Seleucid Akra tormented the Jews

by Damien F. Mackey … many good researchers, closely following the ancient records, have determined that Haram al-Sharif definitely was not where the Jerusalem Temples had been built. A decade ago, in 2015, there was great excitement amongst archaeologists that the hitherto elusive Akra (Acra) fortress built by the Seleucid invaders in Jerusalem had been discovered. Brent Nagtegaal wrote about it enthusiastically a few years later: Fortress of Antiochus Epiphanes Uncovered in Jerusalem | ArmstrongInstitute.org Fortress of Antiochus Epiphanes Uncovered in Jerusalem Hannukah’s nemesis comes to life in 2015 discovery By Brent Nagtegaal • December 20, 2019 His article will require some correction (my comments to be added). He wrote: In November 2015, the Israel Antiquities Authority (iaa) sent a news brief to reporters in Jerusalem, calling for a press conference the following day to announce the “solution to one of the greatest questions in the history of Jerusalem.” The announcement did not disappoint: On site, in Jerusalem’s City of David, archaeologist Doron Ben-Ami announced that the famed Akra (citadel) of Antiochus Epiphanes had been discovered. Up until that announcement, little had been found testifying to the massive Hellenistic intrusion into the city early in the second century b.c.e. Yet here, at the northwestern portion of the City of David, a massive section of a city wall from that very period was found under layers and layers of construction from later civilizations. Damien Mackey’s comment: A chronological correction. While “the second century b.c.e.” is the standard era for Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes, this will need to undergo some lowering if I am right in my revised identification of this Seleucid king: Time to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus (4) Time to consider Hadrian, that 'mirror-image' of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus Brent Nagtegaal continues: Along with the city wall, the base of a fortification tower was unearthed, having a width of over 3.5 meters (12 feet) and a length of over 18 meters (60 feet). Attached to the lower portion of the wall was a sloped embankment known as a glacis. This was made up of layers of soil, stone and plaster designed to keep attackers away from the base of the wall, a key feature of a defensive city wall. According to the press release from the iaa, this glacis extended as far down as the bottom of the Tyropoeon valley, the depression on the western part of the ancient city. Around the massive wall, lead slingstones typical of Antiochus’s army were discovered, as well as bronze arrowheads featuring a trident symbol on them—the mark associated with Epiphanes. Further corroborating the dating of the wall were a number of coins, the earliest of which dates to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. On top of that, hundreds of pottery handles impressed with markings from Rhodes that were used for wine vessels were also discovered, testifying to the Hellenistic nature of the fortress’s inhabitants. While one can rarely be 100 percent sure of the identification of such a site, the evidence certainly does support the conclusion that this building is indeed the famed Akra. Fortress of Antiochus Following an unsuccessful bid to conquer the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt in 168 b.c.e., Antiochus iv (Epiphanes) ventured back to Judea and unleashed one of history’s most atrocious anti-Semitic attacks on the fledgling province of Judea. He ransacked the capital city of Jerusalem, sacrificed swine flesh on the altar of sacrifice in the temple courtyard, and then set up a statue of Jupiter in the holy of holies. Afterward, he ravished the countryside in order to destroy any vestige of the Holy Scriptures he could find, as well as killing those who would not comply with his decrees. Then, in order to ensure the Jews didn’t rebel, he constructed a massive fortress in the northern part of the City of David and stationed a permanent garrison of his troops there. Damien Mackey’s comment: Now for a geographical correction. This is where the sensational find starts to unwind in terms of it being the Akra. Its position here “in the northern part of the City of David” is perfectly correct if the standard geography is followed, according to which the Jerusalem Temples had once stood at today’s Temple Mount, Haram al-Sharif. But many good researchers, closely following the ancient records (e.g. Marilyn Sams below), have determined that Haram al-Sharif definitely was not where the Jerusalem Temples had been built. See also my article on this: True location of Jerusalem Temples right near Gihon Spring (4) True location of Jerusalem Temples right near Gihon Spring Brent Nagtegaal continues: This famed building stood for the next quarter of a century, a constant affront to the Jews as it sat adjacent to the temple. Even after the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes was successful at reclaiming Jerusalem in 165 b.c.e., the Jews still could not take the citadel. Damien Mackey’s comment: The war can be re-dated to the early years of Jesus Christ: Religious war raging in Judah during the Infancy of Jesus (3) Religious war raging in Judah during the Infancy of Jesus Brent Nagtegaal continues: In fact, for the next 20-plus years, long after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes in Babylon, a garrison of Seleucid troops continued to be stationed in the Akra, constantly hounding those visiting the temple grounds. As Flavius Josephus relates in Antiquities of the Jews: [A]nd when he had overthrown the city walls, he built a citadel [Greek: Acra] in the lower part of the city, for the place was high, and overlooked the temple; on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians. However, in that citadel dwelt the impious and wicked part of the multitude from whom it proved that the citizens suffered many and sore calamities. It was only after Simon, the elder brother of Judas, came into power over the new, restored Jewish state in 142 b.c.e., that the Seleucid forces were finally ousted from the Akra a year later. Then, to ensure that foreigners would never again hold captive the religious practice of the Jews, Josephus records that Simon led a three-year, night-and-day effort to destroy the Akra completely, even grinding down part of the ground it rested upon. How could these excavators find evidence of the Akra if Simon destroyed it? …. I shall leave Brent Nagtegaal’s article at this point, with this relevant question hanging, to turn to an important article by Marilyn Sams, who far better understands the geography of Old Jerusalem: (4) Did Excavators Find the Seleucid Citadel in the Givati Parking Lot Did Excavators Find the Seleucid Citadel in the Givati Parking Lot? by Marilyn Sams Since 2007, parts of the Givati parking lot excavation on the southeastern hill of Jerusalem, conducted by Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, have been characterized as the remains of Queen Adiabene’s palace and also the Seleucid Acra. Both of these faulty identifications are based on a misunderstanding of and/or lack of attention to literary descriptions which place both of these constructions in the lower city, formerly the City of David, called “Acra,” starting in the Greek period. “Acra” (meaning “citadel” in Greek) stands for both the citadel itself and the area it occupied--the lower city. Josephus and First Maccabees place them both south of the temple, which was in the middle of the southeastern hill, and also verify that Simon Maccabee not only destroyed the citadel, but also the hill on which it stood. Therefore, there were no remains remaining. This paper will set forth the literary evidence evidencing the citadel’s actual location, which was also near the location of Queen Adiabene’s palace. Citadels Preceding the Seleucid Citadel Because the Haram esh-Sharif has been falsely identified as the temple mount, rather than the Roman camp Antonia, claimed by eyewitness Eleazar ben Ya’ir to be the only monument remaining after the 70 A.D. destruction (War VII, 8, 376), there have been eight erroneous proposals for the location of the Israelite and Seleucid citadels. However, they were all in the same location, starting with the Jebusite citadel (called “Millo” in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles), where David resided before building his palace across from it in the newly renamed City of David (Antiquities VII, 3, 65). The northern boundary of this city can be assumed to be the Middle Bronze Age II and Iron Age I walls found in Kathleen Kenyon’s Area H at the bottleneck of the southeastern hill. Hence, the City of David covered roughly the lower half of the southeastern hill. In 3 Kings 2: 35 (Septuagint version), we discover that Solomon expanded this city by breaching its northern wall and adding the “wall of Jerusalem,” a fortification which would then protect the northern half of the southeastern hill and the daughter of Pharoah in the palace he had newly built for her, outside the City of David. The crescent shape of the City of David/Jerusalem (the shape of the southeastern hill) is witnessed by accounts in Josephus, Aristeas, Tacitus, and the Venerable Bede, confining the city to the southeastern hill, with no northerly extension described. It is notable from the Septuagint scripture that Solomon did not breach the City of David’s wall until he had already built the temple and his own palace and rebuilt the citadel. Since the temple was built on Mount Zion at the border between Benjamin and Judah, above En Shemesh (Spring of the Sun--the Gihon Spring), Solomon’s citadel replaced the former Jebusite citadel and acted as a landmark (along with the temple) demarcating the Benjamin/Judah borderline. Hezekiah repaired this citadel (2 Chronicles 32: 5), Nehemiah mentioned it in the Persian period (Nehemiah 7: 2), and Josephus described it during the conquest of Jerusalem by Antiochus the Great (Antiquities XII, 3, 133). Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the son of Antiochus the Great, replaced the citadel of these descriptions with a new one in the same place. The “Lower City,” “Acra,” and the “City of David” As noted by archaeological excavations or the lack thereof, the “city” of the Persian and Greek periods reverted to the southeastern hill only. Therefore, the “lower city” of those periods was the area south of the temple, which edifice Hecateus of Abdera (c. 4th century B.C.) described as occupying the “middle” of the city (Contra Apion I, 22, 198), a location shared by the Gihon Spring (Shiloah), as noted in Hagigah 76a of the Jerusalem Talmud. The Letter of Aristeas also implies the temple’s bifurcation of the city by describing “upper towers” and “lower towers.” …. In Antiquities XII, 5, 252, Josephus recounts Antiochus Epiphanes’ 168 B.C. conquest of Jerusalem, after having overthrown the walls, and his building a citadel in “the lower part of the city:” He also burned down the finest buildings; and when he had overthrown the city walls, he built a citadel [Acra] in the lower part of the city, for the place was high, and overlooked the temple; on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians. (italics and bracketed Greek terms or other information mine, as in all further quotations) The towers and immense stones of the citadel are described by Aristeas and the height of the “place” of the citadel recalls the 3 Kings 2: 35 passage which says Solomon built his citadel “above” the temple, implying the Seleucid citadel replaced the former Solomonic citadel in the same place. The descriptions of the citadels’ location as being “above” and “high” and “overlooking the temple” are factors which have been minimized, ignored, or dismissed in the false locations posited for all the citadels. The literary evidence is clear that the citadels were in a place higher than the temple in the lower city--that part of the city, in both the Israelite era and the Greek era, being limited to the lower half of the southeastern hill. The reason for the height of the citadel being greater than the temple appears to derive from the difference in height between two natural hills, which were likely augmented by occupational tels (because of the spring), dating from 3,000 B.C., with Mount Zion, the hill on which the temple was built, being the lower of the two. Antiochus Epiphane’s destruction of Jerusalem is also set forth in Maccabees 1: 31-36, but in these verses, Acra, or the “lower part of the city” is referred to as the City of David: And when he [Antiochus] had taken the spoils of the city, he set it on fire, and pulled down the houses and walls thereof on every side…Then builded they the city of David with a great and strong wall, and with mighty towers, and made it a strong hold for hem,…For it was a place to lie in wait against the sanctuary, and an evil adversary to Israel. Hence, the citadel built by Antiochus and occupied by his soldiers became a snare to the Jews, rather than a protection to the temple, as had been its previous role. The tide turned, however, when Judas Maccabeus made an assault on the garrison of Macedonians in the “upper city…[and] drove the soldiers into the lower, which part of the city was called the Citadel [Acra]” (War I, 1, 39). Since the city of this period occupied only the southeastern hill, the “upper city” was north of the temple, and the “lower city” was south of the temple and called Acra, because the citadel stood there (just as the area around the citadel called Millo had also been called Millo). It appears from later descriptions that the Macedonian soldiers driven into the lower city were forced to reside in Antiochus Epiphanes’ citadel. Hence, the War passage explains why the Givati parking lot (located in the “upper” area of the southeastern hill) yielded lead sling shots, bronze arrowheads, and catapult stones stamped with Antiochus IV’s symbol, and coins from his era (Fessenden, 2015). The Macedonian soldiers had been there, in the “upper city,” before Judas drove them into the “lower city.” But it was in the lower city, not the upper, where the Seleucid citadel stood. ….

