The Biblical Geology: The Hosts of YHWH

Thomas Jay Oord said: “The Bible tells us how to find abundant life, not the details of how life became abundant.” I disagree.
Belittling the Creative Power of YHWH
Rome was determined to exclude the Jews from the land of Judah, which by now was desolate of its sons. Even in the Galil the gentiles had become very numerous. The old order, wherein Israel had been a people on its own land, was rapidly vanishing. In a few generations the entire Jewish community in the land of Israel would be destroyed, and the center of the Torah would shift to the far-off Bavel.
The Minim were intensifying their efforts to harass the Jews spiritually and physically, and they were busy inciting Rome against them. In Hullin 87A we read the following report: “A min said to Rabbi: He who formed mountains is not the one who created the wind, for it is written 'Behold He forms mountains and He creates the wind' – Amos 4:13. (According to the Gospel of John it was Logos and not YHWH who created the heaven and the earth). Rabbi replied: Foolish one, go to the end of the verse, which states: 'The L-rd of Hosts is His name'”.
That this was a matter of great gravity is evident from the fact that when the Min promised to reply after three days, Rabbi fasted during the ensuing three days until the report came that the Min had taken his life because he found no reply.
G-d blessed the seventh day, and He declared it to be holy, for it was on this day that he ceased from all the work which G-d created to make. (Bereshis 2:3) In other words, as rabbi Leo Baeck observed, G-d created the world in order to continue the work of creation. Let us see how G-d continues to create the earth. Because G-d id not stop to create after six days of creation. G-'s day of rest suggests His continued activity. The Guardian of Israel won't slumber.
The Biblical Secretaries of G-d assigned meteorites to the vast category called “Hosts of the YHWH.” Indeed, if we take into consideration frequency of the meteorite falls, we can compare this phenomenon to rain or dew; that's why the scientific literature speaks about “meteorite showers.” Meteors occur in the earth's atmosphere every day. These and invisible meteorites are estimated to add more than 1,000 short tons (910 metric tons) daily to the earth's weight. But who counted them? Did anybody count bacteria or viruses? Yeast is always there when we need it.
Approximately, 15 billion tons of continental material reaches the outlets of rivers and streams annually. Most of the detritus is trapped near the outlets and on continental shelves and only a few billion tons actually escapes into the deep sea. Together with the biological material in the sea it contributes about 3 billion tons of sediments in the ocean floor each year. Obviously, the Host of YHWH have to balance the yearly disappearance of the continental material into sea depths. And, in fact, they do.
Careful excavation revealed the remains of twenty-three earlier temples lying beneath the ziggurath of Eridu in successively deeper occupation levels, the earliest being a simple chapel built upon an ancient sand dune and dating back to at least 5000 BC. Eighteen levels were revealed from the so-called Ubaid period, which preceded the appearance of writing.”
The ancient people knew of the precious metal’s celestial origin for in many languages the name for it contains a reference to the sky (Gr. Meteoron, things in the air, lifted up, in air). Coming from gods, as it was believed, they were venerated in temples. One of the best known instances is that of the Ephesians; they were worshippers not of the goddess Diana and the “image which fell down from Jupiter,” as the unfortunate translation of Acts 19:35 runs in the authorized English version, but of Diana and of the “thing that fell from the sky.” Similarly, in Delphi besides Apollo a holy stone was the object of adoration. The “iron shield” which fell in Rome under the reign of Numa Pompilius was put in the perpetual custody of a college of 12 priests. The ‘Black stone’ of the Kaba is no doubt, a stone meteorite with its strange black crust. In the ruins of an ancient Mexican temple an iron meteorite was unearthed, carefully wrapped in mummy cloths. A shower of stones which fell from the sky in 1803 at l’Aigle, not far from Paris, finally convinced the Paris Academy and the rest of the scientific world of the reality of the fall of meteorites. Latin term sidus, star is derived from Gr. Sideros, iron.
DUST is composed of tiny particles of many kinds of solid materials. The particles have diameters of less than 0.0025 millimeters (0.0001 inches); a million typical dust particles would have a total volume equal to about one grain of sand. The particles consist of minerals, organic matter, soot, radioactive materials, and salt from evaporated sea spray. In relatively pure air there are fewer than 500 particles of dust per cubic centimeter, whereas dirty air may contain more than 50,000 particles per cubic centimeter.
Millikin site in the Fraser Canyon, British Columbia, where excavation uncovered stratified geological deposits containing a series of archaeological components dating from the early postglacial period to the 19th century A.D.
Plateau basalts, or lava plains, occur where fissures leaked successive flows of basic lava that have blanketed huge areas in basalt. Basalt up to 7000ft (2100m) thick covers 250,000 sq mi (650,000 sq km) in India’s Deccan Plateau. Other outflows form the US Columbia River Plateau, South America’s Parana Plateau, the Abyssinian Plateau, and Northern Ireland’s Antrim Plateau.
The Ring of Fire
Linear chains of volcanic islands and seamounts in the Pacific.Volcanic basins (calderas)
These may be formed in several ways:
a A lava plug bottles up explosive gases below
b In time, pent-up gas pressure blasts off the top of the volcano
c The explosion leaves a great shallow cavity – a caldera or basal wreck.
The Deccan Plateau formed from lava outflows, covers 250,000 square miles.
Volcanic plug:
a Upwelling lava fills the original volcano’s central pipe
b Erosion attacks the soft outer slopes
c Only the resistant lava plug remains
Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.
The river Rhone in southern France flows through a plain of sands and gravels, but buried far beneath these deposits, lies a deep channel. It can be traced down the Rhone valley, sinking over deeper as it goes, until near the Mediterranean coast it is 3,000 feet below the present sea-level.
A similar buried channel underlies the valley of the Nile. In the Delta, it sinks so far beneath the thick layer of sediments deposited by the river that it seemed untraceable. Recently, oil geologists located it – 8,000 feet beneath the city of Cairo
The great Sphinx of Giza, as a 19th-century photograph shows has spent a large part of its known history covered up to its neck in desert sands. Whilst thus covered, its body has not been subject to wind-erosion, yet the body is heavily weathered. Could there have been some weathering agency at work?
Indeed, the meteorite showers may consist of no more than 5 meteors in an hour but may reach as many as 75. On occasions, the sky may be lit by thousands of meteors per hour. Some 35,000 or so meteors fell one hour during the Leonid meteor shower of November 1833. This spectacular display of the Host of YHWH terrified most everyone who witnessed it. On Feb. 8, 1969, a 30-ton meteor broke up over the town of Pueblito de Allende in northern Mexico. Some of the 5,000 objects larger than a baseball are currently being tracked around the earth – the natural satellites.
Without rain, snow, dew, the earth would not put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind (Gen 1:11), which means that life would not be possible. We don't perceive the life-fostering function of the meteorite showers because it covers much longer periods of time. The language of the Bible does not sound like the jargon of the modern Science, nonetheless the thoughts of many Biblical verses match exactly conclusions of the present-day geologists.
For instance, the verse: “And G-d said: 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear'” (Gen. 1:9) express the same phenomenon which the modern geologists discovered when they saw that rocks formed below the seas are now high in the mountains and that mountain chains have been raised repeatedly at different places and then worn away.
Climbers in Switzerland, Austria, and Croatia, as they ascend more than a mile above sea level, pass decks of ice-crusted rock made from the skeletons of sea creatures that once lived in the Mediterranean. More than 3,000 years ago, the trodos ophiolite on Cyprus was mined extensively by the Greeks for its copper and tin. In essence, the Greeks were minding the ocean floor that had been conveniently brought up the the surface by G-d.
The deposits were formed by the precipitation of metals from hot-water solutions that were rich in silica and metal and were discharged through the sea floor by hydro-thermal springs. The ophiolites have been identified in various parts of the world: on the Apennines of Norther Italy, the northern margins of the Himalayas in southern Tibet, the Ural Mountains, the eastern Mediterranean, the Afar Desert of northeastern Africa, the Andes of South America, and islands of the western Pacific such as the Philippines, uppermost Newfoundland, and Point Sol along the Big Sur coast of central California.
