Red Moon Rapture

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Red Moon Rapture

Postby Phillip » Mon 18 Mar 2013 10:38 am

Trying to think of novel subjects that might spark some interest and responses the subject of the Red Moon Rapture cropped up on Eric Aitchison's email thread, mainly for dating reasons and other reasons not exactly clear. Anyway, Wikipedia has a nice long article on the subject, at www.encyclopedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_d ... nd_eclipse which is very good and well thought out and has not been subject to the Wiki thought police who patrol it regularly to delete any mention against the true faith of CAGW (and EU heresies). See also http://redmooonrapture.com/crucifixion/ ... clipse.htm
The subject involved is eclipses and a general assumption by commentators that the Gospels refer to an eclipse during the Easter event. The rapture refers to the fact Jesus was taken up into the sky after being resurrected, to commune with God, something that seems to be a Jerusalem tradition. That tradition may specifically be associated with Mount Moriah and the Threshing Floor that involved David in similar communications with God. It also pops up in Islam - see for example http://my.telegraph.co.uk/abdulmuhd/amu ... is-a-myth/ which describes the tale in general outline. The more complete story is quite interesting as Mohammed was carried off in his dreams on the back of an angel horse, variously Burak or Baraq, which had the face of a woman and the tail of a peacock. Baraq transported him to Mount Moriah in Jerusalem and he experienced an ascent or mi'raj through the celestial spheres where he eventually came across the archangel Gabriel who confirmed him as the Prophet of Allah etc. It seems to me that certain traditions associated with Jerusalem have lived on into the Islamic period. There was a wonderful article in Kronos many years ago, by Lewis Greenberg I think (might be wrong) 'Jerusalem - City of Light' that centred on the deity of the city. That deity, in the EA Letters (conventional timescale) was Shalman (hence we have Solomon and the Islamic Sulieman and Assyrian Shalmaneser etc) but leaving that aside, there is a possible cometary parallel here, the face of a woman (goddess, and Arabs pre-Islam had goddesses, with long flowing hair perhaps) and the tail of a peacock (a colourful appendage like the quetzal bird tail feathers associated with Quetzalcoatl or the Coat of Many Colours associated with Joseph, and so on). David, we may note is associated with a comet hanging like a sword above Jerusalem, and the Threshing Floor, in some sources, was associated with a bolide or thunderbolt strike. Hence, the special nature of Mount Moriah.
The Wikipedia piece is interesting as it describes the various attempts to associated the three hour episode of darkness with an eclipse - unsuccessfully. It can take the Moon an hour to cross the Sun but just a few moments , a couple of minutes, involves actual darkness. In Acts 2:20 it says, there is a reference to a 'moon of blood ... ' ie red, hence the red moon rapture. According to the synoptic gospels darkness covered the land for hours but generally medieval writers, and later, regarded this event as a miracle, an add-on to the crucifixion story. Those swayed by the eclipse connection have sought to date the crucifixion by finding evidence of an actual eclipse event around that time. The problem is that the darkness is said to have lasted from the 6th to the 9th hours, and the rail of the Temple was rent in twain and the earth did quake, and rocks rent. Graves were opened up and the bodies of the saints arose and came out of their graves. When the Roman centurion is said to have seen these things he was afraid. Is this another embellishment - or did an earthquake take place as well. Godowski adds that during an earthquake the dead wil arise from their graves as the soil of a grave is less dense than the surrounding soil. When sufficiently shaken and disturbed bodies could literally rise out of the ground - so was there an earthquake?
The Wikipedia entry goes through Apocryphal texts and historical texts and it seems that quite a lot of literature has grown up around this subject. For example, Paulus Oresius (375-418) said, 'a vey great earthquake took place ... ' and 'rocks upon mountains were split '''0 and clearly a lot of earthquake reports have either been conflated and associated with the crucifixion or it really did occur. However, another way of looking at this earthquake connection is that it was perhaps associated with the original Mount Moriah tradition - a bolide or thunderbolt that instigated a tectonic response, and came with a darkening of the sky.
Astronomer Mark Kidger compared the Apocryphal gospel of Peter with historical eclipse data and came up with AD29 - not too far from the traditonal date of AD33 (but just a bit too close for comfort to the theory of the date of the birth of Christ, in around 4BC). Was there really an eclipse in 29 and how often do these come around. Might there have been others at more distant dates in time? (say up to 12 years away).
In Acts 2:20 the Apostle Peter mentions in the context of the prophecy of Joel that 'the Sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood ...' but lots of commentators take this reference to be prophesy of the End Times rather than Easter. Red moons are usually associated with lunar eclipses but the Biblical account also involves a darkening Sun. Was it an eclipse or has Joel also made use of the Jerusalem tradition of a bolide/ thunderbolt event and transferred it into the future?
This broaches the question, was there a darkening of the sky during the crucifixion event or has all this been projected on to the account and nothing much out of the ordinary really happened. He died and his brother James went on to lead the movement.
We also have that other point made. The Last Supper is generally associated with the Passover meal which always takes place on Full Moon. However, an eclipse takes place at New Moon, a full two weeks away. Medieval commentators were very aware of this discrepancy and came to regard the red moon rapture as solely a miraculouse event - as it didn't conform with nature. The has led to modern commentators, inclined to be more critical of the Biblical text, to say the incident originated in the Gospel of Mark and its unusually long length of time, three hours, is used to dispute the historicity of the Gospels. It is an eclipse that has been exaggerated. The intention, they assure us, was to add drama to the crucifixion account. The Gospel of Matthew adds the earthquake and the bodies rising out of the graves, and the Gospel of Luke refers specifically to a darkening of the Sun. However, the Gospel of John does not report any kind of miracle associated with the crucifixion. Was he chronologically later than the others? or earlier?
If it was all a case of adding drama and then the writers may have known about similar traditions of darkness, earthquake, and miracles surrounding Jerusalem, and these became mixed up - just as the dream of Mohammed used folklore or legends attached to that city. Baraq, of course, reappears in the Bible as the companion of Deborah in the defeat of Sisera and his army that involved a flood of waters and miraculous events in the natural world. Barak in Jewish tradition has the meaning of lightning - and commentators often describe the magical horse Baraq, as the lightning horse. In Jewish sources Barak, the lightning horse, strode across the firmament, each stride the breadth of visible sky. In addition, Deborah is associated with a swarm of bees (and we might associate that with a swarm of meteorites or the tail of a comet).
Phillip
 
