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This post was inspired by the Apollonius's thread about the parallels between the figure of Julius Caesar and the figure of Jesus Christ. This is a translation of a transcription of a Russian documentary and the original information was uncovered and compiled by Alexey Khrustalyov.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Traditionally the New Testament places are considered to be the territories of present-day Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. However, no clear evidence of this has yet been found. There are some piles of shards, or there are some stones, they are immediately and happily written in the minus 20th century or minus 30th century, but any real, any really interesting finds that would unequivocally confirm the Old Testament or New Testament history in Israel are practically nonexistent.
And, in fact, almost all of the finds that pop up there from time to time, are either fakes or are so obviously staged that it is ridiculous. Here's one of the last of these very funny stories, you probably remember the urn being found. An urn with the name of Jesus' brother on it was written, Jacob, I think, as was the name of one of Jesus' brothers, and literally three or four years later the man who brought this wonderful urn to the world was prosecuted in Israel for forgery of artifacts. Yes, he was caught, just caught by the hand.
Alexander Grinin. And this is against the backdrop of, remember, when literally a month or two ago they found Adam's grave.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, they can find anything they want there, it's not written there that this is Adam's grave. There must be some confirmation of what they find, and there is no confirmation. And if we're talking, for example, about Old Testament history or New Testament history, we would like to have at least something... It's clear that a lot of time has passed, it's difficult to find some artifacts, but at least something that connected this particular land with the text of scripture or with the text of the Torah or with the text of the Old Testament.
Israeli archaeologists and their American, English, German colleagues who work there have big problems with this. That is, they can't find anything significant that unequivocally indicates that the events of the New Testament or the Old Testament took place there. Actually, if we talk about the Israelite archaeology in general, it appeared quite recently. For all of archaeology it seems to be such an interesting land, it is the land of the Holy Sepulchre, those are sacred places for Muslims too, but, nevertheless, some of the first more or less systematic excavations there began in general only in the 19th century. Even closer, so to speak, to the middle of the 19th century. And the first who began to work there were, I think, Americans Robinson and Smith, if I am not mistaken, well, at least one of the first, yes. The Frenchman Clermont Hanneau made a great contribution and also the Englishmen worked there, then the Germans came, and at the very end of the 19th century the Russians excavated there.
Alexander Grinin. Are you talking specifically about the territory of Israel?
Map of Palestine
Alexey Khrustalyov. On the territory of Palestine, let's be clear, it was Palestine. That's the land of Palestine right there - in Jerusalem, around Jerusalem, that is what is now the land that now belongs to Israel, Palestine, partly Lebanon, partly Syria, and so on. More or less serious expeditions appeared there in the middle of the 19th century. And the first plan of Jerusalem, a proper plan, was made, if I'm not mistaken, by an Englishman named Talbot somewhere in the second half of the 19th century. And what was before that, the whole Christian world didn't show any interest in the Holy Land?
They did, but again, no significant traces that would link these places with biblical events were ever noticed. That is, of course, there are some notes from the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. By the way, it's very interesting, if we're talking about the testimonies of the Holy Land, there are very big breaks there. First, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, appears there. This is the very beginning of A.D., 3rd century A.D., and then some information appears only after the Crusade.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, and moreover, she takes out a bunch of artifacts...
Alexey Khrustalyov. We'll come back to this later, where and what she takes out, it's also very interesting...
Alexander Grinin. A Piece of the Holy Sepulchre Cross...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Absolutely right, she found a lot of things there, she led the excavations herself, founded several churches there and so on, we will come back to that.
Alexander Grinin. Note that there were organized excavations in the 3rd century...
Alexey Khrustalyov. In general, we can say that at this time Helen was about 80 years old. Imagine the age of 80 in the 3rd century, when much later the average life expectancy was 35, 40, 45 years in Europe. What is an 80-year-old woman and what is it like for her to travel for example from Trier, where she lived, to Jerusalem. Well, just imagine what it's like. I mean, not every man would dare to do that, and a healthy, strong man, well, we'll get to that question later. And now it probably makes sense to go back to the 19th century, to the beginning of the excavations.
That is, some piles of stones are found, and they are often tied to Old Testament or New Testament names quite arbitrarily.
Actually, if we talk about Israel, about the Holy Land, about how to connect the text of the New Testament and the Old Testament with this land, then we must first of all talk about the mass of inconsistencies in the texts describing these territories and what we see in reality. In fact, it is no big secret that scholars have been knocking themselves out looking for Capernaum, Gadara, Sodom, Gomorrah, the land of the Gergesenes, and so on and so forth. Well, what to speak of such cities, if the temple of Solomon, in fact, can not be tied to the area, and Calvary can not be tied to the area.
And it's a well-known fact enough that in the mid-19th century, an English officer, moved Golgotha, that is, he believed that Golgotha was not where everyone else saw it, but in a completely different place. So there are a lot of points of view out there, where in general..., in the 19th century they couldn't yet determine where Golgotha was.
Alexander Grinin. Well, it's localized now.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Now it's localized, but the thing is that we're told that there's an unbroken tradition, that for almost two thousand years people knew where Golgotha was and it was clearly localized; people understood that this is Jerusalem, this is Golgotha, this is the Way of the Cross and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, as it turns out, even in the 19th century there were no clear ideas about where Golgotha was. And the reason there were none, we can understand, because there are no structures of that time and it is very difficult to determine where was the Way of the Cross, where was Golgotha, where was the Temple of Solomon, where were some other buildings of Herod's time.
Indeed, even according to traditional history, Jerusalem was simply razed to the ground more than once, from the first centuries AD to the most recent destruction of the 20th century, let's suppose. So it is insanely difficult to determine exactly where, what was located, and the sources do not give an unambiguous answer, where and what was located and it is Jerusalem. Jerusalem is kind of a central point, what about other points in Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and so on, it's very difficult to pinpoint them.
Alexander Grinin. And let me ask you this. I haven't been to Jerusalem, but is there a lot of sites that can be considered controversial, like Golgotha, that there are several hills or mountains that can be called Golgotha? As far as I remember they had a seven-hill structure, seven hills.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You see, if you want more, any hill can be called Calvary. The question is not what you can do, the question is where it really was, and the problem is just that it is impossible to localize it properly. That is why linking Calvary to Jerusalem and linking the entire biblical history, the entire New Testament history to these places is, to put it mildly, questionable. To begin with, the same Arabs, for example, do not know the city of Jerusalem, they know the city of Al-Quds or there are some variants of pronunciation, I probably will not reproduce it as Nikolai Nikolaevich Vashkevich, for example, will reproduce it, a brilliant Arabist.
Alexander Grinin. Which one is that?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well "Hiero" is Greek. It is a Greek word and therefore the second part - "Salim" is connected with Shalom, and this is why, honestly, I've never seen such a mixture of roots in the name of cities, then... Actually, the interesting question is what do Arabs think about all of this history. And in general it is very interesting to look at the history of Jerusalem and the holy places, not from our European point of view, but from the Arab point of view, from the point of view of the Middle Eastern authors.
For example, when they write about Jerusalem-Al-Quds, the Arab authors do not deny that it is indeed a holy city. But why is it a holy city? Not because Isa was there, whom, by the way, they also revere very much, the prophet Isa, Jesus, but because from Al-Quds, the prophet Muhammad made his night ascent to heaven, it is absolutely not a holy city because Isa was there, but because Muhammad was there.
Alexander Grinin. Didn't it happen somewhere in Mecca or Medina?
Alexey Khrustalyov. This is an interesting point. The fact that the Arab authors, for example, the same Nasir-ibn-Husrau wrote that those who could not make the hajj to Mecca go to Jerusalem. Well, that is, Mecca is certainly the holy city for all Muslims, but those who cannot go to Mecca, they went to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem, specifically Al-Quds, again, I emphasize, because all the time this mixing happens. In fact, in all Arab sources, without exception, it is called Al-Quds, there is no Jerusalem, there is Al-Quds, there is Al-Bayt Muqaddas, there is Beit al-Maqdis and so on, well there are names, I will not compete again with Arabists in pronunciation.
Nevertheless, all these names appear in Arabic literature, and of course there is no Jerusalem there. There is even such a literary genre as "fadail Al-Quds," an Arabic literary genre that describes the virtues of the city of Al-Quds and Muslim authors they write with great respect about the tombs of the common prophets, such as the tomb of Ibrahim, if I'm not mistaken, Moses, and so on and so forth. That is, they write about the graves of common prophets, but they do not write about the fact that in this city the prophet Isa, whom, by the way, they respect very, very much, was crucified. Moreover, there is direct evidence from Arab authors that the Franks, as they called them, those people who came during the Crusades, the so-called Crusades, openly fabricated the story of Christ's stay in Al-Quds.
Here, for example, I can quote a piece from Isfahan, he writes: "As for the Dome of the Rock, the Franks made a church and an altar in it, they decorated it with pictures and statues and they designated places in it for the monks and a place for the Gospel. Above the footprint of the prophet," the prophet, attention, yes, we're talking about Mohammed, "they erected a little gilded dome and said it was the footprint of the messiah. Well, here again, you can take different views of this evidence, but nevertheless.
Alexander Grinin. And what is this source?
Alexey Khrustalyov. This is Isfahani. So it is interesting that the footprint of one holy man turns into the footprint of another holy man.
Alexander Grinin. And now, is it still like that, or...?
Alexey Khrustalyov. It's hard to say, to be honest, I haven't checked personally what's going on there now with this particular footprint, I can't say, honestly, I just can't, you can look.
Alexander Grinin. And the Dome of the Rock, what term is that, is it some kind of church?
Alexey Khrustalyov. The Dome of the Rock is one of the holiest places for all Muslims and the Dome of the Rock is the place associated with the Holy Sepulchre. Now there is a serious battle going on around this place, as far as you know, as to whom it will belong.
Alexander Grinin. So this is some kind of object on the territory of Jerusalem, yes?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Of course.
Alexander Grinin. So theoretically inside this very Dome of the Rock there must be a trace of the prophet, we don't know what happens to it there, but it must be there.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, theoretically it has to be there, yes. That is, in practice it is probably possible to check it in some way, but again, we have to be very careful with all this evidence, because many times it was rebuilt, demolished, remodeled, well, that is whether there is something that was after the crusades is a big question.
Alexander Grinin. Within the framework of your concept that you're telling us today, I take it that in that case it shouldn't be there at all. If we come, for example, to this place, which is now called the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, there can be no footprint of the prophet...
Alexey Khrustalyov. There can be anything, because you probably know very well how things are restored and how they are resurrected from oblivion. When you come to Italy you can see how it all happens, they do not even hide it. For example, in Italy when there is restoration of frescoes there, in fact, all this is not closed, the masters work and you can see how it all happens. People crave for a spectacle, it is clear that the business is the tourists. Well, this is sort of the second question, because the first one is still politics and it is important for people that these events took place at their place, and the consequence, for example, is the attraction of tourists and so on and so on.
So, if we return to Muslim authors, for example, very interesting testimony left by Al-Harawi: "as to the places of pilgrimage of the Christians, the most important of them is the church of scum. The Christians have a tomb there, which they call the tomb of resurrection 'kiyamah' because they believe that the resurrection of the Messiah took place there, in fact, this place was the Kumamah scum, a place of refuse, because they threw garbage from all around there", interesting, really.
Alexander Grinin. By the way, they have a favorable attitude towards Isa, any imam would say for sure that Muslims respect Isa a lot.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is only natural because they really respect Isa, and I don't think that if resurrection of Isa really happened they wouldn't mark it in some way, but at least they would write that there is an opinion that...
Alexander Grinin. They wouldn't have littered the place with garbage so to speak.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, I don't think they would, at least there wouldn't have been a dump at that place, that's true. I mean, it's unlikely that the Arabs and the Muslims, who had a lot of reverence for Isa, would have set up a dumping ground there. Here's the same Nasir-ibn-Husrau that we've already talked about today, he wrote that the Christians own a large church in the city that goes by the name of Bayt al-Kumama, the church of scum, and they honor it highly. But there is a subtle point here, there is some difference between honoring it highly and relating it to the messiah. That is, in Moscow there are also many temples, which are revered, which are highly revered, but this does not mean that it is in these temples that some gospel events took place, that is, "to revere" and "to relate to" are different things. Well, as far as the Arabic authors are concerned, yes, of course, if we are talking about gospel events, then the most important text that tells about gospel events is the text of the Bible.
In fact, I checked all these places with the text in Old Slavonic, with the text of the Vulgate, but I did not check the Greek text. In the Vulgate, and with the Old Slavonic, in general, everything is conveyed adequately. For example, read Luke's Gospel: "And as he was going to Jerusalem, he passed through the region of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, he was met by six lepers, who stood afar off, and with a loud voice said: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us"". In general, a quick glance at a map of ancient Israel is enough to realize that the Gospel passage quoted here is not about the Middle Eastern kingdom of Herod's time, if only because it is physically difficult to pass between Samaria and Galilee bordering each other. Now, if you look at a map, you'll see that these are just bordering territories and if you walk between them, you'll get anywhere but Jerusalem.
Well, let's say that between these lands, or between these cities, there was some kind of lane where the savior walked, or another possibility is that, Christ walked along the border of Samaria and Galilee. But again, in this case he must have come anywhere but to Jerusalem, because both the neutral strip and the border between these lands, it goes in a direction strictly perpendicular to that by which he could have come to this ancient city. But besides all this, in general a very interesting point, purely chronological point, in general what kind of Samaria can we talk about, if even according to traditional history, Samaria was renamed to Sebastia in the minus twenty-fifth year, and it remains Sebastia to this day. That is to say, here since those times, the name does not seem to have changed...
Alexander Grinin. Well, they can refer to this fact that, say, historian or chronicler simply used some archaic names and he did not have a modern map, as usual.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Perhaps, anything is possible, I by no means claim to carry some kind of truth in the last instance, I just reason and speculate. And in my picture of the world it somehow does not fit very well. Firstly, the fact that the direction is wrong, and secondly, even purely chronologically, well, it does not work. Although, if we are talking about chronology, that is a separate topic, when the Gospel events took place. Actually, I am a supporter of the short chronology version, and I believe that the Gospel events did not take place two thousand years ago, they took place closer to us in time, well, we will return to this question.
But, nevertheless, even I emphasize, even within the traditional concept, it does not work out that Samaria was there. In general, the question whether there was Samaria, if from time immemorial there has always been Sebastia and now it is Sebastia, where did this association with Samaria come from is a big question. Yes, you can say that now a certain Israeli territory around these lands is called Samaria, but then again, this is already a tribute to tradition, this is what is called the work of the 19th-20th centuries, and it's hardly relevant to the history we're talking about today.
Alexander Grinin. In general, probably, I'm curious why to lie in principle, why to invent something that hasn't existed, well, take the map if there is information that this territory was renamed in 25 B.C. Well, name it Sebastia at once and there are no problems.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You see, the thing is that when you see these inconsistencies, you begin to understand that there was nothing to rely on, there was no continuous chronology. If we generally talk about the chronology as such, you can treat the works of Fomenko as you like, but nevertheless he writes, in fact, very correct things, at least as far as the chronology is concerned. And even if we're talking about biblical chronology, gospel chronology, it would seem that, yes, you can very simply do really as you say, if you had to interpret something correctly, you could take some sort of composite table and see when was what and write correctly.
But that's the thing, they couldn't write it right, because there was nothing to rely on, well, there was no unified chronology, so there are holes like this, so there are terrible inconsistencies. That's what I just said - 25 years going back and forth is really nothing. By the way, we are not talking about 25 years here, but because we are not counting, roughly speaking, from year zero, and the events of the Gospel, which took place there towards the end of the 20s, maybe in the 30s, 31, 32, it is very difficult to determine right now, So it was renamed in minus 25, and we are talking about, let's say, about the 30th year of our era, so there is already a decent difference, that is 50-60 years for that time in general you could already understand that on this place is Sebastia. But the thing is, people weren't writing about this region of the world or this time, which is why Samaria arises there and why the option arises there, when it passed between Samaria and Galilee. What was the place they written about?
Alexander Grinin. Yes that is the question, I feel that there is a big landmine laid here.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, in my opinion, we are talking about a completely different place. If we take a map of medieval Europe, because in my opinion all these events have taken place already, conditionally speaking, this is the 11th-12th century of what we call the 11th-12th century of our era. I can't say more precisely, because there are so many inconsistencies in the chronology that it's impossible to determine more precisely yet. Well, if you take even the same papal documents, papal chancellery and look at them, you see that there before the 12th century, and maybe even to 13th, the dates of the documents in the papal chancellery were not stamped, and only starting from the 12-13th centuries, there may even be later, there are dates from the birth of Christ, that is for them even for the papal chancellery was a big question when these events took place.
Alexander Grinin. So the dates were the third year of the papal reign...?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Actually, I do not want to eat other people's bread. It is all described, repeatedly described by Fomenko, it is described in the earlier works of Postnikova it is described in the earlier works of Morozov, here, I will not say anything new about this and these authors, and the German authors, the same Uwe Topper, have works devoted to chronology, you can look and read there. So, there was no unambiguous chronological scale, so if we are talking about the events of the Gospels, then we can express different points of view. By the way, there is a very interesting point here, that what Christians believe is formulated in the Creed, as we know. But in the Creed, in fact, there is only one binding "crucified for us under Pontius Pilate," it says in the Creed, there are no other bindings in the Creed.
Alexander Grinin. That is, Gaul is the self-name of the French state, the French called themselves Gauls, or as?...
Alexey Khrustalyov. The French called... There is such a very subtle question in general who to call the French and who to call Gauls, it is a linguistic question, on the one hand...
Alexander Grinin. Well yes, there was a lot of these small duchies, principalities.
Alexey Khrustalyov. If you look at this, this is a completely separate issue, a very interesting one, about who the Gauls were and where they lived, and in general what is Gaul and what is the Gallic Belt of Europe, and so on and so forth, I think we can return to this question at the end. Now, to stay on topic, let's just look at a map of northern France, a map of Gaul, and see that the city called Amiens today used to stand on the Samara River, which is now the Somme River, and in ancient times it was called Samara, and the city was called Samara-Breguet or Samara-Bravy, and there are different names. So that's Samaria for you.
Here's how to get to this ancient city is a question for an encore. Historians still don't know which city to consider Cana. Israeli workaholics from archeology have several versions. They believe Kanami or Kfar Kanum 6 kilometers from Nazareth, or Herbatkannum, for example, 8 kilometers from Tzipori, well, perhaps there is a third, fourth, fifth option, just these two options are the most famous. But, the fact is that all of these present candidates for Cana, in New Testament times they were not settlements, they were not even spits on the map, that is, you can call it a settlement with a great stretch and, in fact, there are no clear indications that these places are Cana.
And yet there are very interesting passages in the text of Scripture, which are, in fact, clues for the researchers of this question, in general, scholars either do not notice them, or do not want to notice them. Look here, in the Gospel of John, it says that Philip, a resident of Bethsaida, finds Nathanael telling him about Christ - this is the Gospel of John. Further, the same Gospel of John said that Nathanael was from Cana of Galilee, is it so hard to compare these passages and understand that Cana of Galilee and Bethsaida must be somewhere near or overlapping, after all, Philip did not meet Nathanael on Mars.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, he didn't cross rivers, he didn't climb over mountain ranges.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, that is, it has to be somewhere near, it has to be somewhere in the neighborhood. But this turn does not suit the researchers of the Gospel, because Cana and Bethsaida do not overlap with each other within the framework of the traditional version. And in fact, strictly speaking, the settlement that today is passed off as Bethsaida is not in Galilee, just for a second, but in Gavletide, on the other side of the Jordan.
Actually again the same question, a certain pile of stones was excavated there and whether it should be considered Bethsaida is a very big question. And Bethsaida and Cana should be, according to the scriptures, according to the text of the Gospel, side by side or overlapping with each other, in the territory where they are searched today there is neither Cana nor Bethsaida, but they exist in another place and the most interesting thing is that under the same names they exist, under which they existed in ancient times. Where are they located? Again in the same Gaul on the territory of modern France and again with the same Yen Samaria, which is very interesting, there is a city known to all, the city of Cannes, located not anywhere, but in the historical territory of Bessen.
If you compare the French spelling of, for example, the territory of Bessen with the name of Bethsaida, you'll realize that it is almost the same, so here's Cana in the territory of Bethsaida and they perfectly overlap each other, and then it becomes clear why Nathanael was both a resident of Bethsaida and a native of Cana and there is no witchcraft and magic in it. And these are real places, by the way, unlike the legendary Ancient Israelites and, by the way, this is a very important point, both of these cities existed in the Roman era, whenever it was, that is even traditional historians recognize that these two cities existed in the Roman era as well.
Alexander Grinin. So it turns out that people study these maps, there are great docs great biblical connoisseurs. Is it really hard to see it and compare?
Alexey Khrustalyov. You know what the thing is, there's a lot of aspect problem. For the people of the church, there are two pillars: sacred scripture and sacred tradition. And, in general, it is not known which one is more important. In fact, both are insanely important, and on these pillars the church of Christ is founded and without sacred scripture there is no sacred tradition and vice versa. So when the people of the church approach this question for them everything is unambiguous and obvious they can't even doubt that...
Alexander Grinin. Canon.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Canon. Maybe it's not so bad and it's probably not so bad, but nevertheless, for most believers, well not so, I say incorrectly, not for most, for a certain part of believers, because for most believers these are really immutable things. For some part of the faithful, the issues of geography and faith can probably still be separated. In fact, I myself belong to this second category, that is, for me there is no doubt, I absolutely do not doubt the text of Scripture as a Christian, but at the same time for me the issues of geography can be separated from the issues of faith in a certain way. Again, I come back to the fact that there is a Creed that articulates what a Christian believes and the Creed, which, to put it bluntly, was not composed by the most recent people of Christianity and not the most foolish.
Alexander Grinin. I absolutely agree, it's obviously interesting, this comparison with Cannes is the simplest one.
Alexey Khrustalyov. The point is that, first of all, the comparison with the city of Cannes, not with Caen, which is to the north, by the way, is also a very interesting point, I'll talk about it now. First, there are two cities with very similar names there is the city of Caen in northern France, there is the city of Cannes in southern France. I don't remember now. I think Postnikov mentioned this very specific point, or I'm not sure now, or Postnikov's, I think I may be mistaken. So, and Fomenko, in my opinion, also has this, that the city of Cannes is associated there with that very evangelical place that the New Testament talks about, that is, I'm not the first to look at France from this point of view. The other thing is that in that hypothesis we're talking about the southern Cannes and by the way, a very interesting point, why does this phrase Cana of Galilee arise at all. Was there some other Cana?
Alexander Grinin. Yes.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Why does the question of Cana of Galilee arise at all, why does this steady phrase combination of Cana of Galilee arise? All the other cities are just given regular name...
Alexander Grinin. Just one word, Bethlehem.
Alexey Khrustalyov. ...in one word, and here it is Cana of Galilee. And where was Cana not Galilee on the territory of ancient Israel?
Alexander Grinin. That is to say, this is Cana of the Festival.
Alexey Khrustalyov. So the thing is that if we are looking at the territory of Gaul-France, this option is possible, because one Caen was in the north and was part of the territory of Galilee...
Alexander Grinin. Galilee, yes.
Alexey Khrustalyov. ...and the other Cannes was in the south....
Alexander Grinin. They were preparing to become the capital of cinematography.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, they were preparing to become the capital of cinema. And what territorial state formation they were part of is a big question. Perhaps, again, this is why the phrase "Cana of Galilee" comes to mind. So if we return to the question of Cana in Galilee, this is the place, as I have already said, where the first miracle was performed - the turning of water into wine, then this connection to Cana in Galilee and to Bethsaida looks quite justified in my opinion. Let's move on and look again at the Gospel text.
Here, for example, is what it says about the places where Jesus was born and raised. "In those days came out a command from Augustus Caesar to make a census throughout the whole land. This census was the first in the reign of Quirinius of Syria. And all went to be enumerated, each to his own city, and Joseph of Galilee went also from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, called Bethlehem. For he was of the house and lineage of David, but to sign up with Mary his betrothed wife, who was pregnant, and when they were there the time came for her to give birth, and she bore her firstborn son and swaddled him and put him in a manger, for there was no room for them in the inn." Well, this passage is talking about the two cities of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
A famous phrase, and it is said by the very Nathanael of Bethsaida. You can look at the map, where officially it is even called Bethsaida, and where this village Nazareth is, and you'll see that Nathanael has some really amazing savvy, he knows about some farm people, about the famous, sadly famous for him city Nazareth, and so on and so forth. Is this the Nazareth that he's talking about? I would venture to guess that he's talking about a different Nazareth, one that still exists in the Gaul territory of France called Saint-Nazaire, which is northwest France. The history of this city is recognized by the French themselves as rather turbid and dark, although the history, in general, is quite ancient.
