| From: isopatch | 3/28/2016 7:28:44 PM | | | | | | Done more than a little digging into the early history of Christianity. Article below offers puzzle pieces which fill out more of the picture outlined in a number of top academic historical research studies.
Iso
Was the Emperor Constantine a True Christian or Was He a Secret Pagan?
26 MARCH, 2016 - 21:03
NATALIA KLIMCZAK
Constantine the Great is known in history as the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity. However, legends and archaeological evidence suggest a different story– it seems that Constantine had a secret about his faith which was hidden for centuries.
 Constantine built many churches. He celebrated the faith in one (Christian) God and his son Jesus by creating many of the greatest churches of the world, including: St. Peter’s in Rome, The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, The Eleona on the Mount of Olives, The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and others.
Construction of The Hagia Sophia depicted in the codex Manasses Chronicle (14th century). ( Public Domain)
Constantine became emperor in 306 AD, and ruled for 31 years. According to tradition, during the battle of Milan in 312, he experienced a vision of a flaming cross with the inscription 'In his sign conquer'. As the legends say, he understood it as a sign from the Christian God asking him to convert. Constantine believed that he would be awarded with unusual power, the support of a deity, and the greatest kingdom of the world if he followed through with the vision.
By the decree of Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of Rome in 324. However, did he really become a true Christian, or was he just seeking the support of powerful bishops for political purposes?
The Christian Emperor of RomeIn the group of his closest advisers there were bishops such as Hosius, Lactantius, and Eusebius of Caesarea. He appointed the group of converted Christians to high positions in many parts of his empire. The Christian ministers had special privileges. He also extended many benefits to pagan priests who became Christian ministers. For example, they received monetary support from the Empire and didn't pay taxes.
Eusebius in a modern imagining. ( Public Domain)
The bishops were a faithful army for the ruler, but apart from creating some laws, temples, and supporting the growing group of priests, Constantine didn't appear to be much of a Christian. He agreed with the bishops’ suggestions to legislate against magic and private divination. But if a change in these kinds of laws was not put forth by an influential bishop, Constantine wasn't interested in making the changes.
Exploring the Origins of the Vandals, The Great Destroyers Archaeologists in Turkey Claim to Have Discovered Piece of Jesus’ Cross The Monastery of Saint Catherine: A Controversial Agreement Across FaithsWith his decree many pagan temples were destroyed. For example, he ordered the damage of the Temple of Aphrodite in Lebanon, but also many other ceremonial pagan places. It seems that he was interested in destroying some of the important places of pre-Christian cults, but at the same time destruction didn't apply to all of them. In every decision to destroy a pagan temple, it was written that the place could not exist because it was a site of misguided rites and ceremonies - a place of true obstinacy. He never outright banned pagan rituals like sacrifices, but only closed and destroyed important temples when the bishops felt the sites were dangerous to their own faith.
Apart from his political motives to support the growing army of priests, Constantine may have had a secret. What is more interesting, is that it seems that the bishop of Rome knew about it, and supported him in this hidden aspect of his life. The truth was that Constantine outwardly supported the new religion but still worshiped the Sun and pagan symbols.
A Christian who Worshiped the Sun?Constantine grew up in the court of the emperor Constantine Chlorus, who was a Neoplatonist and a devotee of the Unconquered Sun. His mother, Empress Helena, was a Christian who traveled through the Middle East searching for key sites connected to Jesus. According to the ancient texts, she was the one who identified the most important places known in the Bible. Young Constantine didn't appear as a follower of his mother's religious interests. He worshiped the Sun, or was devoted to Mithraism.
Orthodox Bulgarian icon of Constantine and his mother, St. Helena. ( CC BY-SA 3.0)
After his official conversion to Christianity in 312, Constantine built his triumphal arch in Rome. It is interesting that it wasn't dedicated to the symbols of Christianity, but to the Unconquered Sun. During his reign, he changed many aspects connected with pagan cults, but that doesn’t mean that he stopped the cultivation of old traditions. He often named them differently, but still allowed for pagan practices in many ways. For example, in 321 Constantine legislated that the celebration of the Day of the Sun should be a state holiday – a day off for everybody.