At the same time, as the Greeks were mining for ophiolites, Celtic miners burrowed through rock and clay of the Salzberg (lit. salt-mountain) and dropped shafts more than 1,000 feet long to extract the salt. An underground mine about 1,000 feet below the surface of Detroit produces more than 1 million tons of salt a year.
There are fossils in Cheops's limestone blocks. One can spend days and nights cataloging the different kinds of sea life in these blocks. The skeletons of microscopic animals accumulated to form beds of the clear, white lime the Egyptians found so attractive for building pyramids. And now, consider the fertile Delta; once, this delta was a bay; patiently the broad Nile filled it up so that peasants could grow enough cotton to export hundred million dollars' worth of it every year.
Most of what is now Louisiana was once part of an ancient bay of the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana is a “gift” of the Mississippi River. The 350 million cubic yards of sediments carried down by the mighty river each year would cover the entire state of Connecticut, if spread in a layer one inch thick. The many tons of mud, sand, and gravel which the great river dumps into the Gulf of Mexico each day would fill a freight train 150 miles long.
Under the microscope, most of chalk resolves into a coarse powder. Embedded in it, however, are myriads of skeletons of one-celled animals called foraminifera. When the crushed foraminiferal skeletons are subjected to heat and pressure they turn into limestone. A huge chalk and limestone deposit make up much of the southeastern part of England. The Latin name of England Albion (White Island) is derived from the color of these deposits. They are, in turn, part of a much larger deposit, some of which has been worn away or overlain by other types of rock, that stretches from the Baltic through the Low Countries to northern France. At the 22,000-feet level on Mount Everest in the Himalayas there is a 200-feet stratum of foraminiferal limestone. It is used to make roads and in building. Michelangelo's David was once a collection of tiny foraminifera living on the sea bottom.
If it not were for the meteorite showers that the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth sends upon the surface of organic sediments, coal could not have been formed. Coal consists chiefly of carbon, derived directly from organic carbon compounds of vegetation. The carbon in the plants that later formed coal was not obtained from the soil by way of plant roots, but from the air by way of leaves. Being the only known natural agency known capable of abstracting large amounts of carbon from the air, plants employ it in the construction of their tissues and store up for future use. Coal is fossilized plant material, preserved by burial and altered by earth forces. In order that the organic sediments could have been transformed into coal they had to be covered by billions upon billions tons of earth sent as meteorite showers, which made possible compaction and condensation. The distribution and amount of meteorite dust falls are controlled by the air current and winds in the upper atmosphere and then are dispersed by the different systems of air streams, which could be compared to rivers in the ocean. Men did walk and work amid the primeval forests that we dig up as coal.
The radar pictures taken by Columbia belied all those who explained the covering of the Great Sphinx as a result of engulfing it by the shifting sands of Sahara. Now we know that the Sphinx disappeared from the face of the earth similarly as the stone age camp sites – covered by mountains of sand. For the first time the Sphinx was excavated during the reign of the pharaoh Thutmose IV about 1450 B.C. And then, it had been covered again and again. In the 19th century, when it was found by the archaeologists it was again largely engulfed in sand. Indeed, the Creator accurately distributed His host on the face of the earth.
The design of human eye and also of ear and nose points to G-d who continues His creation by enlarging the earth for growing populations of diverse creatures. Tears which are produced by lacrimal glands help to clear eyeballs of foreign particles, such as dust, and keep them from drying out, which would result in blindness. Each time the eyelid blinks, it sucks a little fluid from the glands. After the tears pass across the eyeball, they flow out through two lacrimal ducts that open at inner corner of each eye. They lead to a lacrimal sac and then to the nasal duct. This duct runs the length of the nose and finally opens into it.
The external auditory canal is the opening you see if you look directly into the ear. The outer third of the canal is lined with fine hairs and with the tiny glands that produce wax. The hairs and wax trap dust and other small particles.
Both nasal passages have a lining of soft, moist mucuous membrane covered with microscopic, hairlike projections called cilia. The cilia wave back and forth constantly, moving dust, bacteria, and fluids from the nose to the throat for swallowing.
Consider in this context the design of camel's eye. Camels have long eyelashes, protecting their eyes from sand. The third eyelid is like a windshield wiper on a car, wiping the sand away. It is thin and translucent, allowing camels to see in sandstorms. Broad ridges of bone above each eye act as built-in sun visors, shielding the eyes. Small ears prevent sand from getting in them.
We perceive the same designing “Mind” behind the oil-producing process. Large reservoirs of oil and natural gas are dependent on the existence of certain geological conditions, such as a sedimentary source for the oil, a porous rock to serve as a reservoir, and some kind of confining sediments. The source material is generally organic carbon in fine-grained, carbon-rich sediments. Porous and permeable sedimentary rock such as sandstone provides the reservoir, and diverse geologic structures that result from folding or faulting of sedimentary layers (earthquakes!) can serve as dams to pool the oil. In order for organic material to be transformed into oil, at least one or two conditions must be met. Either the rat of accumulation must be so high or the oxygen in the bottom water must be so low that the material is not oxidized before it is buried. Oxidation causes decay, which destroys organic material; therefore, areas where there are high rates of accumulation of sediments rich in organic material are the most favorable sites for the formation of oil-bearing rock.
Referring to famine as a check on population, Bishop Malthus wrote in the following incredibly sincere passage from the revised sixth Edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population (1862):
“...We should facilitate, instead of impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits.” Now you understand better why certain people hate Moses and the Torah.
As the 1972 Club of Rome's Project Report on The Predicament of Mankind made us all aware, there are “limits to growth”, and if the world's major industrial powers continue to pursue economic growth and to foster an ethic based on ever-increasing production and consumption of goods the planet's resources will rapidly be depleted and the environment irremediably polluted. To create “a steady state of economic and ecological equilibrium,” the Report concluded, will require a Copernican revolution of the mind” and if the human species is to survive “man must explore himself – his goals and values – as much as the world he seeks to change. So now, at last you know what the Copernican revolution really means.
In the Biblical cosmology “G-d divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. 1:7). Accordingly, we learn from Ex 16:31 that “when the layer of dew was gone up, behold upon the the face of the wilderness a fine, scale-like thing., fine as the hoar-frost on the ground.” This was the “Bread” which YHWH had given them to eat. In the logic of the Bible, the thought that the G-d who created life on the earth have fed his people with “manna which they knew not, neither did their fathers know” (Dt. 8:3), can be regarded as a miracle only in the sense that this food of Heavenly Restaurant had been sent precisely when it was needed for their survival. The idea of the survival of the fittest, or the strongest does not fit into Biblical scheme of things.
Isidore of Seville's Originum sive Etymologiarum contains Herodot's and Diodor's statements that geometry had been invented by the Egyptians to measure land after the disappearance of boundary markers in the Nile floods. Then the Egyptian gymnophysists taught Eudoxos, Pythagoras and Plato all the mysteries of Thoth, a Great Lord of magic which was also called mathematics. Translating the curvatures of the earth into ideal shapes of spheres, triangles and squares they were trying to ascertain the extent of the earth. But how can you find out the extent of the earth knowing that G-d keeps enlarging its size? Reading the list of annual meteor showers which G-d sends to earth, remember the revealing questions contained in the Book of Job: “Where were thou when I founded the earth? Tell if you have understanding.” “Who determined its dimension if thou knowest? Or who stretched the measuring line over it?”

