That Jesus guy sure got around. This is a sign in Shingo, Japan, where they claim that Jesus settled down after escaping crucifixion.
Here’s the story:
When Jesus Christ was 21 years old, he came to Japan and pursued knowledge of divinity for 12 years. He went back to Judea at age 33 and engaged in his mission. However, at that time, people in Judea would not accept Christ’s preaching. Instead, they arrested him and tried to crucify him on a cross. His younger brother, Isukiri casually took Christ’s place and ended his life on the cross.
Christ, who escaped the crucifixion, went through the ups and downs of travel, and again came to Japan. He settled right here in what is now called Herai Village, and died at the age of 106.
On this holy ground, there is dedicated a burial mound on the right to deify Christ, and a grave on the left to deify Isukiri.
The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.
I like how Isukiri “casually” let himself be tortured to death.
I also wonder if the people of Shingo intentionally put up the sign to screw with Mormon missionary heads.
My braaaain… too much weird…
It seems perfectly reasonable to me. They probably have as much evidence that Jesus, or Little Joshy as he was known to friends, died in Herai as they have evidence that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
Oh! So -that’s- what happened.
That explains it all…
I feel better now.
Well, at least the resurrection makes sense now, I guess
So now we have the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Latest Testament.
Except in this one, we find out who the father of Jesus was.
Oh, wait …
“Casually” is wrong. They meant “causally”, i.e. in accordance with the usual restrictions on the flow on information in space-time. :-)
So little bro Isukiri died for eveyone’s sins, not JC? Xians have been kissing the wrong ass for 2000 years.
Wouldn’t “casualty” be more appropriate?
The migration of people between Japan and the Middle East in the First Century CE was really quite astounding.
“Wierder”, PZ? Really?? And just after I saw this Oatmeal last night.
(I try to overlook these things, but it’s especially egregious in post titles, to me.)
I hate to be pedantic (actually that’s not true), but it’s “weirder”. An incredibly common error, but one that bugs me every time.
“Wierder”? That’s weird! I beleive that spelling definately conflicts alot with the recieved wisdom.
I bet the burial mound’s empty?. Damn! Ignore that, we don’t want to start all that nonsense again.
English doesn’t have rules. It has customs, conventions and exceptions to the customs and conventions.
It sounds like someone has taken Christopher Moore way too seriously.
@Zeno: *twitch* *twitch*
Ah! A new version of Blake’s Jerusalem in the offing! Follow along, everyone…
And did those feet, in ancient times,
Walk upon Nippon’s mountains white;
And did the holy Lamb of God
Learn all the ninja ways to fight?
And did he eat unheated fish,
Served up on plates of plain bamboo,
And did he, like Keanu Reeves,
Proclaim to all: “I know kung-fu”?
Bring me my books of manga art,
Bring me Akira, new-reborn;
And though it stirreth PZ’s heart,
Bring me my tentacles for porn!
I will not wail when ground doth quake;
Nor shall tsunamis e’er be feared;
For it is true, what people say:
Japan is really bloody weird!
Which trumps all the stories reported secondhand in the gospels.
…
Why has the world not heard of this before now? I’m sure that all the True Christians would want to have the True Gospel. They’ve been doing it wrong for two thousand years.
…
Isukiri, Scapegoat for Jesus.
…
THAT’s who Mr. Cheeky is!!! He was certainly casual about the whole thing! Yeah, that must have been him.
…
“wierder” was weird … Zeno, your comment was perfect. :-)
Jebus got around all right. Don’t forget his trip/trips to Britain.
Come to think of it, I wonder whether the legend of the yeti was simply a misidentification of an unshaven Son of Man shuffling through the Himalayas on His way to or from Japan. We may never know.
Maybe Jebus wanted to trade in twelve lame apostles for seven awesome saumurai?
Hmmm. Preposterous nonsense – and still far more believable that the “official” verison of events !!
LOL, but no more inane than the rest of religion.
But wait, The Bible according to Biff doesn’t mention Japan, only India.
It’s funny trying to contemplate explanations for the sign.
Tourist trap for people who aren’t culturally Christian?
Lesser-known offshoot of Christianity?
Church-suppressed secret only previously hinted at by coded communications Leonardo Da Vinci slipped into his paintings?
Okay, that last one’s probably a stretch.
That’s what makes it so compelling.
