Holy Lance and Holy Cross

1) Holy Lance and Holy Cross, 2) Catholicism vs. Slave Hunting Pseudo-Theology

I usually think creation.com / CMI is a fairly good site, for questions related to the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Usually. But not quite always. As to Fourth Day events, I cannot quite agree with details, to say the least, with avowed Heliocentrics. Today I found a debunking of traditional Mount Ararat site. From it I found - the source of Hume:

CMI : Has the Ark of the Covenant been found? And Noah’s Ark? Pharaoh’s drowned army? What about the Garden of Eden? creation.com/has-the-ark-of-the-covenant-been-found

The relevant quote is:

Then there are pieces of wood ‘from the actual cross of Christ.’ In the fourth century, Helena, the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. ‘There with a rapidity and assurance that can only strike wonder in the modern archaeologist, legend has it that she unearthed the True Cross, the lance, the crown of thorns, and identified, under a temple of Aphrodite, the tomb of Christ.’ [Reference given as: National Geographic, 164 (6):723, December 1983.]

This cross became an object of pilgrimage, with pieces cut off as a token for the one who made a generous offering. Theologian John Calvin (1509–1564) wrote that, by his day, there were so many parts of the ‘true cross’ around that ‘whereas the original cross could be carried by one man, it would take three hundred men to support the weight of the existing fragments of it.’ [John Calvin, Book of Days, Volume 1, p. 587.]

I hope how you can see how:

• a) by promoting scepticism about relic claims, Calvin promoted scepticism about miracles made by or through relics,
• b) besides, he promoted scepticism about recorded Christian miracles outside the case of relics as well,
• c) and in both cases, about the Catholic Church which has recorded them as faithfully if not as inerrantly as Acts records Luke seeing St Paul raise a boy from the dead whom he had examined as having broken the neck and same St Paul deal with snakes and receive a snake bite without harm,
• d) that if this tendency was in Calvin's case not denying Biblical miracles, it was because of the remnants in Calvin's mind from the Catholic religion he had left,
• e) that eventually this would break out on full scale among people loosing the Catholic faith in the Bible on top of the Catholic faith in miracles and relics. This happened in Hume. Feuerbach, Marx and Engels, Lenin, Trotski, Stalin, Mao, as well as Charles Darwin are all intellectually indebted to Calvin's take on miracles and on relics, notably those of the Holy Cross.

Let us see if his original argument holds water.

‘whereas the original cross could be carried by one man, it would take three hundred men to support the weight of the existing fragments of it.’

How did he come up with such a figure? Like numbers involved in the Holocaust, it is not what I would call a singular, visible fact. It is an adding up of singular visible facts, involving huge proportions of estimate.

First of all, even if we suppose there were false relics, there were perhaps true ones as well. But second, his argument about the false relics is a mathematical one which is very hard to check. Third, if not based on downright intellectual dishonesty before people who were not questioning his attacks on Catholicism (whatever else they questioned, as his prolonged celibacy before marrying Ydelette de Bure), it was at best based on some sloppy adding up, and multiplication by a large fragment of Holy Cross. Fourth, God has made the Holy Cross the tree of life, so He can also have given it a multiplication like of the bread and fishes in the desert.

This fourth argument was actually put forth by Catholics, but ridiculed by Calvin. Or by Calvinists. Now I am of course supposing they did not make it up as a strawman to draw away attention from the real criticism of Calvin's argument. I do not think it is necessary to suppose this is so, since I do not have any faith in his "three hundred men" calculus. But at least we are sure God could do it. But if we do not say He actually did so, you can easily see how precisely the three hundred men calculus (in the sense of three hundred men necessary for the sheer weight, there may have been use for more than one man in carrying separate objects, even if their added weight could be carried by one man in an object that is compact and solid) is being rehashed as "mathematical impossibility" of Noah's Ark taking "all existing species" on board.

Now, his calculus may, in case it was anywhere near honest, have been based on adding up localities known to have fragments of the Holy Cross with reputed such, known to have relics, using for multiplication factor perhaps a larger fragment of it, or even the composite weight of relic as such with the jewelry around it.

Of St Theresa from Ávila the direct relics, i e her body, have been dispersed by revolutionary henchmen from France, Napoleon's soldiery, having not exactly the Westminister Catechism, but at least a Calvinist theological fury against "superstition and idolatry of relics". One indirect relic (like a rosary she had used or some piece of clothing) was exposed in Burgos, I touched the rosary I onwed onto the glass window around the relic on my pilgrimage to St James in Galicia. The fact is that relics are not usually carried around or set in a place just as the objects they are, they are set in a setting. Calvin could - presuming his honesty, which I for one am not vouching for - have gotten the weight he multiplied by number of fragments (however he calculated that one) by asking someone who had carried a fragment of the Holy Cross, and the man asked may have been unaware of the calculus Calvin was trying to do, and have given the weight you are carrying in a procession when you carry a relic of the True Cross in processions - an information with a practical value, it was obviously far less heavy than being one of four carrying a golden (or golden on the surface, gilt) statue of the Virgin with Child.