Did Jesus Die on the Cross?

Shaul-Paul was well connected too
Rufus Pudens, the Roman Senator married Priscilla, mother of the Apostle Paul through another marriage. Rufus and Pudens parented Rufus Pudens Pudentianna, Saint Pauls half-brother. Saint Paul, or Paul of Tarsus, is a Christian saint, who has lent his name to a number of places and things: Buildings and institutions Churches St Pauls Cathedral in London, England, designed by Christopher Wren St Pauls Cathedral (Macau) in Macau St Pauls Cathedral, in Melbourne.
Pudens was the husband of Claudia. They were identified with the Pudens and Claudia of Martial’s ‘Epigrams’ (iv. 13, xi. 53), and Claudia was held to be a British maiden and a daughter of a British chief named Cogidubnus (Martial, xi. 53, ‘CIL.’ vii. 11)
King of Siluria, was sainted by the early Church of Britain. "He first of the Cymry gave infants names, for before names were not given except to adults, and then from something characteristic in their bodies, minds, or manners." His brother Linus the Martyr, his sister Claudia and her husband Rufus Pudens aided the Apostle Paul in the Christian Church in Rome, as recorded in II Timothy 4:21 and Romans 16:13 (Rufus Pudens and St. Paul are shown to be half-brothers, with the same mother but different fathers. "His mother and mine." She thus appears to have been the mother of an elder son, Paul, by a Hebrew husband, and a younger son, Rufus, by a second marriage with a Roman Christian.)
Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, but Trophimus I have left in Miletus sick. Do your utmost to come before winter. Eubulus greets you, as well as Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen (2 Timothy 4:19-22).
From all this we realize that Paul and Rufus Pudens Pudentius were half-brothers, each having the same mother. In turn, this made the British Princess Gladys, the emperor Claudius' adopted daughter, now known as Claudia Britannica Rufina Pudens Pudentius, sister-in-law the Apostle of the Gentiles! And lastly, through Gladys' adoption, Paul is the half-brother-son-in-law (if there can be such a thing) to the emperor Claudius!
St. Bernard, while gazing upon the glories of the Church, once commented, “Thus, wealth is drawn by ropes of wealth, thus money bringeth money...O vanity of vanities, yet no more vain than insane. The Church is resplendenr in her walls, beggarly in her poor. She clothese her stones in gold, and leaves her sons naked.”
Http://ww.asis.com/users/stag/royalsoap.html)
Jesus Had a Rich Family with Ties to the Herodians
According to the Gospel of Matthew ( Matthew 27:60), the garden and tomb were the private property of Jesus’ wealthy uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. Some said that Joseph was the uncle of Vigin Mary and therefore of Jesus. He was well placed as Nobilis Decurio, a minister of mines for the Roman empire, with direct access to Pilate himself.
Described as one who was “looking for the kingdom of God,” Mark 15:43. all four Gospels agree that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin which is the way bouleutēs, literally "counsellor", in Matthew 27:57 and Luke 23:50 is often interpreted, and a secret disciple of Jesus. (John 19:38) Scholars suggest his private garden and Jesus’ tomb was likely the Garden of Gethsemane, a favorite gathering place of the disciples with a clear view of the Temple on Mount Moriah or Sion (or Zion, the ancient name for Jerusalem).
When Pilate allowed Joseph's request he immediately purchased fine linen (Mark 15:46) and proceeded to Golgotha to take the body down from the cross. There, assisted by Nicodemus, he took the body and wrapped it in the fine linen, sprinkling it with the myrrh and aloes that Nicodemus had brought (John 19:39). Remember, the phoenix “maketh for itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and the other spices...”
It Was Finished Amazingly Fast!
According to the Gospel of Mark, immediately after the Crucifixion Joseph of Arimathea asked Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ body. Pilate was astonished that Jesus is dead so soon (Mk 15:44), it usually took several excruciatingly painful days for the crucified to perish. That was the point. The Gospels record that Jesus was suspended from the pillar at the sixth hour (noon), at the ninth hour (3 p.m.) he said he thirsted and was given a sponge soaked with vinegar by a Roman centurion (in fulfillment of Psalm 22:16 and Zecharia 12:10). When Jesus received the vinegar, which normally has a reviving effect, Jesus said, “It is finished: and bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” (John 29:30) By nightfall he was declared dead. This is where medical doctors see trouble in the story of the Crucifixion. How is it possible, they wonder that a viral and powerful man such as Jesus (the image on the Shroud of Turin is that of man who was about 5’ 10” tall, 165 pounds) could have died so quickly?
Pilate also had reason to be surprised. Jesus’ legs were not even broken, the customary coup de grace which hastened death so that the dead bodies did not remain on the pillars on the Sabbath day. (John 19:31) The breaking of the legs prevented the crucified from straightening out their bodies. This assured suffocation within a few hours. Mallets broke the legs of the thieves. Jesus’ legs were left untouched because he was believed to be dead already. So how come he died so soon? Pilate conferred on this matter with a Roman centurion who is named Longinus in the apocryphal Book of Nicodemus. According to the Gospel of John, he was the centurion who thrust his lance into the side of Jesus to confirm his death. (John 19:33-35) Blood and water flowed out. None of the other Gospels mention Longinus’ action or the transformed blood and water of Christ. Yet in the Gospel of John this blood simultaneously verified Jesus was dead and that the faith of Christ is centered in his blood and water. Longinus became an early hero of the first Christians for his actions that Good Friday in April 2,000 years ago. If Jesus’ legs had been broken his body weight would have crushed his lungs causing him to die from asphyxiation. Most importantly, if Jesus’ legs had been broken, the prophecy of Exodus 12:46 “… a bone of him shall not be broken” would have been unfulfilled. Some say that in that moment, by his single action, Longinus held the destiny of the world in his hands. When he made the decision to pierce the side of Jesus he altered history.
Short Spear or Sponge?
Longinus the centurion and his Spear are the subject of immense mystery. According to legend, he was nearly blind. In the apocryphal Acta Pilata, Longinus was the supervisor of the Crucifixion.

Christian legend also claims Longinus was a secret follower of Jesus. He is the same centurion who, transformed by the events that transpired at the Crucifixion, praised Jesus as the true Son of God (Mk. 15:39)He was also the centurion who confirmed the death of Jesus to Pilate, and who then released the body of Jesus to another of Jesus’ secret disciples, Joseph of Arimathea. It has even been suggested that Longinus was the Roman soldier who administered the ‘vinegar’ to Jesus.
In their carefully researched work, The Jesus Conspiracy. The Turin Shroud and the Truth about the Resurrection. (1994, pp.252-3) Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber note that an error of translation was made when the word hyssos (‘short spear’) was taken for hyssopos (‘hyssop’). Through this error it is revealed that, instead of a spear, Longinus held up a sponge soaked in a narcotic substance that put Jesus into a catatonic state, giving him the appearance of death.
Body or Corpse?
The trouble with the description of Longinus’ piercing Jesus’ side and the blood spurting out is that it is medically impossible. Corpses do not bleed. In order for blood to spurt out Jesus would have had to be at least partially alive. Additionally, it has been argued for centuries that Longinus’ piercing and the wound it caused was not sufficient to kill Jesus. The wounds that appear on the body in the Shroud of Turin tend to support this. So, the question continues to be asked: is the Gospel of John indicating that Jesus was still alive after the Crucifixion? Dead Sea Scroll scholar Hugh Schonfield The Passover Plot. A New Interpretation of Life and Death of Jesus (1965 p.168), and the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (p.329) note that in the original Greek version of Mark’s Gospel, when Joseph asks for Jesus’ body he uses the word soma -- a word they propose applied to a living body. Pilate responds in the affirmative, but uses the word ptoma -- which means “corpse.” This is a perplexing state of affairs. Given the two different words, soma and ptoma, did Joseph receive a living or a dead body? This is the vital question of Christianity. 1 Corinthinians asks “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain?” John’s Gospel says that, along with Nicodemus, Joseph pulled Jesus’ mangled body from the pillar. Without the knowledge or involvement of any of the other apostles they rushed the body to Joseph’s garden and went immediately to work. The two men treated the open cuts and wounds with a sticky gel made from over 100 pounds of aloe, myrrh and other medicinal herbs. They wrapped his body in a linen shroud, and placed it in Joseph’s private tomb, sealing it with a large rolling rock. Were they preparing Jesus’ body for burial or healing the massive wounds? Joseph came from Arimathea near the Samarian border. He returned there after the Crucifixion, suggesting he lived there.

The question thus arises:
Why is Joseph’s family burial tomb in Jerusalem?
Especially in a location so conveniently located to the site of Jesus’ Crucifixion?
Was his burial place located there because Joseph considered Jerusalem sacred?
Or, knowing that Jesus’ execution was imminent, unavoidable and indeed necessary for the fulfillment of prophecy, was this site’s proximity to the site of the Crucifixion pre-selected as part of an elaborate conspiracy for as a recovery area?
Arimathea is often held to be another name for Ramathaim-Zophim in Ephraim, the birth-place of Samuel, where David came to Samuel. (1 Sam. 1:1, 19), Others identify it with Ramlah in Dan, or Ramah in Benjamin. (Matt. 2:18)
Gospel of Nicodemus
The Gospel of Nicodemus, a text appended to the Acts of Pilate, provides additional, though even more mythologized, details. After Joseph asked for the body of Christ from Pilate, and prepared the body with Nicodemus' help, Christ's body was delivered to a new tomb that Joseph had built for himself. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Jewish elders express anger at Joseph for burying the body of Christ in the following exchange:
And likewise Joseph also stepped out and said to them: Why are you angry against me because I begged the body of Jesus? Behold, I have put him in my new tomb, wrapping in clean linen; and I have rolled a stone to the door of the tomb. And you have acted not well against the just man, because you have not repented of crucifying him, but also have pierced him with a spear.
—Gospel of Nicodemus. Translated by Alexander Walker.