The Mysterious Column of ConstantineIn 330, Constantine set up a statue which is a key to understanding his private beliefs. After decades of supporting Christianity, he appeared as a statue of the Sun god in the forum. The column became the center of the Forum of Constantine, nowadays known as the Cemberlitas Square in Istanbul. Today, the column is 35 meters (114.8 feet) tall, but in the ancient times it was 15 meters (49.2 feet) taller, and ended with an impressive statue of the emperor. The column was decorated with pagan symbolism supported by some Christian decoration.
The Column of Constantine, seen from the south-east ( CC BY-SA 3.0)
The statue on the top of the monument presented Constantine in the figure of Apollo with a Sun crown, the greatest symbol of the kings from the times of Alexander the Great. It is said that he carried a fragment of the True Cross in his hand - a relic of the cross of Jesus. At the foot of the column there was a sacred place which contained relics, including other parts of crosses, a basket from the biblical story of the loaves and fishes miracle, a jar which belonged to Mary Magdalene, and a wooden statue of Pallas Athena from Troy.
The Column of Constantine in its original form, with the statue of Constantine as Apollo on top. ( Public Domain)
The Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143 – 1180) saw this monument as too pagan, and he decided to place a cross in place of the statue on the top of the column. The monument was damaged a few times in history, but the column has survived until modern times. Parts of the statue of Constantine are located in a museum, but the Column of Constantine is still one of the most important examples of Roman Art in Turkey.
Pagan, Christian, or a God?After his death in 337, Constantine became one of the pagan gods. An analysis of archaeological sites suggests that Constantine, like previous emperors of Rome, had never stopped seeing himself as a son of the ancient deities. It is hard to believe that Constantine’s Christian beliefs were as strong as his mother Helena’s. He appears more as an intelligent politician than a man who truly wanted to Christianize the world.
Colossal marble head of Emperor Constantine the Great, Roman, 4th century, located at the Capitoline Museums, in Rome. ( CC BY-SA 3.0)
Featured image: The Baptism of Constantine, as imagined by students of Raphael. Source: Public Domain
By Natalia Klimczak
References:Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 1986
Charles M. Odahl, Constantine and the Christian Empire, 2004.
Michael Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times,1994.
biblicalcatholic.com
sententias.org
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| From: Tom Clarke | 3/30/2016 6:49:20 AM | | | | | | "The discovery of real unicorns isn't new, but according to a new study in the American Journal of Applied Science, they roamed the Earth much more recently than previously thought. Researchers from Russia's Tomsk State University found a Siberian unicorn skull in Kazakhstan and dated it to around 29,000 years ago, disproving the original theory that the species went extinct 350,000 years ago."
nymag.com |
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| From: Tom Clarke | 3/30/2016 9:57:42 AM | | | | | | Scan of Shakespeare's Grave Indicates Skull Is Missing
A portrait of William Shakespeare is pictured in London, painted in 1610 and thought to be the only surviving picture of him painted in his lifetime
Reuters
March 24, 2016 7:12 PM
LONDON—
Shakespeare's skull is likely missing from his grave, an archaeologist has concluded, confirming rumors that have swirled for years about grave-robbers and adding to the mystery surrounding the Bard's remains.
Four hundred years after his burial at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon, central England, researchers were allowed to scan the grave of England's greatest playwright with ground-penetrating radar. In the area under the church floor where the Bard's skull was expected to be, they found signs of interference.
"We have Shakespeare's burial with an odd disturbance at the head end, and we have a story that suggests that at some point in history someone's come in and taken the skull of Shakespeare," said archaeologist Kevin Colls from Staffordshire University. "It's very, very convincing to me that his skull isn't at Holy Trinity at all."
The findings deepen the mystery about Shakespeare's last resting place.
The grave does not bear his name, merely this warning rhyme: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, to dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones."
Second skull
In their quest to find Shakespeare's skull, Colls' team also investigated a long-standing tale that it was hidden in a sealed crypt in another church 15 miles (24 kilometers) across the English countryside in Worcestershire. But analysis of that skull showed it to be that of a woman who had been in her 70s when she died.
The story of Shakespeare's missing skull appeared in The Argosy magazine in 1879, which blamed the removal on trophy hunters from the previous century when grave-robbing was common.
Skulls were worth collecting because genius, thought some at that time, would be evident in the remains of a man like Shakespeare, whose character Hamlet famously holds a skull while musing on death.