Now, since 25 of March is not just the date of the Annunciation but of the Crucifixion as well - this is even more certain, since it is probably that people in doubt over Christmas date calculated Crucifixion = Day of Conception = 9 months before Day of Birth. So, from the True Cross (but I will get back to it) to the Lance of Longinus.

Adolf Hitler was allegedly in possession of what he believed was the ‘holy lance,’ the spear used by the centurion to pierce Christ’s side. This was only one of many relics der Führer obtained (or sought) to satisfy his obsession with the occult. Interestingly, several such ‘genuine’ spears are owned by various collectors around the world.

Adolf Hitler may have had an "obsession" with the occult. I actually think he had so. Thule Lodge, proning research into lost Atlantis as supposed Urheim of Germanic or Aryan race ... yes, I think he had an "obsession" with the occult or at least (I am not sure what obsession means) an interest which was at times consuming and may have been superstitious. This does not mean that the honour due to relics is occultism, even if Jewry would stamp it as such. When Elisaeus was buried, his body fell on another body, which rose from the dead on touch. The same miracle happened again with the body of St Martin of Tours. God himself has honoured relics with miracles. Now, an occultist may not believe in God, he may not believe miracles are miracles of God, or Adolf may have had some remains of his childhood Catholic faith, precisely as Calvin when not putting Christ's miracles in doubt. But supposing Adolf's interest was of an occultist and sacrilegious nature, this does not discredit the relics. There are Sadducees who belive in no personal God, but who use Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy as a book of occultism. This is the darker side of what happened in Kabbalah between Kaiaphas rejecting the true Christ, and Isaac Kaduri finding Him. It is a side of kabbalistic use of Holy Writ among those who prefer Kaiaphas to Kaduri even now. But obviously, and Jonathan Sarfati must agree, this does not discredit Genesis.

So, getting back to how the True Cross and the Lance of Longinus were found ... St Helen, the Mother of Constantine the Great (whom the Eastern Orthodox also honour as a Saint) did some research. It involved torturing a Jew who had the information but refused to give it away (not with her own hands of course). This is to some people argument enough she was no Saint and that any Church honouring her as such must be outside the People of God. I obviously do not agree. Any Church NOT honouring her as a saint is outside the true People of God, whatever excuses God may find for individual souls who lost their way into such a thing. But as to the story of how this happened, there is better evidence than National Geographic articles.

How the Holy Cross Was Found: From Event to Mediaeval Legend
Stephan Borgehammar
http://www.amazon.fr/How-Holy-Cross-Was-Found/dp/9122014322

A book I read before becoming friends, via Facebook, with its author. A quite man, not easily excited. His life has been more quiet than that of John Calvin (or my own). His conversion from Lutheran Confession to Catholic Church was more quiet than mine, but far more quiet than Calvin's self-exclusion by partial apostasy from the Catholic Church as co-founding some Non-Lutheran Protestant Confessions (Lutherans reject Zwingli and Calvin, but accept Melanchthon as a Theologian). But even above his personal qualities, he is a man who put forth a coherent argument. Since the story exists in two or three versions, that even contradict each other or seem to do so (I just said that the Catholic record of miracles is as faithful, but not as inerrant, as St Luke's record in the Holy Bible - faithfulness being a human intention and even achievement, inerrancy more like a divine privilege), since these exist since very shortly after the purported event, the story as such must have arisen very close in time to when it is supposed to have happened, i e, as I add to his conclusion, to when it happened. As writing within Modern Academia, he was not allowed or did not feel allowed to state that conclusion in the text of his Book.

I may save the topic of the Ark of Noah for another day, the Holy Lance and the Holy Cross are quite enough as theme for one essay.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Annunciation of Our Lady
the Blessed Virgin Mary
and Holy Good Thief
25-III-2014

Appropriately, when on theme of Good Friday and when having mentioned Hume and Marx, I came across this:

The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance
Founders: Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan
http://www.memorialsighet.ro/index.php?lang=en

I might mention that Carpentras, in France, formerly (back then) Holy Roman Empire, claims to possess a horse bite made by Constantine, from the nails of the Holy Cross. But it was the Church Bells from a Church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary which stopped the Plague of 1628. As I looked up Saint Mors or Saint Clou (Holy Horse-Bite or Holy Nail), I found on wiki an ancient author's reference:

Rufin d'Aquilée, Histoire Ecclésiastique, I, 7-8 (PL 21, 475), with Rufinus of Aquileia and Historia Ecclesiastica as Latin forms, and PL means Patrologia Latina, edited by Migne. Obviously an author who died 411 AD is a better source for something that happened around 325 than an author who lived around 1000 AD for something that happened 2300 BC.

Obviously, Stephan Borgehammar had additional information. One French Architect, Charles Rohault de Fleury went through all the fragments of the Holy Cross he could find, estimated them accurately by cubic millimetres, and they amounted to a tenth of a Cross. I suppose this refers to his work "de Fleury, Charles Rohault (1870). Les instruments de la passion. Paris." And one A. Frolow, art connaisseur - I suppose the reference is to "Frolow, A., « La relique de la Vraie Croix », Archives de l'Orient chrétien, 7, Institut français d'études byzantines (1961)" - completed the work, got ten times as much and this means there is half a Cross around in the Cross relics. The first has his own wikipedian article in both English and French, the latter was cited as a reference to the French article on the Battle of the Yarmouk./HGL

Sometimes Luther Got it Right!