It is noteworthy that close to Saint-Nazaire is another city with a distinctive name, Quiberon or Kebren. Why distinctive? Because in a town called Hebron was born a fairly close relative of Christ - John the Baptist, of course, if we are talking about relatives, these cities must be somewhere near, and they are indeed in the Gaul territory of France. Just look at the map you will realize that St. Nazaire or maybe Nazaire, as it used to be called, and Kebren are very close to each other.
The entire territory of modern France-Gaul is not such a large area. By the way, here is also a very interesting point, because according to the scriptures, Jesus preached about three years before he was executed, before he was crucified. If you look at the territory of modern Israel, the question arises where you can walk there for three years.
So, we've settled on the fact that this triad of Saint-Nazaire, Quiberon, Belem we have it on our face, again in the territory of that very Gaul, which I think is Galilee. So now it's time to talk about the places where Jesus performed his miracles, such as the land of the Gadara. Well, here we should enjoy an extended quote from the text: "and they sailed to the land of the Gadara lying against Galilee". Emphasize the point "against Galilee".
..."When he came ashore, there met him a man from the city who had been possessed by demons from long ago, who was not clothed and did not live in a house but in coffins, and when he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice: "What have you to do with me, Jesus son of the Most High God, I beg you not to torment me" For Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of this man, because it had tormented him for a long time so that they bound him with chains and bonds to keep him safe, but he tore the bonds and was chased by a demon into the wilderness.
Jesus asked him, "What is your name? " he said "Legion", because many demons entered him and they begged Jesus not to command them to go into the abyss, there was a large herd of pigs grazing on the mountain and the demons begged him to let them enter them, he let them, the demons. The herdsmen, seeing what had happened, ran and told in the city and in the villages, and they came out to see what had happened."
Well, and so on.
Usually, this is a fairly commented on piece from the Gospel and usually all the commentary boils down to one thing, that it refers to the city of Gadara inside the Decapolis, southeast of Tiberias or about that area, although the real Gadara has not yet been found, which means, again, that there is no real connection.
It is believed that Gadara was somewhere inside the Decapolis. How is it that Gadara was inside the Decapolis? After all, Luke gives the exact address against Galilee, and it is necessary to sail, not by caravan on donkeys. Then why study the text of the New Testament at all, if the right city will be designated as Gadara anyway? And where did the herd of pigs come from? This is in Israel, where the pig has been considered an unclean animal for centuries, what, a decorative breeding or something? And there is not just a herd, there is a herd with a shepherd, not to mention the fact that there is not even a feed base for this herd of pigs, but that is another matter, but the pig in Israel is an unclean animal.
Alexander Grinin. Well, the fodder base is possible, then there was a different climate considered that...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Anything is possible, but nevertheless a pig was considered an unclean animal.
Alexander Grinin. ... Definitely according to Judaism.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Definitely about this and no herd of pigs could be there by definition.
Alexander Grinin. Who did he herd the pigs for?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Or, as they sometimes very ridiculously write in some comments that Gadara was supposedly a Greek town and this Greek shepherd was herding Greek herds, well, quite ridiculous, of course, what the Greeks were doing. Actually, they usually settled along the coast they generally did not go deep into the desert, but that's putting it mildly. Not to mention the fact that nothing Greek can be found in the Tiberias area. Well, okay, a herd of pigs. And what steepness did they jump from, it says quite clearly in the Gospel text that they fell from a steepness into a lake, and what lake, if Gadara is inside Decapolis, look at the map.
What lakes are there? There is no lake, no sea, nothing, i.e. there is one overlay, i.e. there are nothing but overlaps, and it can be explained, well, if you want, of course, you can explain anything, i.e. you can pull everything up by the ears, but to tie this Gadara to the Gospels is very difficult, and here modern Gospels commentators make rather a serious mistake. And the real Gadara, meanwhile, quietly and peacefully exists to this day, you may be surprised, but it even exists under its own name. Where?
Alexander Grinin. I suspect in Gaul.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You know the funniest thing is that, or rather it's not even funny, you just have to read the text of the Gospel carefully and Luke gives a very accurate address - against Galilee is the country of Gadara. Against Galilee we take a map of Northern France and see what happens if we, for example, sail from Bessen by boat from Bethsaida and cross the mouth of the Seine. Where do we end up? We end up in the canton of Goderville, that is, the town of Ville, this is the town of Gadara in the canton of Goderville. The place remains with the same name. Surprisingly enough, I think this is the Gadara country we are looking for and by the way here and with pigs has always been good, well, Gaul is famous for its pig herds and pig culture and with steepness it is all right here.
Alexander Grinin. And where is the steepness?
Alexey Khrustalyov. There are very decent, very steep slopes. If you drive by the French Bank you will see that they are very decent steeps and there is a place to jump a pig herd.
Alexander Grinin. It is quite possible to fall down.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, and quite, quite possible. And, most importantly, on the opposite shore would really be Gallia - Galilee, all preserved.
Alexander Grinin. Terrific.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Preserved to this day. By the way, here's an interesting point. Very many people pay attention to the similarity of episodes described in Matthew and Luke, where Luke talks about the country of Gadara, and Matthew talks about the land of Gergesen or Gerasenes. Here is what Matthew writes: "and when he came to the other side to the country of Gergesin, he was met by two demoniacs who had come out of the tombs, very fierce so that no one dared to pass that way, and behold they shouted, what have you before us Jesus the son of God?" Well, again, it's the same situation-Jesus casts out the demons puts them in a herd of pigs and the pigs steeple into the sea. At the same time, the location of Gergesa or Gerasa of antiquity scholars, of course, still can not establish, so they try to draw one episode to another and say that the country of the Gadara and the country of Gergesa are one and the same.
And the place of Gergesia is not assigned anywhere else, but in the depths of the Decapolis, where, as we remember, there are big problems with the herds of pigs and with the steepness and water. And the most interesting thing is that interpreters are not confused by the words of the Apostle to the other side, that is, we are talking about the fact that there was a crossing to the other side. What other bank are we talking about if these cities are in the depth of the Decapolis? By the way about the Decapolis, that's a separate question, what is the Decapolis and how did it end up in that place in the first place. After all, if you look at the map,there are big problems with the cities there.
Alexander Grinin. Do you mean the map of Israel?
Alexey Khrustalyov. A map of Israel, of course, you can scrape together ten cities, if you count all the houses in the Decapolis and take them for cities, then you can say that there are ten cities. Ten cities there is simply unreal to find, and here it is cities, not just towns, not just settlements, but cities of the Decapolis, the Decapolis of Greece. It's an amazing thing.
Alexander Grinin. And on the territory of Gaul, there is ten cities?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Now we will come back to this question to the territory of Gaul and so on, while we are talking about the land of the Gergesenes. Let's try to see what happens if we don't interpret Matthew's words, but arm ourselves with them as an exact indication. Suppose Jesus sailed from the same Bessen or the country of the Gadara, for example, and to get to the other shore to the country of the Gergesenes. Where would he end up?
By the way, on the way to the country of Gerasenes or Gadara, Christ and the apostles get caught in a storm, well, probably this episode everyone remembers "and when he entered the boat his disciples followed him and behold there was a great commotion on the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was sleeping, then his disciples, coming up to him, woke him and said Lord save us, we will perish and he said to them: "Why are you so fearful and of little faith?" Then he got up and forbade the winds and the sea, and there was great silence, and the people marveled and said: Who is this, that both the winds and the sea obey him?"
Well, interpreters of scripture have been telling the tale for centuries of how terrible the storm was on Lake Genesaret aka Lake Tiberias, aka Lake Tiberias aka Lake of Galilee. Yes, the storm was terrible, well really? What kind of Pharisee would it take to ascribe to the true God such a miracle of overcoming the storm in a glass of water? If someone was on this very lake of Kinneret, he knows that it is simply, to put it mildly, a puddle.
Alexander Grinin. Maybe it dried up.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Everything may be, again, it's a stretch. But there hasn't been a storm there probably since creation, what storm can there be with wild waves and winds in this place is completely incomprehensible. At the same time, if we look at medieval maps, we learn that the strait, which today is called the Channel, used to be called the Gallic Sea. The Gallic Sea, where the real Gerasa or Jersey is, and that is where the storms are not unlike the storms that people try to attribute to Lake Kinneret, there are storms with gale force winds and huge waves, and I think that was the storm that the Savior tamed and that was recognized as the great miracle.
Alexander Grinin. Given the French passion for swallowing letters.
Alexey Khrustalyov. By the way, Lazarus himself, whom the Savior raised from the dead, is not buried far away, he is buried in the cathedral of Otön. According to legend, this holy man after the resurrection moved with his sisters Martha and Mary to Gaul and he became the first bishop of Marseilles. And the most interesting thing is that the cathedral of the city of Auteuil, where St. Lazarus is buried and was called before and is now called, I think, the cathedral of St. Nazarene Saint-Nazaire - the cathedral of St. Nazarene. Well, probably someone may say that it is again a coincidence, well, perhaps it is time to stop being surprised by these coincidences.
Moving on.
There is a curious passage in Matthew's Gospel in which Christ mentioned several cities at once: "Then he began to rebuke the cities in which his strength was most manifest, because they did not repent. "Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, for if in Tyre and Sidon there had been powers manifested in you, long ago they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes, but I tell you Tyre and Sidon will be more glad in the day of judgment than you. And you Capernaum, who were raised up to heaven, will be brought down to hell; for if the powers that were revealed in you had been revealed in Sodom, it would have remained until this day; but I tell you that the land of Sodom will be more glad in the day of judgment than it will be for you." This is the fragment that I think makes sense to dwell on in detail.
We've already talked about Bethsaida today. Tyre and Sidon. Maybe it's much simpler. Maybe Tyre and Sidon aren't exactly Sur and Saida, maybe the Sea of Galilee and the Decapolis were not exactly where modern interpreters of the Gospels find them today. Let's look at a map of France-Gaul, maybe you'll immediately find an answer to the question of how you can go from Tyre, Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the Decapolis, look, in the heart of France are two cities of Tours and Issoudun. Leaving them and going north-east you get to the Decapolis - a union of Alsace cities that we are told existed in the 14th century, but given all the joys of modern chronology it is quite possible that it existed before and after.
Nevertheless, the Decapolis in Alsace are the real ten cities, not the ten mythical settlements in the territory where they are trying to find them today. So, going through this very Decapolis and going strictly north you get to the Sea of Gaul, that is, you get to the Sea of Galilee, all strictly in accordance with the Gospel text. Now it's turn for Chorazin, Sodom, and Capernaum from Matthew's quote above. None of these cities in the near east, as you understand, have been found. Well, I guess I don't need to explain now why it is not found, better to look for them, because this part of the Oikumene is probably better in Gaul. Chorazin is probably modern Quercy, which was called Karsin in Oxytan, compare with Chorazin.
The name Sodom probably refers to Sedan, which is in the northeast, and, incidentally, nearby is a town with the equally sonorous name of St. Omer, formerly simply Omer. Given the aspirated nature of the first consonant - simply Gomorrah. And another evidence in favor of this version is that in the neighborhood is Lotharingia - that is, the land of Lot, who, as we remember, leaving these sinful cities, was the only righteous man there. So, the only point about which, frankly, I can't say anything is Capernaum. Here there are some difficulties and I can not localize it in the territory of modern Gaul in France, although there is one clue and a very interesting clue.
Remember when we were talking about Luke's Gospel, when we were talking about Samaria and Galilee, when he was going to be in Paris in between, then I said we should stop and talk a little bit about something else, well now that we've talked a little bit about something else it's time to go back to Paris. Now that Samaria and Bethany and Gadara and Cannes and Bethlehem and other cities are around the eternal city, I think it makes sense to take a closer look at Paris. So what do the two real and mythological capitals of the world have in common?
Let us begin, perhaps, with the inhabitants of these glorious cities. Well, as you may recall, who were the people who schemed against Christ the most? The Pharisees. Well, I think it's no big secret to linguists and people who read and love history and linguistics that the letters "f" and "p" are interchangeable in many languages, so if you replace the first letter in the word "Pharisees" with "p", you get a very interesting word.
Alexander Grinin. Terrific!
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, you get "Parisees".
Alexander Grinin. Parisians.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, yes, the same Parisians, who gave their name to the city of Paris. That is, the very tribe that gave the city of Paris its name. Were they really involved in the crucifixion of Christ? Let's take a look. Let's begin, perhaps, with the crucifixion - with Golgotha. As I said the location of Golgotha is now considered certain, but nevertheless, as I said, in the 19th century to determine, to localize this place was not possible, at least there were still options and the debate continued and continues to this day. But in Paris, if we accept the view that Paris is the Jerusalem, there is a mountain which corresponds exactly to all the descriptions and is called Mount Montmartre, the mountain of the martyr.
Montmartre
This mountain is not in the city; it is outside the city. That is, again, all in accordance with the Gospel tradition and it is very symbolic that this mountain is crowned by the Sacre-Coeur Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Christ, which was built in the 19th century, but we will return to the history of the construction of this cathedral.
Sacré-Cœur Basilica
First, the history of Montmartre itself is very interesting; if we rewind the tape back in time, we learn that Montmartre was the birthplace of one of Europe's most famous secret societies, the Jesuits. And it was on Montmartre that Ignacio Lopez, who is known to the world as Ignacio Loyola, together with his companions took vows, certain vows, on Mount Montmartre, and it was on this mountain that the Society of Jesus was founded.
Alexander Grinin. What, just here on the mountain, he did it right out in the open?
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre
Alexey Khrustalyov. Also a very interesting point. In addition to the Sacré-Coeur, there is another small temple on Montmartre - the "Temple of Saint Peter". It is so unknown that even dodgy Parisian cab drivers do not know that there is a temple of Saint Peter behind the Sacré-Coeur. And the temple is very ancient, very old, as they say it is part of a monastery, the middle part of an abbey of some antiquity. And, by the way, this place was a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. And a very serious pilgrimage. Very often the crowned heads from all over Europe went there. So it was in this very temple of St. Peter that Loyola and his companions took certain vows and this place is considered the birthplace of the Society of the Jesuits; actually, it is clear that this place was chosen by them absolutely not by accident.
Alexander Grinin. It should be clear that this place is not random. Of all places, why there?
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is interesting that by the way the French, if I am not mistaken, were not among these people and why they chose Montmartre in Paris as a place where the Society of Jesus will be founded is a good question.
Alexander Grinin. Alexey, is this official data?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, this is absolutely official data.
Alexander Grinin. The Jesuits don't argue with that?
Alexey Khrustalyov. No. No, this is absolutely official data, you can read about it everywhere, just not many people pay attention to it and not many people connect it with the Gospel story. "They just founded it and that's all to this story".
Alexander Grinin. Well, yes, that's if you just read the history of the creation of the Society of the Jesuit Order.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, but why in Paris?
Alexander Grinin. Well, they just wanted to do that, why not?
Alexey Khrustalyov. They just decided so apparently.
Alexander Grinin. So there is a deep sacred meaning...
Alexey Khrustalyov. In my opinion, yes. By the way, Ignacius Loyola and his friends, when they took these vows, were going either to Jerusalem or to Rome for their ministry if it didn't work out. Judging from the fact that they didn't go to Rome and didn't get to Jerusalem of the Middle East, we can make a neat assumption that they stayed in Jerusalem, the real one, that is Paris. By the way, a very interesting point, as you know Paris is on the hills, like many cities, so the hill next to Montmartre is called, not accidentally, Buttes-Chaumont, that is translated simply as Bald Mountain. Well, I do not need to tell you what the Bald Mountain is for Christianity, and what it is associated with. Here is such an interesting moment in the life of the city of Paris.
Alexander Grinin. Is this a literal translation of Buttes-Chaumont?
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is a literal translation, yes, the Bald Mountain. And the Jesuits were not simple guys at all, they knew what they were doing, where they were doing it, and how. A very interesting question, by the way, which place was really Calvary, this particular Bald Mountain or Montmartre? In order to understand this, we have to go back a few centuries and see what another Jesuit said at the end of the 19th century, very interesting. There was a Cardinal Heber, under whom the Sacre-Coeur was built, who motivated the fact that the temple of Christ's heart had to be built here, and he said very interesting words.
I allow myself to quote: "This is it, this is the place of martyrdom he cried out, this is the place where the holy heart must rule, where it can cry out incessantly at the foot of the hill where Christianity was born, born among us in the blood of our first apostles, a monument to our religious awakening must be erected," I think it could not be clearer. I don't know whether he regretted what he said or whether it was a deliberate leak, but nevertheless, these words were written down by the Abbé Loggineau in the late 19th century and can be found in a number of brochures describing the construction of the Sacré Coeur.
Alexander Grinin. Well, besides the fact that the temple is very beautiful, visible from afar in general it has some architectural features that could be indicative, do you know? Indicative of some of its mysterious meaning.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Maybe they are there, but I have not studied the temple so thoroughly. I mean, of course I have been there, of course I have looked at it from all sides, of course I have seen how it is built, how it is organized and so on, but maybe there is something I have not noticed yet.
Alexander Grinin. The Jesuit generals haven't said anything about it, that is if they have deliberately allowed a leak then...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Or I just did not pay attention to it... It is possible that there are some clues in the architecture of the temple.
Alexander Grinin. There are elements that are most likely indicative...
Alexey Khrustalyov. We have to look at it, we have to study it more closely, more thoroughly.
Alexander Grinin. Well, by the way, even the name, is somehow not quite standard.
Alexey Khrustalyov. The name, yes, to put it mildly, is quite non-standard - Sacre-Coeur. Well, a few more strokes to the portrait of Paris-Jerusalem. Everyone knows that one of the most important cathedrals dedicated to the Virgin, if not the main one, is located in Paris. It's called Notre Dame de Paris.
First of all, in this cathedral is one of the most important Christian relics - the Savior's crown of thorns, and secondly, it is very interesting that this cathedral was decorated with statues until the 18th century, and these statues were not of French kings, those were 28 statues of the kings of ancient Judea. For what is left of these statues, these heads are in the museum of Cluny, today in the center of Paris, these are the kings of ancient Judea.
That is, all nations seek to immortalize their homegrown kings, holy warriors, and the French, for some completely unknown reason, suddenly decide to immortalize the kings of ancient Judea. Why should they? Well, unless the kings of ancient Judea and the French rulers are one and the same. Next. Another very interesting point.
Alexander Grinin. Although, in theory, they would be preserved in these conditions, dry climate and so on.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, they should have been preserved... There are some in Paris though. Well, what babies, even if they can not show well the temple of Solomon, they can not show the place where it was, only approximately something is shown, but they do not say how it all was located. The most interesting thing is that there is one such very subtle point, in general, when they read the Gospel, they do not notice that there were moneychangers in the temple, whom Jesus drove out of there.
Alexander Grinin. Well, it is believed that they created it...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, in general, yes. And if we take the viewpoint that the Templars are the same money changers, then it is quite understandable how they ended up in their own office, i.e. there is nothing so strange here. By the way, one of the towers of this "Paris office" was called Caesar's Tower. Well, I suggest that historians look for Caesars in the 12th century, when it was called like that, what kind of Caesars we had in the 12th century, in whose honor the tower could be named.
Alexander Grinin. Well, they liked to read ancient literature.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, that was later, they started to read antique literature later in time, this is closer to humanists and early Renaissance, and in the 12th century I am afraid...
Alexander Grinin. No, the traditional ones will say.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, well, naturally I'm afraid that in the 12th century antique literature was just started to get written. By the way, I wanted to tell you about another interesting coincidence. We have already talked today about Lazarus, who was resurrected by Christ; his remains, as I said, are in France. And according to some apocryphal texts, he was appointed bishop to a certain city of Kiti, now they are trying to link this city of Kiti with Cyprus and the city of Larnaca.
Well, Larnaca must indeed once have been the city of Kition; it is quite possible that we are really talking about that city of Kiti. But it seems to me, in the light of all that has been said above, that the city of Kiti must be looked for in a completely different place. Well, if you even look at a map of modern Paris, you'll see that the center of Paris is Cité, which is the same as the English City, which is the same as, I believe, the Moscow's Kitay-gorod, which is the same as the Jewish Ghetto, which is the same as the Italian Citta, and in principle these are all words derived from the same root, all words are related.
Now, it is not at all certain that Cyprus was the residence of Lazarus; it is quite logical to assume, if Lazarus is buried somewhere nearby, that he was made bishop in this very city of Sita, Kita, it is quite probable.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It was there that Jacques de Molay was executed, absolutely right. So it is quite logical to assume that it was to this city of Cite that Lazarus was sent as bishop, and not somewhere in the middle of nowhere, to Larnaca in Cyprus. By the way, Cité was mostly rebuilt during the time of a French king with a very antique name, Philip Augustus.
If you remember Christ, according to traditional history, lived just in the time of Emperor Augustus. This may or may not be just another coincidence. Interestingly, by the way, in Paris, among other things there are remains of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Queen Helen, which, incidentally, not many people know about. That is, people who are interested probably know, so deeply digging and strongly interested, but in general few people know about it.
Alexander Grinin. It's that 80-year-old grandmother.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, here we are just back to that very 80-year-old grandmother, St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen, mother of Constantine the Great.
Alexander Grinin. Who worked tirelessly on the hot shores.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Generally, she - Helen, is one of the central figures of the original Christianity, it was she who, as we have already said, went according to the legends to Jerusalem, found there some relics of the Passion, and brought them back to Gaul.
Alexander Grinin. Well, in general, you should agree that by today's times it is a heroic deed to go such a long distance on, say, a wooden vessel, carrying such values, even for those days, that is, as I remember, it is a huge trunk with the relics she was carrying.
Alexey Khrustalyov. To put it mildly, the story is not very believable, not very believable, because, as I said, imagine a shaggy century and an eighty years old, even if the queen, even a person who works for hundreds of thousands of subjects, this kind of journey is the hardest, at that time, this excavation too, which they allegedly led there. And, most interestingly, a certain porphyry sarcophagus is shown in Rome, in which, supposedly, she was buried.
Anyway, if anyone thinks that this is the sarcophagus of a Christian saint, well, everyone is free to hold his opinion. It is absolutely pagan sarcophagus and, again, some kind of dark history, they allegedly took it from under someone and so on and so forth, that is for the queen could not find a proper sarcophagus, in general, some kind of strange story. And the most interesting thing is that while she was buried in Rome, by some strange coincidence her remains ended up back in Reims in Gaul, and then they were transported to Paris.
Alexander Grinin. And here in Gaul?
Alexey Khrustalyov. And here in Gaul, to this day, not far from Paris, there is a town called Quirillamot. The most interesting thing is that the only saint with the name Cyriacus was born in Gaul and preached not somewhere, but in the city of Trier, where Queen Helen lived. And then everything falls into place. If you take the viewpoint that queen Helen did not go far away and was not helped by someone with a strange name, but by a local resident, everything will go back to the right place.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, she hired a foreman, and, by the way, she had enough administrative resources in these places. Well, imagine that in this situation you don't remember in any way the hard routine of those days, that is, for example, we are not talking about the robbers, the hostile armies - it's even amazing!
Alexey Khrustalyov. Actually that's what I meant when I said that the way was, to put it mildly, not close and not safe, that's what I mean. The most interesting is that Queen Helen, after she went to Jerusalem, she returned not to the new capital Constantinople, built by her son Constantine, and not to the old capital, which she could not stand and Constantine himself could not stand it, but to the allegedly out-of-town city of Trier in Gaul. Why would she, well, maybe she just wanted to be close to some holy places? As an option.
So, putting an end to the subject of Paris, I want to draw attention to another very interesting detail. Here's a look at the coat of arms of Paris, which, by the way, few people can explain why this particular coat of arms is a rook. And let's compare it with the coat of arms of the city of which I spoke about today, which I believe is the birthplace of Christ the city of Saint-Nazaire or Nazaire. This is a series of find 10 differences absolutely identical coats of arms and the key is very appropriate, it is immediately clear where something began, where it ended, absolutely identical coats of arms. By the way, the ship in this form - a boat is one of the oldest Christian symbols, it's not less ancient than say fish, and here are such symbols can be seen, including, and in the caves of the first Christians, by the way.
Coat of Arms St. Nazaire and Paris
There are similar ships even near us in Chersonesus, where the caves were excavated, and similar ships are depicted in the caves of the first Christians, and the boat ship is one of the oldest symbols and means salvation in the church, salvation in Christ, salvation in the church. And, in general, it is clear why these two cities have such coats of arms. By the way, if you look at the French heraldry in general, you will find similar coats of arms only for these two cities, all other coats of arms are different in one way or another, and there is no such similarity at all. Why is it that Paris and some out-of-the-way Saint-Nazaire have such similar coats of arms?
