Is Matthew 17:19 literally true?

Short answer, yes, but Christ's promise in that verse is not for everyone.

A somewhat lengthier discussion is this challenge on the site "God is imaginary":*

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says:

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

If "nothing will be impossible to you", then if we ask to cure cancer tonight, cancer should disappear. Right? Yet nothing happens. Note that if we take the Bible less-than-literally here, the statement "nothing will be impossible to you" becomes "lots of things will be impossible to you," and that would mean that Jesus is lying.

Now, what does Haydock comment have to say?

ST. MATTHEW - Chapter 17:19** Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. *For amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you.

Comment:

Ver. 19. If you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed. Christ insinuates to his apostles, as if they had not yet faith enough to work great miracles, which require a firm faith joined with a lively confidence in God. The mustard-seed is brought in with an allusion to its hot and active qualities. (Witham)

That is, a perfect faith; which, in its properties and its fruits, resembles the grain of mustard-seed in the parable. (Chap. xii.[xiii.?] 31.) (Challoner)

By faith is here understood, not that virtue by which we assent to all things that are to be believed of Christ, the first, of the theological virtues, in which the apostles were not deficient, but that confidence in the power and goodness of God, that he will on such an occasion exert these, his attributes, in favour of the supplicant. To have a true faith of this kind, and free from all presumption, is a great and high privilege, which the Holy Ghost breathes into such only as he pleases. (Jansenius)

Examples of this efficacious faith are given by St. Paul. (Hebrews chap. ii.[xi.?]) St. Gregory of Neo-Cæsarea is also related, by Eusebius and Ven. Bede, to have removed by the efficacy of his faith a rock, which obstructed the building of a church; thus literally fulfilling the promise of Jesus Christ. (Tirinus)

The faith of the apostles, especially of those that had not been present at the transfiguration, was not perfect and complete in all its parts, till after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Ghost. (Haydock)

St. Jerome understands by mountains, things the most difficult to be effected.

One simple example of the fact that the Apostles eventually had the faith to move mountains: 100 years after Spartacus and his followers were beaten in battle and crucified along the Via Appia or whereever it was, it was as impossible as anything to imagine slavery would disappear.

Yet slavery did disappear where Romans and Franks ruled one after another. And in the rest of the Occident.

Now for the whole context:**

14 *And when he was come to the multitude, there came to him a man falling down on his knees before him, saying: Lord, have pity on my son, for he is a lunatic, and suffereth much: for he falleth often into the fire, and often into the water.

15 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

16 Then Jesus answered, and said: O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me.

17 And Jesus rebuked him, and the devil went out of him, and the child was cured from that hour.

18 Then came the disciples to Jesus secretly, and said: Why could not we cast him out?

19 Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. *For amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you.

20 But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.

In other words, everywhere an exorcist succeeds, there is an example of this promise in work. Ask Gabriele Amorth of his experience thereof.

This is no warrant for just any layman - the Apostles to whom Christ spoke were the first bishops of the Church - asking anything and waiting for it to happen and it will.

But as Tirinus commented, one bishop had in fact done what Christ promised. St. Gregory of Neo-Cæsarea is also related, by Eusebius and Ven. Bede, to have removed by the efficacy of his faith a rock, which obstructed the building of a church; thus literally fulfilling the promise of Jesus Christ.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Quadragesima Sunday
or First Sunday of Lent
9-III-2014

* God is imaginary : Proof #1 - Try praying
http://godisimaginary.com/i1.htm

** Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition. ST. MATTHEW - Chapter 17
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id35.html

... And Why Not Mormonism (*grinning*)?

I came across Pearl of Great Price, not meaning the thing so called by Our Lord, namely state of Grace and pleasing God and getting to Heaven, but the text which Joseph Smith called so.

Wikisource : Pearl of Great Price/Moses
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pearl_of_Great_Price/Moses

Chapter 1[edit]*

1 The words of God, which he spake unto Moses at a time when Moses was caught up into an exceedingly high mountain,

2 And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses; therefore Moses could endure his presence.

3 And God spake unto Moses, saying: Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?

No, that is not God speaking to Moses in those words. Book of Moses in Pearl of Great Price portrays God as a babbler.

I could have added something like "for ... and is not this ..." because I am a babbler, but I refuse to take God for one!

It is not that God would not reason. It is rather that God when talking to men reasons so well that he has no need to point out a lot of things to make the argument understandable.

That is of course the ONE reason why I refuse to believe in Mormonism, which I do on other grounds just as with Mahometanism, just as with Hesiod's Theogony and its Muses or with Odinism. Among these, Odin might even beat the "god of Joseph Smith" when it comes to literary style (see Hávamál).

But the main one is that I draw a very thick and straight line between revelations as in messages purporting to be from Heaven and Revelation as in Heaven showing itself in action, like Christ's Resurrection or things. A revelation is tested by its agreement with Revelation as in Salvation History. Not the other way round.***

There is no hint whatsoever that Joseph Smith got the "Pearl of Great Price" in any way that connects it with Moses. Unlike how Jesus and we get the Pentateuch, for instance.

We get the Pentateuch as firmly from Moses as we get the Lord of the Rings from Tolkien. Joseph Smith got The Pearl of Great Price as little from Moses as Tolkien got Lord of the Rings from The Red Book of Westmarch.

And not only is the "God" of Pearl of Great Price wrong, its "Moses" is wrong also:

9 And the presence of God withdrew from Moses, that his glory was not upon Moses; and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth.

10 And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.

A phrase like "which thing I had never supposed" is basically Malory style or even Howard Pyle style for "who'd have thunk it?" And that in its turn is a very American turn of phrase. Of course it may well have had its precursors in the time of Malory or even Chaucer but to me it sounds like a sort or habitual introspection that became fashionable through Stoics Platonics and through the Christian habits of confession and examination of conscience but hardly entered into the daily habits of anyone at the court of Pharao whatever the Pharao was. It seems - according to recent attempts to harmonise the Exodus with Egyptian history that the Pharao in question was Amenamhet III (whom David Grohl has nicknamed "Mister Grumpy") and I suspect he was more surrounded by people who would remind us of old Arabs with white beards making comments that sound like lessons than by men expressing themselves like Chaucer. Besides, close by Amenamhet III the atmosphere may well have been a bit stifled, like living on a spy mission into enemy country or like living next to Stalin. Not really a school of spontaneity.