Here is what I am quoting:

Nothing new under the Cosmos
Neil deGrasse Tyson pushes atheism like his mentor Carl Sagan
Jonathan Sarfati
Published: 23 March 2014
Section: Geokinetic revisionism
http://creation.com/cosmos-neil-degrasse-tyson-review#_Geokinetic_revisionism

Here is the quote:

Luther actually said:

Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Joshua 10:12].

Note the parts I have italicized. These show that a major reason for Luther’s objection was Copernicus’ challenging the establishment and common sense for its own sake (as Luther saw it). At the time (as opposed to 20-20 hindsight), there was no hard evidence for geokineticism. And Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), a devout Lutheran, saw no conflict between geokineticism and Lutheran theology. He showed how Joshua 10:12 could be explained as phenomenological language, using Luther’s own principles of biblical interpretation! See also Joshua’s long day: Did it really happen—and how?

OK, phenomenal language covers the narrator's words "and the sun stood still". Possibly, if these stood by themselves.* But does it cover Joshua's words while performing the miracle? When Jesus told a Legion of Demons "get out of him", was that also phenomenal language?

I think CMI might want to think again on this one. And Luther gave the right direction. Of course, unlike Kepler and Sarfati he had the advantage of being raised a Catholic.

I already had looked up the link to Joshua's long day and it has not bee updated to include the aspect I was missing in it earlier. I now looked up the Kepler link which does not deal with that either. While we do talk of Kepler, it seems Calvin had perfect acquaintance with Kepler's works and condemned them, repeating what Luther had said in the table talk. This was the century before the processes of 1616 and 1633 in the former of which Sidereus Nuntius was condemned as a book and Galileo forbidden to deal with the subject further and in the latter of which only Galileo had finally to abjure. On this topic Reformers and Catholics reached the same conclusion, only that the Reformers smelled the rat earlier.

When finally the Catholic Church did react, it were the Dominicans of San Marco in Florence** who rang the alarm bell - precisely in the topic "Josue did not order the Earth to stand still, but the Sun to do so". And similar ones, related to Holy Bible, including a certain Psalm which CMI treats a bit Cavalierly.

Now, Jonathan Sarfati is citing Buridan and Nicole Oresme (as well as Copernicus) against Tyson. But Copernicus, first did not dare publish his work, then published it with a preface (or a testament executor did so after his death) stating Heliocentrism (in the exact sense of Sun standing absolutely still in the Centre of the Cosmos) was being forwarded only as a Mathematical Model of a reality which in itself was of course Geocen- tric (in the similarily absolute sense). Buridan possibly, Oresme certainly arrived at same conclusion: Heliocentrism was mathematically possible, but it was pointless absurdity for its own sake*** (see how Luther agreed with them!) to consider it seriously as possible reality.

I am sorry the attack on Tyson (and he does not an attack for admiring the New Age Kook Bruno, and he does need one for recycling the Hypatia canard at the Centre of "Agora" as well) is disfigured by the attempt to still save Heliocentrism.

Chesterton said two things that come top mind here:

• a) it may happen that the Catholics will have to say what the Reformers tried to say, BUT when it really needs saying
• b) "it is really good news that the Earth is round". I e as a ball and not as a French or Dutch pancake.

I think you have already seen where I think a Catholic today would need to agree with the Reformers on point a. Fortunately a point where no condemnation from Trent came at all. You see, Trentine Council dealt with four kinds of Protestantism plus their recombinations:

• Luther's errors;
• Zwingli's and Oecolampadius' errors;
  (Bucer and Calvin and Cranmer recombine these two)
• Muenzer's errors of Anabaptism and revolution;
• Lelio and Fausto Sozzini's errors, leading up to George MacDonald at their best and Transcendentals at their worst and being revived in a less anti-Biblical way by Charles Taze Russell.

But Luther's words from Table Talks are not on the list of Anathemata. Or rather, not the particular ones just cited.

On the other hand "Bible as Capable of Containing Errors", a very bad heresy, was definitely on the list due to the both Sozzinis. Trent defines that Bible as such is without error, and that Original Manuscript of any one book is in that way Bible as such. As for copies and translations, errors can have crept in as to "mere fact",° but not as to salvific doctrine in the translation commonly used by the Church, i e the Vulgate by St Jerome of Stridon.°°

Now, as to the other little reference to Chesterton ...

In Manalive the Character Innocent Smith says "it is really good news that the World is Round" ... and it was news that Giordano Bruno seems to have missed, despite them being available for so many centuries since Eratosthenes, despite the Church not hiding or condemning it, despite him having a training as a Dominican (which is perhaps why Dominicans at San Marco were vigilant a few years after he was burned). Why "miss- ed"? Well, if he had got it, he would have known that his "proof" (by extrapolation ... uh uh ...) for infinity of Universe was flawed in its most observable part.