Alexander Grinin. And how do you explain this, why they are so similar, I do not quite understand why?
Alexey Khrustalyov. These are the cities where the Way of the Cross began and where it ended in Saint-Nazaire or Nazareth, where Christ was born, and Paris-Jerusalem is where this journey ended, which is why there is this connection.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, brilliant.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Such an interesting detail. The number of facts that I was able to dig up, that I was able to discover, at least allows us to look at Paris from a slightly different point of view, from a less traditional one, so to speak. By the way, when last time I was talking about Paris, I forgot to say one more interesting thing, according to the Gospels there must be Emmaus, a place mentioned in connection with Christ, and of course this city must be not very far from Paris. In Palestine this place has not been found yet, but near Paris still exists quite an ancient town Meaux.
Map of Paris
If you look at how it is spelled, how it is written by the French themselves, you will realize that Emmaus and Meaux are very similar. There are a lot of cities with such names, including biblical ones, but it is very important to understand which of these names are primary and which are introduced later. For example, in Portugal there is a place called Nazareth, but it does not have a rich history and was established quite late. This is one of the objections I always hear, that in fact there are many such places with biblical names. And very often when people oppose me, they say, look, there are quite a few places with biblical names all over Europe both here and there, that is, you can localize what you are talking about anywhere in Europe.
To which I say, no, guys, not in any place, because if somewhere there is one, two, three such places it is very good, but try to find any territory in Europe, where biblical places are collected on a small enough area. Besides the history of France and the history of Spain, the history of the Iberian Peninsula, they are also connected with the history of the Arabs, they are also connected with the history of the Hebrews, and that is where the Arabs and the Jews always lived - in France and in Spain, and that is where the Arabic and Hebrew languages were spread, that's why places with such names could arise there. Moreover, it is very interesting, when we talk about the Jews in France, and there have always been many Jews in France, they spoke and wrote in a certain French-Jewish language.
It is interesting that this so called Hebrew-French, is actually identical to Old French. Moreover, when the scientists begin to look through the old dictionaries and old Jewish books it turns out that a lot, well, let's say not a lot, but a fairly large number of French words that are not recorded in the French sources are recorded in the Jewish sources, and they are written in Hebrew letters. That is such a very interesting thing, which is rarely talked about.
Jerusalem, Old Town
The same can probably be said about the Arabs, because everyone knows very well that the history of Spain, the history of the Iberian Peninsula is mostly the history of the Arabs. And when they try to say that there was some kind of Reconquista it's quite ridiculous, because what Reconquista can we talk about? The Conquista, yes, but the Reconquista I seriously doubt, because the whole history of Spain and Portugal and partially France, which can be touched, which you can read something and look at with your eyes is the history of the Arabs and the Jews. It is not the history of the Spanish or the French or whoever else.
Therefore, when we say that the Gospel events could have taken place in what is now Gaul, we must be very clear that the territory of present-day France, the territory of present-day Spain is where two very different cultures, two very different civilizations collided - European civilization, while we will not say which, pagan or Catholic, but it was a European civilization and a Jewish-Arab civilization. In other words, there were two completely different cultures, two completely different civilizations, which could not help but clash, with completely different approaches to life, with completely different ethics and so on and so on. By the way, the conflict that emerges in the Gospel is quite possibly one of the reflections of that clash of civilizations, which emerged between Europeans and the Arab-Jewish civilization, which was in Spain, in Portugal, partly in France and so on.
That is, in general, when people talk about the history of Spain, for example, they always say that yes, there was an Arab presence, but for some reason this Arab presence is always downplayed somehow. Well, they say that yes, it was there, yes, there is some evidence of it, but, nevertheless, the attitude to the Arab culture was as to the culture of the conqueror, that is, it is love and hate. They admit that it was there, but, nevertheless, they claim there was a Reconquista, that is, "we regained what had been lost". A good question is when was it lost and by whom was it lost? Now, by the way, the Iberian Peninsula has a lot of names there that echo both Old Testament names and New Testament names, even the very name of the peninsula, you'll excuse me, of course, the Iberian Peninsula, but isn't that the Hebrew Peninsula?
And the Ebro River, and the French part where there is Ever and so on? I mean, Jaffa, Maqueda aren't those Old Testament places? Generally speaking, the whole Spanish educational system, in general, is built on some Arab things, on some Jewish scientific points, again, it's all from the Jewish-Arab world. So it's not homegrown, it's not indigenous Spanish, it's not Castilian, it's all taken from the Arabs and the Jews. And, in general, the whole history of Spain is this story of love and hate. Well, we've gone a little off topic now, and we'd like to go back to Gaul and Galilee.
We began to talk about, or rather ended up talking about the fact that Paris could be the Jerusalem that is described in the Gospels, the city of Emmaus - Meaux. Another very interesting point - we talked mostly about geography, now it probably makes sense to talk about the people, those people, those characters that are mentioned in the Gospels. We should probably start with Pontius Pilate, because Pontius Pilate is one of the main spatio-temporal references that exist in Christianity, the name of the man is mentioned in the Creed, and he is one of the central figures in the Gospel. Pontius Pilate, what is known about him?
Not much is actually known about him, and what is known leads to very interesting thoughts, well, for example, where Pontius Pilate ended his life. Pontius Pilate was exiled to Gaul to Vienne, where he either died, or committed suicide. We know about it only from the apocryphal sources, and we cannot say for sure, but nevertheless most of the apocrypha about the life of Pontius Pilate say that he finished his life in Gaul in Vienne, and even in Vienne the tomb of Pontius Pilate is shown.
Although there are several versions. There is a version that Pontius Pilate committed suicide by throwing himself into the river, but the river did not accept his body and carried it somewhere else. There is a version that Pontius Pilate committed suicide somewhere in the Alps and there is now an ice lake, a lake covered with ice in which Pontius Pilate's body is frozen, there are in fact many versions. But all these versions, they all really mean one thing, that Pontius Pilate finished his life in Gaul, which is either the territory of today's France or the borderland between France and Switzerland. Vienne is located in what is now France, close to Italy.
The most interesting thing is that this part of northern Italy, the part which borders with France, this piece was Gallia. Another interesting point is that on this piece of land now flows a river - the biggest Italian river, the most full-flowing, which is called the Po. And the thing is, this river's name in the ancient times was "Iridan", i. e. "Jordan", between us two. And this river, if memory serves me correctly, passes into the Rhone, so theoretically this whole water artery could be called the Jordan (Iridan). So if we're talking about the territory of Gaul, Gaul is a huge area. Gaul is today's France and a piece of today's Germany, a huge piece, and the same Trier we were talking about, where Queen Helen lived, it was part of Gaul, it was not part of any other formations, it was a piece of Gaul. So this Pilate ended his life there in Gaul, and what's interesting is that his wife Claudia Procula, not much is known about her either, was from Narbonne.
Well, I think it is not necessary to say that Narbonne still exists in the territory of modern France, it is the south of France, by the way, one of the cities where medieval pilgrimages were made very often. So Claudia Procula was from Narbonne and spent her entire childhood in Narbonne. The question is, where, when and under what circumstances could Pontius Pilate, if he was not from Gaul, have met Claudia Procula, be acquainted with her family and how did he get her as his wife? As it turned out, apparently, Caligula had such a tradition, as soon as he did not like a person, he immediately exiled him to Gaul. As it turns out from the Apocrypha Herod Antipas, who was also mentioned in the Gospel, was also exiled by Caligula to Gaul and he ended his life in Gaul too. Archelaus is another son of Herod the Great. Where do you think he ended up?
By the way, I certainly do not claim anything with stubborn certainty, but the city of Magdala, from which the name Magdalene may be derived, is not located in Palestine. The city of Magdala is in what is now Germany, which, by and large, is not very far from the larger Gaul in question. And it is quite possible that the woman from whom Christ cast out the seven demons is just the same Mary of Magdala, from that German Magdala.
Another name that is not mentioned in the canonical text of the Gospel, but which I would like to mention, is Longinus. The same Longinus who pierced Christ with his spear. If you write his name in Latin, you get a very interesting word, which you can very easily read in French, Longine. In general, little is known about this man, there is, however, a small village in the East of France with this name, I certainly do not know whether it existed in Gospel times, I think that it did not exist, but nevertheless the name itself leads to some very interesting thoughts. As for the other characters in the Gospels. Joseph of Arimathea, for example.
Well, there is quite an extensive apocryphal literature about the life of Joseph. It is written that he came to Gaul together with Saint Lazarus, the one we already spoke about, with the Apostle Philip, sisters Martha and Mary and that he preached for some time in Gaul. I wonder what language he preached in, if Galilee and Gaul are different lands? Probably Aramaic. By the way, all those who allegedly came to Gaul, the same sisters Martha and Mary, they are all known as preachers. A very good question - in what language did they preach, if they were illiterate women, and most likely knew only one language - Aramaic. In what language did they preach in Gaul to the then Celts?
But if they were local, then everything falls into place and they didn't come from anywhere, not from the distant Palestine. By the way, if we are talking about Joseph of Arimathea, there is a certain apocryphal account of Joseph of Arimathea allegedly taking the young Christ with him on a business trip to the British Isles. The apocryphal literature on this subject is vast, that is, the list of literature is enormous and you can find a lot there, nevertheless, there is one of the apocrypha that tells us that Joseph of Arimathea travelled with Jesus to Cornwall, then returned again. I wonder where he went back to? That is, if we even assume for a second that this apocrypha is talking about a trip that actually took place. How do people, who say that he sailed from one of the ports of present-day Palestine and ended up in England, imagine that trip? Imagine yourself.
The remains of St. Helen, who did the excavations in Jerusalem, as we recall, are also in Gaul in what is now France. Well, now, I guess, heavy artillery. Let's talk about Christ's grandparents, Joachim and Anne. Also two very interesting characters. They're not mentioned in the canonical Gospels, but there's a church tradition, there's a lot of church literature from the first centuries, there are writings of the church fathers and according to all this, Joachim and Anna were the grandparents of Christ. So, curiously enough, the remains of St. Anne are not somewhere, but in France again. They are located in the town of Apt.
How did they get there? A good question, if they were not from Gaul or from neighboring territories, how could these remains be there. Of course, they can say that they were the result of the Crusades and so on and so forth. You can say anything you like, but somehow it is interesting that as a result of the Crusades, everything ended up in one place practically scattered over the territory of ancient Gaul. So, as far as St. Anne's is concerned. There is an area In what is now France, called Brittany. And in this very Brittany there is a cult of St. Anne, which, by the way, is traced back only to the 13-14 centuries, according to the official data.
It is believed that St. Anne according to legend was a Breton woman and lived in Brittany and Joachim, a resident of Jerusalem, met St. Anne, fell in love with her and she became Joachim's wife. So, if Joachim lived in Jerusalem and St. Anne was a Breton woman. First, the question is, in what Jerusalem could Joachim meet Anne or where could they meet at all? Because according to these Breton legends, Joachim was a resident of Jerusalem, and Anna was a Breton woman. A lot was written about this in the 19th century and in the early 20th century, and then somehow this topic has gently died out. Now, why might this be true? If we look at a map of France, we can see that Brittany is very close to the very cities I was talking about, to the city of Kebren (Hebron) and to the city of Saint-Nazaire, it's really very close. And, if we're talking about how Joachim and Anna had some relation to Mary the mother of Christ and had some relation to Christ, here you have it all lined up.
These are the places where kinsmen may live, the family of John the Baptist, as we know, was related to the family of Joachim and Anna, so they do live not far from each other. Kebren/Quiberon and Brittany are not far at all. Accordingly, and Nazaire, which then became St. Nazaire, all those places are within reach. That is, you don't need to take a trip of a lifetime, you don't need to travel a week, two weeks, a month, and so on, it's all very close. Where are the remains of St. Joachim - the unfortunately, I can't say anything specific. Interestingly, most of the main characters mentioned in the Gospels have their remains either in modern Gaul, or somewhere quite nearby.
Santiago de Compostela
That is, one of the pilgrimage routes is going precisely to Santiago de Compostela, where the tomb of Saint James is located. And most of the places to which pilgrimages were performed in medieval Europe are in the territory of modern France, in Gaul, most of the places I spoke about today, they somehow turn out to be points of these very routes of pilgrimage. By the way, one such famous place of pilgrimage was Paris hill Montmartre. One of the places of pilgrimage was the Apt. One of the places of pilgrimage was Narbonne, Lyon - the ancient Lugdunum is also one of the places of pilgrimage, this is what concerns the main characters of the Gospels, whose names are connected in one way or another with Gaul.
Shroud of Turin
It is also a very interesting topic. First of all, it is interesting when all these relics in general appear in medieval Europe, when they arise at all. Well, we should probably start with the most famous relic associated with the life of Christ - the Shroud of Turin. It has already been written about the Shroud of Turin, which would be enough for more than one documentary. That is, it has been written and said a lot about it, and radiocarbon dating has been done on the shroud.
And what is interesting, if you abstract away from all the verbal nonsense that exists around the shroud, there are several points, let's say, the turning points, drawing attention to which we will understand that the shroud, as a relic, first appears only in the mid-14th century in Europe, the rest of its history is legendary, well, that is the mildest word that could be used. The shroud first appears in the 14th century, and it emerges, not anywhere, but in what is now modern France. And it emerges in a family that was most directly related to the Templars.
So, if we go back to the shroud, there is another very interesting point. Based on the fact that radiocarbon dating gave the 12th, 13th century, they began to say that the shroud is fake. But if the events of the Gospel took place later and not in modern Palestine, then why is it fake? Just if it is the 12th/13th century it is likely that the shroud is indeed real. Moreover, when they talk about the shroud, there is another interesting point, which for some reason is always forgotten. Weaving - the way this shroud is woven did not exist at the beginning of our era. This way of weaving, it arose at least 1,000 years later.
So when they say that the shroud is from the 12-13th century, and when they say that the way of weaving, which can be found in the shroud does not correspond to gray-haired antiquity, but to the 11th, 12th, 13th century, everything becomes very real, and then you really can say that the shroud is really something that is related to Christ's passion, crucifixion, and so on and so on. By the way, recently, if I'm not mistaken in 2005 or 2006, another radiocarbon dating was carried out, another relic associated with the Passion of Christ. The plaque with the inscription Jesus Christ the King of the Judeans, which was nailed over the cross. It is now, if I'm not mistaken, in Rome, it first surfaced in Rome, I think in the 16th century, if I'm not mistaken, the end of the 16th century.
Nevertheless, on this very titlo, radiocarbon dating was conducted, which also gave a spread. I think, it turned out to be approximately from the 10th or the beginning of 11th century. Also, by the way, very interesting result, again the same skip of a thousand years, again, it is not gray-haired antiquity, and much closer to our time. According to the legend, it was found by the Saint Helen, brought allegedly to Rome, to which Helen did not like to return and again it emerges only in the 16th century. In general, if we're talking about relics associated with the Passion, most of them surface in Europe in the 14th century, either late 13th or 14th century. There are, of course, some exceptions, but the vast majority of these relics are late thirteenth, fourteenth century.
Well, we just talked about the Shroud of Turin, what about the parts of the Savior's cross? There are quite a few of them and someone from the Protestant preachers in the 16th century said that if all these parts, all these wooden parts that today are passed off as parts of the cross are put together, then you can make a ship out of them, not a cross. Well, nevertheless, these pieces of the cross of Christ exist and the largest part is in Spain in Santo Toribio and the first mention of it was in 1316, if I am not mistaken, that is again the same 14th century that we were talking about.
So this means that the cross was, to put it quite crudely, disposable for each execution used, the cross was used for each subsequent execution, moreover, if it was not disposable there would have been no way of the cross and no way of Christ with the cross on his shoulders. First of all, why waste the valuable wood on some criminals, why make such a show and so on and so forth. There are really many questions, unfortunately, no answers to them. In general, if we're talking about these criminals, Barabbas was a released bandit, the bandit who was released. That is, they could have let Christ go before the Easter or they could have let Barabbas go - they let Barabbas go.
Well, everyone knows this plot well from Bulgakov, I know it more from Bulgakov than from the Gospel or some Gospel literature. So, Barabbas was let go, and Dismas and Gestas were executed. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the prudent robber was called vorakh, vrakh, or simply rakh, as they wrote on ancient icons. It is quite possible that this same Barabbas (Varavva), who was released, turned into a varakh, rakh, or just then into rakh. Most of the sources claim that the names of these bandits were Dismas and Gestas. By the way, also another interesting point, in the Arab Gospel of the Savior's childhood they are called Titus and Dumah, and there are apocryphal versions, in which these outlaws are called Dijmon and Gesta, there are versions Dijmon and Esta. Very interesting, they sound quite French.
In general, names are interesting in themselves. Here, for some reason no one asks the question, when they etymologize their names Dismas and Gestas no one asks the question, why do they even have such names, is that a Greek translation or what is it, why the two local kosher brigands have Greek names - a good question. Frankly, I haven't found an answer in traditional gospel literature to this question - why do they have Greek names. This is the same situation approximately as with the herd of pigs, if you remember we said that there was a herd of pigs and it was written off as Greek. Here is the same situation where the local robbers have Greek names.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, it's strange.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It's a little strange, really. Moreover, when they begin to etymologize them, it turns out to be even more interesting. The name Gestas can not be etymologized at all. If you try to find information about how to translate it, for example, from Greek or Aramaic or something else, the name Gestas - it somehow does not work out very well. With Dismas it is roughly the same story, it is etymologized through a Greek word that means "sunset of death". Well, imagine such a name in reality. "Boy, what's your name?" - "Death". It is funny, really. That's how it turns out, they execute, along with Jesus, two Greeks one of which Dismas "sunset of death", and the name of the other is simply not etymologized. It's a strange plot, isn't it?
Why then, with such pomp for some Greeks, are they executed with the help of Rome? Well, I mean, there are actually a lot of questions. What are these local brigands with Greek names, whose names are also so strange? No, quite possibly, if we're talking about these indicative names, like the name Peter in the Gospels, they should be understandable, at least they should be understandable to the translator, but there's such variation in the translations, and then there's the Arabic childhood gospel, in which they are Titus and Dumah. These names can very well, oddly enough, be derived from Slavic languages, because the same Doumakh is spelled variously Dimas, Dismas, Doumakh, Dijmon. We recall that it was a prudent brigand, that is, thinking (думающий/dumayuschiy from the word думать/dumat'), that's why it is Dumakh, that is, the root is the same.
And as for Gestas, his name is also well etymologized - a guest. Guest (гость/gost') in Old Russian and Old Slavonic is also a stranger-enemy, and, by the way, according to the Church legend, Dismas is the first man who entered the paradise with Christ, that is what Christ promised him, when Dismas believed in him and told him about it. And the second outlaw reviled Christ in every way, and it is said of him in church tradition that he was an unwise outlaw, that is, hostile to Christ, hence the guest is an enemy. Well, this is one hypothesis, such a hypothesis is more likely than the hypothesis that people have such strange names. Even if we abstract away from the way these names are etymologized, the question remains - why are they not Aramaic, why are they not local, if it happens in the territory of modern Israel-Palestine. Slightly off-topic.
So, we stopped at the Shroud of Turin and the plaque that was nailed to the cross. What other relics are there? In fact, there are quite a few relics, for example, there is such a relic as the iron crown of the Langobards or Corona Ferrea. It is known to have been made from one of the melted nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross. The time, the first mention of this crown is 1311, it is now in Italy, that is, not far from the present-day Gaul. Next is the blood of the Savior, which we have already spoken of today. The blood of the Savior, which was collected by Joseph of Arimathea according to the legend, is in Bruges and the first mention - the year 1311 again.
There is also a holy chalice. It is often confused with the Holy Grail, but that's a bit different. According to legend, the Holy Chalice is the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. This Holy Chalice is located in Spain in Valencia and the first mention of it again is the 14th century, 1399, there is even a place of the first mention - the monastery of San Juan de la Peña.
San Juan de la Peña
Aachen shrines. In the city of Aachen, the museum has three flasks containing some of the greatest relics of the Christian world: the dress of the Holy Virgin Mary, the scrolls of Christ, his armband and the shroud of John the Baptist. And they were first shown in 1349 and there is some evidence that they came to Aachen from Bohemia from Prague and at least the reliquaries for these items were made in Prague at the end of that 14th century again. Well, there is a legend that, supposedly, these things did not get to Aachen by accident. They got there thanks to Charlemagne. But what Charlemagne is - this is a separate and very funny story, not about that now, now we are talking about other things. So, again, back to the time of the 14th century again.
Next, the crown of thorns. Well, unfortunately, not very much is known about it, again, there were a lot of medieval dodgers who said that they had a piece of the crown of thorns, well, this situation is approximately the same as with the cross of Christ. But, nevertheless, it is considered that this crown of thorns, at least its main part, is in the Notre Dame de Paris in France and it arrived there from Byzantium. Well again, the question whether it arrived or not remains open, but the fact that it is in Gaul, is in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris is a fact.
Another very important thing is the Sudarium of Oviedo. The Sudarium is very often confused with the shroud of Christ, with the Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium of Oviedo is a kind of shroud, which was thrown on the head of the deceased. And here it is believed that the Sudarium is in Oviedo in Spain, and here we are dealing with just an exception, the first reliable mention of it is the 11th century, late 11th century. But the thing is, again, we don't have a document from the 11th century, we have a copy from the 13th century, which says that this was actually in the 11th century.
By the way, here, if we're talking about the Sudarium from Oviedo, it was researched, I think, by Janes Benet. She was researching just the history of this same Sudarium from Oviedo and she mentioned in one of her interviews that in the middle of the 14th century, the Spanish King Alfons, I don't remember the number, I won't deceive, so this same King really wanted to see this Sudarium, this shawl, but he was not shown it in the middle of the 14th century. And for the first time, this Sudarium from Oviedo was shown to the public in the middle of the 16th century - in 1547 at the earliest.
Well, here it is necessary to remind that Trier is just again the territory of Gaul, this is the place where Queen Helen lived, that is, that Trier and Argenteuil are two Gallic cities. In Trier, despite the fact that they say that they had the relic at the end of the 12th century, it was first shown in 1512, that is again the beginning of the 16th century. The French don't admit when was the first display, but the history goes all the way back to the 12th century. Nevertheless, the areal is interesting, Trier and Argenteuil are two Gallic cities. About the plaque with the inscription you and I have already talked. There's another interesting one.
In the Cathedral of Cologne, as you know, there is a tomb with the remains of the Magi. It is believed that the Cathedral began to be built at the end of the 12th or early 13th century, specifically to place the remains of the Magi, however, it was finished in 1322, that is again in the 14th century. And again, the question is - why did it take that long to build the cathedral? Well, of course we can say that some cathedrals were being built for 500-800 years and so on. Nevertheless, the shrine with the remains of the Magi was placed in 1322, that is the 14th century.
There is a Gallic Belt in Europe, and if you look at a map of Europe, this Gallic Belt is perfectly visible, it starts in Portugal. They can try to derive Portugal from the word Cale all they want, but it's still Portugal, it's a port of Gallia, which is an entrance to Europe, a port in Gallia. Then it flows smoothly to the north of Spain into Galicia, again a Gallic territory, then comes France - Gaul, there is nothing to do here, it is the main Gaul. Then this Gallic belt goes through Switzerland, which is Helvetia. It is actually not Switzerland, they themselves write on their coins that they are called Helvetia, which is again Gallia. Then this belt goes partly to Italy, partly it goes to Germany, there is Holstein, the city of Halle. Then a huge area goes to Galicia, Galicia is a huge territory, which falls on the territory of modern Austria, Poland, partly Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, even Russia.
Further on there are some chunks, there is Latgale. Further it goes south, into Turkey, where there is Galatia and ends in Galilee in the territory of modern Israel. In fact, there is a huge Gallic belt. When they talk about this Gallic belt, for some reason all the scientists believe that one Gaul has nothing to do with the other. That's how it turns out for them that none of these territories are related to the other. Moreover, if you open, for example, the dictionary by Fasmer you will be surprised to learn that Galicia (Галиция) and Galicia (Галисия) are different words, turns out they have no relation to each other, because according to etymologists our Galicia is derived from the city of Galich, and the city of Galich is derived from the word Galka (jackdaw). It turns out that Slavs probably had such a tradition to name the city in honor of jackdaws, not to confuse with the bird troika. Galicia flies by the European expanses.