Must look elsewhere for Maccabee town, Modein

by Damien F. Mackey “Simon built a monument over the tomb of his father and his brothers. He made it high so that all might see it. It had polished stone at the front and back. He also set up seven pyramids, opposite each other, for his father and mother and four brothers. He devised an elaborate site for the pyramids, setting up great columns around them. On the columns, he put suits of armor for a permanent memorial. Beside the suits of armor, he carved ships so that all who sail the sea might see them”. I Maccabees 13:27-29 Modein, the ancestral home of the Maccabees, could not have been situated in central Israel The quote above from I Maccabees 13 tells me immediately that the presently favoured site location of the Maccabean ancestral home of Modein, at Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut in central Israel, could by no means be the Modein of the Maccabees. Why? Because, as we shall read below, “all who sail the sea” would not possibly have been able to have viewed the elaborate designs carved on a tomb which would have been some 27 km distant from the Mediterranean Sea - and much further away from the Sea of Galilee. Steve Fine has noted this fact when he wrote in (pp. 6-7 of): The Hasmonean Royal Tombs at Modi‘in Art and Identity In Latter Second Temple Period Judaea: (6) The Hasmonean Royal Tombs at Modi‘in Art and Identity In Latter Second Temple Period Judaea: | Steven Fine - Academia.edu It seems that the armor and ships at the Hasmonean tombs were meant to project Hasmonean power by sea and land. Located in the home territory of the Hasmoneans at Modi‘in, on this boundary between the Judaean heartland and the conquered (or soon to be conquered) coastal plain and the somewhat distant Mediterranean Sea (approximately twenty-seven kilometers to the west as the crow flies) … this typically Hellenistic monument presents Hasmonean military accomplishments and objectives in a concrete form that was easily understood by Jew and Greek alike. From such a distance, it is most likely that the monument could not be seen at sea. …. [End of quote. My emphasis] The archaeologists who have been getting excited in relatively recent times about a potential discovery of the Maccabean tomb in that central region, at Horbat Ha-Gardi, will seriously need to re-consider (my opinion) just what they are uncovering there: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/archaeologists-may-found-lost-tomb-maccabees-334463 Archaeologists May Have Found the Lost Tomb of the Maccabees Experts are taking a closer look at the site. Sarah Cascone, September 23, 2015 Archaeologists may have finally uncovered the lost tomb of the Maccabees, Jewish warriors who led a successful rebellion against Greek rule in the second century BC. Experts are taking a second look at a tomb at Horbat Ha-Gardi, near the ancient city of Madi’in. Over a hundred years after it was first discovered, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has resumed long-abandoned excavations at the site. First discovered in the late 1800s, the site’s similarities to historical descriptions of the Maccabees’ final resting place were immediately recognized. Researchers at the time even went so far as to claim “there is no room for doubt. I found the Tomb of the Maccabees.” In Antiquities of the Jews, a 2,000-year-old manuscript by Josephus Flavius, “the tomb was described as a tall, impressive structure surrounded by columns; it was said to overlook the sea and was built of fine stones and was covered with pyramid-like roofs,” according to a statement by the IAA. Early assumptions about the tomb were quickly challenged when Charles Clermont-Ganneau, a French scholar of the time, found a mosaic floor decorated with a Byzantine cross, indicating that the site had been built by Christians. However, Clermont-Ganneau maintained that the site could still hold the fabled Tomb of the Maccabees, writing that “it is possible that this structure was built by the Christians, so as to commemorate the burial place of the Holy Maccabees, since they were exalted saints in the eyes of Christianity.” Nevertheless, excavations were soon abandoned. Amit Re’em, an excavation director on the Authority’s new project, suspects the tomb was discovered by ancient Christians, who added the cross to identify the site as the burial place of important figures—namely the Maccabees. “What other important figures would be here?” he asked the AP. Re’em and excavation director Dan Shahar admitted in a statement that their efforts had yet to yield conclusive evidence: “An excavation and a lot of hard work are still required in order to confirm that assumption unequivocally, and the riddle remains unsolved—the search for the elusive Tomb of the Maccabees continues.” [End of article] If the Maccabean town of Modein was not situated in central Israel, then where should we look for it? Searching for the town of Modein in Galilee Why, Galilee? Because of my having re-dated the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids to the era of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, with Judas Maccabeus being identified as Gamaliel’s rebel, “Judas the Galilean”: Judas the Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a mountain” (2) Judas the Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a mountain” This historical revision now enables for a serendipitous meeting of Rabbi Gamaliel’s “in the days of the census” (Acts 5:37) with Luke 2:1’s “decree that a census should be taken”. Same census, same emperor, same era, same revolt. We can now take all this a geographical step further. If the Maccabean ancestral home of Modein was in, not central Israel, but Galilee - as I believe it to have been - then it must have been very close to the only Sea in that region, the Sea of Galilee, in order that, regarding those splendid carvings of the tomb, “all who sail the sea might see them”. Tiberias has a famous cemetery facing the Sea of Galilee. There, for instance, we find a tomb dedicated to Moses Maimonides (Rambam).

The power of the Miraculous Medal

‘Is it possible that our enemies should display such activity and gain superior strength, while we remain idle, without getting down to work? Do we not have even stronger weapons, namely the protec¬tion of heaven and of the Immaculate Virgin?’ Saint Maximilian Kolbe We read in the following article: Maximilian Kolbe and the Miraculous Medal | Militia Immaculatae Maximilian Kolbe and the Miraculous Medal (Excerpt of the book “The Immaculate, our ideal”) As an outward sign of membership in the [Militia Immaculatæ), the Knight of the Immaculata wears her Miraculous Medal. We human beings are not only spirit, but also body. Our interior life, our ideal and mentality must be perceptible from outside, must be expressed in our external life. Therefore outward signs are necessary in order to bring the interior disposition to light. The Savior willed to grant His graces to people pre¬cisely through such “sacred signs”, namely the Sacraments. In a similar manner the Knight of the Immaculata must also make an outward pro¬fession. The Miraculous Medal is the outward sign of the interior Total Consecration to the Immaculata. Furthermore, as a weapon in the battle for souls he distributes these medals wherever he can. The Miraculous Medal should be the weapon, the bullet, which the Knight of the Immaculata makes use of. Even if someone is as wicked as can be, if he agrees to wear the Miraculous Medal, give it to him and pray for him, and occasionally try with a kind word to bring him to the point where he begins to love the Mother of God and to fly to her in all his difficulties and temptations. But anyone who sincerely begins to pray to the Immaculata will soon be con¬vinced to go to Confession as well. There is much evil in the world, yet let us consider that the Immaculata is even more powerful: “She will crush the head of the infernal serpent.” Isn’t such a practice somewhat exaggerated? How is it that the founder of the M.I. places so much trust in such an external thing? We should reply, first, that the very origin of the M.I. is closely related to a great miracle that was worked through the Miraculous Medal, namely the conversion of a Jewish man, Alphonse de Ratisbonne. In the year in which the M.I. was founded (1917), the seventy-fifth anniversary of this great miracle was being celebrated in Rome. Young Brother Maximil¬ian had already asked himself the question long before that: Is it possible that our enemies should display such activity and gain superior strength, while we remain idle, without getting down to work? Do we not have even stronger weapons, namely the protec¬tion of heaven and of the Immaculate Virgin? He found out the answer on that memorable twentieth of January, when the superior of the house presented to them the story of the impenitent Jew’s conversion as a theme for meditation. In that medita¬tion, as Father Pal, his friend and co-founder of the M.I. attests, the Saint received the inspiration to found a knighthood in honor of the Immaculata, which chose the Miraculous Medal as its emblem and shield for the future Knights. From that day on, Brother Maximilian often visited the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in order to pray before the altar where Alphonse de Ratisbonne had converted. He also chose that altar as the one upon which he would offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the first time after his priestly ordination. Furthermore Fr. Maximilian often used to tell his friars about truly extraordinary incidents that he himself had experienced with the Mirac¬ulous Medal. For example, one time while he was recuperating in Zako¬pane he tried to convert a young Freethinker who proudly called him¬self “the Heretic”. All arguments were in vain. Nevertheless, out of courtesy he accept¬ed the Miraculous Medal. Immediately afterwards I suggested that he make a confession. “I am not prepared. By no means,” was his reply. But … at that very moment he fell on his knees, as though impelled by a higher power. The confession began; the young man wept like a child. The Immaculata had won. …. \Naturally, the cause of this miraculous change in a human heart was not the medal itself as a physical object, but rather the Immaculata, who attaches her special graces to the wearing of the Miraculous Medal. And there were many, many such incidents in the life of St. Maximilian. Therefore: Distribute her Medal, wherever there is an opportunity: to chil¬dren, so that they will always wear it around their necks; to the elderly and the youth, so that they, under her protection, might have enough strength to resist the temptations and falls that par¬ticularly beset them in our times. And also to those who do not go to Church, or who are afraid to go to Confession, who make fun of religious practices, who laugh at the truths of the faith, who are mired in a moral swamp or are living outside the Church in heresy – to all of these people you absolutely must offer the Medal of the Immaculata and ask them to wear it, but then fervently beg the Immaculata also for their conversion. Many people make use of another expedient when someone is reluctant to accept the Miracu¬lous Medal. They just sew it secretly into his or her clothing and pray for that person, and sooner or later the Immaculata will show what she is capable of. The Miraculous Medal is the ammunition of the M.I.

Who built Rome’s Pantheon, Marcus Agrippa or Hadrian?

by Damien F. Mackey “My investigation thus allows us to reclaim Hadrian’s planning and agency for at least part of this iconic building, and to discern more clearly his prominence, and perhaps even his personality, in the imperial capital city”. Mary T. Boatwright Introduction Conventionally considered, I believe that it is quite impossible for historians to arrive at a fully accurate answer to this question regarding the celebrated Pantheon. The received text book history and chronology just will not allow it. The conventional scholarship, as typified here by Mary T. Boatwright, would have Marcus Agrippa, whose inscription appears boldly inscribed on the Pantheon, dying around 12 BC, whilst the emperor Hadrian is thought to have come to power more than a century later, in around 117 AD. The best that could be said, from a commonsense point of view, is that Marcus Agrippa clearly built the Pantheon, while the emperor Hadrian may later have embellished and/or refurbished, it. The Pantheon could not have been a Hadrianic era building! My New History for Hadrian and Marcus Agrippa The revised history and chronology of these times that I have developed, however, can accommodate Agrippan and Hadrianic involvement in the Pantheon at the same time. This is because I have multi-identified both the emperor Hadrian and Marcus Agrippa in ways that are totally unconventional. Their era is the Infancy of Jesus Christ. The emperor Hadrian, a Seleucid king, was (among others) Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Augustus, who decreed a universal Census when Jesus Christ was born (Luke 2:1): Time to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus (2) Time to consider Hadrian, that 'mirror-image' of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus Marcus Agrippa, the Right-Hand Man Of Caesar Augustus (Lindsay Powell), was, variously Herod ‘the Great’ (also for Augustus); Philip the Phrygian (for Antiochus); and Herodes Atticus (for Hadrian). On this, see e.g. my article: Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man (7) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man So, just as King Herod (Marcus Agrippa) ‘the Great’ built on an enormous scale on behalf of the emperor Augustus Caesar, so, too, did he do the same for Hadrian as an alter ego of this Augustus. Disentangling convention Having laid this new and revolutionary foundation, we can now bring more light to bear on what Mary T. Boatwright has written at the beginning of her 2013 article: Hadrian and the Agrippa Inscription of the Pantheon (7) Hadrian and the Agrippa Inscription of the Pantheon Introduction Recent work has reignited debate about the authorship and meaning of the Pantheon, a now-iconic building whose convoluted testimony and unusual design have always complicated its understanding. …. Although the Pantheon is frequently considered to be Hadrian’s most famous construction and a key to his character and politics … it was long attributed to Marcus Agrippa because the inscription on its facade names this colleague of Augustus as patron: M. Agrippa L. f. co(n)s(ul) tertium fecit (CIL VI 896 [1]: … ‘Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul three times, made [this]’ …. Only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did scholars begin to agree that the structure was Hadrianic. Their deduction, based on brickstamps, excavation and literary evidence, seemed conirmed by Herbert Bloch’s more thorough analysis of Roman brickstamps in the 1930s, which dated to AD 118 or 119 the initial construction of the present Pantheon. …. Doubts about the Pantheon’s design and architect lingered … however, as Mark Wilson Jones explores elsewhere in this volume, as have questions about the relationship of the present building to the Agrippan and Domitianic predecessors known for its site. …. The newest challenge to the Pantheon’s Hadrianic date came in 2007, when Lise Hetland republished the Pantheon’s brickstamps. Arguing that the vast majority are Trajanic and only one clearly Hadrianic, she concluded that Trajan initiated the present building shortly after ad 110 (when lightning destroyed Domitian’s restored Pantheon), and substantially completed it before his death in AD 117. Damien Mackey’s comment: This adds an apparent further complication: TRAJAN. Once again my system can resolve this, for Trajan also was Hadrian: Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian (2) Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian Mary T. Boatwright continues: …. If she is correct, Hadrian was responsible mostly, or merely, for completing another’s project. …. This conclusion has radical implications, including for the interpretation of Hadrian and his relationship to the city of Rome. Although I do not contest Hetland’s Trajanic dating for the Pantheon’s inception, and I leave to Wilson Jones discussion of the Pantheon’s design (and architects), I argue in this paper that the Pantheon still provides insight into Hadrian and the topography of Rome. My focus is the Pantheon’s famous Agrippa inscription. Its placement on the Pantheon’s pronaos makes it among the finishing touches of the building, and it must reflect Hadrian in some way. But the inscription does not name Hadrian. This is usually taken to confirm a notice in the Historia Augusta, that Hadrian restored the Pantheon and various other buildings and consecrated them with the names of their original builders (HA Hadrian 19.10). …. The literary evidence, however, deserves closer study. Furthermore, comparison of other building and rebuilding inscriptions in Rome, including the rebuilding inscription of Septimius Severus and Caracalla on the Pantheon, underscores the uniqueness of the Agrippa inscription’s huge bronze lettering, and argues for Hadrian’s responsibility. The cos. tertium wording of the inscription can also substantiate Hadrian’s authorship. My investigation thus allows us to reclaim Hadrian’s planning and agency for at least part of this iconic building, and to discern more clearly his prominence, and perhaps even his personality, in the imperial capital city. …. [End of quote] For more architectural anomalies pertaining to this period, see my articles: Emperor Hadrian’s palaces missing (8) Emperor Hadrian's palaces missing Did Hadrian or Herod build the Wailing Wall? Did Hadrian or Herod build the Wailing Wall? Caligula exalts Marcus Agrippa Caligula exalts Marcus Agrippa