He reasoned - I learned a few months ago - that "as the wanderer will always find new horizons, so also if one could fly through space, one would always find new constellations, therefore the Universe has to be infinite".

Innocent Smith set out wandering for the point where "new horizons" give way to "old horizons once again", the beautiful morning of a νοστον αημαρ. Since the surface of the earth is only without an outer rim, but not actually infinite, anyone even not setting out for that point and that morning voluntarily would if travelling long enough reach it by fluke. And if travelling but not long enough he would of course not have any infinity of horizons either.

If St Thomas More was a saint (as a Catholic I am not doubting it, not for a moment) and was right when saying about the Sun "I'll be above that fellow", then he may have gone pretty quickly, or his soul at least (await- ing his body to join it on the Day of Resurrection) to a point where the stars no longer give new constellations, but only turn the nearest ones inside out. Heaven is a place, because it already contains two or three bodies, Our Lord and the Queen-Mother of Heaven°°° and probably St John the Disciple's body as well.

Now, this is what Bruno missed out on, for one of his lines of thought. He concluded for a mathematically infinite universe (which is mathematically impossible, size as in distance between two points, like number, can only be finite, except "potentially"~ And he did so because he had not thought the roundness of earth through thoroughly. He was denying, mentally, in the "observable" part of his parallel reasoning, that Earth had an outer rim, quite correctly, but concluding that it was basically an infinite flat extension, as it might have appeared to one Rahan. And even Rahan one day (fictional though he was) had to conclude that the Sun was cheating, he was going back under earth each night.~~ Which would imply either rim or roundness, and deny Giordano Bruno's infinite flatness.

I am not sure whether Bruno's preference for Heliocentrism as to Our World and Polycentrism/Acentrism as to Infinity of Worlds came from his reasoning in favour of an Infinity of Worlds. I do know that once he reaches that point, he reaches a point where St Thomas Aquinas's philosophical proof for God being exactly one creator and ruler of one world breaks down in favour of Bruno's and Joseph Smith's conclusion "He" is only the "God" of Our World/Solar System. How so? St Thomas Aquinas does not say it is impossible to prove the existence of God from the mind of Man, as CSL did in Miracles, but he does not pursue that proof, he prefers more extrovert methods of proving God. Now, in a sense the Five Ways cited in Prima Pars, Quaestio Secunda, Articulus Tertius or First Part, Second Question, Third Article (abbreviated I, Q2, A3) does prove there is a God. But at that specific point the God proven is so unspecific He could be St Thomas' own God, the Triune God of the Bible and of the Tradition, or, the "god of Dawkins", or even "the god of Bruno and Joseph Smith". The specific point at which St Thomas rules out that particular spectre even further mixed up with "world soul", another one not yet refuted in Q2 A3 (for belief in which Bruno got burned in 1600), was precisely (I, Q11, A3) the Unity of God's action on the world. If we want a conspectus of Q2 A3 with Q11 A3, we could do worse than going to John Calvin or ... Steven Dutch.~~~

If the earth isn't rotating, and everything is rotating around the earth, then everything more than a mere 4.1 billion kilometers away from earth (2.5 billion miles) is moving faster than the speed of light. Jupiter and Saturn are actually moving at appreciable fractions of the speed of light as they whip around the earth once a day. They should show easily observable relativistic length contraction. So relativity is wrong, too. The speed of light either is not a limit, or must vary from place to place in space. So all the formulas in electronics and quantum mechanics that make lasers and solid state electronics possible must be wrong too. Curiously enough, the spacecraft we send to the distant planets behave as if their electronics are following exactly the same laws of physics as on earth. Somehow these spacecraft get accelerated by the rotating universe to far beyond the speed of light, something terrestrial physics considers impossible, yet all the data we get back mimics the terrestrial laws of physics. More prosaically, these spacecraft are being flung outward by huge centrifugal forces, but the forces have absolutely no effect on their trajectories.

Well, this very great speed is of course a great credit to the Might of God in the category "strength" (infinite such). But when it comes to either spacecraft passing Saturn (if such occurred) or stars staying in their place in the "sphere of the fixed stars" or planets going calmly about their usual orbits within that ... and all this without bursting ... that is a fine credit to God's Wisdom and Control. We Catholic Geocentrics are not saying that a Geocentric Universe can be explained in purely natural terms, as something God set rolling but which runs itself "without further intervention from its maker" (until it runs down). We say that Geocentrism, i e taking the Universe as it is directly observable, is a major argument that there is a God. To Bruno the denial of Geocentrism did not yet spell Atheism (after all each of his "Worlds" might need as much internally in order to stay in shape even if the star was in the centre), but it dis spell Polytheism, and that was one thing he was put on the stake for. It was - as obviously - one thing that Freemasons admire him for having thought. And Freemasons were Heliocentric from the start. Or became so within a century.

They also believe in "the great architect of the universe" ... which is a title given to "god" - or nearly so - before them by one Kepler.#

As Kepler said: ‘We see how God, like a human architect, approached the founding of the world according to order and rule and measured everything in such a manner.’ (Johannes Kepler, quoted in: J. H. Tiner, Johannes Kepler-Giant of Faith and Science, Mott Media, Milford, Michigan (USA), 1977, inside front cover).