Isukiri? Didn’t he play left field for the Mariners?
This story can make a brilliant ninja movie.
In the 1890’s a Russian wrote a book purporting that Jesus went to India at a young age, studied with the Buddhists in Tibet, returned to Judea and was put to death for those teachings.
It was a hoax, but so is everything else written about haysoos.
haahaaaaa!
poopyhead spelling error, tee hee!
I thought we all learned the handy mnemonic rhyme:
‘I’ before ‘E’, except after ‘C’
And when sounded like ‘A’, as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh’.
And then also except for ‘weird’ too.
There is also the Jesus Lived in India book which says he wandered off to India and Tibet for a while then returned there. Got a grave for him, and Mary too, someone over there.
Actually makes a good case within the mythology as there is some parallels between what Jesus said and some Indian religious schools. No real evidence of course, but a fun story if you enjoy mythology.
The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.
So, like Moses, JC thoughtfully wrote up his own obituary and a description of posthumous events.
And he even left us some clues: “the ups and downs of travel”, for all you Carmen Sandiego fans, tell us that he climbed some mountains on the way. (But once he got the coast, he walked.)
No doubt he was eagerly welcomed into the village once he demonstrated his turning-water-into-sake techniques. Did they make him promise to leave the swine alone?
Giliell,
Well, crap. Looks like I need to re-read that book! :)
The Japanese are clearly misled. After Jesus escaped crucifixion, he traveled to Missouri and continued his ministry, writing in modified alien Aramaic on gold plates.
The Indian story has already been mentioned, and this is better known than the Japanese fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_India_%28book%29 is the best ref. I can find at present), and there are notable similarities, especially the survival of Jesus to a grand old age (112 in this case). Apparently Jesus is buried in Pahalgam in Kashmir, next to Moses, the Kashmiris being the lost 12th tribe of Israel.
There is scant evidence for either possibility, but at least there were mystics in India at the time, whereas little is known about Japan.
Does double substitution work?
Maybe Xians are doubly saved since Jeebus was going to die in their place, and Isukiri died in Christ’s place.
Think of the possibilities for
moneymakingsoul-saving this story has!Glen Davidson
Died at 106? Aww, so young; how tragic! Noah was over 600!
How long before they build the Shrine of the Holy Seppuku?
To 33: Upstate New York for the golden plates, you know. I’d like to think my predecessors in the Show Me state would have been a little less gullible.
Oddly enough, Jesus’s younger brother cropped up again in 19th century China, calling himself Hung Xiuquan – so evidently he was indeed resurrected, then lay low for 1800+ years. After failing the civil service exams, Hung proclaimed a new dynasty, the Tàipíng Tiān Guó (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace), declared his identity as Jesus’s younger brother, and launched a war in which millions died – probably the bloodiest war in history up to that time, and until WW1. He was eventually defeated, but his death is mysterious – some sources say he committed suicide by poison, others that he died of illness* – but perhaps it was really his brother whose badly-decomposed body was found :-p
* Up until this illness or self-poisoning, he had presumably been well Hung.
So when does the Shrine of the Holy Seppuku get built?
This is the same story in the Qur’an. An impostor was killed in the place of Jesus. Except in that version, Jesus ascended into heaven only to return when the world ends instead of peacefully living out his days in Japan. Afterwards, he’ll help the Mahdi fight off the against an anti-Christ figure.
Sorry for the repeat of the bad ‘seppuku’ pun. I refreshed after submitting the first comment. Never saw it displayed. (I’ll slink off to my corner and be quiet for the rest of the thread.)
Chas, you misspelled neighbour.
Jokes aside, we now have another contradictory narrative of Jesus’ life. How would a Christian actually decide between them? How would they know which is true? Leaving aside idiotic ones, such as those appealling to history for instance, what would be some cogent arguments for why the traditional narrative is liklier to be true than this one?
Just spell it “wyrder,” like in Old English, then you won’t have to worry about little ditties regarding i before e and vice versa.
Glen Davidson
Ah yes Jesus, the preachiest of the Pokemon. Not much of a fighter but a damn good long distance walker.
Decided to get off my posterior and search for the backstory. Wikipedia provides. The Japanese government apparently seized the sacred texts so no one can verify their authenticity. Or existence.
Definitely reminiscent of the Mormon gold plates.