Someone I met over the internet reasoned "Moses can hardly have been humble if he called himself humble, considering that humility is a Christian vertue" ... but the thing is, whether he realised that God would accept his humility or not, he was from a place and an upbringing which did not habitually value humble people. It is not like a man these days calling himself "modest" (which would usually be self praise), it is like a man these days saying he has "a self-esteem issue" (which is generally speaking not self praise). When Moses said it he was basically telling God that if he was to speak to the Pharao he risked feeling very uncomfortable and even bungling it all by shutting up when he should not. Which is why God gave him his brother Aaron for help in that errand.**

And I would of course be as suspicious of a text purporting Moses used the roundabout modern phrase "self-esteem issue" rather than using the word humble for it as I am of a text where "Moses" in one breath speaks like a Sufi ("Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing,") and in the next ("which thing I never had supposed") like an English or French but certainly Christian gentleman with the curiosity of an explorer and the background of introspective expressions from centuries earlier - which were earlier than the English or French gentleman, but definitely later than Moses.

The fact that "Pearl of Great Price" includes visions and other supernatural stuff has really nothing to do with my disbelief.

And I suppose the guys who recognise Lord of the Rings as fantasy because they think Balrogs (i e demons taking physical shape and threatening with physical destruction) are impossible will miss Tolkien's real deliberate giveaway to make the very gullible think again. A thing like The Red Book of Westmarch (which Tolkien showed as little as Joseph Smith showed the gold plates he translated Book of Mormon from) is made to make the reader think about such a trivial matter as how did the text come from purported or implied observers to us. The guys who say "it is fantasy because it contains Balrogs" might miss that hint and therefore believe in the manuscript of one Adso from Melk.

I know one lady I was back then friends and sometimes in love with (she is now married to someone else) who actually thought it funny to realise that Adso from Melk is fiction and Name of the Rose is not a Medieval text, even if it is a text by a better Medieval Historian than most of its readers. She laughed at herself so heartily she cannot have been making a show to be ironic.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Adaucus and the Town dwellers
who had him for chief, martyrs
under Galerius Maximinian
7-II-2014

* Wikisource, like wikipedia, is a wiki, ok, that means readers can edit it. Not meaning you should unless you see part of the text misrepresented, as in you know the text.

** In the real Pentateuch, of course, not in The Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses.

*** I believed the Palmarian revelation until I found out a quote where Palmarian Catechism disagrees with the cosmology of ordinary Patristic understanding of Christianity (there are three dimensions, not eight!), I doubted about Christ's revelation to St Bridget as to crusade when I thought "heathens in Novgorod" referred to Russian Orthodox (even if schismatic, Christ would hardly call them heathen just for that) but have regained confidence in it since I noticed she lived a century after Alexander Nevski first defended Novgorod against Teutonic Order and then handed it over to very real Pagans - the Yellow Horde. Christ's words to St Bridget were of course a way of telling her and through her the Swedish King that Novgorod needed liberation from the Yellow Horde. He did not listen however. But notice that it is not my view of Catholic Orthodoxy that changes according to what I read in St Bridget's Extravagantes or in ... earlier ... a site by Palmar de Troya. It is my view of these revelations which changes according to as I notice a discrepancy with Catholic Orthodoxy either showing up (as with Palmar) or disappearing (as with St Bridget).

What's wrong with Wotanism

Apart from a very quick answer like "everything" or "it is Pagan", one can also mention it is being promoted by lies. Or even selfcontradictions.

However, unlike the practitioners of priestcraft in biblical religion, Wotanists did not and do not pretend to speak for God. The Gods speak to every man or woman directly through the evidence of Nature's Laws. The whole purpose of priestcraft is to allow the priest or the people he represents to control or have power over others. The power of the pulpit and of "Divine Right to Rule" rests on the words "God said," and a claim of superior access to God. Wotanists denounce the whole philosophy of one man having power of compulsion over others.

The quote is from the more or less openly Neo-Nazi site White Resister. Here is the link if you care to pursue it. Now, as a Swede and friend of an Icelander and as having studied Norse Mythology for pleasure since I was small, I can only categorise these words with the two letters BS.

Let us however not stay with such a summary categorisation but actually exercise ourselves in taking each proposition as seriously as if it had some connexion with fact. It has. Being opposed to fact is one connexion with it.

"However, unlike the practitioners of priestcraft in biblical religion, Wotanists did not and do not pretend to speak for God."

Except that old Odin pretended to BE "god", sort of, in a Marduk kind of way when he came to Uppsala and fooled the previous king, probably with hypnotic tricks. I have ugly fears about what he did to the previous king after getting the throne. That man's name was Gylfe.

Oden's rival about Fricca, Niord, and the latter's son, Odin's stepson, were also worshipped as gods, probably even during their lifetime. Only when Yngwe Frey left the throne to Fiolner, the latter visited Froda son of Hadding in Denmark (in the time of Caesar Augustus, though Saxo Grammaticus poses them maybe three or even five centuries earlier), got drunk, stumbled into a vat of hydromel, or mead as we also call it, and drowned. Fiolner has not come down to Norse tradition as a god, and I think you can see why.

"The Gods speak to every man or woman directly through the evidence of Nature's Laws."

Except of course to poor old Gylfe, to whom they spoke through some Samarian Magician or some Druid or some other magician who has come down to us through tradition as having been called Odin.

"The whole purpose of priestcraft is to allow the priest or the people he represents to control or have power over others."

No. That accusation was however levied against "priestcraft" by one Emperor, Frederick II the Stauffer, who was very eager to control people himself and saw the Catholic Church as represented by the Papacy as an obstacle. So much so that he did not always care to be even orthodox about Catholicism.

"The power of the pulpit and of "Divine Right to Rule" rests on the words "God said," and a claim of superior access to God."

The power of Odinid dynasties (like the Ynglings, whose early carreer I outlined) rested among other things on a claim of descent from Odin. On the other hand it seems a lucky ruler could very easily claim or get granted such. East Anglian Royalty descends from "Odin's" son "Casere" = Julius Caesar or maybe Caesar Augustus or some even later one. In other words, though even their claim to descend in any sense from Caesar is pretty tenuous, that claim by itself was to the Pagans proof of descending from Odin. If that man was a Druid fleeing from Gaul to implant Druidism in a gullible region like Sweden and far from Rome, he might have grinned very heartily of knowing the Caesar he was fleeing from would later count as his son ... if he lived long enough to learn thereof, of course.

"Wotanists denounce the whole philosophy of one man having power of compulsion over others."