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Re: Red Moon Rapture

Postby barry » Wed 20 Mar 2013 9:31 am

There was a lunar eclipse in 29 AD, visible from Jerusalem, but on 14th June and late at night. Lunar eclipses occur about every other year between 17 and 41 AD, but either in the morning or late evening. Three hours is not unusual for a full lunar eclipse, the one in 29 AD lasted for over three hours. There were a few solar eclipses in this period but none in spring-time. (All data from the Alcyone/PLSV program.)
barry
 
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Re: Red Moon Rapture

Postby Peter » Mon 15 Apr 2013 10:55 am

Prior to the publication of his SIS Review 2012 paper - When and Why they Changed the Calendar – From Tiberius to Bede, in which he linked the introduction of new calendars and new religions during this period to natural catastrophes that were often associated with cosmic bodies, Laurence Dixon asked me to bring the SIS Study Group up to date with my ideas about the Venus and Mars cycles within his paper’s timescale; see the report on page of SIS Workshop 2012:2. I had originally published my Venus and Mars cycle derived chronology, that I outlined in my 7th of March posting under the heading Peter’s Book, as a poster presentation at the 2007 SIS Cambridge Conference, but Laurence knew that I had been working on it since then.

As I said in my March posting, Mars currently passes through the segment of its orbit closest to the Sun at the same time as the Earth passes through the segment of its orbit while farthest from the Sun at every 7th or 8th conjunction. Due to a locked relationship between the planets these close conjunctions every 15 or 17 years have for the past 2,600 years always occurred in the spring. I maintain that quite a number of the Mars close conjunctions caused Warlow axis shifts and earthquake damage and that cosmic experiences at the time of the Mars close conjunctions account for many of the calendar changes and religious controversies identified by Lawrence. Before he posted his Red Moon Rapture Forum topic Phillip, as a regular member of the study group, knew that I dated a Mars, Warlow axis shift to the day of the crucifixion so I must assume that he wants my input on the subject. However, I had hoped for some other responses to his posting prior to making my contribution.