To St Thomas Aquinas, God had more like constructed an Instrument during Creation, and since then He has been playing on it, both in miracles and in "ordinary providence". If God shows Himself in His universe, He is not an Intruder. But an Architect who signed over the house he had built, say to an Adamson, would be an intruder if disturbing Adamson by showing up in the house he had built. That is one way in which "architect" is not a theologically bright comparison for God. Though it is also actually there in Medieval Iconography. And it cannot be totally lacking as to Earth (a place where the Creator has sometimes not even a stone to use as a pillow and a place about which He used the words about "laying foundations" to Job, also a place in the Middle of which He is leaving people pretty much alone, since Hell is situated there), but it is hardly appropriate as to the Universe as a whole. I am not sure whether Kepler was also guilty of Arianism. I thought he had been involved in Astrology all his carreer and find with some relief he actually attempted to disprove it after a while, but his fondness of calculating the exact positions of the planets at any given time was of no practical value, except to astrologers. It was at least where he came from. And Newton was both an occultist and an Arian, as I learned from Lyndon LaRouche (who, however, heroise Kepler).

Steven Dutch actually cites that Celestial Mechanics of the latter one (perhaps updated a bit by Laplace) as proof of Heliocentrism (as to Solar System):

First of all, there are no known cases anywhere else in the universe of large massive objects circling around small light objects.

OK, are socker balls more massive than Zlatan? Are hockey pucks larger than Russian Hockey players? That was some news to me! Or perhaps Dutch is claiming socker and hockey are myths? Or they are in some other universe with laws totally separate from those of our universe?

I suppose he meant "circling" as shorter expression for "circling through a balance of attraction to a centre and inertia as to an initia or previous path not going to or through it". In that case there are no known non-astronomical parallels in which the circling has been going on for billions of circles either. When stones on strings are being circled by a hand for illustration, it is actually not a two body problem with an attractive force, but a three body problem with string as third body limiting range of stone as second body. When water droplets circle statically charged knitting needles in NASA space stations (out of gravity field of earth)## the circles are replaced by a water droplet drawn onto the knitting needle afer about fifteen circles.

Of course, you could argue that inside the space station air is providing friction.

But that even complete lack of friction (if such were the case in space) could extend the lease from fifteen to fifteen billion circles (say for Mercury, since a Solar System formed 4.5 billion Earth Years ago) staggers belief. And, unlike the supposition of Galileo (who on top of that considered circular motion as an equivalent of rest if going on in a friction less environment after being set in motion by God), space is not a complete void (confer a redder light in part not attributed to famous red shift, but to dispersion of blue light due to interstellar matter, including but not limited to gas clouds.

I will actually get on a bit with Dutch now:

In issuing its challenge, CAI specified:

Now a word of caution. By "proof" we mean that your explanations must be direct, observable, physical, natural, repeatable, unambiguous and comprehensive. We don't want hearsay, popular opinion, "expert" testimony, majority vote, personal conviction, organizational rulings, superficial analogies, appeals to "simplicity," "apologies" to Galileo, or any other indirect means of persuasion which do not qualify as scientific proof.

Sounds reasonable, but is it? After we eliminate the arguments from authority, we are left with "direct, observable, physical, natural, repeatable, unambiguous and comprehensive." Nobody should have any issue with the proof being observable or repeatable, and "comprehensive" is so loose as to be meaningless, but what about the rest? Does "physical" rule out mathematical proofs? Does "natural" rule out observations by spacecraft?

Parallax can be arranged by angels moving the stars. As Christians, we cannot say as a certainty of faith God excluded angels from any merely material part in Ordinary Providence (excepting stationarity of earth). He only excluded them from directly producing our will. So, parallax, as observed by Earth will not do. The parallax of Alpha Centauri could be interpreted as a consequence of earth moving back and forth at a known distance (with two known angles), but also of an angel moving Alpha Centauri (unknown distance both of movement and to us). But there is a possible way of verification still open to those stating it is 4 lightyears (approx) away: I have, some time ago, suggested an observation of aberration and parallax be made, not just from Earth, but also from Mars. If Tychonian Universe is Has, as far as I know, not been done. I have also suggested that the space probes might have while going off in straight lines observed a zigzagging of Earth, IF of course Earth is moving annually in and out of the Origo of their trajectory lines, and I have not gotten any answer.###

So, as to Dr Jonathan Sarfati stating Bruno and Galileo had no proof back then I would extend that to nor do their inheritors now. But as to Dr Jonathan Sarfati stating that Mediævals were positively Geokinetic before Bruno, I will have, much as I detest the admiration of Bruno in deGrasse Tyson, have to say he is right. But if I do not count that as an admission, it is because I do not share the otherwise pretty common admiration for Heliocentrism or Geokinetism.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
III:d (? right?) Sunday of Lent
23-III-2014

Notes:

* Similarily an Atheist could say he didn't trust the Hebrew timeline of History more than the Egyptian or Greek ones, but he would be forgetting that Genesis, and even St Luke, like Ynglingatal (for Sweden-Norway-Iceland), has a chronological backbone of genealogies. Which Egyptian and Greek Paganism lacked.