Wait, Wilberforce was an Odinist, right? And Queen Saint Bathilda, spouse of Clodevech II was of course not of Catholic religion, was she? I mean, the Catholic Church is famous for canonising Pagan clergy and statesmen, right? Not.

Wilberforce who abolished slavery was himself an Anglican. One of his sons was the Anglican bishop who opposed Huxley about Evolution. The other was a convert to Roman Catholicism. And Queen Saint Bathilda, who had abolished what was left of the Roman slavery of Antiquity, was a Roman Catholic all her life, since the baptismal font up to making it to Heaven. Neither of them was Odinist.

And ask the people loyal to King Alfred or to Brian Borumha whether the Odinist invaders where not somewhat slave hunting as well. While you are at it.

There is one other quote I find interesting in the article. David's famous third reason for not being a Christian:

Third, a Folkish religion must teach fertility, not "sex is sin" and woman-hatred (as Paul in Corinthians 7:1, John in Revelation 14:4 and Jesus in Matthew 5:28). I could continue, but the purpose is to promote my religion, not attack others.

He meant 1 Corinthians 7:1.

Now concerning the thing whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

A preference for the celibate state is in fact not hatred of the one sex and preference for the other. Elsewhere he says "a man who gives his daughter away in marriage does well, but if he does not give his daughter away in marriage he does better" (quoting from memory), meaning here that it is good for a woman not to touch a man. This other quote also clearly states that though marriage is second best, it is nevertheless good. So does first Corinthians 7 in the verses 2 - 5:

[2] But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. [3] Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband. [4] The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife. [5] Defraud not one another, except, perhaps, by consent, for a time, that you may give yourselves to prayer; and return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency.

Every man having his own wife refers not to every man without exception, but every man to whom "for fear of fornication" (or, possibly, similar reasons) applies.

Now, choosing celibacy for onself (as St Paul did) and stating that sex is a sin for someone having so chosen is very much not the same thing as stating simply that sex is a sin.

It is sex outside marriage or infertile sex within marriage which is a sin. Sex within marriage and without condoms or even worse things is tainted, it has a connexion to sin and is therefore a kind of impurity in its concrete exercise, but its basic act is considered by Christianity as JUST. Precisely as its purpose. It is thus also a just excuse of moments of what might otehrwise have been sinful lust.

So, yes, Revelation 14:4 exalts the privilege of celibacy and Matthew 5:28 forbids lusting after any woman not one's wife, but also lusting after one's own wife in such a way as to make lust rather then shared parenthood the purpose of the relation.

I cannot see how this attitude can possibly be considered incompatible with a religion that promotes the survival of a folk or a nation. Look at Ireland before recent apostasies (whether on part of clergy who would have been thrown out of orders and of monasteries pretty quickly before Vatican II or on part of laymen apostasising from the faith and promoting it by reference to those clergy), was the people with the monks and nuns really the one that had fewer children per family and higher percentage of bachelors and old maids than their neighbours in England and Wales? Were Italian families in Rome really smaller than German families in Berlin or Swedish families in ... Uppsala ! ... fifty years ago?

But there is an even funnier aspect to this charge.

Whenever "priestcraft" these days is accused of wanting to dominate people, it is usually precisely because "priestcraft" is telling people who are not opting for celibacy to be fruitful and multiply. The standard Pagan reply (perhaps outside Odinism or Wotanism) against Catholicism is requiring priests to stay out of the bedroom. We Catholics actually invite priests to the bedroom of newly wed couples, he has to bless the bed before they go on to use it.

Let us now work backwards a bit:

Second, a Folk preserving religion must follow a God of the whole Folk, not a personal God of personal advantage.

It seems that German Odinists and Modernist Protestants, both with a more Patriotic bent than a bent for Personal Salvation, were eighty years ago or even earlier starting to tell a lot of courples NOT to be fruitful and multiply. And not just doing it with mere verbal advice. Nazi Germany, certain states in US and in Canada - who had started even before Hitler. And Per Albin Hansson, a Social Democratic, democratically elected Prime Minister of Sweden, nominally acting on behalf of a King who no longer exercised political power, did so too. Lapps and Gipsies were sterilised by force well into the 70:s, so no thanks, people who want no personal relation to God but only a national relation to gods are - as was recently proven - a menace to fertility.

The first reason of David is a bit odd as well:

First, prior to biblical religion, the Aryan race was secure in its nations and existence, as well as dominant throughout the known world. Today, after nearly 2,000 years of biblical religion, including inquisitions, the dark ages, the slaughter and murder of millions in the name of Jesus, the Aryan race faces near certain extinction. The effects must now outweigh the "could have been's" and "would have been's.

I am reminded of The City of God. Pagans were accusing Christianity of having caused the downfall of Rome. St Augustine of Hippo gave the appropraiet answers. Now, I do not agree that the Aryan race is a real entity with a real claim on loyalty. Nor did Odinists think of it as such, since the Anglo-Saxon Christians of Alfred were obviously as Aryan (or properly speaking: as little Aryan, as little Gipsy) as the Danes of Guthrum. I do not agree it is facing extinction. I do agree it is facing humiliations as when Aaron Dugmore died for being white and I agree "it" (as in they) should be defended against such. But while I do agree the West used to be more powerful than recent years, I simply observe two things:

• 1) Christianity is what raised Spain to its power over an Empire without a setting sun. It is true that it crumbled from Napoleonic Wars down to the Spanish American war (but its agressors Napoleonic France and Massonic USA were as Aryan powers as itself), but it is the most powerful example of Western power, surpassing Rome.
  
  Now exactly as Rome had a past with defending the Hearth and the Capitolium against Brennus and Hannibal (a bit less successful with Brennus, though) before it became a world power across the Mediterranean, Spain has had a similar past defending Christianity against the Moors, from Covadonga to taking of Granada. And it never came anywhere West of the Azores without the attributes of Cross and Banner, Language and Sword.
  
  Its failure is due to agression from powers "wanting the Pope to dominate less" as they would have stated their purpose. Both Napoleon and McKinley were politically the opposite of say Dollfuss or Eamonn DeValera.
  
  
• 2) Whether for good or for evil or - most likely - for both taking turns, the West did dominate the rest. It is the reversal of this which fills David with dismay.
  
  

  the Aryan race was secure in its nations and existence, as well as dominant throughout the known world. Today, after nearly 2,000 years of biblical religion

  
  
  Dominant throughout the known world? Actually it was not, unless you like to call both Romans and Persians Aryans, subsuming them under one "racial" loyalty despite widely diverse loyalties in nearly every other respect. But what about the moral imlications of such a supposed domination?
  