To my mind the crucifixion shows classic Mars event features; it was preceded by religious controversy and following it a new religion evolved, it was in the spring, the Sun set 3 hours early and widespread earthquakes were experienced at the time. Earthquakes occur during Warlow axis shifts because the external force driving an axis shift causes geological fault line already under stress to give way. I believe that Pliny’s report (Natural Histories, 36:15) about around 30 years of inaccuracy of the obelisk erected in Rome as a sun-dial by Augustus implies that a Warlow axis shift occurred in 33 AD that corrected an earlier axis shift.

This suggests to me that the “eclipse” that Josephus says that King Herod saw shortly before he died was darkness resulting from a Venus axis shift late in December of 1 AD; I believe that Josephus has been mistranslated, because there is no modern word for darkness due to an axis shift. The Chinese census data supports my dating of a catastrophe to 1 AD; the census for 1 AD shows the Chinese population at 59.6 million, but it had fallen to only 21 million at the time of the next surviving census in 57 AD. I am confident that not only was a Warlow axis shift experienced in 1 AD that raised sea levels in China, but that another was experienced a Venus cycle prior to 1 AD as Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Although it may not technically be correct when referring to BC dates I include a year zero in my chronology tables and, allowing for the 3 months added to the calendar by Caesar, the Venus cycle date prior to late December of 1 AD was in October of 50 BC.

The date of the crucifixion fits a Mars cycle that includes the Ides of March in 44 BC, Mary’s vision of Gabriel in 1 AD and the report about violent earthquakes that Cassius Dio, in Book LVII, says shook down a portion of the city wall of Rome as thunderbolts were experienced in 16 AD. John the Baptist almost certainly anticipated a damaging Mars approach in 31 AD, but the cyclical gap on this occasion was 17 years and he was executed, either because of what he forecast or because he was wrong. A Mars cycle after the crucifixion saw St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus at the same time as the sky seemed to be on fire and Divine Power shook the Earth when Claudius adopted Nero. This approach of Mars probably persuaded Herod to kill James and arrest Peter with the fully illuminated Mars the Angel of the Lord that shone light on Peter in prison, thereby effecting his release as reported in Acts (12:7 to 10).

The next approach of Mars encouraged Christian apocalyptic fever and their persecution by Nero was in reaction to their expectation of the imminent return of Jesus. Earthquakes were apparently experienced in Asia, rivers ran with blood, the sea was driven back from Egypt and overflowed a great part of Lycia. This approach of Mars also encouraged the revolt of the Jews. Josephus says that first a star stood over the city, very like a broadsword. Then while the people were assembling for the feast of Unleavened Bread, at 3 in the morning, so bright a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it might be midday.

I must admit at this point that there are conflicts between my planetary cycle dating and conventional dating, because if Augustus was born soon after a cosmic omen as is reported and that cosmic omen was Mars on its approach prior to 44 BC then Augustus was born in 61 BC. This means that it must have been 41 BC when he appointed himself Consol at the age of 20; see Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars. It also means that the battle of Actium was in 29 BC not in 30 BC, because cosmic happenings and earthquakes were experienced earlier in the year of the battle.

I also have a problem with the date for the death of Domitian. Suetonius says it was a year of dreadful omen and Eusebius says that this was when John had his revelations. The Book of Revelations contains unmistakable Mars event features and I am confident that John’s dragon, that old serpent, that is the Devil was Mars and that Gog and Magog, who will accompany Satan when he is loosed from his prison, were the satellites of Mars, Phobus and Deimos. John’s report that the heavens departed like a scroll implies that he witnessed an axis shift as well as most impressive aurora displays. However, the Mars approach and astrological event associated with Domitian’s murder later in the year that was, I believe, an uneventful inferior conjunction of Venus must be dated to 97 AD not the conventional 96 AD.

These dating anomalies are disturbing, but I have a great deal more confidence in the planetary cycles that in ancient historians dating.
Peter
 


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