Jesus Was a Very Rich Man. Pt.2

“The only pagan contamination in Israel was among the very rich, inspired by self-interest or snobbery, and there were not many of these” (Daniel Rops, Jesus and his Times. 1954, p.408)
And was it always said that the manner of Jesus' death was crucifixion? Apparently not. Here is what is written in Baraitha Bab. Sanhedrin 43a:
On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover! - Ulla retorted: Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning him Scripture says, Neither shalt though spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government for royalty [i.e., influential]. Our Rabbis taught: Yeshu had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni, and Todah.
How was Jesus connected with the Government?
King Hezekia encouraged by prophet Isaiah restored the celebration of the Passover and destroyed the “brazen serpent” crafted long-ago by Moses in the wilderness which had become an object of idolatrous worship.
The Gnostic Jesus asks Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews (John 3: 14): “And as Moses in the desert lifted the serpent on the pole, the Son of Man must be lifted up. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”. True, Moses set a “fiery serpent upon a pole” in order to calm panic of the people bitten by fiery serpents” (Num. 21:8). Obviously, this episode of the brazen serpent matches that of the Golden Calf and both events confirm that the Jews who left Egypt were still attached to the symbols of the Egyptian religion that they must have professed during centuries of their bondage. The brazen serpent called Nehushtan continued to be venerated by the people until it was destroyed by King Hezekiah (2 Ki 18.4). But Jesus seems not to have known that or simply ignored the fact of destruction of the pagan religious symbol. His mindset reminds strongly the mindset of Pope Pius II who believed that the Roman Empire had fallen because the scholars had deserted paganism for the Papacy. A pre-Christian relief from Cyprus shows a combination of serpents, crosses and swastikas. Recall that Philistines (or Palestinians according to KJV) came to Egypt and Canaan from the Mediterranean islands. The Capernaum “synagogue” which, according to the Gospels, was built by a Roman officer and was used by Jesus to preach, had the walls adorned with the perennial solar symbol, swastika.In 167 BC Hellenized Jews cooperated with Antiochus IV to sacrifice pigs to Dionysus in the Temple of Jerusalem.
A strange but related story is told in Acts 28:1-6; in this story the apostle Paul is visiting the 9-mile-long island Melita (Malta), a center of serpent-soul worship beneath the southern tip of Italy. The underworld of the gods, it was claimed, was accessed from this island. Paul is bit by a serpent or viper, “which came out of the heat and fastened on his hand” (similarly the golden calf came out of the heat). But Paul shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. The Maltese said he was a god.
This collaboration with the Herodians and their political tool the Sanhedrin to promote the faith in immortality was what the Romans needed in order to continue the occupation of Judea. Everywhere attention to Rome and the real situation in Palestine were deflected to otherwordly concerns. The New Testament seems to be a sort of fairytale situated in a very bloody, turbulet time.
Can you imagine the better pro-Roman propaganda that the one preached in the Sermon on the Mountain: “Ye have heard that it hath been said (Lev. 19:18), Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of Your Father who is in heaven: for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust' (Mt. 5:43-45). The passage quotes Lev 19.18, 'love your neighbor as yourself', and then it attributes to others the reverse, 'hate your enemy'. The second half is not a quotation from the Bible.
The impression that Jesus was a poor man, and even homeless is supported by the Gospel of Matthew (8:20) where Jesus says about himself: “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I (the Son of man) hath not where to lay his head.” The inspiration for this verse is very revealing. 130 years before Christ Tiberius Gracchus such a thought for the whole proletariat of Rome: “The wild beasts of Italy have their holes and their lairs, in which they rest, but the men that fight and die for Italy's power have nothing but air and light, because this they can not be robbed of. They roam with their wives and children without house and home.” Interestingly, a early Christian mosaic depicts Jesus wearing uniform of a Roman legionary.
Let me remind in this contxt the pertinent observation by Karl Kautsky in his Foundations of Christianity: “Compare the sermon on the Mount in Luke and in matthew, which is later. In the first it is still a glorification of the poor and a damning of the rich. By Matthew's time this had become a touchy subject for many Christians, and the Gospel acxcording to Matthew boldly turns the poor who are blesed into the poor of spirit (simpletons), and leaves the damning of the rich out altogether.”
Who Pays the Piper Calls the Piper's tune
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Cast ye unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 25: 14-30) This excellent summary of market operations was expressed by Jesus at a banquet he partook of in the home of a rich taxcollector. And don't forget "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mt. 12:17; Lk 20:26). Jesus was not leading riots against Herod's tax collectors, like he was doing at the Jerusalem Temple, he was sharing meals with them.
Jesus doesn't seem to have thought of ending poverty. He took for granted, like all the ancients, that a slave's duty is to serve his master well; “blessed is the slave whom his master, returning, finds performing his charge” (Mt. 24:46). He is not concerned to attack existing economic or political institutions, on the contrary, he condemns those impatient, ardent souls who would “take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”
John mentions Jesus' disciple who was known unto the High Priest: “And (the disciple) went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the High Priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter.” (John 18:15-16)
By the time Jesus was born there were a number of factors that led to the corruption of Sanhedrin. First, there was the outside influence of the Romans. Herod, for example, had killed members of the Sanhedrin who challenged his wicked behavior. He also filled the supreme court with men who were willing to cooperate with his corrupt manner of conducting business. Under the Romans the Sanhedrin more or less adopted a form of political pragmatism to get along with their Roman overlords. In AD 6 Judea was made a Roman province. Under this political situation the Sanhedrin and the high priest were “granted almost exclusive control of the internal affairs of the nation ... and, so long as public order was maintained and tax revenues were forthcoming, they were content for national matter to be under the control of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin had great power but they were always ultimately answerable to the Roman governor. (Brian Schwertley, The Ecclesiastical Trial, Part 2: Before the Sanhedrin , www.reformedonline.com/)
Luke's accurate and relatively abundant knowledge about the Herod family may be due to his acquaintance with certain people who had close contact with the family. He mentions Joanna the wife of one of Antipas's stewards, among the well-to-do women who supported Jesus and his disciples during their itinerant ministry, and his reference to Manaen 'companion' or 'courtier' of Herod, the tetrarch who became one of the leading teachers and prophets in the church of Syrian Antioch about AD 47 is also of interest. Luke must have found in Manaen a valuable informant on the contacts of Antipas and his relatives with the early Christian story.
Manaen is also mentioned in Acts 13:1-3: “Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certyain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which has ben brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul...” The rulers of the Herod dynasty were brought up in Rome.