The scan of the grave where Shakespeare's remains rest next to those of his wife, Anne Hathaway, was conducted in a nonintrusive way, said the team, who will present the results in a television documentary due to air in Britain on Saturday.
"There are so many contradictory myths and legends about the tomb of the Bard," Colls said in a statement. "These results will undoubtedly spark discussion, scholarly debate and controversial theories for years to come. Even now, thinking of the findings sends shivers down my spine."
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| From: isopatch | 3/31/2016 12:13:42 PM | | | | | | With even MSM news forced to report increasingly horrific news, on a daily basis? More and more people who aren't staunchly secular are wondering if the trend below is more than just atavistic superstition.
What do you folks think?
TIA
Iso
<Exorcism is making a comeback — and big news — worldwide
March 30, 2016 12:41am
Jamie Seidel
News Corp Australia Network
A scene from the Last Judgment in Cathedral of Orvieto. Organised religion is fighting back and turning to the ancient rite of exorcism to combat the ailments of a modern world.
EXORCISM. It’s back. From the courtrooms of South Africa to the cornfields of heartland America, the battle for your soul has taken a decidedly physical turn.
Possessed presidential candidates. Demon-haunted miscreants. Snake-spirit infested parishioners.
Exorcism just keeps appearing in the headlines.
From television to the tea-room, exorcists are making a comeback. Picture: iStock
The painting Exorcism of St Benedict, by Spinello Aretino.
St Francis Borja at the Deathbed of an Impenitent, by Francisco De Goya.
A painting of an exorcism by an unnamed artist from the 16th century.
Lasting rites ... The ritual of exorcism is a carefully defined procedure. Picture: iStock
Date with the Devil
Dateline explores the increasing demand for exorcisms in Italy.
A so-called ‘wave’ of drug-related satanic killings sweeping Mexico (with the alleged intention of turning the victims into vampires) has resulted in calls for a ‘Magno Exorcisto’.
A confessed killer in Cape Town is appealing for an ‘exorcism’ as part of his sentencing, to expel the ‘demonic forces’ that ‘made him’ behead his 15-year-old victim and sell his body parts to a traditional healer.
And late last year, staff in a German hotel were stunned to find a 41-year-old mother beaten to death by her South Korean family (aged between 44 and 15) in an effort to ‘drive out the devil’.
Have the gates of Hell truly been opened?
Or is there some other source for this surge in spiritual warfare?
THEY’RE BACK
Even the most eminent do not appear immune to the Devil’s advocates.
US Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz — himself a loudly professed Southern Baptist — was confronted earlier this year in New Hampshire by two protesters armed with a wooden cross and a mirror.
Their objective: To free him of a power-hungry evil spirit. The outcome? The self-proclaimed exorcists stated only time would tell.
The medieval-flavoured rite one seemed to have gone the way of trial-by-fire and pre-purchased forgiveness of yet-to-be-committed sins.
Exorcism appeared well and truly dead-and-buried after a public scandal in 1973 when a young German woman, Anneliese Michel, was killed after repeated rituals.
But a turnaround of sorts began in 2004. An official decree from Pope John Paul II instructed every Catholic diocese to appoint an exorcist.
Who would dare disobey?
DEMON HAUNTED WORLD
It’s not just ‘a Catholic thing’. Pentecostal churches have long been enthusiastically adding their high-profile branding to the ceremony. And virtually every flavour of religion — be it ancient Assyrian or Hindu — mentions some form of rite to expel oppositional spirits in its holy texts.
But the Catholic International Association of Exorcist’s upped the ante in 2014: Their annual meeting declared occult activity was on the rise. (For the uninitiated, this includes believing in the power of crystals, t’ai chi and yoga — as well as the more traditional Ouija boards, palm-reading and tarot cards.)
Its head, Italian priest Gabriele Amorth, is something of an ace: He claims to have personally cast out 160,000 demons.
Despite this metaphysical massacre, he needs help. To that end the Regina Apostolorum pontifical institution of the Legionaries of Christ is about to conduct its annual one-week course on exorcism in Rome.
“We have a very secularised society in which, more than in the past, there’s the tendency to open the doors to occultism and esotericism,” said Father Pedro Barrajon, director of the Istituto Sacerdos.
The course is intended to train participants in recognising at-risk members of congregations.