  

  Wotanists denounce the whole philosophy of one man having power of compulsion over others.

  
  
  So one race can dominate another race and no single man or clique of men in the dominating race have power of compulsion over any man in the dominated?
  
  Or is it supposed to mean that being under power of compulsion by one single man who is on top of that a stranger is not OK, but being under power of compulsion of a clique of strangers is totally OK?

Oh boy ... if the Wotanists are looking for the genial mind that they lack, I feel I might be competent but I am very certain I am not willing. Or rather, I am incompetent for the purpose of serving their cause by being competent in having a mind if not as genial as I like to think at least less disingenious than that expressed by David Lane.

I mean, his third reason very clearly proves that Albigensianism (which taught not only that the marriage was sinful, but that infertile sex was preferrable to those unable to stay perfact celibates) cannot be a Folkish religion. And yet his first reason includes cursing the Inquisition for wiping out Albigensianism from the religious map of Southern France.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Romwald Abbot
7-II-2014

Updated the followin day./HGL

Are Unbelievers Hysterics?

Acharya wrote a letter to her list about the Blood Moons, and here is a quote:

In short, because of the lunar eclipses over the next couple of years, many Christians are "looking to the stars" for portents of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This purported return is to be accompanied by slaughter and bloodshed, so many nonbelievers will not go along happily with such a belief!

The slaughter and bloodshed in question is to be done on an army that is making war against Christians, so it is not really a question of such a belief per se triggering random acts of bloodshed and slaughter on our part.

Of course, if "unbelievers" (or the Atheist Community among them, perhaps supported by Jewish or Muslim communities or both) choose to go hysteric about what Christians believe and how that could act out - after nearly a Century of Evolutionist beliefs and Antichristian prejudice acting out very badly, then I cannot guarantee, nor can anybody else, that we Christians do not retaliate.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mairie du III / Paris
St Agnes of Rome
Virgin and Martyr
21-I-2014

Tim O'Neill makes an excellent case against the proposition That Constantine turned Jesus into the Son of God

Here* is his case:

While Christians reject the idea that Jesus was 'turned into a God' at any point as a matter of faith, non-Christian historians accept that 'Jesus' was a First Century Jewish preacher and healer who later became regarded as, somehow, God in human form. Where they differ from what Brown is implying through Teabing is when and how this occurred.

...

We have no shortage of writings from Christians of the Second, Third and Fourth Centuries AD and they regularly tell of their perception of who and what Jesus was. If Teabing, Langdon (and Brown) are correct, we should see a sharp break around 325 AD, with earlier writers referring to Jesus only as a mortal prophet and later ones adopting this 'pagan' idea of him being a god in human form. But we do not see this at all.

The evidence from all Christian writings prior to 325 AD, right back to the late First Century and within a generation or two of Jesus' own time, indicates clearly that the overwhelming majority of Christians regarded Jesus as God long before 325 AD, before the Council of Nicea and centuries before Constantine was even born. Non-Christian historians agree that the process of turning the mortal Jewish preacher, Yeshua bar Yosef, into the divine being 'Jesus Christ' was well underway as early as 90 AD and was more or less complete by the middle of the Second Century.

Anyone see the problem?

"We have no shortage of writings from Christians of the Second, Third and Fourth Centuries AD"

Ah? What about First Century AD?

He supports the kind of scholarship in which Second Epistle of St Peter was not by the Disciple Peter. But from Second Century. A scholarship that is a boon to "Arians" - people denying Divinity to Christ in the modern way rather than that of the historical Arius (who had no clue about that scholarship) - a boon to global flood deniers and a few other variants on the theme Christians who dare not be Christians fully.

But also a scholarship which is contradicted by - if not for Second Peter at least for the Gospels - authors from precisely as early as Second Century.

If Matthew was not written by St Matthew, John not by St John, both of whom were disciples of Jesus and known to be so, and if Luke and Mark were not written by men who were disciples to St Paul and St Peter, how did Papias come to think they had been written by those? How did Irenaeus of Lyons come to think so?

If Book of Mormon was not really written originally in Nephitic language encoded in Reformed Egyptian what-ever-kind of Egyptian characters (hieraglyphic, hieratic or demotic), there are clearly two points on which deception can have been practised, even if Mormons do not believe it was a deception. Point a, Joseph Smith can have been deluded by a demon (option only available to people believing there are such, but as a Christian I am not denying myself that option), point b Joseph Smith can have been a con man. Both are very clear possibilities. But Papias is not discovering the four gospels as Joseph Smith discovered the book of Mormon, he is claiming the Gospels were always accepted among the Christian community as of those persons. So Papias being either deceived by a demon or a deceiver himself is cleary ruled out.

Or assume Papias had been writing to give the impression the four Gospels had always been accepted since they were written by people who had met Jesus or had met those who had met him when in fact that was not the case but he had made them himself - how then could Papias have been accepted as telling the truth by the Christian community, since if they had just formed around Papias they would naturally have accepted Papias as their founder or second founder, which is clearly not the case, and since if they had been around without the four Gospels until Papias forged them, how could they have believed him when he was basically telling them what they had been reading for decades or in some cases even more than a century when in fact they had not read it unti Papias produced it? They could have concluded Papias was a good writer, they could have concluded Papias had done what Joseph Smith claimed to have done, namely restore lost gospels, but they could not possibly have concluded they had always been keeping them and Papias was just recording the fact. And if they had caught him saying that when it was not the case, they would not have concluded he had even rediscovered Gospels previously lost, since in that case they would have thought him dishonest.

But saying we lack Christian material from the First Century depends precisly in claiming that books purportedly from then were really from Second Century, it includes someone forging their collective memory in a totally implausible way. That is exactly why Bultmann is popular with Atheists and with Christians who do not really want to be Christians. They want to believe that ideas found in the books of the New Testament are really later than the death or cessation of effective control and influence in Christian community of their purported writers.

Not only do they not have the case O'Neill - one of them himself - has against Da Vinci Code. He says that if Dan Brown was right we would expect one literature from Ante-Nicene Fathers and we get another one and not at all that one. If he wanted to make such a case against Christianity, he would rather have to contend himelf with saying "we would expect one kind of literature from the First Century, but we do not have it" ... but that is not all. He would admit not to having the kind of literature from the First Christians he would expect if he were right either. And he would also have to admit that somehow or other a literature he did not expect from the First Christians had become attributed to them.