So, these Gallias do not seem to be connected in any way, although it is absolutely clear that this belt is not interrupted anywhere, it is a continuous belt which goes from the west of Europe to the east and goes to the south quite clearly. Let's put the question this way, who lived in this belt? The Celts lived in this belt, the Slavs lived in this belt, the Germans lived in this belt. And, if you look at it from a linguistic point of view, this gets very interesting, and not even just from a linguistic point of view. Who are they in general, where did the word Gaul come from, what's the etymology of the word Gaul? Well, there are different variants, there is a Greek version, there is a Latin version, there is a version that this is a self-name, and so on. That is, in the notes on the Gallic War Gaul is mentioned by Caesar. But, where the proud name of Gauls came from in the first place is not very clear.
That is, if you try to etymologize directly, the researchers stumbled on a very interesting thing. Look, for example, what the word "Gaul" means in any Celtic language, Middle Irish, for example, the word "Gaul" means - "glory". From here, by the way, comes the word Call "to call", "to praise" and so on, there are many words of this root they are all quite obvious. By the way, I wonder why the rooster is the symbol of Gaul. We are told that the word for rooster in Latin - "Gallus". The word Gaul and Gallus coincided, and stupid Gauls, who didn't know anything about anything, made a rooster as a symbol, just because there was this consonance.
A good version, but such a kulturtrager, civilizationalist version. "There lived stupid Gauls, who did not know a thing about Latin, who on the basis of some incomprehensible consonances suddenly decided that the cock and Gaul are one and the same". At the same time, for some reason it is left out of brackets, why is this in the Latin language, why Latin words are compared, and so on and so forth. Let's look at it from this angle, who is the cock-gallus? Well, although Fasmer was a terrible Germanophile and a Russophobe, he was ready to attribute the word "mama" to the German language, but even he, with all his bias, to put it mildly, could not fail to mention that the word "gallus"-"rooster" and the Russian word "голос" (golos, means "voice") are related words, which is, in fact, obvious. If you look at some Old Russian dictionaries or Old Slavonic or something else, you'll see that the word "голосовяк" was used for songbirds, including roosters.
That is, the words "golos" and "gallus" are related words. That is, their rooster is related to our voice. Generally speaking, a rooster can be called a voice, indeed, what distinguishes this bird is its voice. Now let's look further, let's not get hung up on it. Gaul in Middle Irish - "glory." And a very interesting series starts to line up. Golos, then galus-cock, and gaul then glory. Now let's look at the Slavic languages. In Russian we have the word "глаголить" (glagolit', means "to speak"), which comes from gologolit', gologol. Glagolithic derives from here too, nagal in here as well, it is a "password" in Old Russian and so on and so forth, a lot of words with this root. But if you look at this root, it is a dual of gall-gal, gol-gol, this is the root. And so it turns out that men of voices, these very Gauls, they are men of glory (слава/slava), in other words - Slavs.
So in fact, Gallus is a tracing of the word Slavic. I do not want to say that Slavs appeared before Gauls and so on, but one word is unconditional tracing of the other. In fact, it turns out that Gauls are men of voices, they are men of words, speaking people, talking people, Slavs, in contrast to non-speaking people, are people who were united by the word, but what word is a big question. It is necessary to understand one simple thing, that between a word "Slav" and a word, for example, "Russian" we cannot put the = sign and when we speak about Russians it does not mean that we speak about Slavs. When we speak about Celts or about Gauls, which in my opinion, are synonyms of Slavs, we speak not about Russians, we speak about Slavs. That is, we must understand that the Slavs may well have walked from west to east, not from east to west.
Therefore the fact that the whole of central Europe was Slavic in the Middle Ages is no secret. The whole territory of modern Germany is, excuse me, solid Slavic place names you will not find practically any German toponym that would go back to the hoary antiquity, almost the entire territory of modern Germany is a Slavic toponym. And Germany is already directly bordering on Gallia, which is what we are talking about. Therefore there is nothing surprising that there was linguistic interference, and nothing surprising that people spoke a very similar language.
So, on one of these sites was a very interesting story posted by a man. The man lives in Ukraine, I understand that in Kiev, unfortunately, I can not give the name, I do not know the name, I only know the nickname on the Internet, his nickname is Lupus. So he tells a very interesting story. That he went to the Carpathians, there live a people named Lemky, passing by one of the houses in one of the villages, he heard a widow mourning for her husband, loudly mourning with the words "ле-ле-леле, лемесе восстане" ("le-le-lele, lemese vosstane"), that is "God, God why have you left me" - the last words of Christ on the cross, which are written down and not translated, or rather they are translated, but in an interesting way, first the main phrase is given, "Элохим, Элохим левеха вохтаны" ("Elohim, Elohim leveha vohtany"), this is how it is written, the main phrase is given, and then the translation is given, supposedly "God, God, why have you forsaken me".
And what language is the translation from? And here everything is clear "леле, леле, леммесе восстаны", "God, God why have you forsaken me". Approximately the same in Bulgarian, oddly enough, a little bit different phrase, but the meaning will be the same, "God, God why have you forsaken me". Jesus Christ was a Galilean, according to my conception - a Gaul. What language did he speak? - he spoke in this unified language, which now we call Slavic, which in ancient times could be called anything - the language of the glagol (verb). By the way, if this single language was spoken, then it becomes clear why the French have the famous Glagolithic Reims Gospel.
After all, no one can understand why, all of a sudden, French kings swore in Rheims, took an oath on the Rheims Glagolitic Gospel until about the 16th century. Why? And, if we accept the version that there was some kind of unified language, which was the very language of the glagol, language of the Gauls, then it becomes clear. According to the version of American researchers, the same ones who wrote about Mary Magdalene as the wife of Christ, this very famous book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" by Bagent, Lee and Lincoln. Based on its stolen motives Dan Brown wrote his famous "Da Vinci Code". It's a fairly well-known hypothesis, that kings from the Merovingian dynasty had the blood of Christ in their veins.
And if this is really true, if it's really close to the truth, then this concept that it was in Gaul, it brings it all together, and then it's clear why the French kings used the Glagolithic Gospel and it's clear why the blood of Christ and it's clear why the lily, these ancient signs. And it is clear why is there a special attitude to the French monarchy and so on and so forth. That is, very many answers within the framework of this concept, very many questions within the framework of this concept receive intelligible answers, at least. The fact that they are now trying to pass off the Gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew as a primary source is ridiculous. The Gospels, the real Gospels, which you can touch and see, exist in Greek, exist in Latin, they are really quite ancient texts, just like the ancient Greek Gospels.
And there is the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of Judas, there is the Gospel of Childhood, and so on and so forth, there are quite a few. But if we're talking, for example, about that Gospel text that exists now, the canonical text, for example, then that text exists, there is the Greek tradition, it's clear where it comes out of, that is, you can trace it, there is the Latin tradition, there is the Slavic tradition, there is no Aramaic tradition. The example with the last words of Christ is a very interesting example, an insanely interesting example, I think the man should be given a monument for finding this, a really brilliant finding, just brilliant.
Moreover, as I said, there are a lot of Greek names in the Gospels - Andrew, Peter, tax collector Matthew, somehow his name is very interesting, he has the name tax collector, that is, мытарь (mytar'), do you see that the name Matthew and the word Myto they have the same root. What language did this indicative name come from? I'll tell you an even more interesting story. We often say that there is the Gospel, but there is also the New Testament Gospel, which consists not only of the four canonical Gospels, it consists of some other works.
There are also the Acts of the Apostles, there are also the Epistles. By the way, if we talk about the authorship of the New Testament, even the churchmen themselves admit that many of the letters of the Apostle Paul, for example, were not written by Paul the Apostle. This is quite official information, they talk about this in seminaries. There is a series of lectures about it, for example by Archimandrite Januarius in which he talks about these texts, he says that of the 14 letters of the Apostle Paul, at least 6 absolutely do not belong to him. That is, it is either some disciples of his, or some followers who signed in Paul's name and gave out some texts under his name. Nevertheless, these texts are considered canonical. This is a paradoxical situation: on the one hand we know that these texts absolutely do not belong to Paul, but on the other hand they are part of the canon.
So, these very Libertines and the synagogue of the Libertines are not freedmen of the first century. In general, what freedmen could there be? Why freedmen of the first century suddenly call themselves Libertines with such inhuman joy? But in the 16th century it is quite a real thing. That is, by this measure we can very easily understand before what time the sacred texts were edited. Probably most of the Gospels were indeed written by the apostles who were either close to Christ or those who were close to his disciples. Indeed, these texts were written by people who knew the subject, who knew what they were writing about. And so this study of mine, although it can be considered very, very heretical, but on the other hand, it seems to me that this study confirms that the events in question, at least the geographical references that exist, the historical references that exist, and the fact that the Evangelists describe the place and time with sufficient precision, seems to me that this is just a confirmation that the events of the Gospel really did take place.
But they took place in a different part of the civilized world, not somewhere in the Middle East, but in the territory of Gaul, one of the most powerful provinces of the Roman Empire, at whatever time it existed. Then it is clear why the area of spread of Christianity is like that, it is clear why the main relics of Christ ended up in Gaul. It is clear at least how it is culturally, how it is ethically connected with previous generations.
Because if we are talking about evangelical Palestine, it is not at all clear on what ground Christianity grew up there, it is not clear, not at all clear. Moreover, if you remember the Savior's father was a carpenter, again we come back to the subject of carpentry and the question of woodworking. Where, in what part of the oikumene is there a need for carpenters, and what kind of carpenters can we talk about in Nazareth, in that city that is now commonly called Nazareth? Moreover, there is one very important thing to note here. In the Celtic tradition, more precisely in the Gallic tradition there is a myth about the god named Ezus, who was either a lumberjack or a carpenter, and who was hanged on a tree with such a streamlined formulation "hung on a tree", and what does it mean - whether he was hanged on a tree, or crucified?
But at least if we compare the Celtic myth and compare what is said in the Gospels, I'm not talking about Christianity, because if we talk about Christianity in general, then naturally we have to look at some Middle Eastern myths, and we have to look at Egypt, those are not some random things in Christianity, and in Christianity there is a lot mixed together. Again, I'm talking specifically about the Gospels, I'm talking specifically, shall we say, about the narrative part, the part that gives reference to place and time. I am not now discussing the cultural aspect deeply, we are now talking about more superficial things. Because you can, of course, dig deeper and see there Mitra and Sita and so on and so on. If there is something to talk about and there is a direction of search - you can talk endlessly.
What I am saying now is that Christianity, having absorbed all these traditions, could certainly have emerged in the form in which it emerged, not somewhere on the margins of civilization, not somewhere in Palestine, where it would have been forgotten immediately the day after the execution, it emerged there and then, when it was already possible to pick it up and spread it around. I think just the Crusades themselves are the answer to the question of where it took place. Let's first remember where the crusades came from and who was the initiator of the crusades. Moreover, let us remember that the papal court was not only in Rome, but also in Avignon. Moreover, often the papal court was not in Avignon, for example, but in the same place as the pope, because the pope had to move often.
Not everyone was eager to welcome him to their lands. Here we are confronted with the history of the Vatican, and the history of the Vatican is exactly the same myth as many other national histories. The Vatican needed to lengthen its history, which is why all these popes who supposedly sat in Rome on the Tiber arose. In fact, the papal court and the papal chancellery is no deeper than Avignon. That is, if we are talking about the papal throne, the papal court, then again, it is possible that popes are a phenomenon, at least originally purely Gallic, purely French, although there is an opinion that the Vatican is generally a Spanish project of the 15-16 centuries, well, the Vatican that we know now. Nevertheless, back to the Crusades.
To conquer the city after 1000 years is questionable, in terms of profit - I doubt they could have caught anything there, there were much more interesting cities in the Middle East, where you could get something. My guess is that the crusades are just a special operation to relocate the scene, if they were crusades at all. Because the history of the crusades is very, very vague, and generally it is not very clear how many of them there were, who participated in them, they talk about some crusades of children, which is also, in general, difficult to confirm, problematic. So, if we are talking about the crusades, and if we accept that there were crusades, we must clarify when they were. Because the Arabs, the Arab sources say that they fought the Franks.
With which Franks is also a question. Because maybe they were just fighting free people and not the French, which, in general, is not the same thing. And if we understand that the crusade was a crusade of knights and quite specific knights, then it is likely that it was a very real special operation, one of the first special operations to create a kind of mirage on the territory of modern Israel, on the territory of present-day Palestine. That is, so that you could always say where it happened, where Christ was crucified, there - in Jerusalem, he was crucified far away, and then again, everything becomes clear, everything becomes in line, why they were there so briefly.
I think that given the degree of preparedness of these knights, they were absolutely able to get a foothold there and hold these territories for a very, very long time. In spite of that, they had great difficulty in holding territories, they didn't have much people at hand. So during the Crusades, the myth was created that all this was happening in that Galilee, in that Judea, here in those lands, not in the territory of Gaul, but in the territory of some distant land, so that there was someone to point the finger at. Well, who would want to be responsible for the crucifixion of the Savior. And to have the pope sit in the same place where the Savior was crucified, who would like that. I think it has something to do with the history of the Vatican, with the history of the papacy, with the history of the orders.
Because what nation-states can we talk about before the 16th century? In fact, none at all. If you look at old maps, you see that there are some common names of territories, i.e. before the 16th century France is called Gaul, the whole France is called Gaul, say in Russia there is Scythia or Tartaria, and so on. Some general names of territories. By no means do I want to say that my version is the only one, true, correct, immutable, fundamental, etc., it is only a version, I mean, we can give as many facts as we want, but, nevertheless, there is a tradition that is very difficult to push back, even a millimeter.
So until there is some absolutely crazy strong evidence, well, at least for the people who read it, listen to it, etc., until then it will remain just a version. It seems to me, personally, and to the people I talk to there, it seems to us that this version is convincing enough. Despite the fact that I spoke for hours on end, I sort of, as you understand, didn't put all my cards on the table. In other words, I could have talked as long as I wanted, I could have given absolutely amazing facts, for example about the famous Mount Montsegur, a separate topic, about why there was a crusade against the Cathars. Now, Mount Montsegur, what was it called before? It was called Favor, so for a second, that's Mount Tabor. What's more, I was talking about the fact that there is the Jordan River - Iridan, it's still a piece of the Po River and the Rhone.
Map of Paris
There are plenty of other toponyms that I haven't even mentioned today, there's Guyenne, which is compared to the Gehenna of Fire. You'll realize that very close there is Mount Sion, it, by the way, still exists on the border in the Upper Savoy department in France, on the French/Swiss border there is the modern Swiss city of Sion, everyone knows it, no one just connects it with these events. Moreover, if anyone is interested, you can look up what Lake Geneva used to be called and whether it has anything to do with Lake Genisaret. Well, biblical toponymy is scattered all over Gaul and partially touches the modern territory of Spain, Iberia, whatever you want to call it, and partially, a little goes into northern Italy. Gaulish territory.
There really are amazing vineyards now, there really are very tasty wines, but almost all of those vineyards are from Rothschilds and 19th century. And the French winemaking has a centuries-old tradition and if people at the feast are still able to distinguish which wines are better, which are worse, you still have to look at the degree of preservation. Could wines in Israel be preserved like that? What kind of winemaking can we talk about in this territory, such deep winemaking where people still understand which wine is better, which is worse, also a good question in line with carpentry, with wood and so on. In fact, there are a lot of these questions, I do not list the various chronological inconsistencies, it is not even interesting to talk about them anymore.
Map of Jerusalem
So, returning to the question of Fomenko and versions of history, that is, what I am talking about is just a version, a version quite heretical, probably, although it seems to me that I just confirm that it really was a matter of faith and geography is a different issue. So, Fomenko's version is also quite interesting, but again, Fomenko mentions southern France and the city of Cannes in connection with Christ and he says that one of the miracles could happen in the city of Cannes, that is, in France. And he considers Constantinople to be Jerusalem. In this case, we must somehow explain how the Gallic Sea suddenly turned out to be the Mediterranean Sea, and there is no answer to the question - in what particular territories did Christ preach. Besides, let us remember that in the territory of modern Turkey or in the territory of Byzantium Christianity certainly has very deep roots. Nevertheless, even though it has deep roots and a very respectful attitude up to now to Christian shrines, Christian evangelical toponymy has not survived in the same volume as in Gaul of France.
Of course, we can say that something has been lost there, something has not been noticed, something has not been paid attention to, and so on and so forth. But the fact is that in France we have a kind of quintessence, some kind of product that we can almost already touch. Look, everything here is quite compact and everything is consistent, everything agrees very well with the Apocrypha and Scripture, which, by the way, is also rare to be consistent with both, because if you move the place of action to Palestine, then you will have many differences between Scripture and the Apocrypha, here the Apocrypha and Scripture converge, traditions converge. Fomenko - Nosovsky version certainly deserves attention and discussion. Moreover, Fomenko was precisely one of the first to draw attention to this problem. Fomenko, like Morozov, like Postrinkov, like Kesler, like many other talented researchers, did a great job and they found a lot of interesting, important, necessary and, not fearing to swear, exclusive information.
So moreover, when a very important point in their research is the dating, when they move it all closer to our time, that is 12th, 13th, 14th century. And, really, if you move it by time, you realize that you don't have any other obstacles in general. The only thing, I am somewhat skeptical about that part of his research, which says about the stay of "Andronicus" Christ in the territory of Russia, Byzantium, but again, this is my personal view of the subject and I in no way want to say that I am right here unequivocally, And Fomenko is completely wrong and understands nothing about history, no, I urge everyone who is interested to read Fomenko, certainly read Fomenko, because even with the ambiguous attitude to him that exists, Fomenko has a huge number of sensible and interesting ideas and thoughts from all points of view.
I remember when I was educated in the Soviet Union, and we were brought up on the idea that in October 1917 the Winter Palace was stormed and so on and so on. When I was taken into pioneer service, a participant in the storming of the Winter Palace, a living man, told us about the storming, the battle, how everything was burning and cracking, the myth was created before our eyes, with the help of the living participants, even though in the 20th century there is radio and television, newspapers, books, so there is more than free access to information. And yet, even though all information is accessible even in the most closed societies, it is still possible to construct myths. Especially since it is clear that any chronicler, any historian of the 19th, 18th, 17th century wrote exactly the same under dictation, exactly the same by order, as modern scribes do.
That is, nothing changes, well, for some reason it is believed that the ancient chroniclers, ancient historians must be believed unconditionally, and if it is written that in this or that century or year, this or that prince, count, king, whatever, did this and that, then it was so, neither a year earlier nor a year later. For some reason it is not taken into account that there are always interested parties, there are always those people for whom it is written. Why were all these chronicles created at all, why were all these chronicles created, why, for whom, where, under what conditions? Let's rewind the tape and we will realize that all chronicles, all history, any of the same documents there, which are now called one hundred percent proof, they were always fabricated in any era, forged.
Moreover, since the 16th century there is such a business as the antiques business, which has its own lobby, which is ready to throw rotten tomatoes at Anatoly Fomenko and Yaroslav Kesler and everyone else who doubts the antiquity of artifacts, antiquity, that some things were created in the ancient era. Try it, fight this lobby. And this is just one example of the fact that in order to make history older and to show it in the right way, to illuminate it from the right side, a huge number of people are interested, and people in power, who, let's say, will stop at nothing. You have to be critical of all sources and that's how I approached it. I always approach history from this point of view.
And for me in general, the era was very interesting, the era of early Christianity and the era of medieval Europe was very interesting. When I began to read, to compare, I realized that one is inseparable from the other. I sincerely hope that I have not touched anyone's religious feelings, I want to repeat this, because I myself have a great respect for people of faith, but I believe that the issues of faith and geography can be quite easily separated. So, I hope that I have not touched anyone's religious feelings, and I hope that someone learned something new for themselves and maybe will start reading more on this topic, will find something else interesting that I have not reached and maybe convince me that I am not right in the fact that these events took place somewhere else.
Well, that's about it.
- Шифр Библии взломан, и явилась сенсация: родина Христа - Франция. Фильм Первый | Путешествуем Сами. We Travel
- Шифр Библии взломан, и явилась сенсация: родина Христа - Франция. Фильм Второй | Путешествуем Сами. We Travel
First part
Alexey Khrustalyov. Traditionally the New Testament places are considered to be the territories of present-day Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. However, no clear evidence of this has yet been found. There are some piles of shards, or there are some stones, they are immediately and happily written in the minus 20th century or minus 30th century, but any real, any really interesting finds that would unequivocally confirm the Old Testament or New Testament history in Israel are practically nonexistent.
And, in fact, almost all of the finds that pop up there from time to time, are either fakes or are so obviously staged that it is ridiculous. Here's one of the last of these very funny stories, you probably remember the urn being found. An urn with the name of Jesus' brother on it was written, Jacob, I think, as was the name of one of Jesus' brothers, and literally three or four years later the man who brought this wonderful urn to the world was prosecuted in Israel for forgery of artifacts. Yes, he was caught, just caught by the hand.
Alexander Grinin. And this is against the backdrop of, remember, when literally a month or two ago they found Adam's grave.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, they can find anything they want there, it's not written there that this is Adam's grave. There must be some confirmation of what they find, and there is no confirmation. And if we're talking, for example, about Old Testament history or New Testament history, we would like to have at least something... It's clear that a lot of time has passed, it's difficult to find some artifacts, but at least something that connected this particular land with the text of scripture or with the text of the Torah or with the text of the Old Testament.
Israeli archaeologists and their American, English, German colleagues who work there have big problems with this. That is, they can't find anything significant that unequivocally indicates that the events of the New Testament or the Old Testament took place there. Actually, if we talk about the Israelite archaeology in general, it appeared quite recently. For all of archaeology it seems to be such an interesting land, it is the land of the Holy Sepulchre, those are sacred places for Muslims too, but, nevertheless, some of the first more or less systematic excavations there began in general only in the 19th century. Even closer, so to speak, to the middle of the 19th century. And the first who began to work there were, I think, Americans Robinson and Smith, if I am not mistaken, well, at least one of the first, yes. The Frenchman Clermont Hanneau made a great contribution and also the Englishmen worked there, then the Germans came, and at the very end of the 19th century the Russians excavated there.
Alexander Grinin. Are you talking specifically about the territory of Israel?
Alexey Khrustalyov. On the territory of Palestine, let's be clear, it was Palestine. That's the land of Palestine right there - in Jerusalem, around Jerusalem, that is what is now the land that now belongs to Israel, Palestine, partly Lebanon, partly Syria, and so on. More or less serious expeditions appeared there in the middle of the 19th century. And the first plan of Jerusalem, a proper plan, was made, if I'm not mistaken, by an Englishman named Talbot somewhere in the second half of the 19th century. And what was before that, the whole Christian world didn't show any interest in the Holy Land?
They did, but again, no significant traces that would link these places with biblical events were ever noticed. That is, of course, there are some notes from the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. By the way, it's very interesting, if we're talking about the testimonies of the Holy Land, there are very big breaks there. First, Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, appears there. This is the very beginning of A.D., 3rd century A.D., and then some information appears only after the Crusade.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, and moreover, she takes out a bunch of artifacts...
Alexey Khrustalyov. We'll come back to this later, where and what she takes out, it's also very interesting...
Alexander Grinin. A Piece of the Holy Sepulchre Cross...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Absolutely right, she found a lot of things there, she led the excavations herself, founded several churches there and so on, we will come back to that.
Alexander Grinin. Note that there were organized excavations in the 3rd century...
Alexey Khrustalyov. In general, we can say that at this time Helen was about 80 years old. Imagine the age of 80 in the 3rd century, when much later the average life expectancy was 35, 40, 45 years in Europe. What is an 80-year-old woman and what is it like for her to travel for example from Trier, where she lived, to Jerusalem. Well, just imagine what it's like. I mean, not every man would dare to do that, and a healthy, strong man, well, we'll get to that question later. And now it probably makes sense to go back to the 19th century, to the beginning of the excavations.
Anyone can go on the Internet and by typing in the right words find images of Jerusalem, for example, from the 19th century and compare it with what we have now. And people will realize that, in general, most of Jerusalem was rebuilt from the 19th century, from the second half of the 19th century, and was built in the 20th century. As for other Old Testament cities or settlements, or New Testament cities and settlements, the picture there is even sadder. Virtually no Old Testament or New Testament cities or settlements have been found.
That is, some piles of stones are found, and they are often tied to Old Testament or New Testament names quite arbitrarily.
Actually, if we talk about Israel, about the Holy Land, about how to connect the text of the New Testament and the Old Testament with this land, then we must first of all talk about the mass of inconsistencies in the texts describing these territories and what we see in reality. In fact, it is no big secret that scholars have been knocking themselves out looking for Capernaum, Gadara, Sodom, Gomorrah, the land of the Gergesenes, and so on and so forth. Well, what to speak of such cities, if the temple of Solomon, in fact, can not be tied to the area, and Calvary can not be tied to the area.