Emperor Hadrian’s palaces missing

“Stratigraphy confirms that Hadrian did not visit a destroyed Jerusalem, but one that had long since been restored”. Gunnar Heinsohn This article can be a companion piece to articles of mine (Damien Mackey) such as: Henry VIII’s palaces missing (3) Henry VIII's palaces missing Professor Gunnar Heinsohn wrote: Jerusalems_First_Millennium_AD_1000_year.pdf …. Jerusalem is obsessed with Hadrianic temples that are said to have been demolished to make way for other structures. On the Cardo Maximus this act is said to have been carried out in favor of Christianity, while on the Temple Mount it was done in favor of Islam. However, under the Jesus Compound on the Cardo, the foundations of an imperial temple of Venus have not been found. On Temple Mount, a Jupiter sanctuary is said to have been built over the ruins of the Herodian temple. The Umayyads supposedly demolished it to build the Dome of the Rock over it. Traces of this temple of Hadrian are missing as well. Nevertheless, the latest research on Roman Jerusalem claims, without hard evidence, the existence of such a structure: “A Temple to Jupiter on top of the temenos, as implied by Cassius Dio, cannot, in my opinion, be ruled out” (Weksler-Bdolah 2014, 58). Cassius Dio (ca. 165-235 AD) lived nearly a century after Hadrian. He provides the only source: “At Jerusalem he [Hadrian] founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter” (Historia Romana, LXIX, 12:1). However, the original of this source is lost. The passage is a paraphrase by John Xiphilinus (late 11th c. AD), a Byzantine historian and the nephew of Patriarch John VIII of Constantinople. He may have tailored this paraphrase to present an imperial blasphemy as a convincing cause of war. He painted the customary act of establishing pagan shrines in a new Roman colonia “in the harsh colors of a religious confrontation by using a ‘loaded’ verb and referring to the temple by a name familiar to both Jewish and Christian readers” (Eliav 1997, 142). Of course, this must remain speculation. Perhaps the term Capitolina in the new city name also led to associations with Jupiter. In Rome stood the most important of all Jupiter temples in the entire empire, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on Mons Capitolinus (Capitoline Hill). There was also a contemporary of Hadrian, Appian of Alexandria (95-165 AD), with statements about Jerusalem. He did not know anything about Hadrian rebuilding a destroyed city and even putting a temple of Jupiter on its most holy site. Yet, he reminded his readers of Jerusalem’s destruction in the time of Vespasian and Titus to then add that “Hadrian did the same in our time” (Stern 1980; no. 143). This makes good sense if Hadrian’s war against the Bar Kokhba rebels (132-136 AD) resulted in damages to the city. Stratigraphy confirms that Hadrian did not visit a destroyed Jerusalem, but one that had long since been restored. There are also no better candidates than Arab Nabataeans with their Umayyad culture for repairing the city after AD 70. And unlike the Jupiter Temple of John Xiphilinus, the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount is indisputable. …. [End of quote] There are so many problems to be sorted out here. Let us take just a few of these. While the real Hadrian, who was the Seleucid tyrant, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, at the time of the Maccabees: Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian (3) Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian did not come to a destroyed Jerusalem as he would have, had he really lived in c. 130 AD, he certainly invaded and despoiled that City near to the Nativity of Jesus Christ. What is wrongly called the Temple Mount is actually where the invading Gentile forces took up their residence. Cassius Dio, a non contemporary of Hadrian’s, is a most unreliable historian – for this period, at least. Appian, had he known of what Vespasian and Titus had done to Jerusalem, could not possibly, therefore, have been a contemporary of the much earlier Hadrian. Hadrian’s war belonged to the Maccabean era, decades before 70 AD. To find traces of Hadrian’s architecture in Jerusalem, one would need to revisit the Seleucid era, and the buildings of Hadrian’s right-hand man, Herod the Great, who was the same potentate as the great builder, Marcus Agrippa: Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man (3) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man

Hadrian, Aelia Capitolina, and which Jewish Revolt?

by Damien F. Mackey “In 1967 a hoard of coins that was said to have been illegally excavated in the northern part of the Judean desert surfaced on the antiquities market. The hoard included Bar-Kokhba coins and an Aelia Capitolina coin. This seemed to indicate that Aelia was founded before the revolt, since the refugees who supposedly hid the coins during the revolt also had an Aelia coin”. Hanan Eshel The very suggestion that there could have been a massive Jewish revolt against Rome (c. 132-135 AD) a mere 60 years or so after the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by Titus and his legionaries, in 70 AD, I find quite ridiculous. According to typical accounts, some half a million Jews may have died in this second revolt. From whence did they all come? Judah, Jerusalem, the Temple, and Judaïsm, were all finished in 70 AD. ‘Not a stone was left upon a stone!’ (Luke 21:6). This is the sad tale of it as foretold by the Lord of History (vv. 20-33): ‘When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. ‘There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’. He told them this parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. ‘Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away’. As I wrote in my article: Simon Bar Kochba in Temple Period (4) Simon Bar Kochba in Temple Period …. But the most compelling argument in favour of a necessary (as I had thought) synchronisation of the activities of Simon Bar Giora and Simon Bar Kochba was that the destruction in Israel was so complete in the first case, at the hands of Vespasian and Titus, with the entire land devastated, the great City (Jerusalem) and its Temple completely burned to the ground, and the people slaughtered wholesale, or sent into slavery, that I did not consider it reasonable to suggest that, some 60-70 years later - {and again readers might cite the recovery of nations much sooner after the First World War going in to the Second – but these nations, e.g. Germany, had not been obliterated internally} - Simon Bar Kochba was able to command armies of 400,000 men in Israel against a Hadrian-led Rome and to have several of the most famous of all the Roman legions on the verge of annihilation - only afterwards to see some 580,000 Jewish men die, almost 1000 fortified villages in Israel completely devastated, once again, and the people, once again, slaughtered or taken into captivity en masse. …. These are numbers both massive and completely unbelievable! Quite different from realism, however, is the account that we find in our text books. Hadrian and the Bar Kochba revolt, are considered to have followed the cataclysmic 70 AD event, as a Second Jewish Revolt - whereas they actually preceded it, in the Maccabean era. You see, Hadrian was not a Roman emperor at all, but was the Seleucid Greek tyrant, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, who definitely did not live as late as c. 130 AD: Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian (3) Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian His Jewish foe, a Hasmonaean – presumably Simon – minted coins according to which the Temple was still standing. But note in the following article the admission that: “The Bar Kochba Revolt lacks the eyewitness accounts, like Josephus, who chronicled the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (A.D. 66-73)”. Typically, we read worrisome articles such as the following one by Mark Turnage: Weekly Q&A: What was the Bar Kochba Revolt? - CBN Israel Weekly Q&A: What was the Bar Kochba Revolt? Posted on June 23, 2023 By CBN Israel In Blog Hope stirred within Judaism sixty years after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its Temple. Perhaps this was the time when the Jews in the land of Israel would finally remove Rome’s presence. The revolt broke out in A.D. 132. The Bar Kochba Revolt lacks the eyewitness accounts, like Josephus, who chronicled the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (A.D. 66-73). The causes of the revolt are not entirely clear. Several factors seem to have contributed to a second Jewish revolt in the land of Israel within a sixty-year period. The Roman Emperor Hadrian banned circumcision in the year’s leading up to the revolt. His ban against circumcision grew out of a general ban against male castration. Romans viewed the Jewish practice of circumcision as mutilation. Of course, circumcision was the sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 17). The ancient sources disagree whether Hadrian refounded Jerusalem as a Roman colony, named Aelia Capitonlina, with a Temple to Jupiter, before or after the Bar Kochba Revolt. If it happened prior to the revolt, it may have served as a cause of the revolt. The Jews seem to have assumed this period would see the Temple of Jerusalem rebuilt. After the destruction of the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon, the Second Temple was built by Zerubbabel in Jerusalem. The Jews looked at this earlier precedent as a pattern for God bringing about the rebuilding of the Temple in their day. Some of the coins minted by the Jewish rebels depict the façade of the Temple. Others bear the inscription “for the redemption of Jerusalem.” The Jewish rebels anticipated their revolt would return Jerusalem to the Jews, remove the Romans, and see the Temple rebuilt. The revolt receives its name from its leader, a charismatic, messianic figure named, Shimon ben Kosiba. Rabbinic tradition relates how a great Sage of this period, Rabbi Akiva, hailed Shimon as the Messiah, calling him bar Kochba (“son of the star;” Numbers 24:17). After the failure of the revolt, the rabbis referred to him as bar Koziba (“son of the lie”). Shimon took the title Nasi Israel (Prince of Israel). This language comes from Ezekiel where the future, hoped for ruler will be known as Nasi. The revolt had a devastating impact upon the Jewish community in the land of Israel. Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources place the Jewish casualties between 400,000-500,000. Even if these figures are inflated, they speak to the widespread loss of Jewish life. The Jewish rebels also inflicted heavy causalities upon the Roman forces as well. Many Jews were sold as slaves because of the revolt. Others emigrated outside of the land. Jews from Babylon immigrated into the land of Israel at this time. The Romans changed the name of the province from Judaea to Palestina. Jerusalem became a Roman colony and Jews were expelled from the city. The Galilee, which had been a center of Jewish life, had idolatrous non-Jews settling in the region. It also impacted the relationships between Jews and Christians. [End of quote] In the next article, Hanan Eshel, also following a conventional route, will try to determine when Hadrian set up his Aelia Capitolina: Hanan Eshel. “Aelia Capitolina- Jerusalem No More.” Biblical Archaeology Review 23, 6 (1997). | Center for Online Judaic Studies ‘Eshel. “Aelia Capitolina- Jerusalem No More.” Biblical Archaeology Review 23, 6 (1997). Unlike the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.), which was chronicled in detail by the first-century historian Josephus, the Second Jewish Revolt, the so-called Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 C.E.), is known only from scraps of ancient literature. …. Archaeology alone can fill in the gaps. And it has been doing so in an amazing way in recent decades. …. One of the mysteries surrounding the revolt involves the founding of the city Aelia Capitolina, the name the Romans gave to Jerusalem. Did the Romans establish Aelia Capitolina before the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, thereby inciting the Jews to revolt? Or did they establish it after the revolt and exclude the Jews from the city as punishment? Scholars, as might be expected, have taken two views. Recent numismatic evidence—coins from the Judean desert—may provide the answer. The first view, that the founding of Aelia Capitolina preceded the revolt, is supported by the Roman historian Dio Cassius. In 130 C.E. Emperor Hadrian (117–138 C.E.) made a tour of his eastern lands, traveling through Judea, Arabia and Egypt before returning to Rome. According to Dio, Hadrian founded Aelia Capitolina during this journey. …. The church historian Eusebius, however, describes the transformation of Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina as occurring after the Bar-Kokhba Revolt was crushed, in 136 C.E. …. The Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic classic, redacted in about 200 C.E., seems to support Eusebius. In Ta’anit 4.6, the Mishnah lists five disasters that occurred on the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, including the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple and the Roman destruction of the Second Temple. The fourth item in the list is the fall of Betar, the last stronghold of Bar-Kokhba’s warriors, which ended the Second Jewish Revolt. The final item in the Mishnah’s list is the plowing of “the city”—that is, Jerusalem. When the Romans founded a city, they fixed its boundaries in a ceremonial ritual in which an ox and a cow, tethered together, plowed a line that marked the new city’s limits. That the Mishnah lists the fall of Betar before the founding of Roman Jerusalem seems to confirm Eusebius’s statement that Aelia Capitolina was founded after the Bar-Kokhba revolt was suppressed. Who was right—Dio Cassius or Eusebius? Like the rebels of the First Jewish Revolt, the Jews of the Second Jewish Revolt issued their own coins. These may help us answer the question. The Second Revolt coins are all overstrikes; that is, the rebels took coins then in circulation and imprinted them with their own impressions. Rome issued coins commemorating Aelia Capitolina. If an Aelia Capitolina coin had been found overstruck with a Bar-Kokhba impression, this would provide clear evidence that Aelia had been founded before the revolt. However, since no such coin has been found, some scholars have assumed that Aelia was established after the revolt, as punishment. In 1967 a hoard of coins that was said to have been illegally excavated in the northern part of the Judean desert surfaced on the antiquities market. The hoard included Bar-Kokhba coins and an Aelia Capitolina coin. This seemed to indicate that Aelia was founded before the revolt, since the refugees who supposedly hid the coins during the revolt also had an Aelia coin. Later, in 1970, hoards said to have come from the same area appeared on the market. These too contained a mixture of Bar-Kokhba and Aelia coins. As Yaakov Meshorer, the dean of Israeli numismatists, noted, these discoveries seemed to support Dio’s testimony that Aelia was founded in 130 C.E., during Hadrian’s eastern tour. There was a problem, however. These hoards were found not in professional digs but in illegal excavations. Local Bedouin regularly engage in such digs and then sell their finds to antiquities dealers. Some skeptical scholars have suggested that antiquities dealers may have added the Aelia coins to the hoards to increase their value. I can now report the controlled and legal excavation of a hoard of coins that may remove any doubts. This excavation is really part of a larger story involving the search for and excavation of caves in the Judean desert. Many of these caves were used by Jewish refugees fleeing from the Roman forces during the Second Revolt. …. Since 1951, 27 Second Revolt refugee caves have been identified. Eight of these caves have been found by the Israel Cave Research Center (ICRC), established in 1979 by the Israel Society for the Protection of Nature. All of these caves can be dated to the Bar-Kokhba period by the finds—pottery, glass, keys, wooden combs and bronze vessels as well as coins. In most of the caves, unfortunately, archaeologists detected evidence of prior illegal excavation. Nevertheless, important finds awaited discovery. In one cave that was clearly a Jewish refuge during the revolt (the Araq el-Na’asaneh Cave), ICRC volunteers found 16 silver denarii struck by the emperors Trajan (98–117 C.E.) and Hadrian, as well as one tridrachma from the Roman province of Cappadocia. Damien Mackey’s comment: Trajan and Hadrian I believe to have been just one and the same emperor: Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian (4) Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian Hanan Eshel continues: This demonstrates that the Jewish rebels did not overstrike all the coins they got hold of but continued to use Roman coins bearing their original impressions. In 1986, I excavated a cave (known as the Abi’or Cave) to which 38 people had fled. We found their skeletons in the cave. They probably suffocated as a fire kindled by the Romans at the entrance withdrew oxygen from the cave. Five documents written on papyrus (three in Greek and two in Aramaic) indicate that the people fled to the cave in 135 C.E. Some of these documents were found on a terrace located at the entrance to the cave. However, the stratigraphy was reversed. Usually, as archaeologists dig deeper, they reveal earlier and earlier strata, or layers of occupation. But near the mouth of the Abi’or Cave, we found a fourth-century B.C.E. document above three documents from the Roman period. This indicates that some later occupants dumped the cave’s contents onto the terrace, thereby turning the strata upside down. Damien Mackey’s comment: Or, has the archaeology here simply been misconstrued? The interpretation of some of what follows I think may well be questionable. Hanan Eshel continues: It is not difficult to determine who did this: monks who lived in this cave during the 14th century. In 1987 I excavated another refugee cave, which yielded one bronze coin that had been overstruck by the rebels and a silver dinar of Hadrian, further proof that the rebels continued to use some regular Roman coins. In 1991 David Amit, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, and I excavated a cave that yielded a tetradrachma of Bar-Kokhba with the facade of the destroyed [sic] Jerusalem Temple on the obverse. About 2,000 of these coins are known, but this tetradrachma is the first to be discovered during a legal excavation. We named the findspot the Cave of the Tetradrachma. Finally, I come to the el-Jai Cave, on the south side of Wadi Suweinet, northeast of Jerusalem. I visited the cave several times, looking for artifacts from the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, but found only some Early Bronze Age potsherds (c. 2000 B.C.E.). When I led a group of students here in 1997, we found evidence of intensive illegal excavations. Near one of the cave’s two entrances we noticed potsherds from the second century C.E. Crawling into the inner part of the cave, we came upon broken glass vessels, often found in destruction layers from the Bar-Kokhba period. We also found two coins near the entrance to the cave’s huge hall and three more inside. The oldest [sic] was a bronze coin of the Roman emperor Domitian (81–96 C.E.), minted in Sebaste, with two countermarks (stamps) of the Tenth Roman Legion. (This legion led the forces that suppressed the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in the first century C.E.) The other four coins all dated to the time of Hadrian. Three of these coins are critical to our discussion: a city coin from Gaza, found in the huge hall, and two Aelia Capitolina coins, from a tunnel leading into the hall. The Gaza coin is important because it can be dated precisely. When Hadrian made his eastern tour, he visited Gaza, an honor the city wanted to preserve in memory forever. To do this, the Gazans recorded two dates on their coins: the Gaza era (the number of years from the Roman liberation of the city in 61 B.C.E.) and the number of years after Hadrian’s visit. The inscription on the Gaza coin from the el-Jai Cave tells us it was struck in year 5 after the visit of Hadrian and year 194 of the Gaza era. This double date (the difference between the two dates is seven or eight months) allows the coin to be dated to the end of 133 C.E. or the beginning of 134 C.E. [sic] One of the Aelia Capitolina coins portrays, on its reverse, the ceremony of the founding of the city as a Roman colony. The emperor appears plowing the boundary of the city with an ox and a cow. The Latin inscription reads “COL[ONIA] AEL[IA] KAPIT[OLINA], COND[IT],” or “Colony of Aelia Capitolina, founded.” In the background is the legionary standard. The other Aelia coin depicts, on its reverse, the head of Sabina, Hadrian’s wife, with the inscription “Sabina Augusta.” Both coins strengthen the association of the founding of Aelia with Hadrian’s tour, especially his visit to Jerusalem. If, as I believe, the Gaza coin was deposited in the cave at the same time as the Aelia coins, Aelia must have been founded by 133/4 C.E. The Bar-Kokhba Revolt lasted another year or so. Therefore Aelia must have been established before, not after, the revolt. Dio Cassius was right. The establishment of Jerusalem as a Roman colony named Aelia Capitolina was apparently one of the causes of the Second [sic] Jewish Revolt against Rome. One final insight provided by the coins from this cave: Some scholars have argued that the rebels had no commercial connections with people outside Judea during the revolt. Their argument is based largely on the fact that coin hoards from the Bar-Kokhba Revolt usually contain no Roman coins dating later than 132 C.E. The coins from the el-Jai Cave disprove this contention. The Jews who fled to this cave no earlier than 134 C.E. carried with them coins minted in 133/4 C.E.—during the revolt.

