As it is apparently not obvious to a few people, this was an April Fool’s joke folks!
Well it’s been an interesting couple of weeks in the world of CJ, which I guess is a small part of the world of Biblical Scholarship. Not to say I have a small part – my part generally evokes favourable comment I find, in informed quarters. 🙂 As YouTube have seen fit to suppress my important researches, I have no other avenue but to publish them here. They will shake Biblical Studies to its very foundations, and I would like to dedicate them to my friends on the Richard Dawkins and James Randi forums
Anyway, back to the plot —
The Story of a Chance Discovery
Long term readers of this forum will know that I have recently been rebuking James Randi for spreading woo about Nazareth, and arguing the case on this very forum, that Nazareth always existed, and that the fringe loonies who say it did not are in fact talking out of their arses, in direct contravention of all the archaeological evidence. I am delighted therefore to say that quite by chance I have stumbled upon the solution to they mystery of where Nazareth actually was, and in doing so have been able to radically advance the cause of both Biblical Archeaology and the Christian faith.
It all began when Playtoe invoked the account of the Empress Helena’s famous visit to Nazareth, where according to the she found not a lot – a tawdry wishing well, a small statue of a rather under endowed Canaanite fertility God and a Bedouin bazaar hawking “Nazareth by Night” mosaics and “My mates went on Crusade and all I got was this lousy surcoat” memorabilia. OK, OK, I made the last two up. Anyway I queried Playtoe as to his source, and he mentioned the little known chronicle of Lady Egeria Humphrey’s. Now as it happens i was aware of the family through my East Anglian genealogical interests, and in particular from the work of Montague Rhgodes James who chronicles the inheritance of a Mr Humphreys of this clan, with a rather fine maze, in the early years of the century. I am afraid I suspected the line was no extinct, but I made a mental note to look up the family in Burke’s Peerage, lest any scion survive with perhaps access to ancient family records.
Last week I was called to town on business, and while there i realized i needed a new tie – I would hate to appear in public dressed in a shabby manner, and am rarely without a tie and collar – and so I popped in to Grace Brothers department store. While making polite conversation with a blue rinsed lady of a certain age with a very demanding cat it seems from her anecdotes, I was introduced to another sales assistant, a Mr Humphreys. Imagine my amazement when it turned out he was of the West Suffolk Humphreys, and I fear the last in the line of Lady Egeria. I was concerned that I might take him from his duties, but he assured me he was free, so we proceeded to my club (the Diogenes) where after several pink gins he informed me that indeed he did possess some ancient family papers, and invited me to inspect his backroom.
I was forced by pressing business to decline, but some days later a parcel arrived at my Cotswolds residence, and within I found the parchment that will overturn almost all that is known in the world of Biblical Studies, and indeed completely revolutionize Biblical Archaeology…
The Codex Nesbitti
The document within the parcel did not seem to amount to much – it was indeed bought by Raymond Humphries, Egeria’s great great great great great nephew while he was himself on crusade in the Holy Land during the Fourth Crusade, shortly after the “oops! have we just burned another Christian City?” episode of the sack of Constantinople in 1204. It was clearly written in atrocious Latin, and at some point a scholar named JCT Jennings had annotated it with rather poor attempts at construing certain passages and carefully drawn doodle of beetles. None the less what it contained was dynamite.
The Codex Nesbitti was written by a Rabbi C. Nesbittus, the C probably standing for Cohen and indicating he is of the priestly caste. From the pseudo-Hadrianic script, I would date the manuscript from late in the Fourth Century, and place it in the School of Sivierus that flourished in Upper Galilee at that time during the Byzantine occupation. Nesbittus is clearly a latinization of a Hebrew name, and indeed the story of the unfortunate rabbi, caught up in a series of misunderstandings, enslaved by the Empress Helena, and forced to make his living renting out reclining couches on the shores of the Black Sea and then later personal donkey trainer to Arius, a heretical theologian, before an even more unfortunate escapade led to him narrowly avoiding a career as an imperial catamite, reminds one of [i]The Golden Ass. [/i]
What is important is that Nesbitticus reveals the truth about Nazareth, and provides us with a key to understanding the entire mystery. It becomes apparent that Nazareth is actually not the towns original name which was ברגהדון
or in Greek Βριγηαδοον. My subsequent researches suggest that this may equate to a modern district of the city of Γλασγοω known as the Γορβαλσ – however it is early days, and further research is needed…
The Mystery of Nazareth
Before proceeding it is necessary to bring the reader up to date on the mystery of Nazareth. Despite the Starkweather-Moore expedition of 1933, the Peabody expedition of 37, Dr Henry Armitage’s extensive digs and the joint work of mother & son team Lavina and Wilbur Whately it has until this point been difficult to make sense of the archaeological record surrounding Nazareth, or as we know should call it, Βριγηαδοον. I think it was Professor Laban Shrewsbory’s extensive work on dating the indoor plumbing of the town that provided us with the best clue as to what was actually going on. The archaeological record is indeed spotty – 101BC, 1AD, 101, AD, 201-202AD, 301AD, 401AD are all attested, but the periods in between are not. In light of this tow major theories have been put forward – the Swiss school headed by Pantsonfyre and Swinddler, who claim the town was an invention of the Gospel writers to try and drum up early Christian pilgrimage tourist traffic (recently endorsed by Randy) and the alternative hypothesis, preferred by Prof. Armitage etc, where the town was a ritual site only settled once a century at a time when the stars are right to celebrate a festival of Dagon, a local maritime deity, and another lesser known pagan deity only called by his worshippers “He Who Can Not be Pronounced”. I of course favoured the latter explanation.