Of course he could claim that the First Christians were not expected to produce any literature at all ... but that leaves out the fact they came from a very literate people and that though most of the Twelve Apostles were comparatively illiterate as Galileans, one of them, St Matthew, was once identified as a Levi, thus as coming from the most literate families of all Judea, as literate as Flavius Josephus. He was also the one credited with the first and earliest Gospel.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Basil of Caesarea
2-I-2014

*History versus the Da Vinci Code
by Tim O'Neill
Chapter Fiftyfive
http://www.historyversusthedavincicode.com/chapterfiftyfive.htm

Dawkins's bad logic

A Muslim who believed Mohammed flew to Heaven on a winged horse asked Dawkins:

"How do you know I am wrong?"

Dawkins answered:

"Oh, come on, you are a man of the twentyfirst century!"

That is not logic. That is making the Century one lives in the Religion one believes in and everyone else has also to believe in. It is as illogical as saying "I am a man of Tuesdays" and attach especial importance to news read in newspapers or ideas thought about on exactly Tuesdays as opposed to other week days.

Only, since the Century unlike the Tuesdays is larger than one's own life, one is less likely to notice the bad logic.

Furthermore he expressed a hope that as Zeus and Thor were dead religions, so it will happen to the God of Abraham.

It did not occur to him that neither Epicurus nor Zenon, but only Jesus Christ actually killed old paganisms off all across Europe. It is like wanting to get rid of Yersin along with the Yersinia pestis. Or like getting rid of Pasteur along with Rabies.

And that attacks like his on the Christian God are only helping to revive in a spookish sort of way the old beliefs./HGL

Source: IRISHINFIDEL : Richard Dawkins Debates Flying Horses with Muslims
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt2XPpJ25I

Is the Genesis "the Basis of the Whole Bible" or are there others?

1) Creation vs Evolution : Heard of Libby Anne? , 2) Did Libby Anne misunderstand at least Something about Young Earth Creationism? Or: Why don't they teach logic in these schools?! 3) Further Faulty Logic in Craig A. James's "refutation of a dialogue" 4) Stupid Word Game, Craig A. James? 5) Whose assumptions are best or least well proven? 6) Somewhere else : Is the Genesis "the Basis of the Whole Bible" or are there others? 7) Great Bishop of Geneva! : How is Chick erroneous about where we got the Bible from? 8) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... to Hitchens on Revelation, Decalogue and Evidence for Moses. 9) Correspondence de / of / van Hans-Georg Lundahl : Notifying Craig A. James of a refutation of his refutation ...


In a Theological and a Historical sense, yes, Genesis is basis for the whole Bible. It sets the scene.

However, if you want to know what is the basis for believing the Bible true, there are other parts that are easier to verify, unless you mean the Flood as such. Like Exodus, like victory over Sennacherib, most notably the Life, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed, Genesis and Gospel stand together so that if either were false, the other would be false also. Christ says that "God created them man and woman from the beginning of Creation" ... if the timeline of evolutionists were true, this would be in an obvious sense false and discredit the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand at the end of Genesis, when blessing the son Judah, Jacob gives a timelimit meaning the Messiah must already have come. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah ... until the hero cometh, and the Nations shall fall unto him."

How so?

Judea lost its sovereignty, and especially its power to execute death penalties, after Herod the Great died. The Jews had not lost sovereignty as much as that during the Babylonian Captivity. Or immediately after. Jews that deny that Jesus is the real Messiah often say the prophecy refers to Cyrus of Persia. But during that period Daniel defends a woman falsely accused of adultery so she is not stoned. Susannah, by name (Daniel ch. 13). Meaning Jews could stone offenders against the Mosaic law. Also, many nations never came under Persia, such as Rome. Nearly all have come under Christ and all but the very smallest have had at least Christian minorities. And in the Persian epoch there is first a law against Jews, then another one that gives them right to slay attackers. By contrast, "Pilate therefore said to them: Take him you, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said to him: It is not lawful for us to put any man to death; ..." (John 18:31) meaning the sceptre had departed from Judah by then. Meaning that Messiah must already have come.

In that sense, Gospel cannot be true if Genesis is false, but also Genesis cannot be true if Gospel is false.

Each of them has its own supporting evidence from outside that circle.

If you want the victory over Sennacherib, denied by that despot, we know another account from Herodotus in which mice chew the bowstrings to pieces. Meaning of course that the real explanation was not known to Herodotus, since God sending an angel of death is much less surprising than mice doing that stuff. Supernatural things can be supernatural, like God sending angels, but natural things, like mice, are not supposed to do very weird and unnatural things, like chew up exactly just the bowstrings of a whole army. And if neither happened, Assyrians would have won (as Sennacherib boasted) and there would not have been any tale of mice and bowstrings. (C. S. Lewis said "mice don't behave that way", hat tip!)

If you want the Exodus, do not take the version in which Hebrews are Hyksos and real Moses either Ahmoses or Thutmoses. Rather, Exodus happened before Hyksos invasion and the drowning of Pharao's army was helping the Hyksos a lot at the invasion. You can consider Hyksos as possibly equal to Amalekites. (Hat tip to a Creationist and Egyptologist living currently in France and to another one called David Down).*

If you want the Genesis, at least there is pretty extensive evidence for the Flood.

And if you want the Gospel, which is the most important, there is the consideration "what happened to the body?" (Hat tip to Dale and Elaine Rhooton, Can We Know?).

Indeed so much that even if Gospel logically cannot be true unless Genesis is true, Gospel can be believed as true by somone not concluding that so is Genesis. I had been an evolutionist as a child and after becoming a Christian at age nine, I spent about a year trying to fit Evolutionism together with what Christ believed (and knew as God) of Genesis. I did not become a Creationist until that failed. Even later I was still a little Evolution geek who was interested in Evolutionistic explanations (like for language)** even as an unbeliever in that non-Christian worldview.