And it's a well-known fact enough that in the mid-19th century, an English officer, moved Golgotha, that is, he believed that Golgotha was not where everyone else saw it, but in a completely different place. So there are a lot of points of view out there, where in general..., in the 19th century they couldn't yet determine where Golgotha was.
Alexander Grinin. Well, it's localized now.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Now it's localized, but the thing is that we're told that there's an unbroken tradition, that for almost two thousand years people knew where Golgotha was and it was clearly localized; people understood that this is Jerusalem, this is Golgotha, this is the Way of the Cross and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, as it turns out, even in the 19th century there were no clear ideas about where Golgotha was. And the reason there were none, we can understand, because there are no structures of that time and it is very difficult to determine where was the Way of the Cross, where was Golgotha, where was the Temple of Solomon, where were some other buildings of Herod's time.
Indeed, even according to traditional history, Jerusalem was simply razed to the ground more than once, from the first centuries AD to the most recent destruction of the 20th century, let's suppose. So it is insanely difficult to determine exactly where, what was located, and the sources do not give an unambiguous answer, where and what was located and it is Jerusalem. Jerusalem is kind of a central point, what about other points in Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and so on, it's very difficult to pinpoint them.
Alexander Grinin. And let me ask you this. I haven't been to Jerusalem, but is there a lot of sites that can be considered controversial, like Golgotha, that there are several hills or mountains that can be called Golgotha? As far as I remember they had a seven-hill structure, seven hills.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You see, if you want more, any hill can be called Calvary. The question is not what you can do, the question is where it really was, and the problem is just that it is impossible to localize it properly. That is why linking Calvary to Jerusalem and linking the entire biblical history, the entire New Testament history to these places is, to put it mildly, questionable. To begin with, the same Arabs, for example, do not know the city of Jerusalem, they know the city of Al-Quds or there are some variants of pronunciation, I probably will not reproduce it as Nikolai Nikolaevich Vashkevich, for example, will reproduce it, a brilliant Arabist.
Whose name is Jerusalem itself? Is it Arabic, is it Greek, whose name is it? The etymology is very, very vague, because it seems to be a Greek name combined with some Semitic root.
Alexander Grinin. Which one is that?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well "Hiero" is Greek. It is a Greek word and therefore the second part - "Salim" is connected with Shalom, and this is why, honestly, I've never seen such a mixture of roots in the name of cities, then... Actually, the interesting question is what do Arabs think about all of this history. And in general it is very interesting to look at the history of Jerusalem and the holy places, not from our European point of view, but from the Arab point of view, from the point of view of the Middle Eastern authors.
For example, when they write about Jerusalem-Al-Quds, the Arab authors do not deny that it is indeed a holy city. But why is it a holy city? Not because Isa was there, whom, by the way, they also revere very much, the prophet Isa, Jesus, but because from Al-Quds, the prophet Muhammad made his night ascent to heaven, it is absolutely not a holy city because Isa was there, but because Muhammad was there.
Alexander Grinin. Didn't it happen somewhere in Mecca or Medina?
Alexey Khrustalyov. This is an interesting point. The fact that the Arab authors, for example, the same Nasir-ibn-Husrau wrote that those who could not make the hajj to Mecca go to Jerusalem. Well, that is, Mecca is certainly the holy city for all Muslims, but those who cannot go to Mecca, they went to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem, specifically Al-Quds, again, I emphasize, because all the time this mixing happens. In fact, in all Arab sources, without exception, it is called Al-Quds, there is no Jerusalem, there is Al-Quds, there is Al-Bayt Muqaddas, there is Beit al-Maqdis and so on, well there are names, I will not compete again with Arabists in pronunciation.
Nevertheless, all these names appear in Arabic literature, and of course there is no Jerusalem there. There is even such a literary genre as "fadail Al-Quds," an Arabic literary genre that describes the virtues of the city of Al-Quds and Muslim authors they write with great respect about the tombs of the common prophets, such as the tomb of Ibrahim, if I'm not mistaken, Moses, and so on and so forth. That is, they write about the graves of common prophets, but they do not write about the fact that in this city the prophet Isa, whom, by the way, they respect very, very much, was crucified. Moreover, there is direct evidence from Arab authors that the Franks, as they called them, those people who came during the Crusades, the so-called Crusades, openly fabricated the story of Christ's stay in Al-Quds.
Here, for example, I can quote a piece from Isfahan, he writes: "As for the Dome of the Rock, the Franks made a church and an altar in it, they decorated it with pictures and statues and they designated places in it for the monks and a place for the Gospel. Above the footprint of the prophet," the prophet, attention, yes, we're talking about Mohammed, "they erected a little gilded dome and said it was the footprint of the messiah. Well, here again, you can take different views of this evidence, but nevertheless.
Alexander Grinin. And what is this source?
Alexey Khrustalyov. This is Isfahani. So it is interesting that the footprint of one holy man turns into the footprint of another holy man.
Alexander Grinin. And now, is it still like that, or...?
Alexey Khrustalyov. It's hard to say, to be honest, I haven't checked personally what's going on there now with this particular footprint, I can't say, honestly, I just can't, you can look.
Alexander Grinin. And the Dome of the Rock, what term is that, is it some kind of church?
Alexey Khrustalyov. The Dome of the Rock is one of the holiest places for all Muslims and the Dome of the Rock is the place associated with the Holy Sepulchre. Now there is a serious battle going on around this place, as far as you know, as to whom it will belong.
Alexander Grinin. So this is some kind of object on the territory of Jerusalem, yes?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Of course.
Alexander Grinin. So theoretically inside this very Dome of the Rock there must be a trace of the prophet, we don't know what happens to it there, but it must be there.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, theoretically it has to be there, yes. That is, in practice it is probably possible to check it in some way, but again, we have to be very careful with all this evidence, because many times it was rebuilt, demolished, remodeled, well, that is whether there is something that was after the crusades is a big question.
Alexander Grinin. Within the framework of your concept that you're telling us today, I take it that in that case it shouldn't be there at all. If we come, for example, to this place, which is now called the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, there can be no footprint of the prophet...
Alexey Khrustalyov. There can be anything, because you probably know very well how things are restored and how they are resurrected from oblivion. When you come to Italy you can see how it all happens, they do not even hide it. For example, in Italy when there is restoration of frescoes there, in fact, all this is not closed, the masters work and you can see how it all happens. People crave for a spectacle, it is clear that the business is the tourists. Well, this is sort of the second question, because the first one is still politics and it is important for people that these events took place at their place, and the consequence, for example, is the attraction of tourists and so on and so on.
So, if we return to Muslim authors, for example, very interesting testimony left by Al-Harawi: "as to the places of pilgrimage of the Christians, the most important of them is the church of scum. The Christians have a tomb there, which they call the tomb of resurrection 'kiyamah' because they believe that the resurrection of the Messiah took place there, in fact, this place was the Kumamah scum, a place of refuse, because they threw garbage from all around there", interesting, really.
That is, in those days it was called the Church of Waste, in fact, there is nothing pejorative in it, because it is simply a reference to the local toponymy, like our church in Kulichki or in Gryazy and so on and so on, also they have this church at the place of waste and it had no relation to the resurrection, according to the Arab authors, at least, it did not have. And it is unlikely that the Arab authors made fun of the memory of Saint Isa, because they really respected him, and the relations with Christians, by the way, at that time the Arabs were very decent, but with the Franks they did not have very good relations, and with the Christians in general the relations were very good.
Alexander Grinin. By the way, they have a favorable attitude towards Isa, any imam would say for sure that Muslims respect Isa a lot.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is only natural because they really respect Isa, and I don't think that if resurrection of Isa really happened they wouldn't mark it in some way, but at least they would write that there is an opinion that...
Alexander Grinin. They wouldn't have littered the place with garbage so to speak.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, I don't think they would, at least there wouldn't have been a dump at that place, that's true. I mean, it's unlikely that the Arabs and the Muslims, who had a lot of reverence for Isa, would have set up a dumping ground there. Here's the same Nasir-ibn-Husrau that we've already talked about today, he wrote that the Christians own a large church in the city that goes by the name of Bayt al-Kumama, the church of scum, and they honor it highly. But there is a subtle point here, there is some difference between honoring it highly and relating it to the messiah. That is, in Moscow there are also many temples, which are revered, which are highly revered, but this does not mean that it is in these temples that some gospel events took place, that is, "to revere" and "to relate to" are different things. Well, as far as the Arabic authors are concerned, yes, of course, if we are talking about gospel events, then the most important text that tells about gospel events is the text of the Bible.
In spite of this, the text of the Gospel is still there, whatever it may be, and it is a basic source for any reasonable person, for any Christian, for any reasonable person it is one of the basic sources on the history of early Christianity, on the history of Christ, and so on and so forth. Well, if we take the text of the Gospel right off the bat and start reading it, there are immediately a lot of questions and there are immediately a lot of inconsistencies with what we see and know, yes today, about the land of the Gospel and what is written in the text of the Gospel itself. Well, I will read bits and pieces from the Gospel, this Gospel in Russian.
In fact, I checked all these places with the text in Old Slavonic, with the text of the Vulgate, but I did not check the Greek text. In the Vulgate, and with the Old Slavonic, in general, everything is conveyed adequately. For example, read Luke's Gospel: "And as he was going to Jerusalem, he passed through the region of Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, he was met by six lepers, who stood afar off, and with a loud voice said: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us"". In general, a quick glance at a map of ancient Israel is enough to realize that the Gospel passage quoted here is not about the Middle Eastern kingdom of Herod's time, if only because it is physically difficult to pass between Samaria and Galilee bordering each other. Now, if you look at a map, you'll see that these are just bordering territories and if you walk between them, you'll get anywhere but Jerusalem.
Well, let's say that between these lands, or between these cities, there was some kind of lane where the savior walked, or another possibility is that, Christ walked along the border of Samaria and Galilee. But again, in this case he must have come anywhere but to Jerusalem, because both the neutral strip and the border between these lands, it goes in a direction strictly perpendicular to that by which he could have come to this ancient city. But besides all this, in general a very interesting point, purely chronological point, in general what kind of Samaria can we talk about, if even according to traditional history, Samaria was renamed to Sebastia in the minus twenty-fifth year, and it remains Sebastia to this day. That is to say, here since those times, the name does not seem to have changed...
Alexander Grinin. Well, they can refer to this fact that, say, historian or chronicler simply used some archaic names and he did not have a modern map, as usual.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Perhaps, anything is possible, I by no means claim to carry some kind of truth in the last instance, I just reason and speculate. And in my picture of the world it somehow does not fit very well. Firstly, the fact that the direction is wrong, and secondly, even purely chronologically, well, it does not work. Although, if we are talking about chronology, that is a separate topic, when the Gospel events took place. Actually, I am a supporter of the short chronology version, and I believe that the Gospel events did not take place two thousand years ago, they took place closer to us in time, well, we will return to this question.
But, nevertheless, even I emphasize, even within the traditional concept, it does not work out that Samaria was there. In general, the question whether there was Samaria, if from time immemorial there has always been Sebastia and now it is Sebastia, where did this association with Samaria come from is a big question. Yes, you can say that now a certain Israeli territory around these lands is called Samaria, but then again, this is already a tribute to tradition, this is what is called the work of the 19th-20th centuries, and it's hardly relevant to the history we're talking about today.
Alexander Grinin. In general, probably, I'm curious why to lie in principle, why to invent something that hasn't existed, well, take the map if there is information that this territory was renamed in 25 B.C. Well, name it Sebastia at once and there are no problems.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You see, the thing is that when you see these inconsistencies, you begin to understand that there was nothing to rely on, there was no continuous chronology. If we generally talk about the chronology as such, you can treat the works of Fomenko as you like, but nevertheless he writes, in fact, very correct things, at least as far as the chronology is concerned. And even if we're talking about biblical chronology, gospel chronology, it would seem that, yes, you can very simply do really as you say, if you had to interpret something correctly, you could take some sort of composite table and see when was what and write correctly.
But that's the thing, they couldn't write it right, because there was nothing to rely on, well, there was no unified chronology, so there are holes like this, so there are terrible inconsistencies. That's what I just said - 25 years going back and forth is really nothing. By the way, we are not talking about 25 years here, but because we are not counting, roughly speaking, from year zero, and the events of the Gospel, which took place there towards the end of the 20s, maybe in the 30s, 31, 32, it is very difficult to determine right now, So it was renamed in minus 25, and we are talking about, let's say, about the 30th year of our era, so there is already a decent difference, that is 50-60 years for that time in general you could already understand that on this place is Sebastia. But the thing is, people weren't writing about this region of the world or this time, which is why Samaria arises there and why the option arises there, when it passed between Samaria and Galilee. What was the place they written about?
Alexander Grinin. Yes that is the question, I feel that there is a big landmine laid here.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, in my opinion, we are talking about a completely different place. If we take a map of medieval Europe, because in my opinion all these events have taken place already, conditionally speaking, this is the 11th-12th century of what we call the 11th-12th century of our era. I can't say more precisely, because there are so many inconsistencies in the chronology that it's impossible to determine more precisely yet. Well, if you take even the same papal documents, papal chancellery and look at them, you see that there before the 12th century, and maybe even to 13th, the dates of the documents in the papal chancellery were not stamped, and only starting from the 12-13th centuries, there may even be later, there are dates from the birth of Christ, that is for them even for the papal chancellery was a big question when these events took place.
Alexander Grinin. So the dates were the third year of the papal reign...?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Actually, I do not want to eat other people's bread. It is all described, repeatedly described by Fomenko, it is described in the earlier works of Postnikova it is described in the earlier works of Morozov, here, I will not say anything new about this and these authors, and the German authors, the same Uwe Topper, have works devoted to chronology, you can look and read there. So, there was no unambiguous chronological scale, so if we are talking about the events of the Gospels, then we can express different points of view. By the way, there is a very interesting point here, that what Christians believe is formulated in the Creed, as we know. But in the Creed, in fact, there is only one binding "crucified for us under Pontius Pilate," it says in the Creed, there are no other bindings in the Creed.
When Pontius Pilate lived and where he lived is a separate question, but we'll talk about that later. Where did these events take place, where could we pass between Samaria and Galilee? Let's open a map of Europe, you know, this place is located immediately, oddly enough, the place is northern France. Everyone knows that the ancient name of these lands is Gaul. Gaul existed until the 16th century exactly, at least there are even coins of French kings, which says "King of Gaul".
Alexander Grinin. That is, Gaul is the self-name of the French state, the French called themselves Gauls, or as?...
Alexey Khrustalyov. The French called... There is such a very subtle question in general who to call the French and who to call Gauls, it is a linguistic question, on the one hand...
Alexander Grinin. Well yes, there was a lot of these small duchies, principalities.
Alexey Khrustalyov. If you look at this, this is a completely separate issue, a very interesting one, about who the Gauls were and where they lived, and in general what is Gaul and what is the Gallic Belt of Europe, and so on and so forth, I think we can return to this question at the end. Now, to stay on topic, let's just look at a map of northern France, a map of Gaul, and see that the city called Amiens today used to stand on the Samara River, which is now the Somme River, and in ancient times it was called Samara, and the city was called Samara-Breguet or Samara-Bravy, and there are different names. So that's Samaria for you.
And it's very interesting, if you look where you can go between Samaria and Galilee, you will see that you will come to the city of Paris, well, let's just remember that for now, I won't comment on it, let's just remember it and move on. Where to next? Well, for example, to Cana of Galilee, where the first of the Gospel miracles of the transformation of water into wine was performed.
Here's how to get to this ancient city is a question for an encore. Historians still don't know which city to consider Cana. Israeli workaholics from archeology have several versions. They believe Kanami or Kfar Kanum 6 kilometers from Nazareth, or Herbatkannum, for example, 8 kilometers from Tzipori, well, perhaps there is a third, fourth, fifth option, just these two options are the most famous. But, the fact is that all of these present candidates for Cana, in New Testament times they were not settlements, they were not even spits on the map, that is, you can call it a settlement with a great stretch and, in fact, there are no clear indications that these places are Cana.
And yet there are very interesting passages in the text of Scripture, which are, in fact, clues for the researchers of this question, in general, scholars either do not notice them, or do not want to notice them. Look here, in the Gospel of John, it says that Philip, a resident of Bethsaida, finds Nathanael telling him about Christ - this is the Gospel of John. Further, the same Gospel of John said that Nathanael was from Cana of Galilee, is it so hard to compare these passages and understand that Cana of Galilee and Bethsaida must be somewhere near or overlapping, after all, Philip did not meet Nathanael on Mars.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, he didn't cross rivers, he didn't climb over mountain ranges.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, that is, it has to be somewhere near, it has to be somewhere in the neighborhood. But this turn does not suit the researchers of the Gospel, because Cana and Bethsaida do not overlap with each other within the framework of the traditional version. And in fact, strictly speaking, the settlement that today is passed off as Bethsaida is not in Galilee, just for a second, but in Gavletide, on the other side of the Jordan.
Actually again the same question, a certain pile of stones was excavated there and whether it should be considered Bethsaida is a very big question. And Bethsaida and Cana should be, according to the scriptures, according to the text of the Gospel, side by side or overlapping with each other, in the territory where they are searched today there is neither Cana nor Bethsaida, but they exist in another place and the most interesting thing is that under the same names they exist, under which they existed in ancient times. Where are they located? Again in the same Gaul on the territory of modern France and again with the same Yen Samaria, which is very interesting, there is a city known to all, the city of Cannes, located not anywhere, but in the historical territory of Bessen.
If you compare the French spelling of, for example, the territory of Bessen with the name of Bethsaida, you'll realize that it is almost the same, so here's Cana in the territory of Bethsaida and they perfectly overlap each other, and then it becomes clear why Nathanael was both a resident of Bethsaida and a native of Cana and there is no witchcraft and magic in it. And these are real places, by the way, unlike the legendary Ancient Israelites and, by the way, this is a very important point, both of these cities existed in the Roman era, whenever it was, that is even traditional historians recognize that these two cities existed in the Roman era as well.
Alexander Grinin. So it turns out that people study these maps, there are great docs great biblical connoisseurs. Is it really hard to see it and compare?
Alexey Khrustalyov. You know what the thing is, there's a lot of aspect problem. For the people of the church, there are two pillars: sacred scripture and sacred tradition. And, in general, it is not known which one is more important. In fact, both are insanely important, and on these pillars the church of Christ is founded and without sacred scripture there is no sacred tradition and vice versa. So when the people of the church approach this question for them everything is unambiguous and obvious they can't even doubt that...
Alexander Grinin. Canon.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Canon. Maybe it's not so bad and it's probably not so bad, but nevertheless, for most believers, well not so, I say incorrectly, not for most, for a certain part of believers, because for most believers these are really immutable things. For some part of the faithful, the issues of geography and faith can probably still be separated. In fact, I myself belong to this second category, that is, for me there is no doubt, I absolutely do not doubt the text of Scripture as a Christian, but at the same time for me the issues of geography can be separated from the issues of faith in a certain way. Again, I come back to the fact that there is a Creed that articulates what a Christian believes and the Creed, which, to put it bluntly, was not composed by the most recent people of Christianity and not the most foolish.
But who this Pilate was, when he lived, where he died - this is a serious question, and by answering this question, maybe we can somehow geographically shift the current references. But, again, I want to say again, what I am saying is just some version and I do not claim to be the final truth, it is some version, to me it seems plausible enough at least worthy of some attention. How other people will react to it, I do not know, it is difficult enough everyone decides for himself, where belief ends and science begins.
Alexander Grinin. I absolutely agree, it's obviously interesting, this comparison with Cannes is the simplest one.
Alexey Khrustalyov. The point is that, first of all, the comparison with the city of Cannes, not with Caen, which is to the north, by the way, is also a very interesting point, I'll talk about it now. First, there are two cities with very similar names there is the city of Caen in northern France, there is the city of Cannes in southern France. I don't remember now. I think Postnikov mentioned this very specific point, or I'm not sure now, or Postnikov's, I think I may be mistaken. So, and Fomenko, in my opinion, also has this, that the city of Cannes is associated there with that very evangelical place that the New Testament talks about, that is, I'm not the first to look at France from this point of view. The other thing is that in that hypothesis we're talking about the southern Cannes and by the way, a very interesting point, why does this phrase Cana of Galilee arise at all. Was there some other Cana?
Alexander Grinin. Yes.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Why does the question of Cana of Galilee arise at all, why does this steady phrase combination of Cana of Galilee arise? All the other cities are just given regular name...
Alexander Grinin. Just one word, Bethlehem.
Alexey Khrustalyov. ...in one word, and here it is Cana of Galilee. And where was Cana not Galilee on the territory of ancient Israel?
Alexander Grinin. That is to say, this is Cana of the Festival.
Alexey Khrustalyov. So the thing is that if we are looking at the territory of Gaul-France, this option is possible, because one Caen was in the north and was part of the territory of Galilee...
Alexander Grinin. Galilee, yes.
Alexey Khrustalyov. ...and the other Cannes was in the south....
Alexander Grinin. They were preparing to become the capital of cinematography.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, they were preparing to become the capital of cinema. And what territorial state formation they were part of is a big question. Perhaps, again, this is why the phrase "Cana of Galilee" comes to mind. So if we return to the question of Cana in Galilee, this is the place, as I have already said, where the first miracle was performed - the turning of water into wine, then this connection to Cana in Galilee and to Bethsaida looks quite justified in my opinion. Let's move on and look again at the Gospel text.
Here, for example, is what it says about the places where Jesus was born and raised. "In those days came out a command from Augustus Caesar to make a census throughout the whole land. This census was the first in the reign of Quirinius of Syria. And all went to be enumerated, each to his own city, and Joseph of Galilee went also from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, called Bethlehem. For he was of the house and lineage of David, but to sign up with Mary his betrothed wife, who was pregnant, and when they were there the time came for her to give birth, and she bore her firstborn son and swaddled him and put him in a manger, for there was no room for them in the inn." Well, this passage is talking about the two cities of Bethlehem and Nazareth.
Here again, it must be said that people conducting excavations in Israel call Nazareth of the first century A.D. just a village where about 25 families lived, that it is such a farmstead, to put it bluntly. Is this farmstead so famous in general in all Israel, that it deserved the phrase "Can anything good come from Nazareth?".
A famous phrase, and it is said by the very Nathanael of Bethsaida. You can look at the map, where officially it is even called Bethsaida, and where this village Nazareth is, and you'll see that Nathanael has some really amazing savvy, he knows about some farm people, about the famous, sadly famous for him city Nazareth, and so on and so forth. Is this the Nazareth that he's talking about? I would venture to guess that he's talking about a different Nazareth, one that still exists in the Gaul territory of France called Saint-Nazaire, which is northwest France. The history of this city is recognized by the French themselves as rather turbid and dark, although the history, in general, is quite ancient.
It is noteworthy that close to Saint-Nazaire is another city with a distinctive name, Quiberon or Kebren. Why distinctive? Because in a town called Hebron was born a fairly close relative of Christ - John the Baptist, of course, if we are talking about relatives, these cities must be somewhere near, and they are indeed in the Gaul territory of France. Just look at the map you will realize that St. Nazaire or maybe Nazaire, as it used to be called, and Kebren are very close to each other.
What if, for example, I told you that Bethlehem is located not far from Saint-Nazaire and Kebren, and Bethlehem is indeed there. Bethlehem of Gaul and this town is exactly on the way from Saint-Nazaire to Paris, if you look at the map - it's called Belem until today, that is practically Bethlehem. If you look there are still Belem Towers in Portugal, so called Bethlehem Towers. In the Latin transcription it will look exactly like that, that is really the town of Bethlehem - Belem, it is on the way from Saint-Nazaire to Paris. This is a triple coincidence.
The entire territory of modern France-Gaul is not such a large area. By the way, here is also a very interesting point, because according to the scriptures, Jesus preached about three years before he was executed, before he was crucified. If you look at the territory of modern Israel, the question arises where you can walk there for three years.
So, we've settled on the fact that this triad of Saint-Nazaire, Quiberon, Belem we have it on our face, again in the territory of that very Gaul, which I think is Galilee. So now it's time to talk about the places where Jesus performed his miracles, such as the land of the Gadara. Well, here we should enjoy an extended quote from the text: "and they sailed to the land of the Gadara lying against Galilee". Emphasize the point "against Galilee".
..."When he came ashore, there met him a man from the city who had been possessed by demons from long ago, who was not clothed and did not live in a house but in coffins, and when he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice: "What have you to do with me, Jesus son of the Most High God, I beg you not to torment me" For Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of this man, because it had tormented him for a long time so that they bound him with chains and bonds to keep him safe, but he tore the bonds and was chased by a demon into the wilderness.
