Posts

The Magi and the Star that Stopped

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by Damien F. Mackey This will be a two-part article in which, firstly, I shall attempt to account for the ethnicity of the eastern Magi, and, secondly - but not originally - identify Matthew 2’s “Star”. Some might call it arrogance, while others might recognise it as a personal conviction that one’s well-researched conclusion is most definitely the correct one. Whatever about all that, the entertaining Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Catholic priest, author and lecturer, is utterly convinced that he has, after a long and serious probe into the matter, properly identified the enigmatic Magi of Matthew 2. Fr. Dwight tells all about it in the following articles, the validity of whose conclusions I shall consider further on: https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-myth-of-the-magi/ The Myth of the Magi About this time in 2017 my book The Mystery of the Magi was published. I had high hopes for it. Of all my books it was the one I had spent the most time on. I had actually done something like

Sparser Spartans

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by Damien F. Mackey “Hugo Jones writes that the Spartans held in the highest regard a certain ancient law-giver, much like Moses the law-giver of Israel. The Spartans celebrated new moons (Rosh Chodesh), and unlike their Greek counterparts, even a seventh day of rest! Of course, the Spartans themselves were very different from other Greeks, particularly those in Athens, whom Sparta often battled”. Mayim Achronim According to King Arius of Sparta, his people shared a common ancestry with the Jews through Abraham. I Maccabees 12:19-23: This is a copy of the letter that they sent to Onias: ‘King Arius of the Spartans, to the high priest Onias, greetings. It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brothers and are of the family of Abraham. And now that we have learned this, please write us concerning your welfare; we on our part write to you that your livestock and your property belong to us, and ours belong to you. We therefore command t

Not so ‘Hot Gates’ of Thermopylae

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by Damien F. Mackey Morton Scott Enslin has intuitively referred to the Book of Judith’s Bethulia incident as the “Judean Thermopylae” (The Book of Judith: Greek Text with an English Translation, p. 80). Introductory Professor Paul Cartledge’s well written book about the alleged Battle of Thermopylae between the Spartans and the Persians in 480 BC holds firmly to the familiar line of British writers and historians that our Western civilisation was based front and centre upon the Greeks. Thus, for instance, he writes in his book, Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World (Macmillan, 2006, p. 4): “The Greeks were second to none in embracing that contrary combination of the ghastly and the ennobling, which takes us straight back to the fount and origin of Western culture and ‘civilization’ - to Homer’s Iliad, the first masterpiece of all Western literature; to Aeschylus’s Persians, the first surviving masterpiece of Western drama; to the coruscating war epigrams o

Lysander and Usanhuru

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by Damien F. Mackey Herodotus, in The Histories, tells of a skilful physician, Democedes of Croton, a character that I claim to be fictitious and based upon a really attested historical figure, the Egyptian, Udjahorresne: Udjahorresne and Democedes (5) Udjahorresne and Democedes | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The latter, who was a mentor in Egypt to Cambyses, appears under different names, all of which are mergeable the one with the other. Thus: Esarhaddon and Nes-Anhuret, Ashurbanipal and Usanahuru, Cambyses and Udjahorresne (5) Esarhaddon and Nes-Anhuret, Ashurbanipal and Usanahuru, Cambyses and Udjahorresne | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The Greek writers (whoever they really were) have supposed Greek navy men, such as Polycrates, Lysander, fighting in Greek wars, but also interfering in Egypto-Persian battles. These supposed Greeks – and presumably their Greek wars (at least in part) – were a fiction. With all of this in mind, the name Lysander (Greek: Λύσανδρος) n

Jesus Christ gives meaning to ancient history and geography

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by Damien F. Mackey “After three days they found him in the Temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers”. Luke 2:46-47 Jesus, who even as a child of twelve was skilfully able to teach Jerusalem’s teachers, would later, as an adult, correct many misconceptions and false traditions on a whole range of issues. ‘You have heard that it was said … but I tell you …’ (e.g. Matthew 5:38). This was the voice of One who spoke words of unerring authority (Mark 1:21-22): “They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes”. Just as when he had been a boy of twelve, when his listeners were “amazed” (ἐξίσταντο) by his knowledge, so now, again, at Capernaum, were those who heard him “astounded” (ἐξεπλήσσοντο) by his authoritative sp

Archaeology of Abimelech

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by Damien F. Mackey “MB IIC at Shechem was a major destruction, so almost certainly it was the city of Abimelech”. Dr. John Osgood SHECHEM OF ABIMELECH Back in 1988, I, then following a pattern of biblical archaeology different from the one that I would embrace today, had raised this query about the city of Shechem to Dr. John Osgood: https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j03_1/j03_1_124-127.pdf “Techlets”, EN Tech. J., vol. 3, 1988, pp. 125-126: …. I think too that Shechem might be a problem in your scheme of things. From the Bible it would seem that Shechem was a small settlement at the time of Abraham, but a city at the time of Jacob. It seems to me that according to your scheme Shechem would be the same size in Jacob's time as in Abraham's. Correct me if I am wrong. Also Prof. Stiebing, who has criticised at various times the schemes of all revisionists (see Biblical Archaeological Review, July/August 1985, pp. 58-69), raises the problem of the absence of LBA

Was Egeria an early visitor to Mount Sinai?

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“Egeria’s account is very precise, detailed, clear and direct to the point that it does not make room to any personal interpretation. She portrays the territory in a photographic manner, describing the form and position of the mountains, the form and dimensions of the valley, the precise distances and travel times from one point to the other.” Flavio Barbiero We read at: EGERIA AT HAR KARKOM (altriocchi.com) – web site of Flavio Barbiero Summary: - The paper shows that Har Karkom was known as the biblical Mount Sinai by Christian pilgrims of the first four centuries C.E. Evidence is provided by a manuscript found in 1884 in the Tuscan town of Arezzo, with the diary kept by a Christian pilgrim, named Egeria, who at the end of the IV century made a trip to the mountain of Moses. Immediately the scholars decided that the account was referred to St Katherine, but unfortunately the description, very accurate and detailed, does not fit at all the reality of that mountain, perha