Jesus Was a Very Rich Man. Pt.1

Early Christian “doctors” were constantly contradicting themselves as to when exactly “the Lord” died or “ascended to heaven” after “he” was resurrected. Two of the most powerful early bishops, Irenaeus and Papias recorded that Christ lived to be very old, flatly denying as 'heresy' the Gospel stories as to his crucifixion at about thirty years of age.” In one of the Warsaw churches there is a statue of a very old Jesus. The Poles commemoratred this strange fact in a saying: “U fary jest Pan Jezus stary.”
Saint Irenaeus (Greek: Ειρηναίος), (2nd century AD - c. 202 AD) was Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, Roman Empire (now Lyons, France). He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. He was a disciple of Saint Polycarp, who was said to be a disciple of Saint John the Evangelist.
But unlike John who introduced to his gospel the philosophical demiurge (Logos), Irenaus preferred to speak of the Son and the Spirit as the "hands of God". The world has been intentionally designed by God.
In addition to reversing the wrongs done by Adam, Irenaeus thinks of Christ as "recapitulating" or "summing up" human life.This means that Christ goes through every stage of human life, from infancy to old age, and simply by living it, sanctifies it with his divinity. Irenaeus argues that Christ did not die until he was older than conventionally portrayed.
Ireenaeus' theology can be better u.nderstood in the context of Clement's letter to the Corinthian church, which is one of the oldest Christian documents still in existence outside the New Testament.
Saint Clement I, also known as Pope Clement I, Saint Clement of Rome, or Clemens Romanus, was the fourth Pope and Bishop of Rome and is considered the first Apostolic Father of the early Christian church. There are only two extant Greek texts of 1 Clement. The oldest is in Codex Alexandrinus, which dates to the 5th century.
Clement:
Proof of the Resurrection – rebirth of the Phoenix! Not the Risen Christ!
"Let us understand, dearly beloved, how the Master continually showeth unto us the resurrection that shall be hereafter ...
Let us consider the marvellous sign which is seen in the regions of the east, that is, in the parts about Arabia.
There is a bird, which is named the phoenix. This, being the only one of its kind, liveth for five hundred years; and when it hath now reached the time of its dissolution that it should die, it maketh for itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and the other spices, into the which in the fulness of time it entereth, and so it dieth.
But, as the flesh rotteth, a certain worm is engendered, which is nurtured from the moisture of the dead creature and putteth forth wings. Then, when it is grown lusty, it taketh up that coffin where are the bones of its parent, and carrying them journeyeth from the country of Arabia even unto Egypt, to the place called the City of the Sun; and in the day time in the sight of all, flying to the altar of the Sun, it layeth them thereupon; and this done, it setteth forth to return. So the priests examine the registers of the times, and they find that it hath come when the five hundredth year is completed.
Do we then think it to be a great and marvelous thing, if the Creator of the universe shall bring about the resurrection of them that have served Him with holiness in the assurance of a good faith, seeing that He showeth to us even by a bird the magnificence of His promise?"
– The Epistle of St Clement to the Corinthians
According to Tertullian (Demurrer Against the Heretics 36 and 32:2) Clement was ordained by Peter.
Stoicism- the Backbone of the New Testament
The Stoics translated the pheonix myth into their philosophical jargon.. Stoicism consider the universe on a path to confragration.The end of the human history will meet its doom in a massive conflagration that will cause all things to return to their original state, exactly like the phoenix does. What makes the association with Christianity more interesting is tha tag at the end of Cicero's note on the subject when he declares that there will b e a conflagration so that “once again a new world may be created and the ordered universe be restored as before” (Early Stoic Physics, SVF II, 593). The same philosophy lies behind Big Bang.
The Stoic teaching that fiery breath (pneuma) infusing the physical body reverberates in Jesus' saying that The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three 'measures of flour, till the whole was leavened.' (Lk 13:20-21). The Stoics contrasted soul and matter. These two principles are the active and passive. Matter is identified with the passive principle. Its complement, the active principle, is reason (LOGOS) or God and is held to extend through matter providing it with motion (like leaven in flour), form, and structure. Both principles are bodily or corporeal principles, but neither exists in isolation.
Pneuma was the “creative fire” of the cosmos, a pyr technikon. It had the status of divinity, and was equated with both god and cosmic reason. Ex 32:24 reports miraculous birth of Golden Calf out of creative fire: `Let any who have gold take it off'; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and there came out this calf." The Vedic god Surya was a solar bull. According to the Assyrians, the bull was born of the sun. There is a link between this philosophy and the words of Jesus reported by John 3:14 (See below).
According to Zen theology the Buddha is “the deity of fire who seeks fire”. The cloven tongues of fire that appeared on the Apostles’ heads symbolized their enlightenment (buddha lit. means the enlightened one) – they became “jamad-agni”, those who knew the identity of god and fire. The cloven tongues of fire on the Apostles’ heads are logically connected with Jesus words (Lk. 12:49): “I am come to send fire on the earth…” Here Christ confronts the Jewish belief in personal God with the atheistic impersonal Absolute of the Aryan religion. Brahman is a neuter word which means energy or fire, or sun.
Paul wrote in 1 Cor 15:16-17: “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain...
On Feb. 9, 1989, A. Sakharov traveled to Italy where he spent more than an hour in private audience with the Pope John Paul II and received an honorary doctorate in astronomy from the University of Bologna. Rector of the University said on this occasion: “Not by chance has he (Sakharov) been placed in the company of Copernicus, of Galileo and of Giordano Bruno. Not by chance is the book chosen for the laureation of A. Sakharov The Dialogue of the Two Greatest Systems by Galileo: a choice meant to recall the spirit of liberty…” Or I would say, license to kill the remaining Jews...
In 1992 Pope John Paul said: “Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depth of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)
Only disregard for teaching of the Bible and a blind admiration for the tradition of philosophical doctrines explains the view of Kepler that man’s ability to understand the mathematical law governing the universe enabled him to mirror God’s own thoughts and thus put him in special contact (mystical union) with the Creator of the Universe. (Cp. Jesus words: “My Father and I are one.” Jn. 10:30). Kepler's God was Plato's metaphysical God (Logos) who is a-historicist mathematician who eternally geometrizes.
The same God wrote for Galileo the Book of Nature. Galileo on the Book of Nature.“Philosophy is written in that very large book that is continually opened before our eyes (I mean the universe), but which is not understood unless first one studies the language and knows the characters in which it is written. The language of that book is mathematical and the characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures.” (Galileo Galilei: Pensieri, motti e sentenze; Florence, 1949) The Hindu Vishnu holds a disc or a rounded piece of gold in his hand. The Egyptian Ra wears a disc as a crown). Will future encyclicals be written in mathematical equations? The God on the front page of the Renaissance edition of the Vulgate wears a triangle on his head.
www.flickr.com/photos/19279530@N00/841587900/
special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/nov2007.html
www.iblistforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=115114...
http://flickr.com/photos/78957022@N00/392513034
Prof. A. Sakharov's Solar Phoenix
The Soviet physicist “proved” that the sun is an immortal god in his dogma of the “solar phoenix”, or strictly materialistic principle of the “spontaneous resurrection of energy (brahma) such as takes place in the sun's core.” And this scientific dogma explains the strange Latin expression "resurrexit” (“he has risen again”) which in nonscriptural references is used almost invariably and surrectio (“risen”) hardly ever. Resurrectio suggest natural process repeating itself time and again and not a “historical fact” as exemplified by the risen Jesus. The term resurrectio mirrors Plato’s cosmology which was cyclic, with periodic destruction and recreation of the universe in conjunction with various astronomical events. Sakharov wanted to undo Patriarch Nikon’s reform who in the 17th century dropped the part of the phrase concerning sanctification “by the Holy Spirit and by fire” because “fire” did not have sufficient textual warrant, and this offended those who believed that the Holy Sprit was Himself fire according to the Aryan dogma. Prof. Sakharov was a true Aryan “jamad-agni”, or a sage who knows the identity of god and fire.
And was it always said that the manner of Jesus' death was crucifixion? Apparently not. Here is what is written in Baraitha Bab. Sanhedrin 43a:
On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover! - Ulla retorted: Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a Mesith [enticer], concerning him Scripture says, Neither shalt though spare, neither shalt thou conceal him? With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government for royalty [i.e., influential]. Our Rabbis taught: Yeshu had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni, and Todah.

Heliocentrism and Birth Control

The Roman Catholic writers are unanimous in the opinion that it was a belief of large number of Pagans that man had fallen from a higher state of existence. St. Augustine insists upon the general belief of the Pagans in original sin, when he writes against bishop Pelage. But we have other testimonies too.
Cicero, in his work De Republica (Bk. III) after painting the grandeur of human nature, and then contrasting its submission to diseases, to fear, to sorrow, to miseries and the the most degrading passions was at a loss to define man. He called him a soul in ruins. It was for the same reason, that in Plato, Socrates reminds to his disciples that those who had established mysteries and who taught that, according to their ancestors, anybody who dies without being purified is plunged into the mire of Tartarus whereas he who has been purified dwells with the gods. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata (Bk. III) writes, that according to Philolaus, the Pythagorician, all the ancient theologians and poets said that the soul was buried in the body, as in a grave as a punishment for some sin.
According to the Theological System of the Persians, “There are stains brought by man when he comes to life.” Also Brahmins believed that man was fallen and degenerated. Sin is the transgression of this law by which it was prohibited. Our perverse inclinations have induced us to transgress the law; hence the first sin which has induced us to commit the others.
The Biblical story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil doesn't identify the nature of sin committed by Adam and Eve. Anyway the Jews don't profess the dogma as it was formulated by the Church fathers. God's blessing “multiply and replenish the earth” (Gen 1:22) precedes the story about the fall which is described only in chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis. And that precludes the identification of the sin with sexual intercourse. The most important idea of this story is that God will never let humanity decide what is truly right and wrong. We human beings have as one of our greatest limitations, the inability to see the ultimate results of our actions. This is one of the big reasons, God tells us not to rely on our own judgment. In Prov. 3:5 we read, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”
Rosemary R. Ruether, in her article Ant-Semitism In Christian Theology wrote: “Many of the church fathers adopt the scheme of history that posits, before the Mosaic law, an earlier period of universal spiritual religion corresponding to the inward reign of the natural law in men's hearts. This is believed to have existed in the time of the Patriarchs and antideluvians. This was the true universal spiritual religion of God, but it was eclipsed temporarily by the lower stage of religion represented by the Mosaic law. The law comes then to represent a Fall, and its giving was occasioned by the peculiar viciousness of the Jews, who are said to need such extra restraints because of the idolatry and unnatural vice which they picked up in Egypt. But now, with Christianity, a new race of moral heroes has arisen and the law is no longer necessary. The original universal spiritual religion of natural law has been restored in a new and perfected form. This theory is especially dear to Eusebius, but it is mentioned or alluded to by various other patristic writers.” http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1974/v30-4-article4.htm).
Solar Pantheism (Heliocentrism) vs. God's Law
Babylonian culture displays a systematic assault on Biblical government. Modern science is only the capstone of a long philosophical maturation that includes evolutionists and heliocentrists from the Babylonian “mighty hunter before the Lord, Nimrod, Pharaohs to Roman emperors-gods to Hitler who tried to replace God's Law with Aryan myths.
The Babylonian and Roman votaries of the sun god shared the same ritual imagery and symbols. Along with the sun as the great fire-god, and, later, identified with him, was the serpent worshiped. In Egypt, one of the commonest symbols of the sun, or sun-god, is a disc with a serpent around it. In Greek, the serpent of fire, or serpent of the sun was called basilisk, that is the “royal serpent,” to identify it with Moloch, which name signifies”the king” In Egypt, the sun identified with this serpent was called pouro which signifies at once 'the fire' (Greek pyr) and 'the king'. And that explains why Copernicus's sun god is seated on the royal throne.
Copernicus's family of stars governed by the sun god, their father from his kingly throne brings to memory the worst practices and teachings of the sun worshipers. The Greek sun god venerated under the appellation Kronos devoured his sons as soon as they were born. Infants were the most acceptable offering at Nimrod's altar because he was considered the representative of Moloch or Baal. This was nothing but the earliest practice of birth control. In the Sumerian myth Enki assisted humanity to survive the Deluge. As the god of what we would call ecology, Enki explains that Enlil is unfair to punish the guiltless Atrahasis for the sins of his fellows, and secures a promise that gods will not eliminate humankind if they practice birth control and live within the means of natural world. The threat is made, however, that if humans do not honor their side of the covenant the gods will be free to wreak havoc once again. This inhuman sacrifice was justified with the dogma of 'original sin'. When the parents made 'their children pass through fire to Moloch,' they believed it was “for the sin of the soul.” And as passing through fire was both a purgation from the 'original sin' and the means of regeneration, so it was also for raising the dead.
The fire that was guarded in the Roman Temple of Vesta was regarded in the very same light as by the old Babylonian fire-worshipers. It was looked upon as the purifier, and in April every year, at the Palilia, or feast of Pales, both men and cattle, for this purpose, were made to pass through fire.. This ancient belief still survives in the Church doctrine of Purgatory. Hercules purified by fire from the gross parts of the body was raised to participate the happiness of the Immortals. The name Tammuz is derived from tam, “to make perfect,” and muz “fire”, and signifies “the fire perfecter,” or “the perfecting fire.” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith Yahweh: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. Isa 1:18. In other words, they did not need to pass their children through fire to purify them especially that they did not believe that their children, as a result of original sin, were born with devils inside them.
The Phaedrus of Plato displays all that man once was, and that which he may yet become again. "Before man's spirit sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of his wings, he lived among the gods in the airy [spiritual] world where everything is true and pure." In the Timaeus he says, "There was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits." In the future world, says Jesus, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage," but "live as the angels of God in Heaven."
The accusation and the precise nature of the "abomination" are stated in the second chapter of the book of Revelation (14, 1-5). The sin was merely – marriage. Gnostic Cathars rejected sex as a continuation of the human soul' entrapment in earth-bound carnal evil. According to Cathars, marriage was a form of prostitution.
It will be recollected that neither Jesus nor Paul ever married, and that they discouraged the marriage relation. Christ says, “They that shall be counted worthy of that world and the resurrection neither marry nor are given in marriage.” And Paul says, “The unmarried careth for the things of the Lord.” (1 Cor. 7:32)
The following is an excerpt from Prof. Stuart A. Kauffman's Online article titled Breaking the Galilean Spell:
“Even deeper than emergence and its challenge to reductionism in this new scientific worldview is what I call breaking the Galilean spell. Galileo rolled balls down incline planes and showed that the distance traveled varied as the square of the time elapsed. From this he obtained a universal law of motion. Newton followed with his Principia, setting the stage for all of modern science. With these triumphs, the Western world came to the view that all that happens in the universe is governed by natural law. Indeed, this is the heart of reductionism. Another Nobel laureate physicist, Murray Gell-Mann, has defined a natural law as a compressed description, available beforehand, of the regularities of a phenomenon. The Galilean spell that has driven so much science is the faith that all aspects of the natural world can be described by such laws. Perhaps my most radical scientific claim is that we can and must break the Galilean spell. Evolution of the biosphere, human economic life, and human history are partially indescribable by natural law. This claim flies in the face of our settled convictions since Galileo, Newton, and the Enlightenment.”
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman08/kauffman08_index.html