Sounds plausible.
I don’t know much Japanese, but it seems to me that “Isukiri” is about how “Iesus Christus” would be pronounced by them, given the phonotactic requirements of the language.
So in that case, Jebus’s little brother would be “Jesus Christ” (on a stick!)
Maybe someone here with more extensive knowledge of Japanese could confirm or deny this.
You mean Regijesus? He’s a hard one to catch.
@49 Mag Max
Jesus Christ in Japanese is usually written イエスクリスト which would be pronounced iesu kuristo – nearly but not quite Isukiri. The sign pictured refers to JC is kuristo. Isukiri is of course rendered in katakana (being a ‘foreign’ name) although it does have a fairly Japanese sound (“cut the chair”? More likely “Sever Israel” I suppose)
LOL Isn’t this a persistent idea! Wasn’t this the reason why the early church had its first biggest schism? The “Arien” heresy, I believe it was called? Pfft! It seems there is just nothing new – ever – in the psychology of god belief. No doubt that whole “substitution sacrifice” idea is well-represented in every other mythology that was ever foisted on the planet as well!
Oops, of course I mean the early Xian church in that first sentence.
How would that screw with their heads? Clearly, the “ups and downs of travel” refers to his trip “up and down” the Americas. See, it fits perfectly.
Argh – typos – my #50 is in response to #48 (not #49) and fthe sign refers to JC as kuristo.
Israel is pronounced Isuraru by the Japanese and the verb to cut is kiru so concatenating the start of Isuraru with kiri (as in Hara kiri) I got Isukiri, “to cut Israel” – Not sure about it but seems not impossible…
Is this a setup for another Dan Brown novel?
I should not have read that while taking a drink of water.
Besides, when has anyone known a Mormon missionary to listen? Sure, they’ll stop talking for a bit and peer intently at you, but what’s really going through their minds is
“Poor fella. All alcohol and caffeine-besotted. He’s probably recently had sex, too. As soon as he stops talking I’ll mention being thirsty in hopes he’ll offer me some soda pop, coffee or tea, at which point I can remind him of how much better I am for eschewing such Earthly temptations.”
Ah, so that’s the missionary position.
Brownian @43:
appealling
*giggle*
And that’s it from me on anyone’s grammar – I don’t need to get a new one ripped, thank you very much.
I jut thought that was particularly adorable on a post about spelling :P
@Niftyatheist #51
The Arian heresy was about not accepting the Trinity, i.e. they did not accept Jesus the Son as equal to God the Father (no idea what they thought about Holy Ghost).
But the replacement sacrifice does seem like a persistent meme, doesn’t it. Abraham almost butchers Isaac but at the last minute an angel holds his hand and shows him a ram in a thicket instead. Agamemnon is to sacrifice Iphigenea, but the goddess Artemis replaces her – again at the last minute – with a doe. These replacements versions are usually later versions of the myth which makes me think this is a manifestation of the impulse of not wanting to let go of a good character. We still do it in soap operas (Dallas 8th season, anyone)
ALL HAIL TPYOS!
jut = just (unless someone else wants to pick up the ball?)
pj I stand (well, slouch, really) corrected! Thanks!
Well, I know I read about some kind of nonsense like this in the early Xian babblings..maybe in the gnostic gospels or somewhere- ie. some poor scapegoat dying in place of Jesus while Jesus takes off for parts unknown (unknown, that is, except for the authors of whichever flavor of alternative ending story you are reading! ;)). I remember one version involving an identical twin brother taking the fall. The point remains, as everyone has mentioned – this is such predictable nonsense!
The wonder of it is that the majority of believers fail to notice how predictably similar their mythologies are to every other mythology around the world. The few who do notice, try to explain it away as a proof of the existence of their god(s). But it is not proof. The similarity of mythologies (representative of the similarity of human psychology and strategies for social control and power in populations around the globe) is no more remarkable than the similarity in the spectrum of human facial expressions across cultures, the similar development of various technologies (agriculture, boat building, etc) and so on.
And, speaking of Abraham, what is it with Xians (and most religions, really) being OK with the whole concept of blood sacrifice being sought so implacably by their “loving” god? How do they cope with the cognitive dissonance there, I ask myself? Even as a young child growing up Catholic (but in a cultural Catholic sense at home, thankfully), I was disgusted by that notion. Always hated Easter, even the chocolate. LOL (With my own kids, I tried to keep the focus on what it should always have remained – a celebration of Spring).