Now, here is a general discussion on how to deal with claims about the supernatural in the sources:

History vs Hume (part one of four, see links within)
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/history-vs-hume.html

Here is a discussion of contemporary evidence outside Bible:

The Question of Contemporary Evidence
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/03/question-of-contemporary-evidence.html

Here is against a claim that St Paul was bluffing when he said five hundred "most of whom are still alive" had seen Christ risen:

What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-blooper-dan-barker-from-atheist.html

But we would not have the Gospel without the Church, so my next question is whether the Apostolic Church remained intact as the Catholic Church. This will get us to a new blog, one which I made against outrageous Protestant claims about Church History.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre - Paris X
University Library
St. Francis Borgia, S. J.
10-X-2013

* CMI : David Down : Searching for Moses
http://creation.com/searching-for-moses

I have linked to David Brown earlier:

Appendix A on : So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-dionysus-was-copy-of-moses-may-one.html

** You may have heard of a theory in which the first articulated sound and also first word was a bilabial f, a targetted breathing out of air on embers in fire, and hence used also for "fire", "light a fire", "warmth", "human ingenuity", "life" and a few more things. Funny if this were true why today phonemes have typically no significance in themselmves, but each only in combination with others - in a purely arbitrary way! Language as we know it and as distinguished from animal communications by "double articulation" (message articulated into morphemes meaningful in themselves through a system of arbitrary morphosyntax - or system which says what says what about what - and each morpheme except the shortest articulated into sounds or phonetic traits meaningless in themselves unless combined) is a very good argument against evolution and for Genesis (or other supernatural accounts of man's origin).

"maybe Zeus does exist"?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... mainly to Hemant Mehta, somewhere else : "maybe Zeus does exist"?

Here's a guy who poses the question, ironically:
Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist
The Atheist Voice : 15 things to NEVER say to an atheist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjEbPfc2d0

Maybe Zeus did exist, or more than one of them.

When I looked at the Theogony the other day, I saw what I always see about it - Hesiod was no miraculous healer, he did not deliver the people from disaster by making them repent and thus avert God's wrath, he did not raise any dead or deliver anyone from captivity. AND he did not die as a martyr for what he professed to have heard from the Nine Muses. No absolute guarantee for honesty personally, such as martyrdom would be, and no guarantee he comes from God.

But after listening a bit to Rob Skiba and even Chuck Missler these days, I saw something else about it. The Nine Muses sang hymns to ... the list begins with "Zeus with the Egide" and ends with "Kronos of the crooked thoughts".

I have no problem believing that this basically reflects a situation some thousand years earlier in which Nimrod made himself son of Satan. I do believe Satan exists, and in that sense I do believe "Kronos of the crooked thoughts"* exists (and yes, apart from liar Satan is also destroyer, so in that sense I believe Apollo/Shiva exist too - it does not mean it is right to pray to them though ...)

But back to Nimrod (Rob Skiba would say "our old buddy Nimrod", it makes me feel a bit queezy, and is probably meant to do that) ... one line of research** in the Skiba connexion has it that Nimrod had got his hands on the vestment of Noah that Ham's son Kanaan stole from him - a vestment inherited from Adam. This fits in somehow with "Zeus with the goatskin shield" ... especially if Noah's vestment was lambskin and Nimrod later preferred another thing made of goatskin.

Nimrod also had very megalomaniac projects. If he wanted to conquer the sky ... he failed, and with many megalomaniac leaders once they fail there is a cover up story. When we get as late as Hesiod we find Nimrod reflected not just in Zeus with the Egide, but also in the Titans who tried to conquer his Olymp.

A bit later than Nimrod but earlier than Homer we also find a Zeus who has a tomb in Crete. I suppose the Saturnus who was his father was chased by him to Italy, where he had a son called Picus and a grandson called Latinus. And Latinus' daughter Lavinia married one Aeneas who came from Troy. Julius Caesar descend from that couple, thus from "Zeus'" brother Picus.

Even a bit later we find Greek society involved in the Trojan war. Agamemnon has his sceptre from Zeus.

When I look at what Leaf had to say about the Trojan war, it seems Agamemnon as well as Priam had his sceptre from some Hittite Nimrod-wannabe - Achaean Greece and Trojan Phrygia were both satrapies in the Hittite Empire.***

When I look at Classic Greek literature, the word Hittite is not as much as mentioned before you start getting Greek literature of Biblical type. Septuagint translation would have been earliest I presume.

So, if the historic Agamemnon had his sceptre from some Hittite "King of Kings" and the Agamemnon of the Iliad from Zeus, I think part of what happened is that Greeks had taken a clear dislike to the former Hittite overlords, and wanted to forget them. The role of world ruler was so infamous in mortal men, they preferred to transfer it to some deity. And they probably already worshipped Zeus - and Agamemnon may have descended from the one whose tomb was in Greece, in Crete (unless the "sons of Zeus" in diverse genealogies were simply self made men as Leaf presumes).

They decided to forget about the Hittite Empire, although it had been under its overlordship that their greatest heroes were living. Homer does not mention Hittites - Hesiod goes one further and identifies Zeus with a person who never was man and never ruled on earth, only over it.

So, in a sense, Zeus did exist: once as Nimrod, adopted son of Satan, once later as Zeus the son of one exiled Saturn (whom he exiled), once even later as a Hittite overlord giving Agamemnon a sceptre on behalf of Teshub - and later still as a poetic fancy gilding these not so great things. And at same time unifying them in a "purely celestial" thing. Not meaning purely spiritual.

And I am pretty certain (as was Hilaire Belloc) that Odin once lived in Sweden. Not a thing to brag about, but probably unfortunately true. A man who pulled a stunt like "I killed a monster and created the world of its carcass" before ignorant savages and got believed is not a real pride. Note that Nimrod probably used similar tactics in Babylon - meaning of course, that although it was great in inventions, their mentality when believing such things was that of ignorant savages. Even Greece seems to have been better in Homer's time than in Agamemnon's, 400 years earlier or so. Nimrod was probably strong enough to have killed some real monsters before the eyes of the Babylonians. Odin was old, and if asked could say "that was when I was younger" ... but he was probably asked no questions.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou
St Jerome of Stridon
30-IX-2013

* Or "of the crooked mind": αγκυλομητης. Note that the Italian and Greek versions do not agree about what happened to the father of Zeus/Jupiter, and so the Italian Saturn need not have been Satan, but may have been an exiled Greek king who became an Italian king and a decent such.

** To put it more clearly: Rob Skiba is using what he thinks is the same Book of Jasher that the Bible mentions, but which might not be so. It is certain that it is not inspired, since it attributes the new languages to 70 demons rather than to God and thus gives demons more power than they have. But that there was a megalomaniac project for conquering the sky is not just the Book of Jasher, it is in Genesis, and so it is true.

*** In literature later than Walter Leaf, it is still certain Troy or Wilusha was loyal to Hittites, but not quite as sure the Achaeans of Greece were so. This footnote and some grammatical corrections were added in a later edit. 20-XII-2013.