Isaac Newton Unveiled, Pt. 2

From I. Newton to H. Himmler
Philosopher M. Polanyi observed, “Newtonian physics and Darwin’s notion of the survival of the fittest were key elements both in the Marxist concepts of class warfare and of racial philosophies which shaped Hitlerism and scientific world view.”
Newton's identification of gravity with spiritual body of Jesus Christ inspired the following genocidal passage in Guide to the Vatican Museums (Gestione Vendita Publicazioni Musei Vaticani, Citta del Vaticano. 1979, o. 12): “ It was this spirit which inspired the creation of two of the most illustrious of the humanistic institutions of the Holy See: the Vatican Library and the Vatican Museums. Both were the outcome of a vision of Graeco-Roman culture as the perfect, almost timeless expression of human creativity at its highest levels - thought and art - and as the precursor, at times almost the prefigurement, of Christanity, above all in the West.” People who write like that must believe in Second Coming of A. Hitler. John Paul II's rehabilitation of heliocentrism and evolutionism should be decoded in the context of the above observation by M. Polanyi. The desire to create a Palestinian state on the ruins of the Jewish state dictated John Paul II his double rehabilitation. Periodically a pope weeps that there is still no Palestinian state and US peace makers rush to the Middle East to create one.
M. Palmieri in his book The Philosophy of Fascism, (Chicago 1936).argued : “The triumph of the idea of Order, of Authority, of equal justice under Law, saw the Empire of Augustus and of Trajanus give to mankind (!) for the first and only time in human history the life-enhancing blessing of political unity. The triumph of the Catholic Idea of salvation in Christ and through Christ and His Church saw the Empire of the Church give to mankind the life-inspiring blessing of spiritual unity. A spiritual power generated from those great Italian spirits who have been in the past the assertors of Rome’s immortal and eternal right to Empire, and the prophets of Rome’s third form of Empire, is the leaven which has brought about that fermentation of spiritual forces called Fascism… Providence chose the Italian land for this high destiny, nourishing a spark of divine truth in it “ab antico” and molding there a race wonderfully adapted in genius and intelligence for subjecting the whole world in Christian obedience…Italy is the priestly nation among the great body of redeemed peoples…Nor did the inhabitants of this peninsula give to other peoples merely divine gifts, but also every other civil and human good, and all the great intellects of Europe, who enhanced in any measure the glory of their countries, lit their lamps at the living flame of Italian genius.” Which means that the Christianity prefigured by the classical culture is perennial fascism.
Amazingly, H.H. Chamberlain in his “Foundations of the XIXth Century” observed, with an unprejudiced consideration: “Nothing will be falser than to regard the Jewish influence in the creation of Christianity as merely negative, destructive and pernicious. If we look at the matter from the Semitic standpoint, which with the help of any Jewish religious doctrine we can easily do, we shall see things in exactly the opposite light: the Helleno-Aryan element as the undoing, destroying force that is hostile to religion as we already observed in the case of Pelagius who tried to emancipate man of God by free will. An unprejudiced consideration will show us that the Jewish contribution is very important and almost indispensable. Nothing entitles us to assume that Hellenic speculation, Egyptian ascetism and international mysticism, without the fervor of the Jewish will to believe, would have ever given the world a new religious ideal and at the same time a new life. Neither the Roman Stoics with their noble but cold, impotent moral philosophy nor the aimless, mystic self-negation of the theology introduced from India to Asia Minor, nor the opposite solution found in the neo-Platonic Philo, and Hellenic thought, deformed by senility – none of these, obviously, would have led to the goal. The Jewish religion is disinclined to all conversion, but the Gentiles, impelled by longing for faith, went to it in crowds.”
Perverted minds of the Nazis concluded in the light of this passage, that in order to get rid of religious faith, the Jews must be exterminated to the last one. They called H.H. Chamberlain der Seher des III Reichs (the prophet of the III Reich).
Obviously, John Paul II was not impelled by longing for faith. His poetry, philosophy, science, mysticism, mythology testify to an unworldly, speculative tendency of mind, which produces in the case of all philosophers that proud contempt of life which makes it possible for the Indian sage to lay himself while still alive in his own grave (like John Paul II’s beloved hero now saint M. Kolbe), and which received monumental expression in the 19th century in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the negation of the will to live embraced by the Palestinian “Martyrs’ Brigades”.
In Hindu Pantheism the universe is evolving from the central Sun, the POINT (puru, like that of Big Bang), the ever-concealed germ. The central Sun is Deity – the World Soul. It is also the Chakra or circle of Vishnu.
Newton wrote his formula for the pull of one mass on another under the assumption that each mass is concentrated in a point. It's as if God took the sun and the planets in His mighty hands and squeezed them as small as He could. This assumption is, of course, an idealization because point masses do not exist, but it greatly simplified Newton's task because it eliminated the need to deal with the dependence of the force of gravity on the sizes of two interacting bodies.
The Jesuit R. J. Boscovich who was 16 when Newton died validated Newton's assumption by reducing atoms to dimensionless, structureless mathematical points, surrounded by forces. Boscovich's atom reached out into space via forces radiating from it. In one of his poems Cardinal K. Wojtyla wrote: “I became a channel, unleashing a force called man.” Maybe, like that of a Godzilla. A rabbi unleashed a force called Golem, but only in a legend.
In the Gospel of John Jesus is Logos, the term the Greeks used for Hercules, who was the “Force called man.” Quarks are Boscovich's particles without dimensions. Whereas leptons make up our earthly bodies, quarks make up our astral or etherical bodies or souls. Boscovich's Atomic Physics prepared the abrogation of the decree of the Index Expurgatorius against the Copernican system (1757) An “apostle” of Boscovich, the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin called the cyclotrons “wombs of change” or evolution.
Newton's Jesus-Gravity is a variant of Hercules in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra imagines Antony's body extended universally from the heavens, just as the extensive pneuma (aer) of the Stoics. Antony's Herculean trunk joins a new heaven and earth. Hercules's bow symbolizes the tautness of the universe, his arrows the pneuma which penetrates everywhere.
Newton's gay lover and disciple, Fatio de Duiller transformed those Herculean arrows into the “gravific corpuscules” that penetrated material objects which are almost entirely transparent. As you may recall Jesus-Logos-Gravity's body composed of “gravific corpuscules” could have penetrated material objects such as, for instance, a door.
Another “apostle” of Boscovich Abbe George Lemaitre (1894-1996), a Catholic priest and Belgium’s most famous astronomer who explained away Einstein's “cosmological constant” argued, Supposing you just stayed with the mathematical model of a gently expanding universe. This would mean that the expansionary force would counter the gravitational force, and so all the matter in the universe could stay separated. Not only that; if the expansionary force slightly exceeded the gravitational force, then the universe would continue to expand and become bigger tomorrow than it is today. That would also mean that it had to be smaller yesterday than it is today, in order to expand to today’s size. The universe would therefore have to be progressively smaller the further back in time you went. And that meant that at some point, very long ago, the universe would have been at its smallest possible size i.e. Boscovich's atom, a dimensionless, structureless mathematical point. Indeed, Lemaitre’s universe was derived from a story of the Indian Upanishads.
From the Hindu Tree of Life to Newton's Vegetable Action
A Tree of Life represents creative forces in the universe. Sunbirds sit on the branches; a five-headed cobra, symbolizing water, rises from the trunk. In the middle of the tree the sun is placed reminiscent of the heliocentrically conceived universe in which energy (Brahma) plays the most important creative part like the creative fire of the Stoics The word Logos of Jn. 1:1 was a Greek counterpart of the Indian Brahman, a neuter noun which means “energy”. The Tree of Life is said to be standing at the axis of the cosmos, and is a common feature of salvation mythology.
In conformity with this vision of the world as a Tree of Life Manu wrote: "Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending, and passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals. . . . Such is the inferior degree"
"These are the transformations declared, from the plant up to Brahma, which have to take place in his world" (Book I, sloka 8). The Nordic counterpart of the Hindu Tree of Life was called Yggdrasil.
What did I. Newton mean by “action at a distance?” Some sort of “force,” like “gravity”, affected “matter” through space yet with no observable mechanism or medium involved. To contemporaries who found the idea of attractions across empty space unintelligible, he conceded that they might prove to be caused by the impact of unseen particles. Newton turned to Alchemy for a possible answer. The Alchemists had developed a concept called “active principles”: Spirit might be able to act upon matter. There was, thought Newton a “spirit of nature.” He called it “vegetable action”, which was “an exceeding subtle & unimaginably small portion of matter diffused through the mass which, if it were separated, there would remain but a dead & inactive earth.” (White Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer).This “vegetative spirit” was called by alchemists “the pneuma,” a mysterious, holy energy from Gods. Newton's matter diffused through the mass is strongly reminiscent of Jesus' kingdom of heaven which is like unto leaven that leavens the whole (Mt. 13:33 and Lk. 13:20). Michael Maier's alchemical text Arcana arcanissima is a lengthy allegory of Hercules as the all pervasive spiritus. There can be no doubt that alchemy influenced Newton's concept of gravity and of force in general. Newton owned a total of 1752 books of which 369 were about alchemy and 170 books were on what was called “practical magic.”
The alchemist manipulated spirit and matter to manifest the philosopher's stone and the elixir of eternal life, an allegorical substance or formula based on occult myths. Newton apparently took the myths seriously, like Eva in the Gan of Eden who ignored God's warning (“Ye shall not eat of it...lest ye die”) and instead believed the serpent who said: “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen 3:4). Newton sought to reconcile Greek mythology with the Bible.
Cerridwen, the Celtic goddess of wisdom and witchcraft in ancient legend is “the keeper of the Black Cauldron of Immortality.” This is the Cauldron from which one sip could bring incredible insights, wisdom and supernatural power.” Cerridwen is another name for Venus which is another name for Lucifer. She is the principal of the school attended by Harry Potter.
The Twilight of the Gods
I. Newton's “vegetable action” inspired the above mentioned H.S. Chamberlain's thesis Recherches sur la sève ascendante (Studies on rising sap) which did not culminate with a degree. The main thrust of the dissertation is that the vertical transport of fluids in vascular plants via xylem can not be explained by the fluid mechanical theories of the time, but only by the existence of a “vital force” (=vegetable action) that is beyond the pale of physical measurement. He summarized his thesis in the Introduction:
Without the participation of these vital functions it is quite simply impossible for water to rise to heights of 150 feet, 200 feet and beyond (Redwoods grow to 275 feet high and often have trunks that are 8 to 12 feet in diameter; they pump tons of water upwards), and all the efforts that one makes to hide the difficulties of the problem by relying on confused motions drawn from physics are little more reasonable than search for the philosopher's stone.
Physical arguments, in particular transpirational pull and root pressure have since been shown to adequately explain the ascent of sap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain). In other words, transpirational pull and root pressure joined forces to defeat Jesus-gravity. Let me make my point, I. Newton had predicted that Jesus would return 49 years after the establishment of Israel in Palestine. The 20th-century Rosicrucian psychic, Edgar Cayce, had predicted the return of Jesus immediately after the discovery of the so-called “Hall of Records” in 1996-98; note that 1948 plus 49 years lands smack dab between those dates, in 1997. My, my is gravity still with us?