So what body part of this Isukiri guy do I need to wave around in order to fight off bad sushi buffets?
So that’s where the saying comes from…
In the movie “The Man from Earth”…
[[MASSIVE SPOILER AHEAD]]
… the main character is a man who, for reasons as yet unknown to him or anyone else, does not age, and thus appears to be in his late 30s even though he is 14000 years old.
In one scene I found particularly funny, he explains to his friends that he was Jesus Christ, and that he learned the philosophy he was preaching from Buddha. However, he also tells them that what he actually said bears only a passing resemblance with what ended up in the Bible that was compiled years later.
I wonder if the author of the screenplay had heard of this sign in Shingo?
bbgunn #37
…
*covers face with hands*
*sobs quietly*
Eric TF Bat says: @17 New lyrics to Blake’s Jerusalem…
OK, it’s not a bad earworm at all… but now, thanks to you, “Jerusalem” is in place, overriding the Sonia Dada “Living on the Edge of the Night” earworm that began my day.
My first thought was that the trip from Israel to Japan in AD 21 would have been extremely arduous. Then I realized that El Al security was probably a lot looser back then since the Romans were in charge.
So is this going to become like an Abraham Lincoln thing?
You know…instead of thousands of places with plaques stating “Lincoln slept here”….it’ll be “Jeebus preached here” or “Jeebus is buried here”?
Maybe I should order a plaque now to avoid the rush and cash in?
I wonder if this was an inspiration for Gore Vidal’s book “Live from Golgotha.”
Only took a day by sea, I hear.
Yep, there are a few variations on the idea found in Gnostic texts. Docetism (“seeming”) was the doctrine, held by many early Christians, probably pagan converts and not Jewish, that Jesus was never truly flesh, but purely divine, and only wore the semblance of human form or actually possessed others’ bodies. “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” one of the Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi, is docetic, and also has Simon of Cyrene (who carries the cross to Golgotha in the Synoptic gospels, and, pointedly, is not mentioned in John) getting crucified in Jesus’ place –whoopsie!
So why would the son of
doggod not get the old man to give him knowledge of divinity? Perhaps they were not on speaking terms? A “god” depending on mere humans for knowledge? The mind boggles.I like Jesus living to 106. 100 or 105 would have just seemed too round and unbelievable.
Does Jebus save anytime if he walks on water?
The Japanese for Christ is “kirisuto,” which is what it says in Japanese there. Isukiri makes me giggle, though, in the idea that a Palestinian 2000 years ago gave such a distinctively Japanese name to one of his sons.
Screw the Mormons, every other Christian has been worshipping Isukiri for 2000 years. It was he who died on a cross for their sins, not JC!
Does that make Christians “Isukirians” now?
Screw the Mormons!
For the last 2000 years Christians have been worshipping Isikuru, not JC who they believe sacrificed himself for their sins!
In stead the noble JC chickened out at the last moment and put his brother in his place.
I wonder if we should start calling Christians “Ishikurians” now?
Hmmm….. I see there’s a lag in this blog showing comments… hence my double post.
how convenient that the brother of IeSU KIRIsuto is named ISUKIRI!
A friend who lived in Japan told me that in her opinion, that story was concocted as an excuse to sell crucified Hello Kitty merchandise.
Is that much different than the tacit assumption that a Palestinian 2000 gave his son a distinctly Greek name? Consider it a transliteration, much like ‘Jesus’ is a hellenisation of the Hebrew name commonly anglicised as Joshua.
Clearly, this ‘Isukiri’ is an nipponisation of the hitherto unkown son of Joseph named Isaac.
Prospect151 #33
It’s even worse than that. The plates were supposedly written in “Reformed Egyptian.”
Hmm, so, thus far, from what I’ve heard, Jesus actually survived the crucifiction, then simultaneously went to Kashmir and Japan, lived for many years before dying of old age, and is now buried at both Srinagar in Kashmir and Shingo in Japan. He gets around a bit, doesn’t he?
Well, Alexander got to India. Was that really the end of the contact? Did the Romans not know of the Chinese?
–o–
Some people will do anything to get away from their creditors.
Poor Mary.
“Told you I was hardcore.”
Well, that explains the sandals and the fish symbolism.
