Tag: Historical Alternative

The Gospel Of Jesus’ Wife

It is a Sunday and since I do not post much on religious subjects….what better day to break that streak that on a Sunday?  Amen and pass the news!

In the past 50 years or so there have been many little known “gospels” being located in isolated places around the world…….stuff like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library of scriptures that have all but been forgotten…..

We have found the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth and on and on….but the one that has caused the most violent of responses to its content is the one that gives an alternative to the story we are told in Sunday school…….the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife……

Since Harvard University professor Karen King first reported in 2012 her discovery of what appears to be an ancient papyrus in which Jesus is suggested to have a wife, the authenticity of the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” has been the subject of much claim and counterclaim. Even the very ink is hard to test because the papyrus scrap is so small. But now LiveScience is reporting that new ink research conducted at Columbia University suggests the document is not a forgery and could indeed date back to ancient times, though researchers aren’t revealing more until their peer-reviewed findings are published. King isn’t saying much, either, though she did write in a letter in the Biblical Archaeological Review that “when discussions and research are ongoing, I think it is important, however difficult, to stay open regarding the possible dates of the inscription and other matters of interpretation.”

Meanwhile, new documents have surfaced perhaps countering the argument that the person who sold the Coptic-language papyrus to the anonymous person who passed it on to King wasn’t in fact in possession of it. King said last year that the anonymous owner provided her with a photocopy of the contract for the sale of six “Coptic papyrus fragments, one believed to be a Gospel,” from the German in question, Hans-Ulrich Laukamp, dated Nov. 12, 1999, and signed by both parties. A LiveScience reporter has since found seven signatures on five publicly available and notarized documents belonging to Laukamp, which at least provides the opportunity to verify the authenticity of his signature. The British Museum, meanwhile, is in possession of a Syriac-language manuscript dating from AD570 that is said to be a copy of an older document suggesting Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, reports news.com.au. (This book claims Jesus had two kids with Mary Magdalene.)

I am sure that this will be debated until the cows come home……with no real accurate conclusion…..personally, I cannot see a Jewish guy in his 30s back in the day that was unmarried…..would have been a source of friction in the society……of course what do I know….I was not there…..and neither was anyone else I know……

Will we ever know the truth?

Lies Agreed Upon

First let me announce that sometime yesterday In Saner Thought got its 200,000th hit…….kinda cool……thank you one and all……

Secondly some sad news….the great actor Omar Sharif has died at age 83……a great actor and a championship bridge player…..he will be missed….may he rest in peace…….

History seems to be running a blistering pace….South Carolina has votes to take down the Confederate flag and put it where it belongs in a museum……this has take a long time but now at least South Carolina can put some of their racist past behind them.  Now the rest of the New South needs to jump on this bandwagon.

When I was in school my favorite teacher, Mr. Clark, had a sign above his desk that read….”History:  Lies Agreed Upon”………..when this country is trying to move past some of our less attractive history…..there are others that are trying to re-write their history………

About 5 million Texas schoolchildren will get their hands on brand-new social studies textbooks when school starts up again, the Houston Chronicle reports—textbooks that USA Today says are “misleading, racially prejudiced, and, at times, flat-out false.” The beef with the new primers: They’re in keeping with state education standards adopted in 2010 that gloss over slavery as the main impetus for the Civil War, instead placing it as a peripheral factor behind “sectionalism” and “states’ rights,” reports the Washington Post. Slavery was merely a “side issue to the Civil War,” one member of the state’s board of education said when the standards—which include Moses and Solomon as prime influencers in the founding of our country—were greenlit in 2010. Per the Post, the new standards “barely address racial segregation,” and the state’s guidelines for history instruction have zip on the Jim Crow laws or the Ku Klux Klan.

Many critics aren’t on board with the new standards, revamped to correct what the board thought was a too-liberal stance on American history. Ex-Education Secretary Rod Paige tried to sway the board in 2010, saying, per the Texas Tribune, “I’m of the view that the history of slavery and civil rights are dominant elements of our history and have shaped who we are today. We may not like our history, but it’s history, and it’s important to us today.” But his pleas seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, because the standards were pushed through with the states’ rights angle. The Washington Post editorial board published its take on the matter Monday, writing that “by distorting history, Texas tells its students a dishonest and damaging story about the United States that prevents children from understanding the country today.”

I am a history junkie……I look for historical evidence in everything I research……but I have found NOTHING that categorized slavery as a “side issue”…….

This is a dis-service to the students of Texas…….and this will not be the only incident of people trying to re-write history……

Castro–A “What If”

I would like to try something new for Info Ink….hopefully my readers will find it interesting and thought provoking……it will be how one minor decision could have changed history……I wish I could say that this is an original idea but it is not…..several noted authors have written along these lines……from time to time it is fun to re-write history…i mean…if politicians can do it why not us mere mortals?

From time to time I do take some time away from the endless political mierda that the media would have us to believe and some times it is just not what is real…..during this time I think of “what ifs” in history, just how things might have turned out differently if another choice had been made…..

During this election season the GOP has started bringing up Castro again….it seems to be inevitable that Cuba’s leader ill be brought up, especially in a Florida campaign with its massive amounts of Cubans living in Southern Florida….so with the disingenuous subject made me think of one of my “what ifs”…..

There is a myth that was flying around that back in the 1950’s that Fidel Castro had a try-out with the Washington Senators as a pitcher.  Now, what if Castro had tried out and signed with the Washington Senators……..he would not have lead the 1959 rebellion against Batista, who would have remained in power and a friend to the US….without the rebellion there would have been no need for the Bay of Pigs and without the bay of pigs there would have been no Cuban Missile crisis…..and Cuba would today be the most sought after vacation spot in the Western hemisphere…..

Batista would have probably been ousted by the CIA because he was a cause for concern……Cuba would have become more democratic but still with problems but nothing the CIA could not handle…….without the rebellion there would have been no massive Cuban immigration into South Florida….without that immigration there would be NO huge GOP voting bloc in the 1980 election and Jimmy Carter would have eeked out a win…….with a win in 1980 and the hostage thing settled Carter would have turned his energy into finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian problem……and the middle east would have been a quieter place…..

And if Carter had won re-election we would have a better alt energy policy and our dependence on foreign oil would be considerably less……

These are just a few things that would have been altered if Castro had been signed by the Washington Senators……just a ‘what if’ but it illustrates that even one minor decision could have changed the world considerably…….

I will be posted these types of ‘what ifs’ from time to time….gives my mental processes a break from the mind numbing ‘political crack’ that is US politics……hope it was enjoyable.