Now however, transliterating the Greek Βριγηαδοον I saw another strong possibility, and as i read further I came to see how wrong Biblical archeology really is.
THE TRUTH REVEALED!
William Comyns Beaumont (and indeed that other visionary, William Blake) were right all along. You remember the sinister biographer of Constantine and Helena, Eusebius? Eusebius is the priest who has been accused of everything from covering up what REALLY happened at the Council of Nicea in 325 (they wrote the whole Bible – Eusebius forged it by his own hand, from Genesis to Revelation) to inventing Jesus Christ, and many other things as well. Yet few of the great atheist scholars, nay not even Richard Carrier or Stephen Carr had come close to recognizing the true audacity of Eusebius plotting – for he has covered up the fact that Jerusalem is in fact Edinburgh, Temple Mount is where Edinburgh Castle stands today (yes, Jerusalem really was built among the dark satanic mills of Midlothian – he knew the Truth – that is why THEY shut him up!) and the Ancient Egyptians until the 13th dynasty lived in Wales. I do not know, but I suspect from reading the Codex that the Parthenon stood in high town Bridgnorth, known to the Ancients as Athens. Persia was probably East Anglia – and London, well London is not important at all.
For those not aware of the true genius of Comyns Beaumont — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Comyns_Beaumont This is the kind of daring freethinking Biblical Archaeology many freethinkers embraced in the past, and I am disappointed we have not seen more of it here! http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5-vCPBMTwEsC&dq=Comyns+Beaumont&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=HMXtq47q-0&sig=GW2EiNc6lfQ_9YVy_FxXqA1rGCM&hl=en&ei=wtXSSYTrJIa7jAeEjLD4Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA9,M1 gives you a glimpse in to this most brilliant radical thinker.
SO, Nazareth?
The Greek Βριγηαδοον, loosely Brigadoon, may or may not refer to the town of this name known in Scottish legend – but it is clear it was not far from Jerusalem (Edinburgh), and my suggestion of the Gorbals district of Glasgow while tentative seems reasonable. The allegedly peripatetic liminal status of the town might well explain the peculiarities of the archaeological record, and finally explain many mysteries that have puzzled Biblical archaeologists. The controversy between say Dever and the Maximalists and Finkelstiein and the Minimalists is at once resolved – they are looking for evidence in the archaeological realia for Biblical events several thousand miles from where they actually occurred. That Ancient Nineveh was Newcastle, and Babylon Bradford seems simple enough – indeed some say that Bradford still is Bradford, though claims equating Sodom with Sunderland are fiercely resisted by the Maccam population, though I think I should point out that the sin of Sodom was never that – it was inhospitality. the sin of Gomorrah (Grimsby) seems to have involved perfumed she goats.
Anyway, enough of my adventures in Biblical archaeology for one night, but I hope this has gone some way towards clarifying things that have long puzzled us all.
Published on this morning, the 1st of April, 2009 Anno Domini
cj x
"And sometimes he's so nameless" 
To quote the great politician and Biblical scholar Francis Rudolf Bultmann Urqhart: ”I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Ah, you are going for the great ‘Stephen Carr’ Hoax which comes up every 1st April.
Stephen Carr does not exist. The name is a scribal corruption of the true canonical version.
If it’s any consolation Steven, it was intentional, and I had originally called Richard Carrier Richard Corrie. (as in the Granada soap!)I decided it was better to use your real names, and then I messed up – mind you I’m always getting that p & v wrong! lol, thanks for taking my mangling ye olde name in such good spirits, and hope my contribution to Biblical Studies amused you!
gypsies who used to be known as tinkers in Britain and Ireland ( and gypsy jews! – eh?) with odd legends about being present at the crucifixion and either stealing a nail or being condemned to wander due to their ancestors blacksmithery with dna that would suggest they were British/Irish not Romany Gypsy ( out of India in the 15th century) and started wandering about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. Did Comyns Beaumont miss them -lol
” In the beginning the gypsies were the jews and the jews were the gypsies until God made us change places ” – Gypsy Legend. Here’s a wee frivolous tale seeing as this page was intended as an April Fools joke – A tinker gypsy is riding his caravan through Edinburgh minding his own business , heading towards Rosslyn Chapel ( remember that place? where did Dan Brown get his wacky ideas for that Da Vinci Code novel ? ) because he’s heard that the St-Clairs who own the land used to allow his gypsy types the roam of the land when they were hunted from everywhere else , and he chances upon a resident from Tel Aviv who has just landed at Edinburgh Airport because he is intending on visiting his relatives at Newton Mearns. Which one of the two is from a nation of gadji/gentiles who were converted to a religious practice?