Bible and Church Questions

Series: 1) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere 2) somewhere else : Bible and Church Questions 3) Creation vs. Evolution : Why I have a Personal Grudge against Kenotic Heresy 4) item : St Augustine gives an inch and some take an ell 5) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : When St Augustine makes a fault, it is not all that faulty

Gary Bates and Lita Cosner wrote a book on how we can know the Bible is the Word of God. Four of the questions I found worth answering as a Roman Catholic, which is not exactly bound to be identic to their answers as Protestants. I only read these four on a preview, I do not own the book itself. I also added a fifth one.

Is the Bible just a book written by men?

No. Although it is in fact written by men, it is not just that.

Moses wrote Genesis largely relying on Tradition, like Luke wrote his Gospel and many parts of Acts.

Moses wrote narrative parts of Exodus largely from personal memory, like St John wrote his Gospel.

Moses spoke with God and got parts of Exodus and subsequent parts of Leviticus by dictation, and he saw the work of the Six days in a vision. Like St John wrote the apocalypse.

David and Solomon also wrote from a thing akin to tradition and memory, namely understanding.

And so on for all the other authors.

But in all these "sources" they wrote and chose what to write under inspiration. Not as in "I feel inspired to write", but as in God inspiring each final decision of the author to the exclusion of all error from each and all books, and to the inclusion of nearly all truth, directly or indirectly, literally stated or symbolically stated, in the sum of all the books. Only books written entirely under inspiration belong to the Bible.

How did they know which books to include in the Bible?

The Church of Israel saw the miracles of Moses.

The Church of Christ saw His miracles and knew whom He had elected as Apostles, and saw their miracles. It has eight authors, the New Testament, and six of them are Apostles, only two are disciples of Apostles: St Mark to St Peter and St Luke to St Paul.

The Church, under either Covenant, accepted the Books given as from God by holy men. And from the time of Moses on, there was always an authority to decide on it: Aaronite priests under the Ancient Covenant until Kaiaphas betrayed it and earned the curses in Deuteronomy 28 for his followers, by rejecting Jesus, and St Peter's and the other Apostle's Succession up to our days knowing what to accept and that they should stop adding after disappearance of St John who had survived the other Apostles, because Christ had promised them The Fulness of Truth. Unlike Old Testament, there is no longer any build up of added revealed truth.

Are there contradictions in the Bible?

No real ones, plenty of merely apparent ones. And usually the Church knows how to resolve them. As other ambiguities (honest or construed ones) in the meaning. If there is hesitation thereon, it is usually not important, certainly less for Salvation than when the Church knows.

How do we know the Bible is the Inerrant Word of God?

Because of the Church telling us, and testifying to her divine mission and fidelity to it by a holy doctrine and by many miracles.

Must we accept any other teachings of the Church than the text of the Bible?

Yes, we must accept all teachings of the Church, everything that is traditionally part of the Apostolic teaching. And that includes Her warnings against unauthorised private reading and against adulterated versions (Albigensian, Protestant, Watchtower Society).

Now, those are the correct answers. Maybe incomplete, but correct. I fear Gary and Lita might have strayed on some of these principles.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou
St Bartholomew's the Apostle's Vigil
23-VIII-2013

Orpheos Bakkikos - a Christian Connexion, Probably

Pre-Christian Crucifix according to Acharya S
http://stellarhousepublishing.com/prechristiancrucifix.html

First of all, I do not know exactly what dialect and what period would say Ορφεος instead of Ορφευς. And I do not know at what period an iota might look like an arrow pointing downwards either, except it was hardly a byzantine minuscule or even uncial, that much I do know. A Roman who was bad in Greek and parted from the Latin transcription Orpheus (seized as Orphe-us, analogous to ferre-us in Latin and to Latin words like Priam-us transliterating as Πριαμ-ος) would do. But other possibilities might be known to Grecicists better than I (me being frankly said lousy at Greek).

Some Christians had noted the similarity between Orpheus who descended into Hades to get Eurydike out and failed and Christ who succeeded where Orpheus had failed, only his bride being the Church comprised parts already in Hades, namely all the just souls that had been gathered down there since Adam's sin up to Crucifixion. So, in a sense, it was also a second Exodus.

And that brings us to Moses, where Acharya has pointed out a connexion with Dionysos or Bacchus, only wrong way around.

Other reason for such a description - of Christ - might be that the Christians were first of all persecuted according to the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus, the one beginning "sei quis uelitod Bacanal habuisse" ... maybe because the Disciples of Christ as well as the Israelites following Moses stroke "existing powers" as similar to Dionysus' attitude towards Pentheus. Or maybe because wine is used - though in quite another way - in the Holy Mass.

When I say "a Christian connexion" I do not quite mean that it was made by a Christian. He would hardly have described his own as Bakkikoi or his and our Lord God as Bacchus or as "Orpheus of the Bacchus-worshippers."

An infiltrator getting out and making his report about them might have done so. A sympathising, curious, but not adept outsider might have done so as well, in a syncretistic way. A bit like lore about Christ and about the Apocalypse found its way into the Norse Mythology about Ragnarok and Baldur.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
University Library of
Nanterre / Paris X Campus
Monday of Pentecost
20-V-2013

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Would "Finding Extraterrestrials" Disprove Christianity?

1) somewhere else : Would "Finding Extraterrestrials" Disprove Christianity?, 2) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : I am not a believer in Hörbiger, 3) Creation vs. Evolution : Would finding Atlantis disprove the Flood of Noah?

Did KGB excavate "an extraterrestrial" in Egypt in 1961?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIZorNzzCuA

[Belated correction to detail of video: they speak about "book of Baruch", but read from III book of Baruch, which is not canonic. The canonic book of Baruch however also mentions giants in chapter three.]

I do not know if they were there. That could be a lie. Let us assume they were.

Then they can indeed both have found and faked the find.

There are some other things they could have done apart from finding or faking. It seems Red Sea was being searched by divers for Pharao's drowned army in the 1970's according to US Creationists, by such as themselves, who were testing credibility of Exodus. Then they were stopped from continuing. And later the search was resumed by people testing reliability of the Quran. Who could of course use the results of the interrupted creationist searches. That is one thing the KGB could have done, if in 1961 they could direct excavations in Egypt.

There are also other things than the excavations they could have faked if they were there.

I have seen Classic pictures of man on the Moon. I have also seen less orthodox pictures in which an astronaut's "glass shield" before the face is reflecting a pyramidic shape.

I find it more credible those pictures were faked in Egypt than that there are pyramids on the Moon. What about the Classic pictures (with the notorious flutter of the US flag)? In that case NASA and KGB might have cooperated. But back to subject.