“Demonic influence is favoured by magical practices and the use of fortune tellers, which can have a real influence leading even to possession,” Barrajon said.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The Catholic News Agency in the United States recently published an article describing how to recognise the demon-possessed.
Interviewing one Father Cipriano de Meo, whose exorcist credentials dating from 1952, it concedes most cases are, in fact, mental illness. Not possession.
The Catholic Catechism is specific in its application:
“Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church,” it reads. “ Illness, especially psychological illness, is a very different matter; treating this is the concern of medical science. Therefore, before an exorcism is performed, it is important to ascertain that one is dealing with the presence of the Evil One, and not an illness.”
The only way to tell the difference, Father de Meo says, is through a personal revelation to the priest — and the reaction of the patient to prayer.
“A possessed person has various general attitudes towards an exorcist, who is seen by the Adversary as an enemy ready to fight him,” he is quoted as saying.
“There’s no lack of frightening facial expressions, threatening words or gestures and other things,” he said, “but especially blasphemies against God and Our Lady.”
DARK AGE GONE MAINSTREAM
The current head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, may promote progressive ideas such as climate change, income equality and — under limited circumstances — contraception. But he’s also a big fan of exorcism.
Religion historian David Frankfurter argues devils and demons tend to be thrust into the limelight whenever a community is confronted by fresh outside forces.
In the modern world, it’s an unavoidable condition. Sexual liberation. Equal opportunities. Migration. Open markets.
The winds of change blow fiercely. But are they demon-sourced?
Old fashioned spirits are a way of making sense of something new and complex, says Demonology, Posession and exorcism lecturer at Texas State University Joseph Laycock.
In the hands of a priest, exorcism gives them supernatural relevance in a relentless — and confounding — real world.
THE SWORD OF THE WORD
Despite all this, experts say public interest in possession appears tightly tied to what’s on television. Little wonder, then, that there’s a remake of The Exorcist in the offing.
But is exorcism actually on the rise?
Michael Cuneo, sociologist and author of newly published “American Exorcism,” asserts “Exorcism is more readily available today in the United States than perhaps ever before.”
He goes on to say: “By conservative estimates, there are at least five or six hundred evangelical exorcism ministries in operation (in the US) today, and quite possibly two or three times this many.”
Australia? It’s not telling.
Unlike their overseas counterparts, Australian Catholic diocese have been backwards about coming forward with the exploits of their proactive priests.
But they’re certainly there.
The Catholic Church in Australia recently admitted to having up to 30 exorcists on the march against evil.>
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifestyle/exorcism-is-making-a-comeback--and-big-news--worldwide/news-story/be76749c251a6fbf76a355e4053b6a52 |
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| From: LindyBill | 3/31/2016 7:55:17 PM | | | | | | After Columbus discovered America, it never had to be discovered again.
View From Space Hints at a New Viking Site in North America
Douglas Bolender, left, and Sarah H. Parcak, right, looking for evidence of a Viking presence in Point Rosie, Newfoundland. If confirmed, the site would be the second known Viking settlement in North America. Credit Greg Mumford A thousand years after the Vikings braved the icy seas from Greenland to the New World in search of timber and plunder, satellite technology has found intriguing evidence of a long-elusive prize in archaeology — a second Norse settlement in North America, further south than ever known.
The new Canadian site, with telltale signs of iron-working, was discovered last summer after infrared images from 400 miles in space showed possible man-made shapes under discolored vegetation. The site is on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, about 300 miles south of L’Anse aux Meadows, the first and so far only confirmed Viking settlement in North America, discovered in 1960.
Since then, archaeologists, following up clues in the histories known as the sagas, have been hunting for the holy grail of other Viking, or Norse, landmarks in the Americas that would have existed 500 years before Columbus, to no avail.
By PBS NOVA Play Video “Vikings Unearthed”
Video “Vikings Unearthed”
To discover how far the Vikings went in their seafaring explorations, archaeologists are using new technologies.
By PBS NOVA on Publish Date March 31, 2016.
But last year, Sarah H. Parcak, a leading space archaeologist working with Canadian experts and the science series NOVA for a two-hour television documentary, “Vikings Unearthed,” that will be aired on PBS next week, turned her eyes in the sky on coastlines from Baffin Island, west of Greenland, to Massachusetts. She found hundreds of potential “hot spots” that high-resolution aerial photography narrowed to a handful and then one particularly promising candidate — “a dark stain” with buried rectilinear features.