Our Lady of Fatima and Pope Leo XIV

“The Rosary for Peace will be held during the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality, which takes place on October 11-12. That day also marks the 63rd anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which Pope St John XXIII opened on October 11, 1962. The original image of Our Lady of Fatima will be in St Peter's Square for the Rosary prayer and the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality”. Pope Leo urges Catholics to pray daily Rosary for Peace in October • Sep 24th, 2025 ________________________________________ …. Source: Vatican Media Pope Leo XIV invited Catholics around the world to pray the Rosary every day during October, for peace in war-torn lands. He made the announcement during the Wednesday General Audience. He said the faithful in Rome will gather in St Peter's Square on October, 11, 2025 at 6pm. "I invite everyone, each day of the coming month, to pray the Rosary for peace-personally, in the family, and in community," he said. The Pope also invited Vatican employees to pray the Rosary daily in St Peter's Basilica at 7pm throughout October. He invited Christians to share with others "the love of Jesus that illumines and lifts up humanity." The Rosary for Peace will be held during the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality, which takes place on October 11-12. That day also marks the 63rd anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, which Pope St John XXIII opened on October 11, 1962. The original image of Our Lady of Fatima will be in St Peter's Square for the Rosary prayer and the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality. Statue of Our Lady of Fatima travels to meet Pope Leo XIV The schedule for the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality, which will take place in Rome on 11 and 12 October, has been announced. The statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which is venerated in the Chapel of the Apparitions, will be present. Pope Francis expressed his desire to have the statue of Our Lady of Fatima present at the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality in Rome on 11 and 12 October, and this was reaffirmed by Pope Leo XIV. The sculpture venerated in the Chapel of the Apparitions will leave Cova da Iria on 10 October in order to be present at the schedule now announced by the Dicastery for Evangelization. There will be two occasions when Pope Leo XIV will be with the statue of the Virgin Mary: on Saturday, 11 October, at 6 p.m., at the prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square, and at the Mass he will preside over on Sunday, 12 October, at 10:30 a.m., also in St. Peter’s Square. Throughout the 11th, the faithful will have the opportunity to venerate and be close to the Statue of Our Lady in the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina. On that day, the schedule includes Mass at 9:00 a.m., presided over by the rector of the Shrine of Fatima, Father Carlos Cabecinhas; at 12:00 p.m., the Rosary presided over by Father Giuseppe Midili; and at 5:00 p.m., a procession from the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina to St. Peter's Square. In a statement issued in February confirming the arrival of the statue of Our Lady in Rome, the Dicastery for Evangelization said that the presence of the image of the Virgin Mary at the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality will “further enrich this moment of prayer and reflection”. Quoted in the statement, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, described the image as “one of the most significant Marian icons for Christians worldwide” and stressed that “the presence of the beloved original statue of Our Lady of Fatima will allow everyone to experience the closeness of the Virgin Mary”. This will be the fourth time that the sculpture has left Cova da Iria to go to Rome. For the rector of the Shrine of Fatima, Father Carlos Cabecinhas, it is a cause for great joy: “in this jubilee time, the Virgin of Fatima is thus the woman of Easter joy, even during the painful times the world is going through.” “Once again, the ‘Lady dressed in white’ will become a pilgrim of hope and, in Rome, she will be with the “bishop dressed in white’, as the little shepherds of Fatima affectionately called the Holy Father,” he said. Fatima and Pope Leo XIV – The iPadre Catholic Podcast Fatima and Pope Leo XIV Posted on May 13, 2025 by Fr. Jay Finelli Today is the 108th Anniversary of the First Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Let us examine the Prophetic Link Between Fatima, Pope Leo XIII, and Pope Leo XIV. On May 13, 1917, in a remote field in Cova da Iria, three shepherd children were visited by a radiant Lady from Heaven—Our Lady of the Rosary. That encounter would mark the beginning of one of the most important series of Marian apparitions in the history of the Church, culminating in the Miracle of the Sun on October 13, 1917. Today, we commemorate the 108th anniversary of that first apparition. But Fatima’s message did not come in isolation. In fact, I believe there is a divine thread that ties it together with another event—one that took place exactly 33 years earlier, on October 13, 1884. On that day, Pope Leo XIII, after finishing Mass in the Vatican, fell into a trance-like state. Witnesses reported that he stood frozen at the foot of the altar for about ten minutes. When he recovered, he was visibly shaken. He later recounted that he had been granted a terrifying vision: he had seen Satan asking God for permission to destroy the Church. The Lord allowed him a certain amount of time and power—after which, Our Lady would intervene. In response to this, Pope Leo XIII composed the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and ordered it to be said after every Low Mass throughout the world. The connection between these two events—Leo XIII’s vision and the apparitions of Fatima—is striking. One could say that they mark the beginning and end of a prophetic warning: a century-long battle between Heaven and hell, with the fate of countless souls hanging in the balance. A Time of Crisis… and a Time of Hope Since those two monumental events, we have seen the rapid advance of secularism, wars, moral collapse, and a tragic division within the Church. The cultural revolution of the 20th century, the loss of belief in the Real Presence, the spread of doctrinal confusion, and the weakening of religious vocations have left deep scars. Evil has grown bolder, and many of the faithful have grown weary. And yet, just when it seemed that darkness was gaining the upper hand, a new light has begun to shine—Pope Leo XIV. The Rise of Pope Leo XIV His rise to the papacy has been nothing short of extraordinary: • Ordained a priest in 1982 • Consecrated a bishop in 2014 • Created a cardinal in 2023 • Elected Pope on May 7, 2025 …. From an unknown diocesan bishop to the Supreme Pontiff in barely a decade—a pace and path rarely seen in Church history. …. It is as if Heaven is once again sending a signal: the battle continues, but God is not abandoning His Church. A Marian Pope for Marian Times Pope Leo XIV has demonstrated from the outset a deep and unwavering devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In his writings, his homilies, and his public acts of piety, he consistently turns to her as both Mother and Queen, Intercessor and Warrior. It is not hard to imagine that Our Lady of Fatima herself has had a hand in his election. Perhaps she has chosen this Pope—this son devoted to her—to be the one who will usher in her promised Triumph, as foretold to the children of Fatima. Certainly, the signs of the times are converging. We may be closer now than ever before to that long-awaited moment when, in the words of Our Lady: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” A Call to Prayer and Fidelity If Pope Leo XIV has indeed been raised up for such a time as this, he will need our prayers more than ever. The weight of Peter’s keys is immense, and the forces aligned against him are powerful and relentless. Years ago, I was told something sobering by Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, a dear family friend and the personal theologian to five popes. He once confided to me: “The Pope is surrounded by enemies.” Let that sink in. The Vicar of Christ walks daily through the fire of spiritual warfare. And yet, as we know, the gates of hell shall not prevail. Still, the Church depends on the fidelity and prayers of her children. Let us then storm Heaven with our supplications: • For the protection of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV • For the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary • For the renewal and purification of the Church • For the conversion of sinners and the peace of the world May our Heavenly Father hasten the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, may St. Michael defend Pope Leo XIV in the day of battle, and Our Lady of Fatima safely guide and guard our new Holy Father in these trying times. God love you!

Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

Following a vision of Satan “running riot” on the planet, “Pope Leo [XIII] composed three prayers to St. Michael, ranging from short to long” …. “The brief one, he commanded, should be prayed at the end of every Mass”. Today (29th September, 2025), the feast of the angels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, is my (Damien Mackey’s) 75th birthday. Daniel Payne wrote on this very feast-day, in 2023 (up-dated today, 2025): Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael: The 3 great archangels of the Bible | Catholic News Agency Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael: The 3 great archangels of the Bible By Daniel Payne CNA Staff, Sep 29, 2025 / 04:00 am Many Catholics can, at the drop of a hat, recite the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel — the famous petition to that venerable saint to “defend us in battle” and “cast into hell Satan.” In the culture of the Church, Michael is often accompanied by his two fellow archangels — Sts. Gabriel and Raphael — with the three forming a phalanx of protection, healing, and petition for those who ask for their intercession. The Church celebrates the three archangels with a joint feast day on Sept. 29. St. Michael the Archangel St. Michael the Archangel is hailed in the Book of Daniel as “the great prince who has charge of [God’s] people.” Michael Aquilina, the executive vice president and trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio, described Michael among angels as “the one most often named — and most often invoked — and most often seen in history-changing apparitions.” Devotion to Michael, Aquilina told CNA, “has been with the Church from the beginning. And Michael has been with God’s people since before the beginning of the Church.” Michael’s history in the Bible is depicted through Daniel, in Jude (in which he battles Satan for possession of Moses’ body), and in Revelation as he “wag[es] war with the dragon” alongside his fellow angels. Michael, Aquilina said, was “a supremely important character who was there from the beginning of the story.” Rabbinic tradition holds that Michael was at the center of many of the great biblical dramas even if not explicitly mentioned. He was an early subject of veneration in the Church, though Aquilina noted that the Reformation led to a steep decline in devotion to the angels — until the end of the 19th century, when Michael began an “amazing comeback journey” in the life of the Church. Following a vision of Satan “running riot” on the planet, “Pope Leo composed three prayers to St. Michael, ranging from short to long,” Aquilina said. “The brief one, he commanded, should be prayed at the end of every Mass.” This was a regular feature of the Mass until the Vatican II era, after which it came to an end — though Pope John Paul II in 1994 urged Catholics to make the prayer a regular part of their lives. “St. Michael is there for us in the day of battle, which is every day,” Aquilina said. The St. Michael Prayer: St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil / May God rebuke him, we humbly pray / And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the divine power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. St. Gabriel the Archangel Gabriel appears regularly in Scripture as a messenger of God’s word, both in the Old and New Testaments. Daniel identifies Gabriel as a “man” who came “to give [him] insight and understanding,” relaying prophetic answers to Daniel’s entreaties to God. In the New Testament, Luke relays Gabriel’s appearances to both Zechariah and the Virgin Mary. At the former, he informs the priest that his wife, Elizabeth, will soon conceive a child; at the latter he informs Mary herself that she will do the same. The two children in question, of course, were respectively John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Christian tradition further associates Gabriel with the apostle Paul’s reference in his First Letter to the Thessalonians to the “archangel’s call” and “the sound of the trumpet of God.” “Judgment will begin with the archangel’s call and the sound of the horn,” Aquilina told CNA. “Thus we hear often of Gabriel’s trumpet.” Media workers in particular have “good professional reasons to go to Gabriel,” Aquilina said. “Since he is the Bible’s great communicator — the great teller of good news — he is the natural patron of broadcasters and all those who work in electronic media,” he said. “For the same reason, he’s the patron saint of preachers ... but also of postal workers, diplomats, and messengers.” The St. Gabriel Prayer: O Blessed Archangel Gabriel, we beseech thee, do thou intercede for us at the throne of divine mercy in our present necessities, that as thou didst announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation, so through thy prayers and patronage in heaven we may obtain the benefits of the same, and sing the praise of God forever in the land of the living. Amen. St. Raphael the Archangel Lesser-known among the three great archangels, Raphael’s mission from God “is not obvious to the casual reader” of the Bible, Aquilina said. Yet his story, depicted in the Book of Tobit, is “something unique in the whole Bible.” In other depictions of angels, they come to Earth only briefly, to deliver a message or to help God’s favored people in some way. “Raphael is different,” Aquilina said. “He stays around for the whole story, and by the end he’s become something more than an angel ... he’s become a friend.” In Tobit, Raphael accompanies Tobias, the son of the book’s namesake, as he travels to retrieve money left by his father in another town, helping him along the way and arranging for his marriage to Sarah. The biblical account “has in every generation provided insight and consolation to the devout,” Aquilina said. Notably, Raphael deftly uses the natural world to work God’s miracles: “What we would ordinarily call catastrophes — blindness, multiple widowhood, destitution, estrangement — all these become providential channels of grace by the time the threads of the story are all wound up in the end.” “Raphael is patron of many kinds of people,” Aquilina said. “Of course, he’s the patron of singles in search of a mate — and those in search of a friend. He is the patron of pharmacists because he provided the salve of healing. He is a patron for anyone in search of a cure.” He is also the patron saint of blind people, travelers, sick people, and youth. “Raphael’s story,” Aquilina said, “remains a model for those who would enjoy the friendship of the angels.” Prayer to St. Raphael: St. Raphael, of the glorious seven who stand before the throne of him who lives and reigns, angel of health, the Lord has filled your hand with balm from heaven to soothe or cure our pains. Heal or cure the victim of disease. And guide our steps when doubtful of our ways. Amen. Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.