Jesus asked him, "What is your name? " he said "Legion", because many demons entered him and they begged Jesus not to command them to go into the abyss, there was a large herd of pigs grazing on the mountain and the demons begged him to let them enter them, he let them, the demons. The herdsmen, seeing what had happened, ran and told in the city and in the villages, and they came out to see what had happened."
Well, and so on.
Usually, this is a fairly commented on piece from the Gospel and usually all the commentary boils down to one thing, that it refers to the city of Gadara inside the Decapolis, southeast of Tiberias or about that area, although the real Gadara has not yet been found, which means, again, that there is no real connection.
It is believed that Gadara was somewhere inside the Decapolis. How is it that Gadara was inside the Decapolis? After all, Luke gives the exact address against Galilee, and it is necessary to sail, not by caravan on donkeys. Then why study the text of the New Testament at all, if the right city will be designated as Gadara anyway? And where did the herd of pigs come from? This is in Israel, where the pig has been considered an unclean animal for centuries, what, a decorative breeding or something? And there is not just a herd, there is a herd with a shepherd, not to mention the fact that there is not even a feed base for this herd of pigs, but that is another matter, but the pig in Israel is an unclean animal.
Alexander Grinin. Well, the fodder base is possible, then there was a different climate considered that...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Anything is possible, but nevertheless a pig was considered an unclean animal.
Alexander Grinin. ... Definitely according to Judaism.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Definitely about this and no herd of pigs could be there by definition.
Alexander Grinin. Who did he herd the pigs for?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Or, as they sometimes very ridiculously write in some comments that Gadara was supposedly a Greek town and this Greek shepherd was herding Greek herds, well, quite ridiculous, of course, what the Greeks were doing. Actually, they usually settled along the coast they generally did not go deep into the desert, but that's putting it mildly. Not to mention the fact that nothing Greek can be found in the Tiberias area. Well, okay, a herd of pigs. And what steepness did they jump from, it says quite clearly in the Gospel text that they fell from a steepness into a lake, and what lake, if Gadara is inside Decapolis, look at the map.
What lakes are there? There is no lake, no sea, nothing, i.e. there is one overlay, i.e. there are nothing but overlaps, and it can be explained, well, if you want, of course, you can explain anything, i.e. you can pull everything up by the ears, but to tie this Gadara to the Gospels is very difficult, and here modern Gospels commentators make rather a serious mistake. And the real Gadara, meanwhile, quietly and peacefully exists to this day, you may be surprised, but it even exists under its own name. Where?
Alexander Grinin. I suspect in Gaul.
Alexey Khrustalyov. You know the funniest thing is that, or rather it's not even funny, you just have to read the text of the Gospel carefully and Luke gives a very accurate address - against Galilee is the country of Gadara. Against Galilee we take a map of Northern France and see what happens if we, for example, sail from Bessen by boat from Bethsaida and cross the mouth of the Seine. Where do we end up? We end up in the canton of Goderville, that is, the town of Ville, this is the town of Gadara in the canton of Goderville. The place remains with the same name. Surprisingly enough, I think this is the Gadara country we are looking for and by the way here and with pigs has always been good, well, Gaul is famous for its pig herds and pig culture and with steepness it is all right here.
Alexander Grinin. And where is the steepness?
Alexey Khrustalyov. There are very decent, very steep slopes. If you drive by the French Bank you will see that they are very decent steeps and there is a place to jump a pig herd.
Alexander Grinin. It is quite possible to fall down.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, and quite, quite possible. And, most importantly, on the opposite shore would really be Gallia - Galilee, all preserved.
Alexander Grinin. Terrific.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Preserved to this day. By the way, here's an interesting point. Very many people pay attention to the similarity of episodes described in Matthew and Luke, where Luke talks about the country of Gadara, and Matthew talks about the land of Gergesen or Gerasenes. Here is what Matthew writes: "and when he came to the other side to the country of Gergesin, he was met by two demoniacs who had come out of the tombs, very fierce so that no one dared to pass that way, and behold they shouted, what have you before us Jesus the son of God?" Well, again, it's the same situation-Jesus casts out the demons puts them in a herd of pigs and the pigs steeple into the sea. At the same time, the location of Gergesa or Gerasa of antiquity scholars, of course, still can not establish, so they try to draw one episode to another and say that the country of the Gadara and the country of Gergesa are one and the same.
And the place of Gergesia is not assigned anywhere else, but in the depths of the Decapolis, where, as we remember, there are big problems with the herds of pigs and with the steepness and water. And the most interesting thing is that interpreters are not confused by the words of the Apostle to the other side, that is, we are talking about the fact that there was a crossing to the other side. What other bank are we talking about if these cities are in the depth of the Decapolis? By the way about the Decapolis, that's a separate question, what is the Decapolis and how did it end up in that place in the first place. After all, if you look at the map,there are big problems with the cities there.
Alexander Grinin. Do you mean the map of Israel?
Alexey Khrustalyov. A map of Israel, of course, you can scrape together ten cities, if you count all the houses in the Decapolis and take them for cities, then you can say that there are ten cities. Ten cities there is simply unreal to find, and here it is cities, not just towns, not just settlements, but cities of the Decapolis, the Decapolis of Greece. It's an amazing thing.
Alexander Grinin. And on the territory of Gaul, there is ten cities?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Now we will come back to this question to the territory of Gaul and so on, while we are talking about the land of the Gergesenes. Let's try to see what happens if we don't interpret Matthew's words, but arm ourselves with them as an exact indication. Suppose Jesus sailed from the same Bessen or the country of the Gadara, for example, and to get to the other shore to the country of the Gergesenes. Where would he end up?
If you take a boat out of northern Gaul, you get to one of the ancient Roman bases on the island of Jersey, Gerasa, compare Jersey and Gerasa you get the land of Gerasenes, which is unsuccessfully sought in the area of Decapolis. And all you had to do was to follow the words of the apostle of Christ. Everything is very clearly stated, everything is written.
By the way, on the way to the country of Gerasenes or Gadara, Christ and the apostles get caught in a storm, well, probably this episode everyone remembers "and when he entered the boat his disciples followed him and behold there was a great commotion on the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was sleeping, then his disciples, coming up to him, woke him and said Lord save us, we will perish and he said to them: "Why are you so fearful and of little faith?" Then he got up and forbade the winds and the sea, and there was great silence, and the people marveled and said: Who is this, that both the winds and the sea obey him?"
Well, interpreters of scripture have been telling the tale for centuries of how terrible the storm was on Lake Genesaret aka Lake Tiberias, aka Lake Tiberias aka Lake of Galilee. Yes, the storm was terrible, well really? What kind of Pharisee would it take to ascribe to the true God such a miracle of overcoming the storm in a glass of water? If someone was on this very lake of Kinneret, he knows that it is simply, to put it mildly, a puddle.
Alexander Grinin. Maybe it dried up.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Everything may be, again, it's a stretch. But there hasn't been a storm there probably since creation, what storm can there be with wild waves and winds in this place is completely incomprehensible. At the same time, if we look at medieval maps, we learn that the strait, which today is called the Channel, used to be called the Gallic Sea. The Gallic Sea, where the real Gerasa or Jersey is, and that is where the storms are not unlike the storms that people try to attribute to Lake Kinneret, there are storms with gale force winds and huge waves, and I think that was the storm that the Savior tamed and that was recognized as the great miracle.
Well, one of the most significant acts from every point of view in the earthly life of Jesus was the raising of Lazarus from the dead. This event took place in the village of Bethany, which, as you can already guess, has long been sought in Israel, but cannot be found. It is assumed that it is somewhere near Jerusalem, but it is not very clear what the basis for this opinion is. In the Gospel of John, Bethany is mentioned as a place associated with the raising of Lazarus, and, in fact, there is no mention of Jerusalem in the nearest verses, nor is Mount of Olives, which is often mentioned in connection with Bethany.
I think where it is now in the north of Gaul in France and again the name has not changed today, as many centuries ago this city is called Bethune. If you want to challenge this version, I suggest to write in French Bethany and Bethune and compare these names you will understand that, in general, we are talking about the same place.
Alexander Grinin. Given the French passion for swallowing letters.
Alexey Khrustalyov. By the way, Lazarus himself, whom the Savior raised from the dead, is not buried far away, he is buried in the cathedral of Otön. According to legend, this holy man after the resurrection moved with his sisters Martha and Mary to Gaul and he became the first bishop of Marseilles. And the most interesting thing is that the cathedral of the city of Auteuil, where St. Lazarus is buried and was called before and is now called, I think, the cathedral of St. Nazarene Saint-Nazaire - the cathedral of St. Nazarene. Well, probably someone may say that it is again a coincidence, well, perhaps it is time to stop being surprised by these coincidences.
Moving on.
There is a curious passage in Matthew's Gospel in which Christ mentioned several cities at once: "Then he began to rebuke the cities in which his strength was most manifest, because they did not repent. "Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, for if in Tyre and Sidon there had been powers manifested in you, long ago they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes, but I tell you Tyre and Sidon will be more glad in the day of judgment than you. And you Capernaum, who were raised up to heaven, will be brought down to hell; for if the powers that were revealed in you had been revealed in Sodom, it would have remained until this day; but I tell you that the land of Sodom will be more glad in the day of judgment than it will be for you." This is the fragment that I think makes sense to dwell on in detail.
We've already talked about Bethsaida today. Tyre and Sidon. Maybe it's much simpler. Maybe Tyre and Sidon aren't exactly Sur and Saida, maybe the Sea of Galilee and the Decapolis were not exactly where modern interpreters of the Gospels find them today. Let's look at a map of France-Gaul, maybe you'll immediately find an answer to the question of how you can go from Tyre, Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the Decapolis, look, in the heart of France are two cities of Tours and Issoudun. Leaving them and going north-east you get to the Decapolis - a union of Alsace cities that we are told existed in the 14th century, but given all the joys of modern chronology it is quite possible that it existed before and after.
Nevertheless, the Decapolis in Alsace are the real ten cities, not the ten mythical settlements in the territory where they are trying to find them today. So, going through this very Decapolis and going strictly north you get to the Sea of Gaul, that is, you get to the Sea of Galilee, all strictly in accordance with the Gospel text. Now it's turn for Chorazin, Sodom, and Capernaum from Matthew's quote above. None of these cities in the near east, as you understand, have been found. Well, I guess I don't need to explain now why it is not found, better to look for them, because this part of the Oikumene is probably better in Gaul. Chorazin is probably modern Quercy, which was called Karsin in Oxytan, compare with Chorazin.
The name Sodom probably refers to Sedan, which is in the northeast, and, incidentally, nearby is a town with the equally sonorous name of St. Omer, formerly simply Omer. Given the aspirated nature of the first consonant - simply Gomorrah. And another evidence in favor of this version is that in the neighborhood is Lotharingia - that is, the land of Lot, who, as we remember, leaving these sinful cities, was the only righteous man there. So, the only point about which, frankly, I can't say anything is Capernaum. Here there are some difficulties and I can not localize it in the territory of modern Gaul in France, although there is one clue and a very interesting clue.
So if we take the view that a certain area of Cabernet is that same Capernaum, then, in general, everything will probably come together. Although, again I emphasize, this is the only place to find, which is difficult enough to localize, and what I say is just a hypothesis, beautiful or not is not for me to judge, but nevertheless there is a little hitch. So, when we have found most of the evangelical names on the map of modern Gaul of France, it's time to go back to the beginning.
Remember when we were talking about Luke's Gospel, when we were talking about Samaria and Galilee, when he was going to be in Paris in between, then I said we should stop and talk a little bit about something else, well now that we've talked a little bit about something else it's time to go back to Paris. Now that Samaria and Bethany and Gadara and Cannes and Bethlehem and other cities are around the eternal city, I think it makes sense to take a closer look at Paris. So what do the two real and mythological capitals of the world have in common?
Let us begin, perhaps, with the inhabitants of these glorious cities. Well, as you may recall, who were the people who schemed against Christ the most? The Pharisees. Well, I think it's no big secret to linguists and people who read and love history and linguistics that the letters "f" and "p" are interchangeable in many languages, so if you replace the first letter in the word "Pharisees" with "p", you get a very interesting word.
Alexander Grinin. Terrific!
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, you get "Parisees".
Alexander Grinin. Parisians.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, yes, the same Parisians, who gave their name to the city of Paris. That is, the very tribe that gave the city of Paris its name. Were they really involved in the crucifixion of Christ? Let's take a look. Let's begin, perhaps, with the crucifixion - with Golgotha. As I said the location of Golgotha is now considered certain, but nevertheless, as I said, in the 19th century to determine, to localize this place was not possible, at least there were still options and the debate continued and continues to this day. But in Paris, if we accept the view that Paris is the Jerusalem, there is a mountain which corresponds exactly to all the descriptions and is called Mount Montmartre, the mountain of the martyr.
This mountain is not in the city; it is outside the city. That is, again, all in accordance with the Gospel tradition and it is very symbolic that this mountain is crowned by the Sacre-Coeur Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Christ, which was built in the 19th century, but we will return to the history of the construction of this cathedral.
First, the history of Montmartre itself is very interesting; if we rewind the tape back in time, we learn that Montmartre was the birthplace of one of Europe's most famous secret societies, the Jesuits. And it was on Montmartre that Ignacio Lopez, who is known to the world as Ignacio Loyola, together with his companions took vows, certain vows, on Mount Montmartre, and it was on this mountain that the Society of Jesus was founded.
Alexander Grinin. What, just here on the mountain, he did it right out in the open?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Also a very interesting point. In addition to the Sacré-Coeur, there is another small temple on Montmartre - the "Temple of Saint Peter". It is so unknown that even dodgy Parisian cab drivers do not know that there is a temple of Saint Peter behind the Sacré-Coeur. And the temple is very ancient, very old, as they say it is part of a monastery, the middle part of an abbey of some antiquity. And, by the way, this place was a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. And a very serious pilgrimage. Very often the crowned heads from all over Europe went there. So it was in this very temple of St. Peter that Loyola and his companions took certain vows and this place is considered the birthplace of the Society of the Jesuits; actually, it is clear that this place was chosen by them absolutely not by accident.
Alexander Grinin. It should be clear that this place is not random. Of all places, why there?
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is interesting that by the way the French, if I am not mistaken, were not among these people and why they chose Montmartre in Paris as a place where the Society of Jesus will be founded is a good question.
Alexander Grinin. Alexey, is this official data?
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, this is absolutely official data.
Alexander Grinin. The Jesuits don't argue with that?
Alexey Khrustalyov. No. No, this is absolutely official data, you can read about it everywhere, just not many people pay attention to it and not many people connect it with the Gospel story. "They just founded it and that's all to this story".
Alexander Grinin. Well, yes, that's if you just read the history of the creation of the Society of the Jesuit Order.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, but why in Paris?
Alexander Grinin. Well, they just wanted to do that, why not?
Alexey Khrustalyov. They just decided so apparently.
Alexander Grinin. So there is a deep sacred meaning...
Alexey Khrustalyov. In my opinion, yes. By the way, Ignacius Loyola and his friends, when they took these vows, were going either to Jerusalem or to Rome for their ministry if it didn't work out. Judging from the fact that they didn't go to Rome and didn't get to Jerusalem of the Middle East, we can make a neat assumption that they stayed in Jerusalem, the real one, that is Paris. By the way, a very interesting point, as you know Paris is on the hills, like many cities, so the hill next to Montmartre is called, not accidentally, Buttes-Chaumont, that is translated simply as Bald Mountain. Well, I do not need to tell you what the Bald Mountain is for Christianity, and what it is associated with. Here is such an interesting moment in the life of the city of Paris.
Alexander Grinin. Is this a literal translation of Buttes-Chaumont?
Alexey Khrustalyov. It is a literal translation, yes, the Bald Mountain. And the Jesuits were not simple guys at all, they knew what they were doing, where they were doing it, and how. A very interesting question, by the way, which place was really Calvary, this particular Bald Mountain or Montmartre? In order to understand this, we have to go back a few centuries and see what another Jesuit said at the end of the 19th century, very interesting. There was a Cardinal Heber, under whom the Sacre-Coeur was built, who motivated the fact that the temple of Christ's heart had to be built here, and he said very interesting words.
I allow myself to quote: "This is it, this is the place of martyrdom he cried out, this is the place where the holy heart must rule, where it can cry out incessantly at the foot of the hill where Christianity was born, born among us in the blood of our first apostles, a monument to our religious awakening must be erected," I think it could not be clearer. I don't know whether he regretted what he said or whether it was a deliberate leak, but nevertheless, these words were written down by the Abbé Loggineau in the late 19th century and can be found in a number of brochures describing the construction of the Sacré Coeur.
When they say that the construction of the temple is connected with the Franco-Prussian wars and so on and so forth, this is a bit of slyness, that is, of course, there was some cover-up, that it is being built under some pretext, but, nevertheless, the basic idea was thrown in by the Jesuits and they brought it to completion, a very interesting point. The majestic Temple of the Sacre-Coeur, which towers over all of Paris, such a crown of Paris, is just on the site of the martyrdom on Montmartre Hill.
Alexander Grinin. Well, besides the fact that the temple is very beautiful, visible from afar in general it has some architectural features that could be indicative, do you know? Indicative of some of its mysterious meaning.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Maybe they are there, but I have not studied the temple so thoroughly. I mean, of course I have been there, of course I have looked at it from all sides, of course I have seen how it is built, how it is organized and so on, but maybe there is something I have not noticed yet.
Alexander Grinin. The Jesuit generals haven't said anything about it, that is if they have deliberately allowed a leak then...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Or I just did not pay attention to it... It is possible that there are some clues in the architecture of the temple.
Alexander Grinin. There are elements that are most likely indicative...
Alexey Khrustalyov. We have to look at it, we have to study it more closely, more thoroughly.
Alexander Grinin. Well, by the way, even the name, is somehow not quite standard.
Alexey Khrustalyov. The name, yes, to put it mildly, is quite non-standard - Sacre-Coeur. Well, a few more strokes to the portrait of Paris-Jerusalem. Everyone knows that one of the most important cathedrals dedicated to the Virgin, if not the main one, is located in Paris. It's called Notre Dame de Paris.
First of all, in this cathedral is one of the most important Christian relics - the Savior's crown of thorns, and secondly, it is very interesting that this cathedral was decorated with statues until the 18th century, and these statues were not of French kings, those were 28 statues of the kings of ancient Judea. For what is left of these statues, these heads are in the museum of Cluny, today in the center of Paris, these are the kings of ancient Judea.
That is, all nations seek to immortalize their homegrown kings, holy warriors, and the French, for some completely unknown reason, suddenly decide to immortalize the kings of ancient Judea. Why should they? Well, unless the kings of ancient Judea and the French rulers are one and the same. Next. Another very interesting point.
In the 12th century, well, according to the traditional chronology, in the 12th century this cemetery appeared and, interestingly, only infants were buried there. It gradually grew to unprecedented size, in the 18th century it was closed, then, however, everyone was buried there - not just babies. But originally it was really an infant cemetery, in the 18th century it was closed, and by the 18th century the name was already shortened to "Cemetery of the Innocents." Well, perhaps the Gauls or the French, I do not know who at the time, were so impressed with the Gospel story that they gave the cemetery such an interesting name. Well, as you understand, there are no such cemeteries in the Middle East, that is, no innocently murdered babies by King Herod, no cemeteries of innocently murdered babies by King Herod there.
Alexander Grinin. Although, in theory, they would be preserved in these conditions, dry climate and so on.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, they should have been preserved... There are some in Paris though. Well, what babies, even if they can not show well the temple of Solomon, they can not show the place where it was, only approximately something is shown, but they do not say how it all was located. The most interesting thing is that there is one such very subtle point, in general, when they read the Gospel, they do not notice that there were moneychangers in the temple, whom Jesus drove out of there.
That's a good question. If we lean on the point of view that Jerusalem is where they are trying to construct it today, I'm afraid this question will go unanswered. But in Paris there is still a Temple street, on which stood the Temple at one time, the Tour du Temple - the Temple of Solomon, and the Knights of the Temple were the very Templars, whose official name was Knights of the Temple of Solomon and the Templars' central office was just in Paris. By the way and the history of the Templars, if you remember, also ends in Paris, along with the execution of Jacques de Molay, it is the beginning of the 14th century. And, in general, everyone knows that the Templars had a very direct relation to what today we would call the banking business, if we accept the point of view that...
Alexander Grinin. Well, it is believed that they created it...
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, in general, yes. And if we take the viewpoint that the Templars are the same money changers, then it is quite understandable how they ended up in their own office, i.e. there is nothing so strange here. By the way, one of the towers of this "Paris office" was called Caesar's Tower. Well, I suggest that historians look for Caesars in the 12th century, when it was called like that, what kind of Caesars we had in the 12th century, in whose honor the tower could be named.
Alexander Grinin. Well, they liked to read ancient literature.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Well, that was later, they started to read antique literature later in time, this is closer to humanists and early Renaissance, and in the 12th century I am afraid...
Alexander Grinin. No, the traditional ones will say.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, well, naturally I'm afraid that in the 12th century antique literature was just started to get written. By the way, I wanted to tell you about another interesting coincidence. We have already talked today about Lazarus, who was resurrected by Christ; his remains, as I said, are in France. And according to some apocryphal texts, he was appointed bishop to a certain city of Kiti, now they are trying to link this city of Kiti with Cyprus and the city of Larnaca.
Well, Larnaca must indeed once have been the city of Kition; it is quite possible that we are really talking about that city of Kiti. But it seems to me, in the light of all that has been said above, that the city of Kiti must be looked for in a completely different place. Well, if you even look at a map of modern Paris, you'll see that the center of Paris is Cité, which is the same as the English City, which is the same as, I believe, the Moscow's Kitay-gorod, which is the same as the Jewish Ghetto, which is the same as the Italian Citta, and in principle these are all words derived from the same root, all words are related.
Now, it is not at all certain that Cyprus was the residence of Lazarus; it is quite logical to assume, if Lazarus is buried somewhere nearby, that he was made bishop in this very city of Sita, Kita, it is quite probable.
Alexander Grinin. And on it, by the way, the execution of Jacques de Molay took place.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It was there that Jacques de Molay was executed, absolutely right. So it is quite logical to assume that it was to this city of Cite that Lazarus was sent as bishop, and not somewhere in the middle of nowhere, to Larnaca in Cyprus. By the way, Cité was mostly rebuilt during the time of a French king with a very antique name, Philip Augustus.
If you remember Christ, according to traditional history, lived just in the time of Emperor Augustus. This may or may not be just another coincidence. Interestingly, by the way, in Paris, among other things there are remains of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Queen Helen, which, incidentally, not many people know about. That is, people who are interested probably know, so deeply digging and strongly interested, but in general few people know about it.
Alexander Grinin. It's that 80-year-old grandmother.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Yes, here we are just back to that very 80-year-old grandmother, St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Helen, mother of Constantine the Great.
Alexander Grinin. Who worked tirelessly on the hot shores.
Alexey Khrustalyov. Generally, she - Helen, is one of the central figures of the original Christianity, it was she who, as we have already said, went according to the legends to Jerusalem, found there some relics of the Passion, and brought them back to Gaul.
Alexander Grinin. Well, in general, you should agree that by today's times it is a heroic deed to go such a long distance on, say, a wooden vessel, carrying such values, even for those days, that is, as I remember, it is a huge trunk with the relics she was carrying.
Alexey Khrustalyov. To put it mildly, the story is not very believable, not very believable, because, as I said, imagine a shaggy century and an eighty years old, even if the queen, even a person who works for hundreds of thousands of subjects, this kind of journey is the hardest, at that time, this excavation too, which they allegedly led there. And, most interestingly, a certain porphyry sarcophagus is shown in Rome, in which, supposedly, she was buried.
Anyway, if anyone thinks that this is the sarcophagus of a Christian saint, well, everyone is free to hold his opinion. It is absolutely pagan sarcophagus and, again, some kind of dark history, they allegedly took it from under someone and so on and so forth, that is for the queen could not find a proper sarcophagus, in general, some kind of strange story. And the most interesting thing is that while she was buried in Rome, by some strange coincidence her remains ended up back in Reims in Gaul, and then they were transported to Paris.
From Trier to Paris is not such a long distance, here indeed even an elderly person could do this. Understandable climate for her to live in, make some excavations or find them in the end and return to Trier. By the way, here is another very interesting story related to Saint Helen, because Helen was helped by a man named Judas Cyriacus or there are different transcriptions, but the most common is Judas Cyriacus and this name is translated from something like Judas of the Lord, so here is a strange translation, And Gregory of Tours is Gregory from Tours, Aristarchus of Samoa is Aristarchus from the island of Samos, and so on and so forth, but for some reason Judas Cyriacus is translated as Judas of the Lord, well, at least it sounds ambiguous, right, Judas of the Lord. And why actually Judas Cyriacus is translated as Judas of the Lord, I think for the reason that finding a town of Cyriacus or a town with a similar name, in the Middle East, in general, is very problematic.