Isaac Newton Unveiled - Pt. 1

Christianity as a religious structure rests upon two fundamentally different and directly hostile “views of existence”: upon Jewish historical faith and upon Indo-European symbolical and metaphysical mythology. The kernel of the Christian religion is the conception of “redemption of man”: this idea has always been and still is strange to the Jews; it absolutely contradicts their whole conception of religion. On the other hand, it is the central idea in all Indo-European religious views; they all revolve around the longing for redemption; the hope of salvation; nor was this idea of redemption strange to the Hellenes; we find it in their mysteries, and in Plato, in the 7th book of the “Republic”, it is clearly recognizable. The idea of redemption embraces two others; that of a present imperfection and that of a possible perfection by some supernatural or transcendental process: the one is symbolized by the myth of degeneration (See, O.Spengler, The Decline of the West), the other by that of gracious help bestowed by a higher Being. The Carirarka-Mimansa considers all living beings as “in need of redemption.” I. Newton, as a member of the British privileged class was enthralled by the Ario-Christianity and its aristocratic principle of nature.
A. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form. Indeed, the Talmud is not a book to prepare a man for the hereafter, but only for a practical and profitable life in this world.” Well, I guess that the CEO's who work day and night to maximize profits of their companies read the Talmud like the priests read their breviaries.
In a now famous passage from De Gravitatione,Newton wrote: “Space is an affection of a being just as a being. No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body is the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an emanative effect of the first existing being, for if any being whatsoever is posited, space is posited...If ever space had not existed, God at that time would have been nowhere” (Janiak, A. Newton: Philosophical Writings,Cambridge University Press. 2004, 25). Is space an emanative effect of the first existing being or rather is the first existing being an emanative effect of space. This contradiction was never resolved by Newton.
To the kabbalists, Space is “the unknown container of all, the Unknown First Cause.” The Zohar teaches that the primordial elements – the trinity of Fire, Air and Water – the four cardinal points, and all the forces of nature form collectively the Voice of the Will (Memrah) or the “Word”, the Logos of the Absolute Silent All. The indivisible point, limitless and unknowable” (like that of Big Bang) spreads itself over the endless space, and thus forms a veil which conceals this Absolute point.
Philo wrote: “The Chaldeans were of the opinion that the Kosmos, among the things that exist, is a single point, either being itself God or that it is God, comprehending the soul of all things (Migration of Abraham, 32)
The Puranas insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time and Space. And Vishnu, like Chuang Tzu's absolute Tao, is a kind of absolute void (Shunyata). The Jewish Pythagoreans or kabbalists, or Essenes recognized numbers as prima materia. Their “Genesis” proclaimed: In the beginning nothing (zero) blew up. Amen! In the Hindu philosophical speculations nothing turns into something. A modern Israeli poet in one of his poems wrote a line about “time siring bats in the heart of caves.”
Newton asserted: “Each particle (!) of space is eternal, each indivisible moment of duration is everywhere.” (Principia III, 42). To express what is now called pantheism, Virgil writes, “All things are full of Jupiter.” No doubt Newton was inspired by another native of Grantham, one of the Cambridge Platonists Henry More who elaborated a philosophy of spirit which explained all the phenomena of mind and of the physical world as the activity of spiritual substance controlling inert matter. More conceived of both spirit and matter as spatially extended, but defined spiritual substance as the obverse of material extension: where body is inert and solid, but divisible; spirit is active and penetrable, but indivisible.
As an example of not-material extension he proposed space, within which material extension is contained. He went on to argue space is infinite. More also argued that God who is an infinite spirit is an extended being. There are, therefore, conceptual parallels between the idea of God and the idea of space, a view which he elaborated in Enchiridion metaphysicum, where he argues that the properties of space are analogous to the attributes of God (infinity, immateriality, immobility etc). H. More was a Cambridge Yogi.
The Hindu religious dogma proclaimed, “All beings are of the same substance, they end by absorption into the bosom of the absolute being (Brahma), which is the metaphysical bond (gravity) of the universe” This Aryan dogma became the base of all European theories of emanationism. According to Plotinus, the first emanation is Logos. It is the unity of forms. When it is radiated forth, its separation from its source produces a turning back or yearning from its source. This yearning is encountered in the neoplatonic interpretation of the Eros or the love for the source of existence (Recall the Source in the series Charmed), which leads everything back to its ultimate origin. Big Bang's contraction will bring us back to Nirvana. The Germans translate Nirvana as Nullpunkt (null point)
Josephus (Antiquitates, XIII) tells us that the Essenes (Jewish Pythagoreans or the Jewish Buddhists, presently called Bu-Jews) held the souls to be immortal: according to them souls descended into bodies, in aerial form, from the highest region of the air (called aether); they are carried back there by a violent attraction.
In the paper entitled De Aere et Aethere Newton wrote: “Just as bodies of this earth by breaking into small particles are converted into air, so these particles can be broken into lesser ones by some violent action and converted into yet more subtle air which, if it is subtle enough to penetrate the pores of the glass, crystal and other terrestrial bodies, we may call spirit of the air, or the ether. The incorporeal ether which facilitates gravitation is actually the body or spiritual form of Jesus Christ,” in the Seneca words “ab aethere lucidissimo ... in terram usque diffusus est.” In the Newtonian physics the difference between matter and spirit is that of degree of condensation. The Jesus-Gravity attracts, obviously, rather in virtue of the substance than of weight. In other words the force of attraction of a planet does not depend on its mass.
The 1997 Luc Besson movie, The Fifth Element, inspired by Newton's identification of gravity with the spiritual body of Christ portrayed the perfect being (played by Milla Jovovich) as a fifth element (quintessence or aether), whose powers were awakened by Love.
Long before Newton, philosopher Anaximander proclaimed similar dogma, “The heavenly bodies have come into being from earth, because mist rose from the earth and was rarified and produced fire (ether), and the heavenly bodies are composed of fire when it is afloat.” Heraclitus had a lofty vision of Fire when he described it as the basic stuff the world is made of, meaning “the purest and brightest sort that is as of the eternal and divine thunderbolt.” That's why two thunderbolts became the symbol of the Nazi SS. The unrepentant French author who converted to Buddhism and wrote under the pen name Savitri Devi put the following dedication on her book The Lightning and the Sun: “To the god-like Individual of our Times, the Man against Time, the greatest European of all times, both Sun and Lightning.” (www.gnosticliberationfront.com/lightning_and_the_sun%20book.htm)
In Opticks Newton wrote: “I do not know what this Aether is,” but that if it consists of particles then they must be “exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastick than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of Projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon great Bodies, by endeavoring to expand itself. In this passage Newton speaks almost like Descartes whose idea of gravity was not expressed by 'attraction' but by 'pressing'.
But what is more interesting here is the historical background of his identification of aether with spiritual body or form of Jesus Christ. The word aether is derived from the Greek αίθήρ, from a root meaning to kindle, burn, or shine.. It was believed to be the substance filling the upper regions of space.
According to Hindu teaching, Deity in the shape of Aether (Akasa) pervades all things and it (!) was called therefore “the living fire,” the “Spirit of Light,” and sometimes Magnes. It was the highest Deity itself which, according to Plato, built the Universe in the geometrical form of the dodecahedron; and its “first begotten” was born of Chaos and Primordial Light (the Central Sun). This “First-Born,” however, was only the aggregate of the host of the “Builders,” the first constructive forces, who are called in ancient Cosmogonies the Ancients and the “First Point.” Therefore Aether is also considered “the immortal gods who gave birth and life to all.”
The ancient Vedic seers described the original creative process as “the churning of the milky ocean” Maxwell wrote in Encyclopedia Britannica: “Aethers were invented for the planets to swim, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic affluvia...Accordingly, it was believed that aether had to be a fluid in order to fill space whereby fields of subtle substance became condensed into gross matter a view that is now widely accepted today in energy-field physics research.” This “churning” is represented geometrically in Tantric ritual as a four armed cross within a circle and the cross is meant to be imagined as oscillating backwards and forwards as in a churning motion.
Later Stoic philosophers “demythologized” the old myths and reinterpreted the gods themselves as personifications of the natural universe (i.e. matter. Hera represents the air, Zeus the lightning and thunder (i.e. fire) and so on. The Stoic philosophy based on material pneuma, and fiery substance providing rationality is nothing but a European variant of Buddhism.
In Buddhism consciousness shares the qualities of the fifth element, space. Like space, it is the subtlest of the five and pervades them all. It is the first and the last, their source and their culmination. Consciousness is luminous like aureoles around Saints' heads. In essence, it is the Buddha Viarochana, the Illuminator. He embodies the knowledge of totality, the all-encompassing dimension of truth, the sphere of all phenomena as they really are. Awareness expands into infinity, no longer self-centered, because the distinction between subject and object is transcended.
Consider the following story about the Chinese Zen master Hogen. To the question “What is Buddha?” one of the disciples responded “Hei-tei-dji Rai-gu-ka” (“the deity of fire seeks fire”). The Stoics were like the Buddist “jamad-agni”, or those who knew the identity of god and fire. In Stoic philosophy human souls are rational seeds of God (Logos, Zeus, Creative fire) and the conflagration is the event in which all souls return to the pure substance of creative fire (pur technikon), Zeus, which is totally in the spirit of the Hindu religious dogma: “All beings are of the same substance, they end by absorption into the bosom of the absolute Being, which is the metaphysical bond (gravity) of the universe.
The Christ expressed the basic Stoic belief in his phrase: “I am come to send fire (i.e. rational seeds of logos, logos spermatikos) on the earth...(Lk 12:49). We remember that the Pentecostal tongues of fire that sat on Apostle's heads are considered as the true beginning of Christianity, the reign of the Holy Spirit.
It is the same pantheism which inspired the words of John the Baptist: “I baptize with water, but one who is much greater than I is coming…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” According to the New Roman catechism “fire” symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit, the same fire which Paul urged the Thessalonians not to extinguish (cp. The undying fire of the Vestal Virgins) – for it is none other than the Holy Spirit Himself (# 696).
J. Goethe vs. I. Newton
In Goethe's play Faust Part 2, set in classical Greece, the philosophers Thales and Anaxagoras debate the relative power of Water and Fire. Goethe clearly sides with Thales' non-violent Water and Anaxagoras, the more violently-inclined proponent of Fire, fond of volcanic eruptions, suffers defeat. Today the aether is regarded as a superseded scientific theory.
We have two contradictory sources regarding John the Baptist's death. According to canonical Gospels John the Baptist was beheaded because he dared condemn Herod's marriage to Herodias, the wife of Herod's brother Philip (Luke 3:19; Matthew 14:3-5; Mk 6:24, 27).
But Josephus Flavius in his Jewish Antiquities stated that Herod killed John to preempt a possible uprising: “Herod feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (For they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise).” Unlike Jesus, John the Baptist would not advise his fellow Jews to “render unto Caesar...”
From the Royal Budget for Jesus
“And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him. And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward (Chuza was King Herod’s business manager and was in charge of his palace and domestic affairs), and Susanna, and many others, who gave him of their wealth for his needs. “ (Mark. 8:1-3)
The book of Acts portrays the disciples of John as eventually merging into the followers of Jesus (Acts 18:24- 19: 6), a development not reported by the Gospels except for the early case of Andrew, Simon Peter's brother (John 1:35-42)
Interestingly, for Mandaeans, a tiny Christian sect living to this day in southern Iraq and Iran, John the Baptist called Yahya is a divine prophet but Jesus is a false prophet.
The Chugu-ji temple at Nara, Japan, contains a contoured wooden image about 4 feet 3 inches in height, dating from 650 AD, now generally identified as a representation of Maitreya (Miroku in Japanes), “The Buddha of the Future.” On a disk-shaped halo behind his head cloven tongues of fire are clearly recognizable.