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).