Alexander Grinin. And here in Gaul?
Alexey Khrustalyov. And here in Gaul, to this day, not far from Paris, there is a town called Quirillamot. The most interesting thing is that the only saint with the name Cyriacus was born in Gaul and preached not somewhere, but in the city of Trier, where Queen Helen lived. And then everything falls into place. If you take the viewpoint that queen Helen did not go far away and was not helped by someone with a strange name, but by a local resident, everything will go back to the right place.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, she hired a foreman, and, by the way, she had enough administrative resources in these places. Well, imagine that in this situation you don't remember in any way the hard routine of those days, that is, for example, we are not talking about the robbers, the hostile armies - it's even amazing!
Alexey Khrustalyov. Actually that's what I meant when I said that the way was, to put it mildly, not close and not safe, that's what I mean. The most interesting is that Queen Helen, after she went to Jerusalem, she returned not to the new capital Constantinople, built by her son Constantine, and not to the old capital, which she could not stand and Constantine himself could not stand it, but to the allegedly out-of-town city of Trier in Gaul. Why would she, well, maybe she just wanted to be close to some holy places? As an option.
So, putting an end to the subject of Paris, I want to draw attention to another very interesting detail. Here's a look at the coat of arms of Paris, which, by the way, few people can explain why this particular coat of arms is a rook. And let's compare it with the coat of arms of the city of which I spoke about today, which I believe is the birthplace of Christ the city of Saint-Nazaire or Nazaire. This is a series of find 10 differences absolutely identical coats of arms and the key is very appropriate, it is immediately clear where something began, where it ended, absolutely identical coats of arms. By the way, the ship in this form - a boat is one of the oldest Christian symbols, it's not less ancient than say fish, and here are such symbols can be seen, including, and in the caves of the first Christians, by the way.
Coat of Arms St. Nazaire and Paris
There are similar ships even near us in Chersonesus, where the caves were excavated, and similar ships are depicted in the caves of the first Christians, and the boat ship is one of the oldest symbols and means salvation in the church, salvation in Christ, salvation in the church. And, in general, it is clear why these two cities have such coats of arms. By the way, if you look at the French heraldry in general, you will find similar coats of arms only for these two cities, all other coats of arms are different in one way or another, and there is no such similarity at all. Why is it that Paris and some out-of-the-way Saint-Nazaire have such similar coats of arms?
Alexander Grinin. And how do you explain this, why they are so similar, I do not quite understand why?
Alexey Khrustalyov. These are the cities where the Way of the Cross began and where it ended in Saint-Nazaire or Nazareth, where Christ was born, and Paris-Jerusalem is where this journey ended, which is why there is this connection.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, brilliant.
Second part
Alexey Khrustalyov. Such an interesting detail. The number of facts that I was able to dig up, that I was able to discover, at least allows us to look at Paris from a slightly different point of view, from a less traditional one, so to speak. By the way, when last time I was talking about Paris, I forgot to say one more interesting thing, according to the Gospels there must be Emmaus, a place mentioned in connection with Christ, and of course this city must be not very far from Paris. In Palestine this place has not been found yet, but near Paris still exists quite an ancient town Meaux.
If you look at how it is spelled, how it is written by the French themselves, you will realize that Emmaus and Meaux are very similar. There are a lot of cities with such names, including biblical ones, but it is very important to understand which of these names are primary and which are introduced later. For example, in Portugal there is a place called Nazareth, but it does not have a rich history and was established quite late. This is one of the objections I always hear, that in fact there are many such places with biblical names. And very often when people oppose me, they say, look, there are quite a few places with biblical names all over Europe both here and there, that is, you can localize what you are talking about anywhere in Europe.
To which I say, no, guys, not in any place, because if somewhere there is one, two, three such places it is very good, but try to find any territory in Europe, where biblical places are collected on a small enough area. Besides the history of France and the history of Spain, the history of the Iberian Peninsula, they are also connected with the history of the Arabs, they are also connected with the history of the Hebrews, and that is where the Arabs and the Jews always lived - in France and in Spain, and that is where the Arabic and Hebrew languages were spread, that's why places with such names could arise there. Moreover, it is very interesting, when we talk about the Jews in France, and there have always been many Jews in France, they spoke and wrote in a certain French-Jewish language.
It is interesting that this so called Hebrew-French, is actually identical to Old French. Moreover, when the scientists begin to look through the old dictionaries and old Jewish books it turns out that a lot, well, let's say not a lot, but a fairly large number of French words that are not recorded in the French sources are recorded in the Jewish sources, and they are written in Hebrew letters. That is such a very interesting thing, which is rarely talked about.
The same can probably be said about the Arabs, because everyone knows very well that the history of Spain, the history of the Iberian Peninsula is mostly the history of the Arabs. And when they try to say that there was some kind of Reconquista it's quite ridiculous, because what Reconquista can we talk about? The Conquista, yes, but the Reconquista I seriously doubt, because the whole history of Spain and Portugal and partially France, which can be touched, which you can read something and look at with your eyes is the history of the Arabs and the Jews. It is not the history of the Spanish or the French or whoever else.
Therefore, when we say that the Gospel events could have taken place in what is now Gaul, we must be very clear that the territory of present-day France, the territory of present-day Spain is where two very different cultures, two very different civilizations collided - European civilization, while we will not say which, pagan or Catholic, but it was a European civilization and a Jewish-Arab civilization. In other words, there were two completely different cultures, two completely different civilizations, which could not help but clash, with completely different approaches to life, with completely different ethics and so on and so on. By the way, the conflict that emerges in the Gospel is quite possibly one of the reflections of that clash of civilizations, which emerged between Europeans and the Arab-Jewish civilization, which was in Spain, in Portugal, partly in France and so on.
That is, in general, when people talk about the history of Spain, for example, they always say that yes, there was an Arab presence, but for some reason this Arab presence is always downplayed somehow. Well, they say that yes, it was there, yes, there is some evidence of it, but, nevertheless, the attitude to the Arab culture was as to the culture of the conqueror, that is, it is love and hate. They admit that it was there, but, nevertheless, they claim there was a Reconquista, that is, "we regained what had been lost". A good question is when was it lost and by whom was it lost? Now, by the way, the Iberian Peninsula has a lot of names there that echo both Old Testament names and New Testament names, even the very name of the peninsula, you'll excuse me, of course, the Iberian Peninsula, but isn't that the Hebrew Peninsula?
And the Ebro River, and the French part where there is Ever and so on? I mean, Jaffa, Maqueda aren't those Old Testament places? Generally speaking, the whole Spanish educational system, in general, is built on some Arab things, on some Jewish scientific points, again, it's all from the Jewish-Arab world. So it's not homegrown, it's not indigenous Spanish, it's not Castilian, it's all taken from the Arabs and the Jews. And, in general, the whole history of Spain is this story of love and hate. Well, we've gone a little off topic now, and we'd like to go back to Gaul and Galilee.
We began to talk about, or rather ended up talking about the fact that Paris could be the Jerusalem that is described in the Gospels, the city of Emmaus - Meaux. Another very interesting point - we talked mostly about geography, now it probably makes sense to talk about the people, those people, those characters that are mentioned in the Gospels. We should probably start with Pontius Pilate, because Pontius Pilate is one of the main spatio-temporal references that exist in Christianity, the name of the man is mentioned in the Creed, and he is one of the central figures in the Gospel. Pontius Pilate, what is known about him?
Not much is actually known about him, and what is known leads to very interesting thoughts, well, for example, where Pontius Pilate ended his life. Pontius Pilate was exiled to Gaul to Vienne, where he either died, or committed suicide. We know about it only from the apocryphal sources, and we cannot say for sure, but nevertheless most of the apocrypha about the life of Pontius Pilate say that he finished his life in Gaul in Vienne, and even in Vienne the tomb of Pontius Pilate is shown.
Although there are several versions. There is a version that Pontius Pilate committed suicide by throwing himself into the river, but the river did not accept his body and carried it somewhere else. There is a version that Pontius Pilate committed suicide somewhere in the Alps and there is now an ice lake, a lake covered with ice in which Pontius Pilate's body is frozen, there are in fact many versions. But all these versions, they all really mean one thing, that Pontius Pilate finished his life in Gaul, which is either the territory of today's France or the borderland between France and Switzerland. Vienne is located in what is now France, close to Italy.
The most interesting thing is that this part of northern Italy, the part which borders with France, this piece was Gallia. Another interesting point is that on this piece of land now flows a river - the biggest Italian river, the most full-flowing, which is called the Po. And the thing is, this river's name in the ancient times was "Iridan", i. e. "Jordan", between us two. And this river, if memory serves me correctly, passes into the Rhone, so theoretically this whole water artery could be called the Jordan (Iridan). So if we're talking about the territory of Gaul, Gaul is a huge area. Gaul is today's France and a piece of today's Germany, a huge piece, and the same Trier we were talking about, where Queen Helen lived, it was part of Gaul, it was not part of any other formations, it was a piece of Gaul. So this Pilate ended his life there in Gaul, and what's interesting is that his wife Claudia Procula, not much is known about her either, was from Narbonne.
Well, I think it is not necessary to say that Narbonne still exists in the territory of modern France, it is the south of France, by the way, one of the cities where medieval pilgrimages were made very often. So Claudia Procula was from Narbonne and spent her entire childhood in Narbonne. The question is, where, when and under what circumstances could Pontius Pilate, if he was not from Gaul, have met Claudia Procula, be acquainted with her family and how did he get her as his wife? As it turned out, apparently, Caligula had such a tradition, as soon as he did not like a person, he immediately exiled him to Gaul. As it turns out from the Apocrypha Herod Antipas, who was also mentioned in the Gospel, was also exiled by Caligula to Gaul and he ended his life in Gaul too. Archelaus is another son of Herod the Great. Where do you think he ended up?
Archelaus, too, was exiled to Gaul and ended his life in Gaul, too. Such interesting fates they had. For some reason, as soon as people finished their service, they all went to Gaul. But nobody exiled Mary Magdalene; she came by herself, as they say. She sailed to Gaul and according to the stories, she lived in southern France and her remains are still located in Provage in the cathedral of Saint-Maximen, this cathedral was built, if my memory doesn't betray me, at the end of the 12th or 13th century specifically to house the remains of Mary Magdalene.
By the way, I certainly do not claim anything with stubborn certainty, but the city of Magdala, from which the name Magdalene may be derived, is not located in Palestine. The city of Magdala is in what is now Germany, which, by and large, is not very far from the larger Gaul in question. And it is quite possible that the woman from whom Christ cast out the seven demons is just the same Mary of Magdala, from that German Magdala.
Another name that is not mentioned in the canonical text of the Gospel, but which I would like to mention, is Longinus. The same Longinus who pierced Christ with his spear. If you write his name in Latin, you get a very interesting word, which you can very easily read in French, Longine. In general, little is known about this man, there is, however, a small village in the East of France with this name, I certainly do not know whether it existed in Gospel times, I think that it did not exist, but nevertheless the name itself leads to some very interesting thoughts. As for the other characters in the Gospels. Joseph of Arimathea, for example.
To this day they are in the Benedictine Abbey of Marienne Moutier. Much has been written about the life of Joseph of Arimathea, and there is a great deal of apocryphal literature about his deeds and his life. Joseph of Arimathea is primarily known for asking for the body of Christ to be buried. And it is believed that Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of Christ, and this blood of Christ is one of the most revered relics in the Christian world. By the way, it is interesting that the first time the ceremony of veneration of the blood of Christ is mentioned in the 14th century and the place where it all took place is Bruges. Again, this territory is very close to Gaul. So, we'll come back to this when we talk about the relics associated with the life of Christ and the life of the apostles, but right now I would like to go back to Joseph of Arimathea.
Well, there is quite an extensive apocryphal literature about the life of Joseph. It is written that he came to Gaul together with Saint Lazarus, the one we already spoke about, with the Apostle Philip, sisters Martha and Mary and that he preached for some time in Gaul. I wonder what language he preached in, if Galilee and Gaul are different lands? Probably Aramaic. By the way, all those who allegedly came to Gaul, the same sisters Martha and Mary, they are all known as preachers. A very good question - in what language did they preach, if they were illiterate women, and most likely knew only one language - Aramaic. In what language did they preach in Gaul to the then Celts?
But if they were local, then everything falls into place and they didn't come from anywhere, not from the distant Palestine. By the way, if we are talking about Joseph of Arimathea, there is a certain apocryphal account of Joseph of Arimathea allegedly taking the young Christ with him on a business trip to the British Isles. The apocryphal literature on this subject is vast, that is, the list of literature is enormous and you can find a lot there, nevertheless, there is one of the apocrypha that tells us that Joseph of Arimathea travelled with Jesus to Cornwall, then returned again. I wonder where he went back to? That is, if we even assume for a second that this apocrypha is talking about a trip that actually took place. How do people, who say that he sailed from one of the ports of present-day Palestine and ended up in England, imagine that trip? Imagine yourself.
If we assume that Gaul and Galilee are the same thing, then indeed he may have planned some business trip to the British Isles, it was not far, it was just across the Sea of Galilee, that is, across the English Channel. As for Joseph of Arimathea, as I said, his remains are in what is now Gaul. I have already mentioned that the fair head of John the Baptist, is also in what is now Gaul in the city of Amiens, which is the former Samara-Brega or Samara-Breva and so on. St. Lazarus's remains are also in what is now France.
The remains of St. Helen, who did the excavations in Jerusalem, as we recall, are also in Gaul in what is now France. Well, now, I guess, heavy artillery. Let's talk about Christ's grandparents, Joachim and Anne. Also two very interesting characters. They're not mentioned in the canonical Gospels, but there's a church tradition, there's a lot of church literature from the first centuries, there are writings of the church fathers and according to all this, Joachim and Anna were the grandparents of Christ. So, curiously enough, the remains of St. Anne are not somewhere, but in France again. They are located in the town of Apt.
How did they get there? A good question, if they were not from Gaul or from neighboring territories, how could these remains be there. Of course, they can say that they were the result of the Crusades and so on and so forth. You can say anything you like, but somehow it is interesting that as a result of the Crusades, everything ended up in one place practically scattered over the territory of ancient Gaul. So, as far as St. Anne's is concerned. There is an area In what is now France, called Brittany. And in this very Brittany there is a cult of St. Anne, which, by the way, is traced back only to the 13-14 centuries, according to the official data.
It is believed that St. Anne according to legend was a Breton woman and lived in Brittany and Joachim, a resident of Jerusalem, met St. Anne, fell in love with her and she became Joachim's wife. So, if Joachim lived in Jerusalem and St. Anne was a Breton woman. First, the question is, in what Jerusalem could Joachim meet Anne or where could they meet at all? Because according to these Breton legends, Joachim was a resident of Jerusalem, and Anna was a Breton woman. A lot was written about this in the 19th century and in the early 20th century, and then somehow this topic has gently died out. Now, why might this be true? If we look at a map of France, we can see that Brittany is very close to the very cities I was talking about, to the city of Kebren (Hebron) and to the city of Saint-Nazaire, it's really very close. And, if we're talking about how Joachim and Anna had some relation to Mary the mother of Christ and had some relation to Christ, here you have it all lined up.
These are the places where kinsmen may live, the family of John the Baptist, as we know, was related to the family of Joachim and Anna, so they do live not far from each other. Kebren/Quiberon and Brittany are not far at all. Accordingly, and Nazaire, which then became St. Nazaire, all those places are within reach. That is, you don't need to take a trip of a lifetime, you don't need to travel a week, two weeks, a month, and so on, it's all very close. Where are the remains of St. Joachim - the unfortunately, I can't say anything specific. Interestingly, most of the main characters mentioned in the Gospels have their remains either in modern Gaul, or somewhere quite nearby.
Yes, there are apostles who are buried, as they say, in the outskirts. There are legends that they are buried in what is now Turkey, even India and so on, but, nevertheless, most of the apostles are buried somewhere within/not far from Gaul. And, by the way, if you look at the pilgrimage routes of medieval Europe, you will see a very interesting thing. Most of the pilgrimage routes go through the territory of modern-day France, with entries into what is now Italy, northern Italy for the most part, and into the territory of northern Spain.
That is, one of the pilgrimage routes is going precisely to Santiago de Compostela, where the tomb of Saint James is located. And most of the places to which pilgrimages were performed in medieval Europe are in the territory of modern France, in Gaul, most of the places I spoke about today, they somehow turn out to be points of these very routes of pilgrimage. By the way, one such famous place of pilgrimage was Paris hill Montmartre. One of the places of pilgrimage was the Apt. One of the places of pilgrimage was Narbonne, Lyon - the ancient Lugdunum is also one of the places of pilgrimage, this is what concerns the main characters of the Gospels, whose names are connected in one way or another with Gaul.
It is also a very interesting topic. First of all, it is interesting when all these relics in general appear in medieval Europe, when they arise at all. Well, we should probably start with the most famous relic associated with the life of Christ - the Shroud of Turin. It has already been written about the Shroud of Turin, which would be enough for more than one documentary. That is, it has been written and said a lot about it, and radiocarbon dating has been done on the shroud.
And what is interesting, if you abstract away from all the verbal nonsense that exists around the shroud, there are several points, let's say, the turning points, drawing attention to which we will understand that the shroud, as a relic, first appears only in the mid-14th century in Europe, the rest of its history is legendary, well, that is the mildest word that could be used. The shroud first appears in the 14th century, and it emerges, not anywhere, but in what is now modern France. And it emerges in a family that was most directly related to the Templars.
When radiocarbon dating of the shroud was done, and as far as I remember, it was done twice, or even three times, the result was disappointing for people who believed this relic to be an authentic relic of the Passion of Christ. Radiocarbon dating gave, if I'm not mistaken, either the 11th or 12th or 13th century, so there was about that range. So if this is the 12th/13th century, then it fits in with Fomenko's concept that the Gospel events took place in the 12th century, and it fits in with what I am saying, that the Gospel events took place in what is now France, that is in Gaul, and it was probably somewhere in the late 11th or 12th century, probably early 13th century.
So, if we go back to the shroud, there is another very interesting point. Based on the fact that radiocarbon dating gave the 12th, 13th century, they began to say that the shroud is fake. But if the events of the Gospel took place later and not in modern Palestine, then why is it fake? Just if it is the 12th/13th century it is likely that the shroud is indeed real. Moreover, when they talk about the shroud, there is another interesting point, which for some reason is always forgotten. Weaving - the way this shroud is woven did not exist at the beginning of our era. This way of weaving, it arose at least 1,000 years later.
So when they say that the shroud is from the 12-13th century, and when they say that the way of weaving, which can be found in the shroud does not correspond to gray-haired antiquity, but to the 11th, 12th, 13th century, everything becomes very real, and then you really can say that the shroud is really something that is related to Christ's passion, crucifixion, and so on and so on. By the way, recently, if I'm not mistaken in 2005 or 2006, another radiocarbon dating was carried out, another relic associated with the Passion of Christ. The plaque with the inscription Jesus Christ the King of the Judeans, which was nailed over the cross. It is now, if I'm not mistaken, in Rome, it first surfaced in Rome, I think in the 16th century, if I'm not mistaken, the end of the 16th century.
Nevertheless, on this very titlo, radiocarbon dating was conducted, which also gave a spread. I think, it turned out to be approximately from the 10th or the beginning of 11th century. Also, by the way, very interesting result, again the same skip of a thousand years, again, it is not gray-haired antiquity, and much closer to our time. According to the legend, it was found by the Saint Helen, brought allegedly to Rome, to which Helen did not like to return and again it emerges only in the 16th century. In general, if we're talking about relics associated with the Passion, most of them surface in Europe in the 14th century, either late 13th or 14th century. There are, of course, some exceptions, but the vast majority of these relics are late thirteenth, fourteenth century.
Well, we just talked about the Shroud of Turin, what about the parts of the Savior's cross? There are quite a few of them and someone from the Protestant preachers in the 16th century said that if all these parts, all these wooden parts that today are passed off as parts of the cross are put together, then you can make a ship out of them, not a cross. Well, nevertheless, these pieces of the cross of Christ exist and the largest part is in Spain in Santo Toribio and the first mention of it was in 1316, if I am not mistaken, that is again the same 14th century that we were talking about.
If we are talking about the fact that the crucifixion was in the territory of present-day Israel, why is the wood, which is almost non-existent in Israel, which is worth its weight in gold there, used for a shameful execution. Why? Where one can be crucified on a cross - where there is plenty of trees, at least not where the forest is worth its weight in gold, and the forest is really worth its weight in gold in the territory of present-day Israel and Palestine, there simply is none. So the easiest execution for those places is stoning, simply because there are lots of them. But crucifixion, why waste precious wood? No, of course there is the hypothesis that they could have been reused and so on and so forth, but then what about the excavations of Queen Helen, who found this cross in the same place where it is said to have been.
So this means that the cross was, to put it quite crudely, disposable for each execution used, the cross was used for each subsequent execution, moreover, if it was not disposable there would have been no way of the cross and no way of Christ with the cross on his shoulders. First of all, why waste the valuable wood on some criminals, why make such a show and so on and so forth. There are really many questions, unfortunately, no answers to them. In general, if we're talking about these criminals, Barabbas was a released bandit, the bandit who was released. That is, they could have let Christ go before the Easter or they could have let Barabbas go - they let Barabbas go.
Well, everyone knows this plot well from Bulgakov, I know it more from Bulgakov than from the Gospel or some Gospel literature. So, Barabbas was let go, and Dismas and Gestas were executed. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the prudent robber was called vorakh, vrakh, or simply rakh, as they wrote on ancient icons. It is quite possible that this same Barabbas (Varavva), who was released, turned into a varakh, rakh, or just then into rakh. Most of the sources claim that the names of these bandits were Dismas and Gestas. By the way, also another interesting point, in the Arab Gospel of the Savior's childhood they are called Titus and Dumah, and there are apocryphal versions, in which these outlaws are called Dijmon and Gesta, there are versions Dijmon and Esta. Very interesting, they sound quite French.
In general, names are interesting in themselves. Here, for some reason no one asks the question, when they etymologize their names Dismas and Gestas no one asks the question, why do they even have such names, is that a Greek translation or what is it, why the two local kosher brigands have Greek names - a good question. Frankly, I haven't found an answer in traditional gospel literature to this question - why do they have Greek names. This is the same situation approximately as with the herd of pigs, if you remember we said that there was a herd of pigs and it was written off as Greek. Here is the same situation where the local robbers have Greek names.
Alexander Grinin. Yes, it's strange.
Alexey Khrustalyov. It's a little strange, really. Moreover, when they begin to etymologize them, it turns out to be even more interesting. The name Gestas can not be etymologized at all. If you try to find information about how to translate it, for example, from Greek or Aramaic or something else, the name Gestas - it somehow does not work out very well. With Dismas it is roughly the same story, it is etymologized through a Greek word that means "sunset of death". Well, imagine such a name in reality. "Boy, what's your name?" - "Death". It is funny, really. That's how it turns out, they execute, along with Jesus, two Greeks one of which Dismas "sunset of death", and the name of the other is simply not etymologized. It's a strange plot, isn't it?
Why then, with such pomp for some Greeks, are they executed with the help of Rome? Well, I mean, there are actually a lot of questions. What are these local brigands with Greek names, whose names are also so strange? No, quite possibly, if we're talking about these indicative names, like the name Peter in the Gospels, they should be understandable, at least they should be understandable to the translator, but there's such variation in the translations, and then there's the Arabic childhood gospel, in which they are Titus and Dumah. These names can very well, oddly enough, be derived from Slavic languages, because the same Doumakh is spelled variously Dimas, Dismas, Doumakh, Dijmon. We recall that it was a prudent brigand, that is, thinking (думающий/dumayuschiy from the word думать/dumat'), that's why it is Dumakh, that is, the root is the same.
And as for Gestas, his name is also well etymologized - a guest. Guest (гость/gost') in Old Russian and Old Slavonic is also a stranger-enemy, and, by the way, according to the Church legend, Dismas is the first man who entered the paradise with Christ, that is what Christ promised him, when Dismas believed in him and told him about it. And the second outlaw reviled Christ in every way, and it is said of him in church tradition that he was an unwise outlaw, that is, hostile to Christ, hence the guest is an enemy. Well, this is one hypothesis, such a hypothesis is more likely than the hypothesis that people have such strange names. Even if we abstract away from the way these names are etymologized, the question remains - why are they not Aramaic, why are they not local, if it happens in the territory of modern Israel-Palestine. Slightly off-topic.