No, Hellenistic kingdoms persisted in Bactria for a couple of centuries after Alexander’s conquests until they fell to the Kushan empire.
They certainly knew of them, yes; all silk in the era came from China (they kept the secret of silkworms jealously), and luxury goods from the Roman Mediterranean made it to Han China too. It’s not known whether there was direct contact of any sort, though. The Parthian and aforementioned Kushan empires stood between them. Chinese sources say there were Roman embassies sent to to Han China, but this is not corroborated in any Western source. On both sides, geographical and cultural details were hazy and highly colored by their respective mythologies of the Far West and Far East.
Eric TF Bat #17
Kung fu is Chinese, not Japanese. Didn’t you ever watch the TV show?
But yeah, I know, “karate” doesn’t scan right.
i before e except when you’re weird.
Jesus could not have studied Buddhism in Tibet: There weren’t any Buddhists there until at least 500 years later.
A somewhat more plausible variation I heard was that Jesus entered a Buddhist monastery in Cairo. This supposedly accounts for the missing years of his biography and for the similarity in some aspects of Christianity and Buddhism (the monastic tradition).
Of course, we first have to establish Jesus as a historical figure. Historical context and plausibility for travel mean nothing if the ticketholder is fictional. Yeah, sure Harry Potter could have taken a train to Scotland to attend boarding school.
Zmidponk, I like your spelling of crucifixion.
Supposedly Jesus was god and god knows everything. He sprang from his mother’s womb quoting Confucius and understanding quantum physics. So why would he spend years in Cairo or Canterbury or Japan when he already knew the stuff he’d learn there?
That is also the standard Islamic belief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_Jesus%27_death
They knew of each other, and may have had limited contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Chinese_relations
It may even be the case that some Roman soldiers ended up settled in China after being passed around as prisoners of war among various intermediate powers, although this looks like the unconfirmed speculation of one historian, an hasn’t been generally accepted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Chinese_relations#Hypothetical_military_contact
Jesus sure left a lot of corpses for someone who rose from the grave. I’m guessing these were made to make Christianity seem less like a foreign religion (like pieces of the cross, etc.)
It shows the lack of imagination that the person choose a name that neatly fits into Japanese phonetics with no Hebrew features and based on the Japanese rendering of the Greek rendering of the Hebrew of Jesus’ name. イスキリ → イエスキリスト note that there aren’t any syllables in iesukiri that aren’t also in iesukirisuto! The sloppiness suggests deliberate joke since even a common liar (I’d like to think) would try harder than that. But it is an interesting looking tourist trap I’ve always wanted to go to if I ever do go to that part of Japan (the furthest North I’ve been is North of Sendai, not too far from where the tsunami hit).
That is also the standard Islamic belief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_Jesus%27_death
They knew of each other, and may have had limited contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Chinese_relations
It may even be the case that some Roman soldiers ended up settled in China after being passed around as prisoners of war among various intermediate powers, although this looks like the unconfirmed speculation of one historian, an hasn’t been generally accepted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano-Chinese_relations#Hypothetical_military_contact
Sorry about the double post. My computer seems to have a problem with FreeThoughtBlogs that means it frequently doesn’t update unless I clear my cache. (It was stuck on Warren Jeffs is going away until a few days ago). I thought it had resolved itself, but it appears to have started up again.
* The problem only occurs when looking at FTB with this computer. I don’t have the problem with any other site, or when looking at FTB on any other compuet.
…It shows
thelack…I should have said the name is based on the Japanese-Portuguese-Latin-Greek (or maybe sans the Portuguese) of Jesus’ name. What a weird coincidence. And there wouldn’t have been Japanese people/culture/language as we understand it today at the time, especially in Northern Japan. It would have been other tribes related to the Ainu. So the story that he married a Japanese woman with a very modern Japanese first name is also incredibly silly. Tourist trap.
So I take it the Japanese version of The Passion of the Christ has a lot more martial arts action than Mel Gibson’s original.
* * *
Praise Isukiri! He died for our sins!
The time wouldn’t be right, anyways. Karate doesn’t date back that far.
For the unenlightened.
I’m betting that “casually” is a mistranslation of a term meaning “accidentally”/”by chance” (because of the etymology of “casual” – Latin casualis, fortuitous ???? I think????)