** A Church where Bergoglio is either allergic against that Church as such or against the Latin Mass being said in it, I cannot recall which, but it was in the news earlier.

*** It is mathematically possible that every day the universe is shrinking ten times in every dimension, so every 24 h every solid has 1000 times less volume than the day before, and that natural laws are being readjusted (perhaps already by the overall shrinkage of every other object) so that no one would notice due to changed sizes playing out differently according to how many dimensions were involved. But it is patently a pointless absurdity to assume this is so, and that is how Nicolaus Oresme felt about Heliocentrism as well.

° Is for instance "60 stades" an error for "160 stades"? One Syrian manuscript has 160 stades between Jerusalem and Emmaus (and the original could have had that too, then), but on the other hand Emmaus has since been destroyed and rebuilt and if Amwaz is 160 stades (30 km, 20 miles) from Jerusalem this does not absolutely mean Emmaus was so too in Biblical times, the same population can have taken a new locality. Most radical interpretation of the conundrum: the real distance was 160 stades "as the bird flies", but by miracle Jesus and the Disciples walked from point A to B using less walking distance, only 60 stades (12 km, 8 miles) since He can create dimensions.

°° Same St Jerome based his Biblical chronology, cited each Christmas (except by certain modernists since 1994, in the English speaking world), not on the Vulgate but on the Septuagint. Trent did not define that St Jerome ought to have used his Vulgate nor that the Christmas proclamation should be changed to conform to the Vulgate. Trads are still reading it in conformity to Septuagint.

°°° I learned that Queen Mothers in the Davidic Court are not called with the same word for Queen as used about one Pagan "Queen of Heaven"; but even if this were not so, it is certain that a title can have a rightful as well as an usurping pretender, as with King of Heaven, rightfully a title of Our Lord, or similarily King of Angels. Is Our Lord a Pagan Divinity because Zeus is called "King of Gods"? But what about Henoch and Elijah? They have indeed risen up into the Heavens, but possibly to a lower sphere, from which they will return before martyrdom, lying three and a half days, being raised from the dead and only after that rising to join the real High Court.

~ God's aeternum is infinite "in time", but very unlike time as not a succession. The sempiternum of angels and saved souls and glorious risen bodies is a succession, which is only potentially infinite (and does in fact never end) but which at any given moment is a finite time after Creation.