Coming of the Son of Man

by Damien F. Mackey “Coming with clouds, and lightning is a portent of total destruction, such phraseology being used before, in the Old testament, when Judgment by Yhwh came on Jerusalem by Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and other "executioners", and now it's Rome”. U.S. researcher, Bob Guyrik, has provided some excellent comments here with reference to my most recent (26th September, 2025) article: Christian Zionists a boon to Israel, but sadly mistaken about Final Coming and Third Temple (5) Christian Zionists a boon to Israel, but sadly mistaken about Final Coming and Third Temple Dear Damien: You nailed it here! The Wailing Wall is part of The Temple to Jupiter, a part of Roman Fort Antonia still remaining. The Mount never had a temple, and the second temple was smashed to powder by the catapults and Scorpiones of which each Roman legion of Titus had 40-60 of these horrendous machines, some weighing 400 pounds dragged by horses dressed in Bronze armor so their faces looked like men with long hair—see internet pictures of these war horses. The siege lasted 5 months (yes, observe in Revelation 9:10 - "They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails"), at the end of which the entire city and temple were smashed, then burnt, the the foundations plowed under (Josephus) leaving nothing. 1.1 million were slaughtered and 93,000 captured with many of these latter sent to die in colosseums around the empire. All of the Levites were found hiding in the temple and were brought out to Titus. He proclaimed "execute them"! (As an aside, Levite priesthood is hereditary, so where will any new priests come from?) All of "these things" was predicted by Jesus in Matthew 23-25, and Luke 19 ff., and Jesus said it would happen within "this generation" (a generation being 40 years historically), and that ""some standing here will witness it" (so the "coming of the Son of Man already happened in August, 70 AD. Not 2 or 3 thousand years in the future! (what good would that be to Jesus' listeners to the Olivet Discourse in 30 AD?) 70 AD is when Jesus "came with clouds", as "predicted by the Prophet Daniel". Coming with clouds, and lightning is a portent of total destruction, such phraseology being used before, in the Old testament, when Judgment by Yhwh came on Jerusalem by Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, and other "executioners", and now it's Rome. It was also called "The Day of the Lord" when Yhwh was the formal judge. Now with Jesus given charge of judgment, the destruction of Israel, Judah, Samaria,and Jerusalem, is named "The Coming of the Son of Man". My wife and 3 grown children identify as believers who will become spiritual living stones, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of the Third Temple when we pass this mortal coil. The delusion that the Second Temple built by Herod was on the Temple Mount (it was clearly in the City of David above the only spring with "living waters" on any of the mountains), such imaginings will preclude attempts to build a third temple at the real site. Besides, with no Ark of the Mosaic Covenant, no Priesthood, no Song of Moses, no Ten Commandments, no Sacrifices, no Propitiation, what a meaningless temple it would be! (The Ark doesn't even have golden rats anymore!) The Mosaic Age is over. We are now in the Messianic Age! Hallelujah! Yes, Damien, I know some muslims which have said the same things as Dr. Ataie, and now belong to Christ. I pray that he follows through and can see, by induction and deduction, his life and the world created by God for all of us, Jew, Gentile, and Muslim, makes sense. The first book of the Bible begins the wonderful story where the Scarlet Thread (Jesus) which saves Job begins, and it continues weaving its way through every book of the Old and New Testament until He is observed at the end of the Apocalypse of John. Beginning and End; Aleph and Tav; Alpha and Omega. ….

Must watch Exposition by Don Esposito of true Temple location

Uncovering Jerusalem's Lost Temple (The temple of the Jews in the City of David) Uncovering Jerusalem's Lost Temple (The temple of the Jews in the City of David) …. It's difficult to admit the Temple is really in the City of David. For the Jews, and Christians for that matter, to admit they have been bobbing their heads at a Roman fort for centuries would be hard to admit to oneself. But, if they want their temple built, just admit it and start construction. Let Muhammad keep his Dome of the Rock built on the Court of the Gentiles (Rev. 11:1-2). Besides, as far as Fort Antonia goes, can you imagine the Romans, the conquerors, allowing a Jewish Temple, the conquered, to be tower above and be much larger than their presence?. That is ridiculous. The Romans are going to make sure they are the biggest and most imposing presence in the city. Also, Micah 3 tells us the site of the temple would be plowed like a field...and it was. Look at the old photos. …. I am not a biblical scholar, and not an archeologist, but I know when I read where Yeshua told his disciples that not one stone would be left upon another of the grand temple they were talking about, I would wonder seeing the Jews at the wailing wall. I knew Yeshua was never wrong. I just could not figure out why they chose that wall to pray at. Now that I have the back history it makes sense. Maybe it would be hard for them to accept that they have been praying up against a Roman fortress wall. Ok, I know what they thought (and many still think) about Yeshua, so they would not know what He said to His disciples. But they were praying in their heart to the One Almighty Yahweh. Isn't that what matters seeing as they do not have a temple? Will they come around? Only time will tell. Thank you, I have now watched several stories about the Lost Temple site. I am so happy and convinced that this is where it is at, in the old city of David. Makes 100% sense. It seems like Yahweh is revealing so much in this time. I hope everyone gets on board and learns of His will for our lives, and His love for ALL of us. Thank you again, you are reaching people, may you continue to be blessed with the ability to get this truth out there. …. I absolutely love it when people can extricate themselves from the accepted narrative and simply think according to what the facts are saying. Congrats! …. When I was first introduced to this possibility, I was very resistant. As a Christian, I also had accepted that the Dome of the Rock was built upon the place of the Temple of our God in Jerusalem. But after just considering all the information, I reluctantly accepted the truth. It was hard, but all the evidence literally proves it. Thank you for your discussion. …. The fact that they say the Roman’s built the aqueduct is SUCH A GOOD point …. Bob Cornuke wrote a book about the Soloman [sic] temple in the City of David as the site of the temple, Bobs [sic] a former police detective, he used those investigating skills to layout all the evidence to prove that Soloman temple was in the City of David. Where Is The Third Temple? | Bob Cornuke

Christian Zionists a boon to Israel, but sadly mistaken about Final Coming and Third Temple

by Damien F. Mackey Dr Ali Ataie really ought to be a Christian. He has well noted in his video that the Passover ritual that was occurring at the Temple while Jesus, the Lamb of God, was being crucified, facing the Temple, was being enacted in his very flesh. The slaughter of the sacrificial lambs, for instance. The rending of the huge curtain of the Holy of Holies. Christian Zionism Some non-Christians, such as the Muslim scholar Dr Ali Ataie (Christian Zionism: a Major Oxymoron), are emphasising that the Christian Zionists are going against the New Testament by hoping to hasten the end times and the Final Coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, by re-building the (third) Temple in Jerusalem. For, as these non-Christians rightly say, Jesus had claimed of the old Temple that “not one stone here will be left on another” (Mark 13:2), and that He himself was the Temple. In this way, such non-Christians have read the New Testament far more accurately than have the Christian Zionists, who are succeeding only in emptying the Scriptures of their true meaning. Blood and water flows from the Temple Dr Ali Ataie really ought to be a Christian. He has well noted in his video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxTg2qTJlw) that the Passover ritual that was occurring at the Temple while Jesus, the Lamb of God, was being crucified, facing the Temple, was being enacted in his very flesh. The slaughter of the sacrificial lambs, for instance. The rending of the huge curtain of the Holy of Holies. Even the Temple priests sprinkling the floor with blood was imaged when Judas Iscariot (was he a priest?) threw the blood money across the floor in front of the priests. (Dr. Ernest L. Martin, RIP, brilliantly picked up this one). But, most significantly, the blood and water that gushed out from the side of the Temple when the priests opened a side door, at the same time that blood and water was flowing from the pierced side of Jesus on the Cross (Christian Zionism). Dr Ali Ataie, a convinced Muslim, is referring to the biblical accounts here. While he, personally, does not believe that these events actually occurred, he rightly insists that this is what Christians are supposed to believe. Implications of Abrahamic Covenant A completely new age had been ushered in with the return of Jesus Christ, as He said, to bring fiery Justice upon the evil and adulterous generation that had crucified Him (cf. Malachi 3:5: “I will come to you in judgment ....”). The land of Israel was ravaged and burned, its capital city of Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple was totally eradicated, and those thousands of Jews who were not killed were taken away into captivity. That physically severed forever the ancient Abrahamic connection between the Jews and the Holy Land. The far more important spiritual connection with Abraham, based on Faith, a pre-requisite for the possession of the Holy Land, had already been shattered. So much so that Jesus, when the Jews boasted of having Abraham for their father, insisted that the Devil, not Abraham, was the father of the prophet-slaying Jews. ‘You belong to your father the Devil’ (John 8:44). On this same important subject, see also my recent article: Covenant between God and Abram wonderfully foreshadows the immolation of Jesus Christ (6) Covenant between God and Abram wonderfully foreshadows the immolation of Jesus Christ Saint Paul in Galatians makes it quite clear that the connection with Abraham is only through Jesus Christ, the “seed” of Abraham (3:29): “And if you be Christ’s, then are you Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise”. The straw that broke the camel’s back would be the rejection of, and murder of, the Prophet of Prophets himself, Jesus the Christ. It is sad and quite frustrating to see pious Jews now reverencing a massive Gentile wall situated well away from where the Jerusalem Temples had stood, and hopefully expecting the Messiah to arrive in Jerusalem in the not too distant future: Fort Antonia and Wailing Wall (7) Fort Antonia and Wailing Wall Nor is it of any true worth that Zionists - including the Christian version of these - a very powerful and wealthy lobby, have that same goal of re-building the stone Temple (in the wrong place, it must be said), to welcome the Messiah, or Jesus (depending on whether one is Jewish or Christian). “Tabernacled Among Us” "And the Word became flesh and Tabernacled among us". John 1:14 No wonder that Jesus Christ was wont to go all the way back to Moses to explain himself (Luke 24:27). His human existence, moving amongst his people, had been foreshadowed back in the time of Moses, in the Pentateuch, by the moveable Tent of Meeting, or Tabernacle. Jesus, too, was often on the move among the people. As John Dickson has written: https://www.johndickson.org/blog/2018/2/7/jesus-as-the-temple “Jesus handed out forgiveness whenever anyone humbly approached him. He acted like a mobile temple”. Saint John picks this up in his Gospel by likening the Word’s human existence, dwelling on earth, to being Tabernacled (ἐσκήνωσεν). That is the literal meaning of the text, and it is meant to recall the ancient Tent of Meeting which contained the glorious Ark of the Covenant with its mercy seat, the Menorah, and the shew bread.