Assuming they really found the mummy which was reconstructed with features of a somewhat gigantic Roswell creature ... well, who says this needs to have "come from outer space"?

I do not.

For one thing, even if facial features can be reconstructed with the technology used or purportedly used in the video, we cannot from there on know that the eyes were like those shown on pictures of the Roswell creatures. Size, perhaps, lack of lids, no, lack of pupils delimitated from the eyeball, no.

For another thing, we cannot with any certainty identify the Roswell creatures - even if they are there - as coming from "outer Space". We cannot rule out they come from earth's surface, like an unusual (albeit very unusual) race of men, nor that they come from its inside, like demons, more precisely, if saint Thomas Aquinas is correct about their non-corporeal nature, like demons "assuming bodies".

Indeed, on a Geocentric or Geostatic worldview, only Angels and God live above us in the stars or even above them. No foreign biology or civilisation is to be presumed.

This may come as a shock to people fed on Star Trek and Star Wars and Agent Spatiotemporal Valérian (if you enjoy space opera, if you have not yet discovered that one, it is a French Comic and its humour is delicious, as its spatial exoticism, of course), but we need not assume there are other earths out there. Even the exoplanets properly sighted and photographed may well be much closer and smaller on a geocentric world view, since parallax or 1838 phenomenon of among other stars proxima Centauri (0.76 archseconds back and forth each year) need not be what it is assumed to be.

There are other considerations in rejecting the idea of Ancient Astronauts.

One of them is: Atlantis. Along with Lemuria and Mu. Another is: Civilisations sprung very suddenly out of the ground. And of course, as we had this video with a mummy at least purportedly from 11.000 (eleven thousand) B.C., dating. A third or fourth is: have atomic bombs already been used very long time ago?

OK, Atlantis first. I do not believe in "levels of consciousness". Atlantis was not drowned, if ever it existed, for "not having reached the proper level of consciousness" or proper stage of "development of mind." It can have been drowned before the Flood as a warning, it can have been drowned during the Flood and not have reemerged after it, it can have been - like Ys - drowned after the Flood of Noah, as a reminder. Only in the last case can there be any sense of talking of Atlantean races, since if Atlantis was not peopled after Flood, only survivors would have been either all of humanity (if Noah himself was from there) or about one third (if one of his daughters in law was from there).

If Atlantis was drowned during the Flood and did not reemerge, that may also have been the case for Lemuria and Mu. Supposing there is any evidence, legendary or submarine archeological, for either or both of these. I am not counting as evidence what a man dreamed under self hypnosis or under hypnosis induced by someone else. I do not believe in "previous lives", but previous lives or what has purported to have been such have been "accessed" under hypnosis, therefore what is accessed under hypnosis is unreliable. So, the self hypnotic dreams of one Cayce are discounted from table of possible evidence, as far as I or most other Christians are concerned.

Civilisations that spring suddenly out of the ground is what is to be excpected either after the Flood of Noah or after possibly other deluges, of Atlantis and so on. Survivors do not bring along their buildings, they may not bring along all of the know-how, but they do bring along some of it, and memories of what they do not know how to do. If I were stranded with a few more on a desert island, I would not bring along myself any know-how as to how to construct computers, but I would know that these have been constructed and might pass that on to my family. Since it has been invented once, it can be reinvented.

There is also the question of how much in inventions are demonic. This does not mean such a thing must never be used, if its use is clearly technological and not magic, since we know there are situations where using the sword is licit and just, although swords may have been one thing demons showed the people of Nod (if Ethiopians are correct in accepting their Book of Henoch, that is). After the Flood (and other deluges if they occurred) some technology recovery or discovery may also have been hastened by negotiations with the realm of darkness. A consideration that should warn anyone that although technology is a great thing, getting more and more of it is not the end of man's life. It is a means, and we should not waste eternal bliss, which is the end of our life, just to get hold of the means.

Dating of the possibly excavated giant mummy by KGB is assuming that current dating techniques are valid, even for ages "older than earth" as earth is dated per Biblical genealogies with life spans and ages at birth of such and such a son clearly given. C14 ... well, I give you the same answer as the standard Creationist answer. I learnt it at age twelve from Edgar Andrews, and I find it pretty satisfying. The C14 level in the atmosphere is not what I would scholastically call "a constant per se" (unlike the level of Nitrogen, which is constantly there in the atmosphere except the marginal tying down thereof by leguminous roots into proteins), but "a constant per accidens", a constant which is only constant because of a special circumstance which need not itself be constant from eternity. In this case: an equilibrium of the C14 lost by radioactive decomposition and the C14 added by cosmic rays on atmosphere. Obviously first amount is - as with all radioactive material - proportional to what is already there of it. And therefore there may have been a buildup period, with less C14, and back then same amount was annually formed by cosmic rays, but less lost, so instead of equilibrium one had a buildup.*

And with less original C14 from atmosphere in an organism for real than is now the case, but with Darwinian scientists assuming wrongly the buildup period was so far past that all organic C14 comes from an atmosphere with our level of C14, there will be counted as "lost C14" what was rather "C14 that was never there in the first place". And therefore ages will rise in the mathematics misapplied. Not incorrect mathematics as multiplying 4*4 and getting 25, but misapplied mathematics, as in counting on levels that are misinterpreted.

Have atomic bombs already been in use in very ancient times? Maybe just so. Maybe that was part of the earth destroyed by a corruption of all flesh, as the Bible describes the earth before the Flood.

So, have Annunaki from planet Nibiru created man by genetic engineering, mixing their own species with some apeman like creature and later returned to form ancient civilisations?

Well, no. God created man.

Is the discovery of the mummy as described in the video, if genuine, the greatest discovery ever made?

No, the greatest discovery ever made was to another grave, which was empty of body but still had the sindone**. It was made by St John running into the grave.

But if the then Sovietics (or if only one or two of them) can describe the mummy discovery as the greatest discovery ever made, they seem to have some remnant of Christian feelings. Only, a somewhat distorted one. Why? Well, in 1961 there was compulsory atheism in the Soviet Union.

I recommend you search the historic evidence for that other discovery, and on this blog I have put refutations of some current explanations away of the Miracle of Miracles which is the Resurrection of Christ.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU Nanterre (BU=UL)
Inventio Crucis
3-V-2013

*Before that there may have been another equilibrium with lower C14, if there was less cosmic rays reaching earth before the Deluge. **Or shroud.