~~ Rahan is a French Comic book of the Seventies, and it was translated - lucky me - into Swedish as well. It is the name of the main character as so many other good titles. He is a Cro-Magnon "Daedalus" type, sole survivor of his clan which was killed excepting only him, in an eruption of a Volcano. He wanders from clan to clan, from tribe to tribe, considering that all men are brothers ("those who walk upright" can of course be seen as an indirect reference to "all righteous men" but is meant for his word for mankind since he lacks so much vocabulary ... to a linguist it is a nightmare or a comedy, depending on taste, I was not yet such when enjoying the adventures as a child).

~~~ Steven Dutch : Pseudoscience : Geocentrism
https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Geocentrism.HTM

# Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Outstanding scientist and committed Christian
by Ann Lamont
http://creation.com/johannes-kepler

## ZME SCience : Water droplets orbiting around a knitting needle in space [AMAZING VIDEO]
Published on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 by Tibi Puiu
http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/water-droplet-orbiting-knitting-needle-space-video-33653/

### Suggestion of studying parallax or aberration from Mars was made on this post or rather editorial comments under it (i e PS:s, basically):

HGLundahl's FaceBook Writings : Creationism and Geocentrism are Sometimes Used as Metaphors for Obsolete Because Disproven, Inaccurate, Science
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/04/cagasuamfobdis.html

From this other page on my blogs ...

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : A thread from Catholic.com (more may be added)
[short link now : http://ppt.li/kp]
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/p/thread-from-catholiccom-more-may-be.html

... you can access, among other threads on Catholic.Com (i e Catholic Answers Forum) also this one which deals with the zigzagging of earth as seen from space probes if Earth is moving, and you can see the thread was closed without my precise point being in any way answered, only a general reference to Geocentrism being BS was given:

Catholic Answers Forums > Forums > Apologetics : Has Cassini-Huygens spacecraft earth flyby in 1999 disproven geocentrism [?]
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=9120534#post9120534

The Most Precious Name of Jesus - Two More Aspects, or Three

1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : How the name of Our Lord was transliterated into Greek., 2) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Where is Papist in Bible Code?, 3) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : The Most Precious Name of Jesus - Two More Aspects, or Three

I have previously established why Ieshua transliterates as Ιησους rather than as a theoretically barely possible but never met Ιησουας. In a second message where I found a reference to Zadoc in between God and Papist in a Bible Code based on King James, I discussed why Iesus and Iustus are two words that have the same first letter, the same first sound in Romance languages, including English (which became a bit French through the Norman invasion) but excluding Romanian (which has its form Isus from Church Slavonic). Two more aspects can be added to whether Ieshua is correctly transliterated as Jesus or not.

First is explaining the middle sound, I was first thinking of the Shin/Sin matter, but there is also the vowel, so the first aspect is two aspects. Second is whether Greek Antiquity saw other transmiterations, and if Ιησους, Iesus, was the one most probably used about Our Lord when first referred to in Greek and Latin.

As to the first, in Greek of older days, it seems η had the sound of a short E, rather than the sound of EE. That is also true about English for the days when EE got its spelling (which generally speaking for most words is from Chaucer's time, previous to the vowel shift, or, if word came into English use later, adapted to the spelling system of Chaucer's English reinterpreted after the Great Vowel Shift). That is the most probable explanation as to why Hebrew has E/AY, Latin has E/AY, but Greek has what now amounts to EE in this Holy Name. Church Slavonic and Romanian (Isus) follow the later Greek pronunciation.

As to the second, Greek and Latin are simply what one may term as "Sibbolet dialects". There are Indo-European languages now that have the sound of Shin, but in all cases it comes from other sounds. In certain Slavonic contexts it comes from Sin after certain other sounds. In French context it comes from Latin C (Kaph) : Cheval is pronounced Sher-Vull, and comes from Latin Caballus. In Northern and English, German contexts it comes from SK, precisely as in Italian from SC, either before slender vowels or in English and German generally. But the earliest written Indo-European languages in Europe, Greek and Latin, are without any Shin at all, they are Sibbolet dialects. People speaking them but not Hebrew would have been able to make the noice of SH, but not to recognise it as a letter in their own language.

Now, third. There are other transliterations of Ieshua than Ιησους or Iesus in Antiquity. One very casual one was Iason or Ιασων. It was also a Pagan name, that of the leader of the Argonauts. And in St Jerome's Vulgate the Sixth Book of the Old Testament is called Iosue. Herein he followed suit after one post-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, written after Jewry rejected the LXX.

But in the LXX Joshua Ben Nun is given as Ιησους Ναυη. And since he was the great role model so to speak of Hebrews bearing that name, obviously the then only current Greek form of his name would have been the one used about Our Lord whenever Greek was being used. It is very probable that on the Cross the inscription written by Pilate had Ieshua in Hebrew letters, then ΙΗΣΟΥΣ in Greek and IESVS in Latin ones.

And these are the transliterations that the Church has kept, for Greek and for Latin. Now, a few days ago the Church celebrated St Gregory the Great. The English people got its Christianity from Rome, not from Constantinople, not from Antioch. And if French Christianity (as I mentioned the present forms in English are taken over from French, except for the vowel shift changing a written E from AY to EE) got its earliest Apostles from Greek speaking parts, when Greek went out of current use there and in Italy Latin came into use as new liturgic language for the West. It was understood on the one hand, it was still (up to Alcuin's reform) flexible in pronunciation, a bit like Greek Katharevousa, including texts from LXX and NT and Church Fathers and on, but being now pronounced like Dhimotiki, and it already had a tradition as a written language.

And of course, Christianity has a perfect right to retain its Ancient Roots rather than having them replaced by new transliterations or - in other matters - translations from Hebrew roots, especially as our access to the latter have come to pass via texts of the Synagogue and therefore via sources that lack and reject the Faith.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
II Sunday of Lent
16-III-2014

Does Steven Dutch Know History?

1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Does Steven Dutch Know History?, 2) Creation vs. Evolution : Two Points on Asher’s Book – and a Third One

Here is his attack on the Kolbe Center (had to check it is not Kolbe Centre, but no, American spelling).*

He cites them from their site (without linking to a specific page) and then gives his rejection of them within brackets. One which shows he has no idea about history.