Literal Interpretation of Saint John’s Revelation

by Damien F. Mackey Whereas Fr. Kramer tumbled out, like far flung dice, the events that the Evangelist described, spinning them right down through the centuries, even to our own time, St. John - as we read in his introductory quote - was clearly talking about an early fulfilment of the events that Jesus Christ had revealed to him. The great soaring Eagle, St. John the Evangelist, introduced the Book of Revelation (1:1) in this fashion: This is the Revelation given by God to Jesus Christ so that He could tell His servants about the things which are now to take place very soon; He sent His angel to make it known to His servant John, and John has written down everything he saw and swears it is the word of God guaranteed by Jesus Christ. Happy the man who reads this prophecy, and happy those who listen to him, if they treasure all that it says, because the Time is close. Now if Plato (whoever he really was) were correct in the observation he made in his Republic that: “The beginning is the most important part of the work”, then this passage of Revelation will be deserving of our closest attention. Introduction In an ideal world one would not need to make any significant future amendments to a book one had once written. But one would also be very foolish - and not a genuine lover of truth - not to do so if, in retrospect, it became apparent that such amendment was needed. Whilst prevention is better than cure, not to cure when circumstances demand it could be obstinate folly. In the 1980’s I wrote an article on The Five First Saturdays (the popular name for the Communion of Reparation asked for by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima on 13 July, 1917) in which article - for the parts pertaining to the Apocalypse - I fairly uncritically followed Fr. Herman B. Kramer’s captivating The Book of Destiny (Tan, 1975). By 1994 this Marian article had become a published book, with no changes at all to my acceptance of Fr. Kramer’s interpretation of the Apocalypse, according to which he had quite ingeniously linked each chapter literally to an important era of Christian history. For instance, Revelation chapters 8 and 9 Fr. Kramer would align with, respectively, the Great Western Schism (C14th-15th AD) and the Protestant Reformation (C16th AD). Perhaps Fr. Kramer’s lynchpin for all this was his identifying of the Eagle, or angel of judgment, of Revelation 8:13, or 14:6, with St. Vincent Ferrer, OP. (ibid., pp. 208-9): By a wonderful co-incidence a great saint appears at this stage [the Western Schism] in the history of the Church. His eminence and influence procured for him the distinction of an eagle flying through mid-heaven. This was the Dominican priest, St. Vincent Ferrer. When in 1398 he lay at death’s door with fever, our Lord, St. Francis and St. Dominic appeared to him, miraculously cured him of his fever and commissioned him to preach penance and prepare men for the coming judgments. Preaching in the open space in San Esteban on October 3, 1408 he solemnly declared that he was the angel of the judgment spoken of by St. John in the Apocalypse. The body of a woman was just being carried to St. Paul’s church nearby for burial. St. Vincent ordered the bearers to bring the corpse before him. He adjured the dead to testify whether his claim was true or not. The dead woman came to life and in the hearing of all bore witness to the truth of the saint’s claim and then slept again in death (Fr. Stanislaus Hogan O.P.). Just as this, St. Vincent Ferrer’s extraordinary miracle, had convinced the Dominican Fathers, his superiors, that he was correct in his claim to be the angel of Apocalypse, so was it all the proof that I needed back in the 1980’s to accept Fr. Kramer’s opinion that Revelation 8 (which includes reference to a warning angel) was fixed to the very time of St. Vincent Ferrer. And so I, quite content with the way Apocalypse had been incorporated into The Five First Saturdays book - now up-dated as: The Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima https://www.academia.edu/3731625/The_Five_First_Saturdays_of_Our_Lady_of_Fatima - moved on to consider other things relevant to that book, for example (in regard to the many similarities found between the Book of Esther and the Fatima events) to locate the precise era of Queen Esther, her uncle Mordecai, and their foe Haman. This was in order to provide a solid historical foundation to the whole Esther saga. Instead of my puzzling overmuch anymore about who, or what, might be the seven-headed Beast of Revelation 13:1, I became preoccupied now with trying to discover who in history was “Haman ... the persecutor of the Jews” (3:10); that most ambitious and cruel character in Esther who, Hitler-like, had singlemindedly set about to exterminate the entire Jewish race, but was thwarted at the eleventh hour by Queen Esther and Mordecai. See now, e.g.: Haman Un-Masked (5) Haman un-masked I know that many today will regard all this as quite ridiculous, a complete waste of time. They will insist that one will never succeed in identifying the historical era for Queen Esther because she never actually existed, never sat on the Persian throne at Susa, was only a character of fiction. But my own research has revealed a different trend, as in the case of the Book of Judith - which contemporary exegetes likewise refer to as “historical fiction”. After years of research into the Book of Judith I am convinced, from a detailed comparison of Judith with the neo-Assyrian records, that the story about this Jewish heroine fits snugly into the era of King Hezekiah of Jerusalem, when King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded his kingdom in c.700 BC. Judith is indeed real history. See e.g. my article: And the Assyrian will fall ‘by the hand of a woman’ https://www.academia.edu/44521678/And_the_Assyrian_will_fall_by_the_hand_of_a_woman Providentially, I was invited in the year of 1999 to write a postgraduate thesis on this very same era, that of King Hezekiah. And I am equally convinced that Esther is true history; though, as with Judith, it has taken some time and intellectual effort to demonstrate this. See, now, my article: Real historical characters in the Book of Esther (5) Real historical characters in the Book of Esther I made real progress with Judith only when I put aside peripheral details to track down the main incident: the defeat of the massive Assyrian army. The Book of Revelation Despite the superficial ingenuity of Fr. Kramer’s interpretation, it does not - on closer scrutiny - match itself appropriately to St. John’s own words. Whereas Fr. Kramer tumbled out, like far flung dice, the events that the Evangelist described, spinning them right down through the centuries, even to our own time, St. John - as we read in his introductory quote above - was clearly talking about an early fulfilment of the events that Jesus Christ had revealed to him. See also my article: Theme of Apocalypse – the Bride and the Reject (5) Theme of Apocalypse – the Bride and the Reject As noted in that article, I am greatly indebted to the insights of Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry on this subject. There is a pronounced dichotomy here between the standard interpretations of Revelation and the actual words of the author. St. John said emphatically that these events were to happen “soon”; that is, soon for St. John’s era and generation of the C1st AD. That St. John meant that soon-ness literally (indeed he repeats it in various ways) is going to become more and more obvious in the course of this article. Thus a literal fulfilment of Revelation 8 in St. Vincent Ferrer’s time, almost a millennium and a half after St. John, as Fr. Kramer had proposed, would not seem to be at all compatible with St. John’s “soon”. This does not at all shake St. Vincent’s testimony. The bull of canonization compares him to an “angel flying through mid-heaven”. The breviary uses similar language. St. Vincent could have been the apocalyptical angel of judgment in the sense that Our Lord said of St. John the Baptist that “... he, if you will believe Me, is the Elijah who was to return” (Matthew 11:14); even though St. John the Baptist had point blank told the priests and Levites who asked him, ‘Are you Elijah?’ ... ‘I am not’ (John 1:21). The Baptist ‘was’ Elijah in the sense that he came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). Though, see my article: Saint Vincent Ferrer channelling Apostle John the Evangelist? (6) Saint Vincent Ferrer channelling Apostle John the Evangelist? Types God has apparently created ‘types’; a classical example being the one that we have just looked at of St. John the Baptist being an Elijah type. According to Pope Pius XI, St. Thomas Aquinas is somewhat reminiscent of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, saviour of Egypt. See my: Joseph of Egypt and St. Thomas Aquinas https://www.academia.edu/24415679/Joseph_of_Egypt_and_St._Thomas_Aquinas That Pope hinted at this in his encyclical, “Studiorum Ducem” (29 June, 1923), when he wrote: Accordingly, just as it was said to the Egyptians of old in time of famine: Go to Joseph, so that they should receive a supply of corn from him to nourish their bodies, so We now say to all such as are desirous of the truth: Go to Thomas, and ask him to give you from his ample store the food of substantial doctrine wherewith to nourish your souls unto eternal life. This passage became the inspiration for me to write an earlier article, “Go To Thomas”, leading me to discover various unexpected but striking parallels between the lives of St. Thomas and Joseph. And the intuitive reader will be able to discern many others types as well of holy men and women down through the ages. Now St. Vincent Ferrer could likewise, as with the Baptist, have come so much “in the spirit and power of” a holy predecessor (angel or human) as to be identifiable with, yet not literally, that predecessor. As we are going to see, St. Vincent certainly shared a common vocation with St. John the Evangelist inasmuch as he foretold a pending judgment that he insisted would occur soon. Moreover, his soon-ness has been just as misunderstood and misinterpreted as has the Evangelist’s. In St. Vincent’s case, the matter of typology is further complicated by the difficulty of deciding whether his type is the Eagle/angel of Revelation 8 or Revelation 14; a difficulty that Fr. Kramer obviously has at least - just as he also seems to stumble over the fact that the Dominican saint was, like the Evangelist, utterly convinced that the judgments he foretold were to be fulfilled very soon (op. cit., p. 209): The above testimony [of the miracle] is accepted by all biographers of St. Vincent as a proof of his claim. But they make his reference to the Apocalypse indicate chapter XIV. 6, for they say he often chose it as his text, ‘Fear God, and give Him honor, for the day of His judgment is at hand’. They do not prove that he pronounced himself that particular angel. And he seems to have had only the general revelation that he was appointed “the angel of the judgment”. By designating him the angel of chapter XIV.6, the commentators run into inexplicable difficulties. For St. Vincent emphatically and repeatedly asserted that the day of Wrath was to come “soon, very soon, within a short time”, cito, bene cito et valde breviter. St. John announced that the judgment was to come very quickly (Apoc. III. II), which meant that it would begin to operate soon. Since St. Vincent uttered these prophecies, five centuries have elapsed, and the end of the world and last judgment have not come. Some try to explain it by saying that the saint meant the particular judgment; but that is meaningless. Others contend that he predicted the approach of the last judgment conditionally, as Jonas predicted the destruction of Nineveh .... But these are all conjectures of biographers. St. Vincent did not aver that he was the angel of chapter XIV. or that the General Judgment was very near. Fr. Kramer, after writing at some length in this rather tortuous vein, goes on to wonder whether St. Vincent might not have been entirely correct about his own apocalyptical identification, because he certainly estimated wrongly in another major matter (ibid., p. 211): Now that St. Vincent himself might have been mistaken about the place assigned to him in the apocalyptic prophecies need not appear strange. He adhered to the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, and sincerely believed him to be the legitimate pontiff. This was a matter in which his human judgment gave the decision. And this judgment can easily err. So also, since it was not explicitly revealed to him what angel of the Apocalypse he was, he may have drawn the mistaken conclusion that it was the one of chapter XIV. 6. However, it has not been proven that he claimed to be that angel or even thought he was. This latter angel has the commission to preach to EVERY “nation and tribe, and tongue, and people”. St. Vincent, even though his fame spread over it all, so that he was like “one flying through mid-heaven”, personally reached only a small part of Christendom. Fr. Kramer’s entanglements here only reinforce me in my decision to consider St. Vincent as, at best, an apocalyptical type only. Confusion is exacerbated by failure to recognise that the judgment about which St. John was referring was intended for that generation (c. 30-70 AD), culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD), and that it equates with the “coming” that Our Lord and the Apostles frequently referred to in regard to the generation that had crucified Him: a “coming” in judgment. Not to recognise this is to make a mockery of Our Lord’s clear words and of other New Testament prophecies. It also takes away the concreteness intended by Our Lord. When, prior to his Passion, He had placed before Him by “some people” the examples of (i) those slain by Pilate’s Roman troops, and (ii) others killed by a falling tower, He had insisted: ‘Unless you do penance you will all perish as they did [that is, by a violent death]’ (Luke 13:1-5). Whilst this statement is also open to spiritual interpretation, it should immediately be understood in the concrete sense, that this is exactly what was going to happen physically to that generation of Jews if they did not have a change of heart within the allotted period of mercy. At the end of the 40 years of probation thousands upon thousands of Jews did die violent deaths at the hands of the Roman troops, with towers likewise falling upon them, as well as missiles, stones and fire. The same sort of warnings applied apparently to St. Vincent Ferrer’s generation. And they apply also to ours. The Vatican II era has been an era of Divine mercy extended to a wicked generation; but it also portends an Advent, or Coming of Christ. Will the early Third Millennium witness the emergence of a new apocalyptical ‘angel’ to proclaim ‘cito, bene cito et valde breviter’? The increasingly intensive force of the disasters that daily assail our planet, as we read about or sometimes even experience, seems to presage a final terrible culmination. One has only to tune in to a news report on any given day to hear a litany of fresh disasters and tragedies. Nerves of steel are needed nowadays, seemingly, to watch or listen to the news; a situation that was humorously summed up some years ago in Skyhooks’ song about the “Horror movie” that is “the 6.30 news: The planes are a-crashing, The cars are a-smashing, The cops are a-bashing, Oh, yeah .... The kids are a-fighting, The fires are a-lighting, The dogs are a-biting, Oh, yeah”. Jesus Christ came to bring us ‘Good News’. But, because the world has largely rejected His Gospel, it now finds itself having to exist on a daily diet of Bad News. Apocalypse Now, or Then? Biblical commentators can have a tendency to take ancient incidents and predictions and to re-invent them, even in their most literal sense, as, now, C21st AD situations. The question is, should their “Apocalypse Now” really be seen as “Apocalypse Then”? Lack of Urgency Fr. Kramer’s whole argument for a late fulfilment of Revelation amounts to a (no doubt unwitting) denial of the urgency, and the concreteness, of Our Lord’s predictions, and those of His disciples. A re-assessment of Fr. Kramer’s commentary is needed in light of St. John’s own words, and this will be the task undertaken here. The conclusions that will be reached in this article are now given, with comments to them following immediately: • St. John wrote Revelation, not in 95 AD - as most commentators (Catholic and non Catholic alike) insist - but prior to the destruction of the City of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus in 70 AD; • St. John likely wrote Revelation (that we now have in Greek) in a Semitic language - either Hebrew or its sister language, Aramaïc; this being a further argument in favour of early composition; • The events described in Revelation were all literally fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (though they have a spiritual significance for all times, including our own). 1. Date of Writing 70 AD or 95 AD Commentators base their conclusion of late date of authorship on the crucial testimony of St. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, who claimed to have known Polycarp, disciple of St. John. The evidence from Irenæus that is deemed so compelling is found in Book 5 of his Against Heresies (at 5:30:3), at the end of a section in which Irenæus is dealing with the identification of “666” in Revelation 13:18 (emphasis added): We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist; for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in the present time, it would have been announced by him who had beheld the apocalyptic vision [i.e. St. John the Evangelist]. For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign. If the conventional date of c. 95 AD for “the end of Domitian’s reign” is correct then it - in conjunction with Irenæus’ testimony - would put paid in one blow to my entire thesis [not however my original idea] that Revelation pre-dates the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. In answering this - which answer will necessitate my providing at least an outline for a proposed revision of Roman imperial history - I shall endeavour to show why I think Emperor Domitian is to be dated significantly earlier than 95 AD; a conclusion that would in no way contravene anything that St. Irenæus wrote - for Irenæus never said that the Apocalypse was conceived in 95 AD (a quarter of a century after the destruction of Jerusalem), but merely “towards the end of Domitian’s reign”. Contemporary chronologists are the ones who have fixed Domitian to that approximate date. Firstly I list for the reader the early Roman emperors (with their conventional dates) up to the destruction of Jerusalem. Some commence their list with Julius Cæsar (49-44 BC): 1. Augustus (31 BC-AD 14) 2. Tiberius (AD 14-37) 3. Gaius, also known as Caligula (AD 37-41) 4. Claudius (AD 41-54) 5. Nero (AD 54-68) 6. Galba (AD 68-69) 7. Otho (AD 69) 8. Vitellius (AD 69) 9. Vespasian (AD 69-79) Conventionally, Domitian would be listed a bit further on, c. 95 AD. But I am now going to propose that Domitian might be the same person as Nero. Chronological ‘Folding’ [Some of what follows is from old articles]. I strongly suspect that there has occurred, in the construction of Roman imperial history, the same sort of duplication that revisionists have observed in early Egyptian history. Chronologists, scientists, anthropologists, seem to have a pathological tendency to want to stretch things out. Procrustes in action with his rack. The so-called Stone Ages they stretch out over several million years, in single file, though there is abundant evidence for overlap. Astronomers keep wanting to expand the size of the universe, galaxy upon galaxy, based on the Doppler Effect (or should that be the Doppelgänger Effect?); and to expand the age of the universe by billions of year (give or take a zero). The same extending has been done to ancient history. In my MA thesis, The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar, deemed in some circles of academia to be “irrefutable”, I argued that Egyptian chronology has been artificially stretched on the rack to the tune of 500 years or more. It needs a benign Procrustes to shrink it back to its original size. Dr. D. Courville, in The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications (1971), rightly concluded that Egypt’s Old and Middle kingdoms - conventionally separated the one from the other (at their beginnings) by 700 years - were in actual fact contemporaneous, and not successive. Chronological reality is often like that; more of a ‘pond-ripple effect’, spreading outwards, than an ‘Indian file’ successive extension. In my “Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses” and “Re-discovering the Egyptianized Moses”, written for The Glozel Newsletter, I built upon Courville’s important re-alignment. What conventional history has cleft in two, artificially separating the parts by 500-700 years, needs to be rejoined together. Pharaoh Khufu (4th dynasty) was, so I reckon, the same as Pharaoh Teti (6th dynasty: That the same sort of folding as with Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms needs to be applied to Roman imperial history - though thankfully not a fold of 700 years, but more like 60 years - will become evident from various testimonies. “Strange Afterglows” One frequently encounters in Egyptology queries over whether some artefact, piece of literature, or even a destructive action, ought to be dated to the Old or Middle Kingdom. This very querying is often a tell-tale sign that folding is required (so that chronologists will no longer be forced into a dispute over a range of estimates incorporating many centuries). Now the same tendency of querying I am finding in historical discussions of Nero and Domitian. Historians puzzle over whether such and such a persecution, or event, occurred during the reign of the one or the other Roman emperor. A tell-tale sign? It can be (though one can also end up with egg on one’s face when the situation is misread). Some commentators, who cannot make up their mind whether St. John the Evangelist was exiled to the island of Patmos during the reign of Nero, or of Domitian, end up by compromising and suggesting that he may have experienced two exiles. One of the first things I decided to do, to test if there might be any possibility of folding with Nero and Domitian was to look at Nero’s other names. Like we, the ancients often had a set of names; and this can be the cause of much confusion and duplication. So is there the chance that Nero was also called Domitian? Even with this new theory in mind, I read over Nero’s four names, without a pause, once I had found them in K. Gentry’s The Beast of Revelation (p. 14). Perhaps I was distracted by Nero’s nickname, Ahenobarbus; a description of his red facial hair. I was only stopped in my tracks a bit further along when I read that a name of Nero’s father was Domitius. I quickly scanned back to Nero’s set of names and saw that, yes, Nero certainly had as one of his names, Domitius, the Roman version of Domitian. He was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero Cæsar). This similarity of names in itself is of course no certain proof of identity between Nero and Domitian. (Perhaps a different alter ego may be required). But it, coupled with evidences for an early Apocalypse, and the queries of historians, begins to shape up to some sort of a real picture. Moreover, the current chronology for the life of St. John the Evangelist would have him ending up as an unrealistically sprightly nonagenarian. St. Irenæus wrote (op. cit.) that St. John “continued with the Elders till the times of [the emperor] Trajan”, who came even after Domitian. According to the reckonings of conventional Roman chronology, St. John would have been in his nineties by the time of his dwelling at Ephesus after his return from exile. Yet the activity that he is then said to have undertaken is that of a younger person. Eusebius wholeheartedly endorsed Clement of Alexandria’s account that John not only travelled about the region of Ephesus appointing bishops and reconciling whole churches, but also that while on horseback he chased with all of his might a young man. Unlikely energy (though, admittedly, not impossible) for a person in his nineties. Here are some further examples of the queries historians make between Nero and Domitian: • Despite the strong conviction by some that the emperor worship that they detect in Revelation can be found no earlier than Domitian, others insist that Nero practised it. Nero was particularly infatuated with Apollo, and even claimed the title, “Son of Apollos”. Seneca, one of young Nero’s tutors, convinced Nero that he was destined to become the very revelation of Augustus and Apollo. • Despite unanimity amongst early Fathers that St. John was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian, shortly after his being dipped in a cauldron of burning oil, St. Jerome said that this dipping occurred in Nero’s reign (Against Jovinianum 11:26). That total picture would be appropriate if Nero were Domitian. That there is something quite wrong with the conventional chronology, and its application to the Apocalypse, is attested by the evidences in the latter that the Temple of Jerusalem was still standing when St. John wrote his book. But that is not all. The conventional chronology of imperial Rome has also served to throw out of kilter the early history of the Roman Catholic Church that has been chronologically tied to it. Let us take the case of Pope St. Clement I of Rome. Clement, like St. John, is supposed to have written around 90-95 AD, yet he likewise spoke as if the Jerusalem Temple were still standing. Clement’s relevant statement is as follows (I Clement 41): Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices offered, or the freewill offerings, or the sin offerings and the trespass offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the altar; and this too through the high-priest and the aforesaid ministers, after that the victim to be offered hath been inspected for blemishes. This statement clearly pre-dates 70 AD. Clement as a writer, therefore, needs to be retro-dated by at least 20 years. That similar anomalies occur with the current chronology of Pope Pius I is shown in some detail by Gentry in Before Jerusalem Fell (pp. 93ff). Added to all this is another strange afterglow about 60 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, with the Emperor Hadrian (conventionally dated to c. 130 AD), putting down a so-called ‘Second’ Jewish Revolt in the Holy Land, and supposedly removing all the stones of the Temple. This, rather than Titus’ destruction of the city, is considered by some to be the more perfect fulfilment of Jesus Christ’s prophecy that ‘... not a single stone here will be left on another; everything will be destroyed’ (Matthew 24:2). But I ask how could the Jews have rallied so mightily, re-populated the area to such an extent, so soon after 70 AD, when their city had been absolutely burned to the ground, and whatever citizens survived were sold into slavery? Might not the Emperor Hadrian himself be a duplicate of an earlier emperor? Here are some articles over which to ponder: Horrible Histories. Retracting Romans (10) Horrible Histories. Retracting Romans Hadrian a reincarnation of Augustus (9) Hadrian a reincarnation of Augustus Rome surprisingly minimal in Bible (10) Rome surprisingly minimal in Bible Was the so-called Domus Aurea of Nero actually a Flavian enterprise? (9) Was the so-called Domus Aurea of Nero actually a Flavian enterprise? Language of the Apocalypse. Are the text books correct about the date of authorship of the Book of Revelation and the original language in which it was written? Greek or Semitic? The text books, in perfect accord with a conventional view of chronology, inform us that St. John wrote the Book of Revelation in tradesmanlike Greek. No mean achievement for one of Jewish ethnicity! Biblical commentators have arrived at the same conclusion about certain other books in the New Testament. But Fr. Jean Carmignac has, in his book The Birth of the Synoptics, shown that the Synoptic Gospels were originally written in Hebrew, or Aramaïc. This leads him to date much of the New Testament significantly earlier than do his colleagues. I fully concur with Fr. Carmignac’s line of research. Now a fortiori in the case of Revelation do the same conclusions as Fr. Carmignac’s need to be drawn: namely, the recognition of a Semitic original, leading to an earlier dating of the book. For even those (by far the majority) who think that St. John wrote his book in Greek are forced to admit - what has long been recognised - that Revelation is one of the more “Jewish” books of the New Testament. “More than any other book in the New Testament, the Apocalypse of John shows a Jewish cast”, wrote G. Kruger in History of Early Christian Literature in the First Three Centuries (p. 35). “Indeed, one of the arguments that historically has been granted the most weight for its early date (as per Westcott and Hort) is that [Revelation’s] language is so intensely Hebraïc in comparison to the Gospel’s smoother Greek”, wrote Kenneth Gentry (Before Jerusalem Fell, p. 209). Torrey and others have gone so far as to suggest an Aramaïc original because of this (ibid.). And, Dr. Gentry again (pp. 239-10): In Charles’s introduction to Revelation, he included a major section entitled “A Short Grammar of the Apocalypse”. Section 10 of this “Grammar” is entitled “the Hebraic Style of the Apocalypse”. There Charles well notes that “while [John] writes in Greek, he thinks in Hebrew”. As Sweet puts it: “The probability is that the writer, thinking in Hebrew or Aramaic, consciously or unconsciously carried over semitic idioms into his Greek, and that his ‘howlers’ are deliberate attempts to reproduce the grammar of classical Hebrew at certain points”. Actually it should likely be viewed the other way around: a translator would have converted St. John’s original semitic version of Apocalypse into Greek. I return to Dr. Gentry: What is more, other names in Revelation are, as a matter of fact, very Hebraic. For instance, the words “Abaddon” (Rev. 9:11) and “Armageddon” (Rev. 16:16) are carefully given [sic] Greek equivalents; “Satan” is said to be “the devil” (Rev. 12:9). Scholars are usually at pains to understand the name of St. John’s 666 “man” (Revelation 13:18) in terms of Greek letters and numbers; a system known as gematria. But, in light of the growing evidence that St. John originally wrote the book in a semitic language, we may also need to take a new approach towards solving this age-old mystery. Literal Sense of Scripture Are the text books correct about the date of authorship of the Book of Revelation and the original language in which it was written? Levels of Scriptural Meaning Literal and Spiritual To kick off this section I had better distinguish immediately for the reader between the literal and spiritual levels of Scripture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, recalling ancient tradition, nicely sums it all up: The senses of Scripture 115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of the Scripture in the Church. 116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal”. [St. Thomas, Sth I, 1, 10, ad 1]. 117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realties and events about which it speaks can be signs. 1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism. [Cf. I Cor. 10:2]. 2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”. [I Cor. 10:11; cf. Heb. 3-4:11]. 3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. [ Cf. Rev. 21:1-22:5]. 118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses: The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny. [Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia]. 119 “It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgment. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the word of God” [Dei Verbum 12§3]. University professor Mons. George A. Kelly distinguishes more briefly between the literal and spiritual sense [which he calls the “fuller sense”] in The New Biblical Theorists. Raymond E. Brown and Beyond (1983), 13 (highlight emphasis only added): The search for the literal sense, the meaning intended by the human author and therefore what God inspired, is considered to be the first obligation of anyone who would read or study scripture seriously. It is also commonly held that only one literal sense to a text is possible, although the words may seem at times to convey double meanings or subordinate meanings. .... St. Thomas Aquinas is usually cited as a leading Church doctor who knew the importance of discovering the literal sense. Modern scholars insist on this as their first priority. The aspect of Fr. Kramer’s commentary that I had especially found most compelling, initially, was that he did not by-pass the historico-literal level of interpretation. He did not go straight for the spiritual and symbolical level, as some do (even giving a spiritual sense and then calling it literal), but tried to nail the various parts of the Apocalypse to specific historical events. Mons. Kelly now explains the next, and higher, level: The quest for the fuller sense to biblical texts is as old as scripture itself. It is based on the conviction that God intended his Word to be meaningful far beyond the time and place of its original composition. Biblical exegetes from the early Church Fathers onwards have sought these meanings. New Testament authors used Old Testament texts this way, explaining Christ’s birth and passion, for example, through quotations from Isaiah and the Psalms. New Testament exegesis in Matthew and Paul also read Christ’s presence back into Old Testament scenes. Church Fathers made a specialty of searching for proof texts referring to Christ, and of extrapolating the fuller spiritual or allegorical meaning. The first great Christian school of exegesis in Alexandria was allegorically inclined; by contrast, the Antioch school stressed the literal meaning. That there is real unity between these two approaches, literal and spiritual, is apparent from Pope John Paul II’s address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and Pontifical Biblical Institute (23rd April, 1993), in which he reflects upon the biblical encyclicals of two predecessor Popes - Leo XIII’s “Providentissimus Deus” (18 Nov., 1893) and Pius XII’s “Divino afflante Spiritu” (50 years later). In this address Pope John Paul shows that the Popes are not afraid of the discoveries of science, but are only too willing to incorporate any genuine scientific developments (§5, highlight emphasis added): ... it became necessary [for Leo XIII] to respond to attacks coming from the supporters of the so-called “mystical” exegesis (EB, n.552), who sought to have the Magisterium condemn the efforts of scientific exegesis. How did the Encyclical respond? It could have limited itself to stressing the usefulness and even the necessity of these efforts for defending the faith, which would have favoured a kind of dichotomy between scientific exegesis, intended for external use, and spiritual interpretation, reserved for internal use. But Pope Pius XII did not opt for so restrictive a view: In Divino afflante Spiritu, Pius XII deliberately avoided this approach. On the contrary, he vindicated the close unity of the two approaches, on the one hand emphasizing the “theological” significance of the literal sense, methodically defined (EB, n. 551), and on the other, asserting that, to be recognized as the sense of a biblical text, the spiritual sense must offer proof of its authenticity. A merely subjective inspiration is insufficient. One must be able to show that it is a sense “willed by God himself”, a spiritual meaning “given by God” to the inspired text (EB, nn. 552-553). Determining the spiritual sense then, belongs itself to the realm of exegetical science. Thus we note that, despite the great difference in the difficulties [the two Popes] had to face, the two Encyclicals are in complete agreement at the deepest level. Both of them reject a split between the human and the divine, between the scientific research and respect for the faith, between the literal sense and the spiritual sense. They thus appear to be in perfect harmony with the mystery of the Incarnation. In this article, I am basically interested in the historico-literal, or scientific level of interpreting Revelation, in order - hopefully - to establish a sound historical basis for Revelation. The inspiration of St. Thomas Aquinas (cf. §116 above) had previously helped me with the difficult work of anchoring the literal. It was with his written encouragement that I had worked on the historicity of the Book of Job; for St. Thomas had insisted - against strong criticism of his day - that the holy man, Job, was a real person. When I read this it gave great impetus to the work I was already engaged in, leading to my