Any Japanese speakers and/or Latin scholars able to confirm for or against?
You know, just for the hell of it. The actual content being egregious hogwash, obviously, at least “casually” is of passing interest as a typical translation issue :)
This page has the curious line
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”EXPIRES” CONTENT=”-1″>
in the header.
Both the uppercase and the argument “-1” to the attribute “content” are wrong. This should get ignored by most browsers and proxys (“Be generous in what you accept but strict in what you give” or so the saying goes) but should be repaired nevertheless.
The HTTP header seems to be OK, as far as I can tell from here (the clock seems to be some seconds off) but it does not send an expiring date. Sending “Last-Modified” should be sufficient but sometimes it isn’t.
So it is most likely the configuration of your browser, which you can check or the configuration of the proxy which you most probably cannot check (it can even be one of the “transparent proxies” on the side of your provider that sometimes have the bad habits of caching too much).
The browser might cache the page itself. Try to reload the page (i.e.: Ctrl+F5 in IE). If that works the caching mechanism of your browser might not work properly (or is irritated by the “meta” line described above). Try to switch off browser-caching completely. If that works: be aware that it might trigger your bandwidth-cap earlier than expected.
CZ
Well, obviously. Where else but Judea would the ancient art of Jew-Do come from?
/yes, stolen from Christopher Moore.
Is that anything like Nokan-Do?
So Jesus’ younger Japanese brother took his place?
Well, that explains the strange additions I found in my New Testament the other day!
John 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
John 20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.
John 20:28.1 But then Thomas said “But wait! This dude doth be a cubit shorter!”
John 20:28.2 “See how he doth not have the blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin of our Semitic tribes!”
John 20:28.3 And the LORD Jesus judo-chopped Thomas into submission.
John 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
…all is clear now!
Why did Jesus’s brother have a Japanese name?
For that matter, why did Jesus himself have a Mexican name? :-)
Then you have the Takeuchi documents, found by the Shinto priest Koma Takeuchi in 1935. The documents indicate where the Ark of the Covenant, the bone of the emperors and Moses, maps of lost continents, and the grave sites of Jesus and Mary (among other things) can be found
BTW, the town of Shingo used to be known as Herai, which the locals will to you is supposed to be Japanese for “Hebrew”.
Source; Kenneth Hite: Suppressed Transmission: The Second Broadcast; P99
ISBN: 1-55634-445-7
BTW, the belief that Jesus was Japanese has been used to support the hypothesis that the Samurai clans were descended from the Ainu, since the samurais tended to be a hairy bunch, much as the Ainu are.
I think there is an interesting story about this. In the early part of the edo period, there was trade between the Europeans and the Japanese and the Europeans did what Europeans do and converted a certain amount of the population to Catholicism. Then they got kicked out and the Tokugawa shogunate would only trade with the Dutch and even they were confined to Nagasaki island. Meanwhile there was a population of Christians who’s knowledge of their religion was through word of mouth since even in Europe at that time, bibles in non-Latin languages were verbotten. They no longer had the mainstream catholic church to keep them from straying from the official dogma. They were also brutally persecuted by the shogunate.
So you have an isolated group of Christians who know the basic story and are free to make themselves at home in it, and local legends like this one, which has probably been around for 100s of years pop up.
I spent a night on Wikipedia reading about the crypto christians and Grace Hosokawa who was a secret Christian of the samurai class. Fascinating stuff.
Nonsense! I know full well that Jesus of Nazareth, aka Yeshua Ben Joseph was in reality none other than Longfang 12378B of the Ophidian Snake Hybrids!
How do I know ? my magic book told me!
Besides, how do you know he wasn’t ?
Were You There ?
the Japanese doesn’t need floatation devices because the Japanese walk on water.
So that’s where he learned it!
Matthew 27:46
And about the ninth hour (three o’clock) Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?…
“I am a sonofabitchi” is what Ja Suski Ma really said – becarz he waz tormentord with guirt! Eri is short for Iskiri Ma, but the on-scene reporter Matthew remembred it incorrectry 80 years later when he filed his report, also thinking it was casually screamed by the man on the cross, not the fleeing figure behind the cross.