Quoting Dutch's page:

The Kolbe Center

This modernist attitude is refuted by the progressive and degenerative moral effect produced by rejection of, first, geocentrism in the 17th century, then special creation in the 19th century, and now the very existence of human life in the womb in the 20th.

[Maximilian Kolbe was a priest had pioneered religious use of mass media before World War II, and who voluntarily took the place of a condemned prisoner at Auschwitz. He was later canonized for his heroism. To have his name associated with something like this is truly revolting, indeed, as sacrilegious as any of the evils this group attacks. Also, sorry, but I don't think abolishing slavery, granting rights to women, establishing due process, and so on, count as "degenerative."]

Commenting

on quote just given.

What were the causes given by Kolbe Center?

degenerative moral effect produced by rejection of, first, geocentrism in the 17th century, then special creation in the 19th century, and now the very existence of human life in the womb in the 20th.

What does Dutch consider as not degenerative?

Also, sorry, but I don't think abolishing slavery, granting rights to women, establishing due process, and so on, count as "degenerative."

A fair reply A:

i

If slavery was in a sense abolished by Enlightenment, was that not a slavery reintroduced by Renaissance Humanism which had previously been abolished by Christian Middle Ages?

ij

And women having rights, if we mean right to not be put out at birth because parents already had one daughter, well, it was the Christian Middle Ages, it was Constantine who by banning abortion gave them this right. When a girl who became a martyr and a Saint was called Caecilia, that does not mean her parents had lookd for a name and come up with Caecilia, it means her father's last name was Caecilius. We do not hear of very many Pagan Roman families where she could even have had a sister called Caecilia Secunda. Christianity granted new born girls the right to life and the right to a personal name - like being called after the martyr St Caecilia or Cecily. Steven Dutch could of course be referring to more sinister things than the right to live. And in fact the Woman of the Middle Ages had more rights than the one of Renaissance or Code Napoléon legislation.

iij

And due process was first established, partly in Codex Iuris Civilis, in reaction against the arbitrary process of those persecuting Christians, then by Inquisition (in Spain people would commit some more leniently punishable crimes in order to get tried by Inquisition, because it was a due process), and if Enlightenment (partly in reaction against two aspects of Inquisition, namely lack of lawyer and permission to limited torture, excepting England) established due process, that was also a re-establishment of due process rather than a first establishment thereof, precisely as Enlightenment abolishing slavery was a re-abolishing of something already abolished. Before. By Young Eart Creationist and Geocentric Christians. More precisely Athanasian Trinitarians, and believers in Councils, Bishops, Monks, Seven Sacraments and Holy Mass.

A fair reply B:

If Enlightenment and its XX^th C. aftermath can indeed brag with some betterments as abolishing slavery, giving rights to women, establishing due process, and this was a repetition of "progress" or rather betterments made during or just before Middle Ages, why should we believe the taste for such betterments came from Heliocentrism, Darwinism, and later Einstein and Roe vs Wade?

A fair reply C:

Through Roe vs Wade, slavery is being reestablished and death penalty has got its due process abolished. When heads were cut off during French Revolution, heads were also attacked by Shrinks. Both shrinks and Robespierre were ardent believers in Laplace and ardent disbelievers in the Church, because it had refused to abandon Geocentrism. Blacks of the United States (or of certain states) were going through a worse slavery in the XX^th C. thanks to Margaret Sanger being a devotee of Darwin, Huxley, Galton, than they had been freed from during the XIX^th C. by Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Abe. Or in some cases already before, by Lee. In my own country Sweden, Lapps and Tatters had that Hell during the XX^th C. also. From 1935 (Hitler imitated the move next year, our Per Albin was before him) to the Seventies.

A fair reply D:

If this does not convince Dutch that Kolbe Center has pretty good reasons, as far as history of ideas is concerned, to oppose the revolutions in "science" along with more tangible evils, perhaps he could at least consider to stop patronising St Maxilian Kolbe against it. His resumé of the latter's activity does not quite show any familiarity with in what exact way he was "a priest [who] had pioneered religious use of mass media before World War II", he does not show any great familiarity with the fact that Rzyczerz Niepokalanej was dedicated to convert Jews and Freemasons, and included some sharp criticism of these, both categories. No, I cannot say the Center** choose its Patron badly.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
II Sunday of Lent
16-III-2014

* Steven Dutch : Pseudoscience : Geocentrism
https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Geocentrism.HTM

** Center being of course US spelling of Centre.

How the name of Our Lord was transliterated into Greek.

1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : How the name of Our Lord was transliterated into Greek., 2) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Where is Papist in Bible Code?, 3) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : The Most Precious Name of Jesus - Two More Aspects, or Three

I saw a page which stated two things:

• 1) As identified previously, the letter “J” is a recent addition to our language and is really only slightly older than America itself. It hasn’t been around a very long time, therefore, we can know for certain that Our Saviour’s name could not have been Jesus nor could Our Heavenly Father’s name have been Jehovah.
  
  
• 2) There is no question that the true and proper names of Our Saviour and Creator could have been transliterated properly in any phonetic based language. Many other Hebrew names were transliterated in Scripture. Why not this one? The most important Name of all!

I answered, with a footnote longer than answer itself, and here add a new one:

Ieshua transliterated to Greek Ιησους (oblique cases Ιησου).*

Ιησους transliterated into Latin Iesus or Ihesus or Jesus (oblique cases Jesu, except accusative Jesum).

Letter shape J is a pretty old device for distinguishing I from L when the L began to look like l. What is only slightly older than US is calling I one letter** and J another letter./HGL

*One could have expected a transliteration as Ιησουας as well, since dative would have been Ιησουα_ι, Accusative Ιησουαν, Vocative Ιησουα (exact match), but in that case Genitive would have been Ιησουου … so Ιησου in Genitive, Dative and Vocative (Ιησουν in Accusative, I think) and hence Ιησους in Nominative was simpler.

The -s ending is unavoidable in Greek masculine singular nominatives. Transliterate Iohanan, you get an Accusative Ιω'αννην (pretty close match) but the Nominative is still Ιωαννης, with an -s. Lithuanian is similar. Vladimiras Vladimirovičius Putinas = Владимир Владимирович Путин. Obviously in Nominative, in Genitive you get Vladimiro, in Dative Vladimirui …

** Under all the Middle Ages they were the same letter and used interchangably, as also u and v in Latin. In English you could distinguish uu/vv/w from u/v, but then uu was regarded as a digraph, as Ll in Welsh.