conclusion, ultimately, that Job was the same as Tobit’s son, Tobias (in his old age); an C8-7th BC character. This long article was eventually published in its entirety, as “Job’s Life and Times”, in the international journal Mentalities/Mentalités. It has since been up-dated in various articles, including one under that same title: Job’s Life and Times (11) Job’s Life and Times This enabled me, as I hope, to have removed a great deal of mystery from the Book of Job, making it possible for a down-to-earth substratum to be laid upon which to interpret the rather enigmatic Dialogue section of the book. It gave the book ‘a body’, so to speak. And that is precisely what I think needs to be done, too, in the case of Revelation. And, indeed. able scholars have already made important progress in this regard. In one aspect the Book of Revelation is far less of a challenge than was the Book of Job inasmuch as proposed dates for the authorship and life of Job had ranged over a 1200 year period of uncertainty (from c.1400-150 BC); whereas the terminal dates for the Apocalypse are closer to, say, 50 years (c. 50-100 AD). Seeking out the historico-literal sense, apart from being the first task of the exegete, can bring its own rewards. It was in fact whilst I was in the process of trying to establish the historicity of another part of the Old Testament - the era of King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam (c. 920 BC), when a Pharaoh sacked the Temple - that the notion first came to me that the Evangelist John was writing Revelation during a time before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, whilst the Judaïc system of things (the Temple, the Golden altar, the sabbath restrictions in the land) was still in place. Because all that Jewish legalism went right out the window with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. I refer to the following quote by Dr. Eva Danelius in her article, “Did Thutmose III Despoil the Temple in Jerusalem?” SIS Review (p. 70), which quote really made me sit up and begin to re-assess Fr. Kramer: For the attentive reader it is obvious that parts of John’s visions - the 24 elders, the importance of clean white garments, the punishment of those who neglect their duty as watchmen - reflect details of the duties of priests and Levites on watch in the Beth Moked, the northernmost building of the Temple compound, where the keys to the Temple mound were guarded under measures of the strictest security. It eventually became apparent to me that the whole book of Revelation reflected a pre-70 AD atmosphere, and that St. John was preparing his own generation for what was soon about to befall it, just as Our Lord had warned that same generation a few decades earlier. After my experiences with conventional Egyptian history, over a long period of time, I was not going to allow myself to be restricted any more by conventional dating. So, when I read that something was supposed to have happened in 95 AD (namely the writing of the Apocalypse), I had to ask myself: On what basis? Whilst I willingly accept Irenæus’ impressive testimony that Apocalypse was written late in the reign of Domitian, I do not so willingly accept the conventional assessment that Domitian reigned in 95 AD. Unless that can be proved beyond doubt. For me, now, the literal sense of the Apocalypse is that it reflects real historical events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The emphasis here on the literal sense should not be seen as an attempt to exalt that sense over the spiritual. The whole point is, as with Job, to establish a substratum in order to make the higher senses more intelligible. (A bit like the way the philosophia perennis is meant to be used as a sound underpinning for theological studies). The Popes too, taking things much further than had St. Thomas Aquinas, have been most encouraging for the historical and archæological approach. I recall that one of the Popes (Pius XII) referred to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb as “a resurrection”. The Popes, as I said, are not frightened of genuine scientific discoveries, but greatly urge their use. As far back as the days of Leo XIII, the Popes have been insisting that biblical scholars learn the ancient languages of the east in order the better to be able to understand the minds of the sacred writers. Now that papal advice, I believe, is going to prove crucial to a right understanding of the literal meaning of Revelation. Pope Saint John Paul II has noted that even by the time of Pius XII, the fruits of his predecessor Leo XIII’s biblical guidelines were already quite manifest: Fifty years later, in Divino afflante Spiritu Pope Pius XII could note the fruitfulness of the directives given by Providentissimus Deus; “Due to a better knowledge of the biblical languages and of everything regarding the east, ... a good number of the questions raised at the time of Leo XIII against the authenticity, antiquity, integrity and historical value of the sacred Books ... have now been sorted out and resolved” (EB, n,. 546). The work of Catholic exegetes “who correctly use the intellectual weapons employed by their adversaries” (n. 562) has borne its fruit. ... The archæological discoveries of the past 150 years have been a tremendous boon for biblical studies insofar as they have enabled us the better to understand the past and the scribal methods and idioms once employed. These discoveries, hidden from some of the great biblical scholars of bygone days - because these lived in times when many major ancient cities lay still buried in their shroud cloths of sand - have given an unfair advantage to we who live in the scientific age. We should be, and seemingly are, more conscious of the historical sense; and that is why this sense has come to the fore in more recent times. There is an interesting example in a writing of St. John of the Cross, in his classic, Dark Night of the Soul, of the use of the “mystical” sense (of which Pope John Paul II speaks) to eclipse, as it were, the literal meaning intended by the original author - in this case Moses. St. John of the Cross is of course the great Doctor of Mystical Theology in the Church. In his discussion of infused contemplation and its effects, the abstraction which it causes in its human subject, he writes of those who are under its influence as having difficulty speaking. No doubt this great Saint was talking from personal experience. In fact it is said of him that he was often so abstract in mind that, when in conversation with another, he had to hit his hand against a table periodically in order to maintain his concentration. Now St. John of the Cross always applied a mystical interpretation even to the Old Testament texts of Moses and David. No doubt this is quite legitimate inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has written the Scriptures for mystics as well as for historians, and the Scriptures are ever open to be interpreted on the mystical level. But St. John of the Cross, perhaps less sensitive to the literal level than would be a modern commentator, sometimes - at least as I estimate it - deprived the text of its natural meaning. Thus, when Moses complained to God that he could not approach Pharaoh, because he was naturally taciturn, St. John of the Cross immediately took this to mean that Moses was under the influence of infused contemplation, and that his speech had therefore been taken away from him (Bk. II): For the speech of God possesses this property: that when it is most secret, infused and spiritual, as to transcend all sense, it instantly suspends and silences the whole harmony and ability of the exterior and interior senses. Whereof we have instances and examples in the Divine Scriptures .... And this dullness of the interior, that is, of the inner sense of the imagination conjointly with the exterior sense in respect of this, Moses also made proof of in the presence of God in the burning bush, when he not only said to God, that after he had spoken with him, he knew not how, nor was able, to speak .... But, if we read the text closely, we learn that Moses said before God that he had been dull of speech all his life: ‘But, my Lord, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence, either before or since You have spoken to Your servant. I am a slow speaker and not able to speak well’ (Exodus 4:10). It is hardly likely that he was for all his 80 years under the influence of infused contemplation. Moreover God, far from praising Moses for his reticence (He at least would have looked favourably upon Moses if he had been dull of speech in the sense meant by St. John of the Cross), became angry with him (vv.11-14). St. John of the Cross had earlier written, with St. Mary Magdalene at Christ’s tomb in mind, that it is typical of ardent love to think “... all things possible, and that everyone is seeking what it seeks itself”. Perhaps the great Doctor of Mysticism carried that very principle into his purely mystical interpretation of Moses and misread the latter’s more basic meaning comment. But I stand to be corrected on this. By all means ought spiritually minded scholars look for the mystical meaning of the entire Scriptures as intended by the Holy Spirit. But now too, in this Third Millennium era, with the Popes also urging the importance of the historico-critical method, all exegetes might strive to be more conscious of the need firstly to lay down the substratum. I have gone into some detail about this because - despite the Magisterium’s emphasis on the importance of the historico-critical method - I know that my approach of emphasising the literal will bring criticism; as it already has. Whilst I welcome legitimate criticism, some of it, I believe, has been misinformed and Fundamentalistic in nature. I feel greatly encouraged again, this time by Pope John Paul II, in that he, in his address referred to above, was both highly critical of the Fundamentalist approach and supportive of an historical exegesis as long as it is according to the analogy of Faith. Some commentators, striving for orthodoxy, are too inclined to label liberal scholars as “modern exegetes”. That would tend to indicate that, to be orthodox, one has to be non-modern, fixed in the past - that there is no development. But Pope John Paul II made it clear on a number of occasions that the static state is not genuine Catholicism. Pope John Paul II was modern, but he always adhered to the analogy of the Faith. Maybe we should rather be distinguishing between modern and modernistic, which latter doctrine completely ignores the analogy of the Faith. Pope John Paul II’s address, in which he was at pains to point out the significance of the Incarnation for biblical studies, is likely to become so important in the future that we need to linger with it for a while (§ 4. emphasis added): In both cases [the two predecessor encyclicals] the reaction of the Magisterium was significant, for instead of giving a purely defensive response, it went to the heart of the problem and thus showed (let us note this at once) the Church’s faith in the mystery of the incarnation. Against the offensive of liberal exegesis, which presented its allegations as conclusions based on the achievements of science, one could have reacted by anathematizing the use of science in biblical interpretation and ordering Catholic exegetes to hold to a “spiritual” explanation of the texts. Providentissimus Deus did not take this route. On the contrary, the Encyclical earnestly invites Catholic exegetes to acquire genuine scientific expertise so that they may surpass their adversaries in their own field. “The first means of defence”, it said, “is found in studying the ancient languages of the east as well as the practice of scientific criticism” (EB, n. 118). The Church is not afraid of scientific criticism. She distrusts only preconceived opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality surreptitiously cause science to depart from its domain. Pope John Paul II will now further develop this important concept in a new section: The harmony between Catholic exegesis and the mystery of the Incarnation 6. The strict relationship uniting the inspired biblical texts with the mystery of the incarnation was expressed by the Encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu in the following terms: “Just as the substantial Word of God became like men in every respect except sin, so too the words of God, expressed in human languages, became like human language in every respect except error” (EB, n. 559). Repeated almost literally by the conciliar Constitution Dei Verbum (n. 13), this statement sheds light on a parallelism rich in meaning. It is true that putting God’s words into writing, through the charism of scriptural inspiration, was the first step toward the incarnation of the Word of God. The written words, in fact, were an abiding means of communication and communion between the chosen people and their one Lord. On the other hand, it is because of the prophetic aspect of these words that it was possible to recognize the fulfilment of God’s plan when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14). After the heavenly glorification of the humanity of the Word made flesh, it is again due to written words that his stay among us is attested to in an abiding way. Joined to the inspired writings of the first covenant, the inspired writings of the new covenant are a verifiable means of communication and communion between the believing people and God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This means certainly can never be separated from the stream of spiritual life that flows from the Heart of Jesus crucified and which spreads through the Church’s sacrament. It has nevertheless its own consistency precisely as a written text which verifies it. 7. Consequently, the two Encyclicals require that Catholic exegetes remain in full harmony with the mystery of the incarnation, a mystery of the union of the divine and the human in a determinate historical life. The earthly life of Jesus is not defined only by the places and dates at the beginning of the first century in Judea and Galilee, but also by his deep roots in the long history of a small nation of the ancient Near East, with its weaknesses and its greatness, with its men of God and its sinners, with its slow cultural evolution and its political misadventures, with its defeats and its victories, with its longing for peace and the kingdom of God. The Church of Christ takes the realism of the incarnation seriously, and this is why she attaches great importance to the “historico-critical” study of the Bible. Far from condemning it, as those who support “mystical” exegesis would want, my Predecessors vigorously approved. “Artis criticæ disciplinam”, Leo XIII wrote, “quippe percipiendæ penitus hagiographiorum sententiæ perutilem, Nobis vehementer probantibus, nostri (exegetæ, scilicet, catholic) ecolant” (Apostolic Letter Viglilantiæ, establishing the Biblical commission, 30 October 1902: EB, n. 142). The same “vehemence” in the approval and the same adverb (“vehementer”) are found in Divino afflante Spiritu regarding research in textual criticism (cf EB, n. 548). In the next very important section Pope John Paul II described the false view of God and the Incarnation that some hold (the sort of view that Aristotle had of God as a distant Creator, and one that the Fundamentalists presently hold): 8. Divino afflante Spiritu, we know, particularly recommended that exegetes study the literary genres used in the Sacred Books, going so far as to say that Catholic exegesis must “be convinced that this part of its task cannot be neglected without serious harm to Catholic exegesis” (EB, n. 560). This recommendation starts from the concern to understand the meaning of the texts with all the accuracy and precision possible, and, thus, in their historical, cultural context. A false idea of God and the incarnation presses a certain number of Christians to take the opposite approach. They tend to believe that, since God is the absolute Being, each of his words has an absolute value, independent of all the conditions of human language. Thus, according to them, there is no room for studying these conditions in order to make distinctions that would relativize the significance of the words. However, that is where the illusion occurs and the mysteries of scriptural inspiration and the incarnation are really rejected, by clinging to a false notion of the Absolute. The God of the Bible is not an Absolute Being who, crushing everything he touches, would suppress all differences and all nuances. On the contrary, he is God the Creator, who created the atonishing variety of beings “each according to its kind”, as the Genesis account says repeatedly (Gn 1). far from destroying differences, God respects them and makes use of them (cf I Cor 12:18, 24, 28). Pope John Paul II was extremely broad-minded in all this: Although [God] expresses himself in human language, he does not give each expression a uniform value, but uses its possible nuances with extreme flexibility and likewise accepts its limitations. That is what makes the task of the exegetes so complex, so necessary and so fascinating! None of the human aspects of language can be neglected. The recent progress in linguistic, literary and hermeneutical research have led biblical exegesis to add many other points of view (rhetorical, narrative, structuralist) to the study of literary genres; other human sciences, such as psychology and sociology, have likewise been employed. To all this one can apply the charge which Leo XIII gave the members of the Biblical commission: “Let them consider nothing that the diligent research of modern scholars will have newly found as foreign to their realm; quite the contrary, let them be alert to adopt without delay anything useful that each period brings to biblical exegesis” (Viglilantiæ: EB, n. 140). Studying the human circumstances of the word of God should be pursued with ever renewed interest. 10. Nevertheless, this study is not enough. In order to respect the coherence of the Church’s faith and of scriptural inspiration, Catholic exegesis must be careful not to limit itself to the human aspects of the biblical texts. First and foremost, it must help the Christian people more clearly perceive the word of God in these texts so that they can better accept them in order to live in full communion with God. To this end it is obviously necessary that the exegete himself perceive the divine word in the texts. He can do this only if his intellectual work is sustained by a vigorous spiritual life.