An alternate explanation goes: When Jesus says “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”, He is, as you no doubt already know, quoting from Psalm 22 (verse 1 in the English versions). This is important to understand, because Psalm 22 is a prophecy of Jesus’ crucifixion. The rejection of the Messiah by the people (v.6), the insults they hurled at Him on the cross (vv.7-8 – compare with Matt.27:38-43), the pain of the crucifixion (vv.14-15), the piercing of His hands and feet (v.16), the dividing up of His clothing by lot (v.18) are just some of the more obvious parallels this Psalm prophesies. Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him because He understood this Psalm and how it applied to His death on our behalf (cf. Matt.20:18-19). By quoting Psalm 22, our Lord makes this clear, and makes it clear to all who would later hear these words of His that He was well aware that He would have to die on our behalf in order to save us – for this reason He came into the world (Jn.3:16-17).
Some people very wrongly take this quote you ask about to be a sign of desperation on our Lord’s part in His hour of trial – but nothing could be further from the truth. These words from our Savior make it clear beyond doubt that, on the one hand, He understood why He had to suffer – this was His mission – and, on the other hand, that He was supremely confident of the Father’s ultimate deliverance of Him through the resurrection of His body before it had even seen decay.
In other words, it was opposite day! Crying out in desperate fear really meant calmly expressed confidence!! (I always point out to my Xian friends, when they claim Ja Suski Ma never sinned, that indeed he did so. He doubted god, and this is most assuredly a sin. “Ultimately, we must never embrace doubt as a Christian virtue, but as a sinful trait to rid ourselves of.”)
But far less weirder than any apologist’s explanations.
He doesn’t really doubt Space Ape… substitute ‘abandoned me’ with ‘fucked me over,’ which was a common and recurring Hebrew lament during and after the Exile. And before, like in Job.
And now, like in restaurants(BAM ~ prolly too new and not smart enough for lame anti-Semitic attempts at humour. Sorry, I’ll try harder)I had a kung-fu teacher tell me once that Brian was using Qi Gong that he’d learnt in China for his magic shows.
I thought Santa Clause was Jesus’s little brother. This ruins it all for me.
“casually” is a bad translation of 偶々 which means more like “by chance”. I know exactly which dictionary the translator must have been using.
The details of the document from which this story comes are on the Japanese wikipedia, and the whole thing is fantastic crackpottery. It includes the idea that the grave of Moses is also in Japan, that the founders of all the major religions came to Japan and worked for the emperor at some point, and that various cities around the world (including, for example, Johannesburg and Boston) are actually named for siblings of an emperor who went travelling across the world 3000 or so years ago. Also pyramids in Japan and blue people.
The guy responsible for the whole thing was also investigated for fraud, which I’m sure surprises exactly nobody here.
“Nonsense! I know full well that Jesus of Nazareth, aka Yeshua Ben Joseph was in reality none other than Longfang 12378B of the Ophidian Snake Hybrids!”
Actually it is a bit more complicated than that, with all the clones, and the horizontal information transfer* between them making all an interlinked meta-individual.
When one unit was crucified, he was easily replaced but he was not in a strict sense resurrected (even though the telepathic data transfer guarantees a continuity of memory up to the time of death surviving among the other clones).
*= For large data volumes, memories are transferred chemically by “direct conference” (See the novel by Robert Heinlein, poorly filmed in the nineties)
Also, the “snake hybrids” are merely the latest favourite host species, the clones that form the collective can physically constitute GM versions of any of several sentient species.
It would have been even more complicated if Jesus had been a subset of the Modhri, from Timothy Zahn’s “Quadrail” series.
I am SO making a character based on this concept the next time I have a chance. I mean, seriously, Ninja Jesus? How can I resist?
I invented a time machine got in it and wound up in 1st century Palestine. I look into the distance and see a man leading a donkey with a pregnant woman on it. I say to the man “What is your name?”
He says, “Joseph”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“Mary”
“Let me guess, you’re going to name the child Jesus.”
“Fuck no! What the fuck you think we are, Puerto Ricans?”
There’s a similar bullshit, site in Turkey that gets swarmed with gullible pocket-bled tourists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_the_Virgin_Mary
@Freemage
I wish I knew how to post pictures here but you may want to Google “Ninja Pirate Cyborg Jesus” “No Mercy”.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ninja+pirate+cyborg+jesus&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1114&bih=507
I wish more people would write sites like this that are actually fun to read. With all the fluff floating around on the internet, it is a great change of pace to read a site like yours instead.