Magnetometer readings later taken at the remote site, called Point Rosie, a grassy headland above a rocky beach an hour’s trek from the nearest road, showed elevated iron readings. And trenches that were then dug exposed Viking-style turf walls along with ash residue, roasted ore called bog iron and a fire-cracked boulder — signs of metallurgy not associated with native people of the region.
In addition, radiocarbon tests dating the materials to the Norse era, and the absence of historical objects pointing to any other cultures, helped persuade scientists involved in the project and outside experts of the site’s promise. The experts are to resume digging there this summer.
Photo
A lump of what scientists say is bog iron ore, and one of the samples being tested from the possible Viking site at Point Rosie. This roasted ore is a sign of metallurgy not associated with native people of the region. Credit Greg Mumford “It screams, ‘Please excavate me!,’ ” said Dr. Parcak, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who won the $1 million TED prize last year for her pioneering work using satellite images to expose the looting of ancient Egyptian antiquities and is using it to globally crowdsource new archaeological sites from space.
The NOVA program will stream online at pbs.org/nova in the United States at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Eastern time, (along with a BBC program in England), and will be broadcast on PBS at 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Given the dashed hopes of previous searches and the many spurious claims of Viking presence in the Americas, scientists on the project as well as outside experts have voiced caution.
Photo
One of the satellite images used by Sarah H. Parcak to identify potential Viking settlement sites along North America’s Atlantic coast. Darker areas were seen as potential structures. Credit DigitalGlobe “Tremendous, if it’s really true,” said William Fitzhugh, director of the Arctic Studies Center and Curator in Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. “It wouldn’t be unexpected,” he said, but added that he wanted to see the data.
“There’s no lock that it’s Norse, but there’s no alternative evidence,” said Douglas Bolender, a research assistant professor at the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archeological Research and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who joined the expedition. He said a buried structure there could be a smithy for longboat nails and weaponry, another strong indicator of Viking presence.
“It would just be logical that there’s more than one site,” said Gerald F. Bigelow, a lecturer in history at Bates College in Lewiston, Me., and a specialist in archaeology of the North Atlantic.
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Davide Zori, an assistant professor of archaeology at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., and a specialist on Viking expansion in the North Atlantic, called the find potentially “very important.”
Much depends on what else is found at the site. In archaeology, context is everything. A famous prehistoric site in Brooklin, Me., yielded an 11th century silver Norse coin but it is believed to have landed there through trade and not as proof of Viking settlement.
Master shipbuilders and seafarers, warriors, traders and raiders, the Vikings boiled out of the Scandinavian fjords starting around the 8th century, marauding through Asia and the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. The Vikings focused particularly on the British Isles, and west to Iceland and Greenland, as memorialized in oral narratives and later recorded as the sagas by 13th-century Icelandic monks.
More Reporting on Archaeology Around 1000, Leif Ericson led an expedition to what became known as Vinland at the northernmost point of Newfoundland at L’Anse aux Meadows (the name an obscure corruption from the French) where explorers starting in 1960 discovered remnants of an extensive colony, including dwellings, a forge, and carpentry workshop — the Vikings’ first and so far only known landmark in the New World. They appear to have been routed by indigenous people the Norse called Skraeling.
One intriguing find was the seeds of a butternut tree, which did not grow that far north and hinted of travels to milder climates in the Gulf of St Lawrence. But evidence of other Viking settlements has been lacking.
Dr. Parcak (pronounced PAR-kak) began her research by using a commercial satellite called WorldView-3, belonging to the company DigitalGlobe, to search known Norse sites on minuscule Papa Stour in the Shetland Islands of Scotland. Using the near-infrared spectrum invisible to the human eye, the satellite detected buried walls, and digging yielded a carnelian bead from India similar to those found at other Viking sites. Dr. Parcak then focused her satellite search on thousands of miles of coastline from the Canadian Arctic to New England.
After two weeks of digging at Point Rosie, an unexpected find in a flooded trench excited the explorers — several seeds, or perhaps blueberries, which were hurriedly sent for testing. The dates came back wildly off — 700 years after the Vikings, maybe even contemporary. They seem to have migrated onto the site much later.
“You feeling nervous, Sarah?” a NOVA reporter asked Dr. Parcak.
“No, I’m not,” she said.
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