by two goblets joined together, with one turned up, the other down. It has been known until now as the goblet of the Infanta Doña Urraca, daughter of Fernando I, King of León from 1037 to 1065.

The two historians – León University medieval history lecturer Margarita Torres and art historian José Manuel Ortega del Rio – identified it as the grail in their book, Kings of the Grail, published last week. They said two Egyptian parchments they found in 2011 at Cairo's University of al-Azhar set them on a three-year investigation. Their studies led them to identify the upper part of the princess's goblet, made of agate and missing a fragment as described in the parchments, as the grail – one of the most prized relics in Christianity.

As I see it the problem with this hypothesis is that the actual legend of the Holy Grail only surfaced in Europe more than a thousand years after the date given for the death of Jesus. Obviously if no historical Jesus ever existed, there would be no Holy Grail. But even assuming that he did, no special significance was accorded to the cup by those who knew him. Likewise, the Grail legend incorporates elements of non-Christian mythology just as the later story of Jesus himself does.

Hopefully these objections are answered to a satisfactory degree in the book. They need to be if the authors want their claim taken seriously. It should also be noted that the supposed magical powers attributed to the Grail developed from folklore and are not mentioned in the Gospels. Therefore, even if the chalice really was used by the man behind the myth of Jesus, it's most likely simply a significant historical artifact.

April Fool's Day

The usual tradition here at Augoeides for April Fool's Day is to find some satirical article about religion and comment on it as though it were genuine. However, some years are better than others in this regard. After a fair amount of searching, I've concluded that there's nothing out there even remotely recent that I'm finding particularly funny this year. It seems as if the various satirical sites are drifting in the direction of spoofing politics and celebrities, without much in the way of stories that fall within the range of articles that normally appear here. So instead, I've decided to break with tradition and post this story from Huffington Post on the origin of the holiday and its surprising connections to Judeo-Christian religious traditions.

The day began, most believe, in 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII decreed the adoption of the “Gregorian calendar” — named after himself — which moved New Year’s Day from the end of March to Jan. 1. The change was published widely, explains Ginger Smoak, an expert in medieval history at the University of Utah, but those who didn’t get the message and continued to celebrate on April 1 “were ridiculed and, because they were seen as foolish, called April Fools.”

Even though the annual panoply of pranks meant to mock the gullible or to send a friend on a “fool’s errand” may not be grounded in any ancient religious merrymaking, the notion of “holy fools” does have a long and respected place in Judeo-Christian history. Hebrew prophets were often scorned as mad or eccentric for pronouncing unwelcome or uncomfortable truths. The Apostle Paul talked to the Corinthians about becoming “fools for Christ.” And Eastern Orthodoxy still sees the “holy fool” as a type of Christian martyr.