If we accept the traditional interpretation that Barabbas is the son of the Rabbi, then, in general, it becomes clear why they let him go, because it is not very kosher to execute the son of a rabbi before Easter. As for, if his name is etymologized differently, and most likely it should be etymologized differently, then he will be neither Barabban, nor Barabba, but simply barbarian - the normal Greek word barbarian, that is, again, an outsider. From here could then appear in the Russian version vrakh, vorog, rah and so on, but again, this is only a hypothesis. Now, let's go back to the facts, we've deviated a little bit from the main line. If you remember, we were talking about those things that are now highly revered by all Christians over the world - relics connected in some way either with the life of Christ or with the lives of people close to him, or with events that were going on at that time.
So, we stopped at the Shroud of Turin and the plaque that was nailed to the cross. What other relics are there? In fact, there are quite a few relics, for example, there is such a relic as the iron crown of the Langobards or Corona Ferrea. It is known to have been made from one of the melted nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross. The time, the first mention of this crown is 1311, it is now in Italy, that is, not far from the present-day Gaul. Next is the blood of the Savior, which we have already spoken of today. The blood of the Savior, which was collected by Joseph of Arimathea according to the legend, is in Bruges and the first mention - the year 1311 again.
The first mention of the spear is the 13th century, in a more or less reliable source it first comes up in the 13th century. All the rest are legendary, but the first more or less intelligible mention in a normally dated source is the 13th century. By the way, Emperor Charles IV ordered an inscription on this spear to certify that this is the same spear and it was in the middle of the 14th century, by the way, also 1354. What other relics are there?
There is also a holy chalice. It is often confused with the Holy Grail, but that's a bit different. According to legend, the Holy Chalice is the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. This Holy Chalice is located in Spain in Valencia and the first mention of it again is the 14th century, 1399, there is even a place of the first mention - the monastery of San Juan de la Peña.
Aachen shrines. In the city of Aachen, the museum has three flasks containing some of the greatest relics of the Christian world: the dress of the Holy Virgin Mary, the scrolls of Christ, his armband and the shroud of John the Baptist. And they were first shown in 1349 and there is some evidence that they came to Aachen from Bohemia from Prague and at least the reliquaries for these items were made in Prague at the end of that 14th century again. Well, there is a legend that, supposedly, these things did not get to Aachen by accident. They got there thanks to Charlemagne. But what Charlemagne is - this is a separate and very funny story, not about that now, now we are talking about other things. So, again, back to the time of the 14th century again.
Next, the crown of thorns. Well, unfortunately, not very much is known about it, again, there were a lot of medieval dodgers who said that they had a piece of the crown of thorns, well, this situation is approximately the same as with the cross of Christ. But, nevertheless, it is considered that this crown of thorns, at least its main part, is in the Notre Dame de Paris in France and it arrived there from Byzantium. Well again, the question whether it arrived or not remains open, but the fact that it is in Gaul, is in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris is a fact.
Another very important thing is the Sudarium of Oviedo. The Sudarium is very often confused with the shroud of Christ, with the Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium of Oviedo is a kind of shroud, which was thrown on the head of the deceased. And here it is believed that the Sudarium is in Oviedo in Spain, and here we are dealing with just an exception, the first reliable mention of it is the 11th century, late 11th century. But the thing is, again, we don't have a document from the 11th century, we have a copy from the 13th century, which says that this was actually in the 11th century.
By the way, here, if we're talking about the Sudarium from Oviedo, it was researched, I think, by Janes Benet. She was researching just the history of this same Sudarium from Oviedo and she mentioned in one of her interviews that in the middle of the 14th century, the Spanish King Alfons, I don't remember the number, I won't deceive, so this same King really wanted to see this Sudarium, this shawl, but he was not shown it in the middle of the 14th century. And for the first time, this Sudarium from Oviedo was shown to the public in the middle of the 16th century - in 1547 at the earliest.
According to legend, the Virgin Mary is believed to have woven a robe for the infant, and this robe supposedly grew with Christ. The two cities of German Trier and French Argenteuil claim this relic, meaning that both parties believe that it is they who have the most authentic chiton, but what the competitors have is a fake. Well, the last pearl of those parties is that both chitons are real, both are not fake, only in one place the chiton is seamless and in the other it's just an ordinary chiton. Well, they agreed to distribute this one. So, anyway, both have all the arguments when they argue with each other whose chiton is older. In both cities all the arguments end at the end of the 12th century. So up to that point they can show some history, it doesn't matter how they do it, maybe they're being a bit deceitful there, but nevertheless, up to the end of the 12th century they show that history, and then again there's a gap, a cliff.
Well, here it is necessary to remind that Trier is just again the territory of Gaul, this is the place where Queen Helen lived, that is, that Trier and Argenteuil are two Gallic cities. In Trier, despite the fact that they say that they had the relic at the end of the 12th century, it was first shown in 1512, that is again the beginning of the 16th century. The French don't admit when was the first display, but the history goes all the way back to the 12th century. Nevertheless, the areal is interesting, Trier and Argenteuil are two Gallic cities. About the plaque with the inscription you and I have already talked. There's another interesting one.
In the Cathedral of Cologne, as you know, there is a tomb with the remains of the Magi. It is believed that the Cathedral began to be built at the end of the 12th or early 13th century, specifically to place the remains of the Magi, however, it was finished in 1322, that is again in the 14th century. And again, the question is - why did it take that long to build the cathedral? Well, of course we can say that some cathedrals were being built for 500-800 years and so on. Nevertheless, the shrine with the remains of the Magi was placed in 1322, that is the 14th century.
Well, these are the main relics associated with the life of Christ or people close to him and, as you understand, they all emerge in the same territory, that is, the area is small enough. The main mass is on the territory of Gaul - on the territory of modern France plus the contiguous territories of Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, somewhere near. In general, if we talk about Gaul, we should say a few words about the territory which now for some reason nobody notices, or rather about the phenomenon which anyone can see on the European maps, but for some reason nobody writes about it, nobody speaks about it, as if it does not exist.
There is a Gallic Belt in Europe, and if you look at a map of Europe, this Gallic Belt is perfectly visible, it starts in Portugal. They can try to derive Portugal from the word Cale all they want, but it's still Portugal, it's a port of Gallia, which is an entrance to Europe, a port in Gallia. Then it flows smoothly to the north of Spain into Galicia, again a Gallic territory, then comes France - Gaul, there is nothing to do here, it is the main Gaul. Then this Gallic belt goes through Switzerland, which is Helvetia. It is actually not Switzerland, they themselves write on their coins that they are called Helvetia, which is again Gallia. Then this belt goes partly to Italy, partly it goes to Germany, there is Holstein, the city of Halle. Then a huge area goes to Galicia, Galicia is a huge territory, which falls on the territory of modern Austria, Poland, partly Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, even Russia.
Further on there are some chunks, there is Latgale. Further it goes south, into Turkey, where there is Galatia and ends in Galilee in the territory of modern Israel. In fact, there is a huge Gallic belt. When they talk about this Gallic belt, for some reason all the scientists believe that one Gaul has nothing to do with the other. That's how it turns out for them that none of these territories are related to the other. Moreover, if you open, for example, the dictionary by Fasmer you will be surprised to learn that Galicia (Галиция) and Galicia (Галисия) are different words, turns out they have no relation to each other, because according to etymologists our Galicia is derived from the city of Galich, and the city of Galich is derived from the word Galka (jackdaw). It turns out that Slavs probably had such a tradition to name the city in honor of jackdaws, not to confuse with the bird troika. Galicia flies by the European expanses.
So, these Gallias do not seem to be connected in any way, although it is absolutely clear that this belt is not interrupted anywhere, it is a continuous belt which goes from the west of Europe to the east and goes to the south quite clearly. Let's put the question this way, who lived in this belt? The Celts lived in this belt, the Slavs lived in this belt, the Germans lived in this belt. And, if you look at it from a linguistic point of view, this gets very interesting, and not even just from a linguistic point of view. Who are they in general, where did the word Gaul come from, what's the etymology of the word Gaul? Well, there are different variants, there is a Greek version, there is a Latin version, there is a version that this is a self-name, and so on. That is, in the notes on the Gallic War Gaul is mentioned by Caesar. But, where the proud name of Gauls came from in the first place is not very clear.
That is, if you try to etymologize directly, the researchers stumbled on a very interesting thing. Look, for example, what the word "Gaul" means in any Celtic language, Middle Irish, for example, the word "Gaul" means - "glory". From here, by the way, comes the word Call "to call", "to praise" and so on, there are many words of this root they are all quite obvious. By the way, I wonder why the rooster is the symbol of Gaul. We are told that the word for rooster in Latin - "Gallus". The word Gaul and Gallus coincided, and stupid Gauls, who didn't know anything about anything, made a rooster as a symbol, just because there was this consonance.
A good version, but such a kulturtrager, civilizationalist version. "There lived stupid Gauls, who did not know a thing about Latin, who on the basis of some incomprehensible consonances suddenly decided that the cock and Gaul are one and the same". At the same time, for some reason it is left out of brackets, why is this in the Latin language, why Latin words are compared, and so on and so forth. Let's look at it from this angle, who is the cock-gallus? Well, although Fasmer was a terrible Germanophile and a Russophobe, he was ready to attribute the word "mama" to the German language, but even he, with all his bias, to put it mildly, could not fail to mention that the word "gallus"-"rooster" and the Russian word "голос" (golos, means "voice") are related words, which is, in fact, obvious. If you look at some Old Russian dictionaries or Old Slavonic or something else, you'll see that the word "голосовяк" was used for songbirds, including roosters.
That is, the words "golos" and "gallus" are related words. That is, their rooster is related to our voice. Generally speaking, a rooster can be called a voice, indeed, what distinguishes this bird is its voice. Now let's look further, let's not get hung up on it. Gaul in Middle Irish - "glory." And a very interesting series starts to line up. Golos, then galus-cock, and gaul then glory. Now let's look at the Slavic languages. In Russian we have the word "глаголить" (glagolit', means "to speak"), which comes from gologolit', gologol. Glagolithic derives from here too, nagal in here as well, it is a "password" in Old Russian and so on and so forth, a lot of words with this root. But if you look at this root, it is a dual of gall-gal, gol-gol, this is the root. And so it turns out that men of voices, these very Gauls, they are men of glory (слава/slava), in other words - Slavs.
So in fact, Gallus is a tracing of the word Slavic. I do not want to say that Slavs appeared before Gauls and so on, but one word is unconditional tracing of the other. In fact, it turns out that Gauls are men of voices, they are men of words, speaking people, talking people, Slavs, in contrast to non-speaking people, are people who were united by the word, but what word is a big question. It is necessary to understand one simple thing, that between a word "Slav" and a word, for example, "Russian" we cannot put the = sign and when we speak about Russians it does not mean that we speak about Slavs. When we speak about Celts or about Gauls, which in my opinion, are synonyms of Slavs, we speak not about Russians, we speak about Slavs. That is, we must understand that the Slavs may well have walked from west to east, not from east to west.
Therefore the fact that the whole of central Europe was Slavic in the Middle Ages is no secret. The whole territory of modern Germany is, excuse me, solid Slavic place names you will not find practically any German toponym that would go back to the hoary antiquity, almost the entire territory of modern Germany is a Slavic toponym. And Germany is already directly bordering on Gallia, which is what we are talking about. Therefore there is nothing surprising that there was linguistic interference, and nothing surprising that people spoke a very similar language.
In this case I am interested in the cultural aspect, the linguistic aspect. It turns out that the Gauls and the Slavs, the people of the word, are people who were in the same linguistic field, at least very close, and what language those Gauls from Galilee spoke was a big question. And in this connection I want to tell you an interesting story. Well, there are a number of forums, which are dedicated to the topic of new chronology or which are dedicated to some kind of historical reconstructions, there are a lot of free platforms where discussions take place.
So, on one of these sites was a very interesting story posted by a man. The man lives in Ukraine, I understand that in Kiev, unfortunately, I can not give the name, I do not know the name, I only know the nickname on the Internet, his nickname is Lupus. So he tells a very interesting story. That he went to the Carpathians, there live a people named Lemky, passing by one of the houses in one of the villages, he heard a widow mourning for her husband, loudly mourning with the words "ле-ле-леле, лемесе восстане" ("le-le-lele, lemese vosstane"), that is "God, God why have you left me" - the last words of Christ on the cross, which are written down and not translated, or rather they are translated, but in an interesting way, first the main phrase is given, "Элохим, Элохим левеха вохтаны" ("Elohim, Elohim leveha vohtany"), this is how it is written, the main phrase is given, and then the translation is given, supposedly "God, God, why have you forsaken me".
And what language is the translation from? And here everything is clear "леле, леле, леммесе восстаны", "God, God why have you forsaken me". Approximately the same in Bulgarian, oddly enough, a little bit different phrase, but the meaning will be the same, "God, God why have you forsaken me". Jesus Christ was a Galilean, according to my conception - a Gaul. What language did he speak? - he spoke in this unified language, which now we call Slavic, which in ancient times could be called anything - the language of the glagol (verb). By the way, if this single language was spoken, then it becomes clear why the French have the famous Glagolithic Reims Gospel.
After all, no one can understand why, all of a sudden, French kings swore in Rheims, took an oath on the Rheims Glagolitic Gospel until about the 16th century. Why? And, if we accept the version that there was some kind of unified language, which was the very language of the glagol, language of the Gauls, then it becomes clear. According to the version of American researchers, the same ones who wrote about Mary Magdalene as the wife of Christ, this very famous book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" by Bagent, Lee and Lincoln. Based on its stolen motives Dan Brown wrote his famous "Da Vinci Code". It's a fairly well-known hypothesis, that kings from the Merovingian dynasty had the blood of Christ in their veins.
And if this is really true, if it's really close to the truth, then this concept that it was in Gaul, it brings it all together, and then it's clear why the French kings used the Glagolithic Gospel and it's clear why the blood of Christ and it's clear why the lily, these ancient signs. And it is clear why is there a special attitude to the French monarchy and so on and so forth. That is, very many answers within the framework of this concept, very many questions within the framework of this concept receive intelligible answers, at least. The fact that they are now trying to pass off the Gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew as a primary source is ridiculous. The Gospels, the real Gospels, which you can touch and see, exist in Greek, exist in Latin, they are really quite ancient texts, just like the ancient Greek Gospels.
There are no textual traditions linking Christ and the apostles with Aramaic, there is simply no such thing with Hebrew as well. You can find some parallels between the Old Testament and the Hebrew texts, but that's another story, because the Old Testament is a completely different book, which, even according to traditional scholars, could have been written after the Gospel. And as for the text of the Gospel, as for the text of writing in general, this text, first of all, has been translated many times, repeatedly corrected, then it was cut down, then something was added. In general, if we are talking about the Gospels - there are many Gospels, there are also what are now called apocryphal Gospels, which were cut off at some stage, but nevertheless, they were very cleverly cut off, but they remained in the church tradition and are used and are recognized as texts of the church lore, which, as I said before, has the same weight as the scripture, the scripture and the lore are in balance.
And there is the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of Judas, there is the Gospel of Childhood, and so on and so forth, there are quite a few. But if we're talking, for example, about that Gospel text that exists now, the canonical text, for example, then that text exists, there is the Greek tradition, it's clear where it comes out of, that is, you can trace it, there is the Latin tradition, there is the Slavic tradition, there is no Aramaic tradition. The example with the last words of Christ is a very interesting example, an insanely interesting example, I think the man should be given a monument for finding this, a really brilliant finding, just brilliant.
Moreover, as I said, there are a lot of Greek names in the Gospels - Andrew, Peter, tax collector Matthew, somehow his name is very interesting, he has the name tax collector, that is, мытарь (mytar'), do you see that the name Matthew and the word Myto they have the same root. What language did this indicative name come from? I'll tell you an even more interesting story. We often say that there is the Gospel, but there is also the New Testament Gospel, which consists not only of the four canonical Gospels, it consists of some other works.
There are also the Acts of the Apostles, there are also the Epistles. By the way, if we talk about the authorship of the New Testament, even the churchmen themselves admit that many of the letters of the Apostle Paul, for example, were not written by Paul the Apostle. This is quite official information, they talk about this in seminaries. There is a series of lectures about it, for example by Archimandrite Januarius in which he talks about these texts, he says that of the 14 letters of the Apostle Paul, at least 6 absolutely do not belong to him. That is, it is either some disciples of his, or some followers who signed in Paul's name and gave out some texts under his name. Nevertheless, these texts are considered canonical. This is a paradoxical situation: on the one hand we know that these texts absolutely do not belong to Paul, but on the other hand they are part of the canon.
There is an interesting place where it says about the synagogue of the Libertines. It is alleged that there was a sect of Libertines or freedmen, they are mentioned there, if I am not mistaken, in connection with the execution of St. Stephen, it is interesting that it does not talk about the sect of Libertines, it talks about the synagogue of Libertines, but the fact is that the word Libertine is a word invented in the 16th century by Jean Calvin. And with this word he stigmatized the sect of Libertines, or rather they were not called Libertines, it was because of Calvin that they began to be called Libertines. He branded a certain sect, which, by the way, was originally on the territory of Gaul. They were originally, I think, in the city of Bruges, and then they moved to Lille, which is Gaul again.
So, these very Libertines and the synagogue of the Libertines are not freedmen of the first century. In general, what freedmen could there be? Why freedmen of the first century suddenly call themselves Libertines with such inhuman joy? But in the 16th century it is quite a real thing. That is, by this measure we can very easily understand before what time the sacred texts were edited. Probably most of the Gospels were indeed written by the apostles who were either close to Christ or those who were close to his disciples. Indeed, these texts were written by people who knew the subject, who knew what they were writing about. And so this study of mine, although it can be considered very, very heretical, but on the other hand, it seems to me that this study confirms that the events in question, at least the geographical references that exist, the historical references that exist, and the fact that the Evangelists describe the place and time with sufficient precision, seems to me that this is just a confirmation that the events of the Gospel really did take place.
But they took place in a different part of the civilized world, not somewhere in the Middle East, but in the territory of Gaul, one of the most powerful provinces of the Roman Empire, at whatever time it existed. Then it is clear why the area of spread of Christianity is like that, it is clear why the main relics of Christ ended up in Gaul. It is clear at least how it is culturally, how it is ethically connected with previous generations.
Because if we are talking about evangelical Palestine, it is not at all clear on what ground Christianity grew up there, it is not clear, not at all clear. Moreover, if you remember the Savior's father was a carpenter, again we come back to the subject of carpentry and the question of woodworking. Where, in what part of the oikumene is there a need for carpenters, and what kind of carpenters can we talk about in Nazareth, in that city that is now commonly called Nazareth? Moreover, there is one very important thing to note here. In the Celtic tradition, more precisely in the Gallic tradition there is a myth about the god named Ezus, who was either a lumberjack or a carpenter, and who was hanged on a tree with such a streamlined formulation "hung on a tree", and what does it mean - whether he was hanged on a tree, or crucified?
But at least if we compare the Celtic myth and compare what is said in the Gospels, I'm not talking about Christianity, because if we talk about Christianity in general, then naturally we have to look at some Middle Eastern myths, and we have to look at Egypt, those are not some random things in Christianity, and in Christianity there is a lot mixed together. Again, I'm talking specifically about the Gospels, I'm talking specifically, shall we say, about the narrative part, the part that gives reference to place and time. I am not now discussing the cultural aspect deeply, we are now talking about more superficial things. Because you can, of course, dig deeper and see there Mitra and Sita and so on and so on. If there is something to talk about and there is a direction of search - you can talk endlessly.
What I am saying now is that Christianity, having absorbed all these traditions, could certainly have emerged in the form in which it emerged, not somewhere on the margins of civilization, not somewhere in Palestine, where it would have been forgotten immediately the day after the execution, it emerged there and then, when it was already possible to pick it up and spread it around. I think just the Crusades themselves are the answer to the question of where it took place. Let's first remember where the crusades came from and who was the initiator of the crusades. Moreover, let us remember that the papal court was not only in Rome, but also in Avignon. Moreover, often the papal court was not in Avignon, for example, but in the same place as the pope, because the pope had to move often.
Not everyone was eager to welcome him to their lands. Here we are confronted with the history of the Vatican, and the history of the Vatican is exactly the same myth as many other national histories. The Vatican needed to lengthen its history, which is why all these popes who supposedly sat in Rome on the Tiber arose. In fact, the papal court and the papal chancellery is no deeper than Avignon. That is, if we are talking about the papal throne, the papal court, then again, it is possible that popes are a phenomenon, at least originally purely Gallic, purely French, although there is an opinion that the Vatican is generally a Spanish project of the 15-16 centuries, well, the Vatican that we know now. Nevertheless, back to the Crusades.
Yes, in fact, practically the first campaign was entirely Gallic. I don't say French on purpose, because the Ile-de-France, which was a small area around Paris, had various Gallic entities, that is, we can say that they were French, but in fact they were Gauls. They were called various things: Bretonians, Normans, and so on and so forth, but nevertheless, they were all knights from the territory of Gaul. So the first crusade was Gallic. Why exactly from there and why go to Jerusalem?
To conquer the city after 1000 years is questionable, in terms of profit - I doubt they could have caught anything there, there were much more interesting cities in the Middle East, where you could get something. My guess is that the crusades are just a special operation to relocate the scene, if they were crusades at all. Because the history of the crusades is very, very vague, and generally it is not very clear how many of them there were, who participated in them, they talk about some crusades of children, which is also, in general, difficult to confirm, problematic. So, if we are talking about the crusades, and if we accept that there were crusades, we must clarify when they were. Because the Arabs, the Arab sources say that they fought the Franks.
With which Franks is also a question. Because maybe they were just fighting free people and not the French, which, in general, is not the same thing. And if we understand that the crusade was a crusade of knights and quite specific knights, then it is likely that it was a very real special operation, one of the first special operations to create a kind of mirage on the territory of modern Israel, on the territory of present-day Palestine. That is, so that you could always say where it happened, where Christ was crucified, there - in Jerusalem, he was crucified far away, and then again, everything becomes clear, everything becomes in line, why they were there so briefly.
I think that given the degree of preparedness of these knights, they were absolutely able to get a foothold there and hold these territories for a very, very long time. In spite of that, they had great difficulty in holding territories, they didn't have much people at hand. So during the Crusades, the myth was created that all this was happening in that Galilee, in that Judea, here in those lands, not in the territory of Gaul, but in the territory of some distant land, so that there was someone to point the finger at. Well, who would want to be responsible for the crucifixion of the Savior. And to have the pope sit in the same place where the Savior was crucified, who would like that. I think it has something to do with the history of the Vatican, with the history of the papacy, with the history of the orders.
They are moneychangers, that is a kind of analogue of the banking system. Accordingly, somehow it was necessary to move the business, it was necessary to somehow promote it all. How can you promote it if you have a brand on your forehead? In general, it's probably quite difficult, but if you've distanced it all a little bit from yourself - it's much easier. So I think that the history of all these secret orders, including the Templar Order, with the execution of Jacques de Molay in 1414, the history of some other orders, looking deeper into the real history of them, we can get closer to understanding what was really going on in the lands of Gaul and Galilee. The Templars are a kind of forerunner of the secret societies, which did the business of turning the tables. The New History is a project, conventionally speaking, of the 16th century, when nation-states in the modern sense of the word began to emerge.
Because what nation-states can we talk about before the 16th century? In fact, none at all. If you look at old maps, you see that there are some common names of territories, i.e. before the 16th century France is called Gaul, the whole France is called Gaul, say in Russia there is Scythia or Tartaria, and so on. Some general names of territories. By no means do I want to say that my version is the only one, true, correct, immutable, fundamental, etc., it is only a version, I mean, we can give as many facts as we want, but, nevertheless, there is a tradition that is very difficult to push back, even a millimeter.
So until there is some absolutely crazy strong evidence, well, at least for the people who read it, listen to it, etc., until then it will remain just a version. It seems to me, personally, and to the people I talk to there, it seems to us that this version is convincing enough. Despite the fact that I spoke for hours on end, I sort of, as you understand, didn't put all my cards on the table. In other words, I could have talked as long as I wanted, I could have given absolutely amazing facts, for example about the famous Mount Montsegur, a separate topic, about why there was a crusade against the Cathars. Now, Mount Montsegur, what was it called before? It was called Favor, so for a second, that's Mount Tabor. What's more, I was talking about the fact that there is the Jordan River - Iridan, it's still a piece of the Po River and the Rhone.
There are plenty of other toponyms that I haven't even mentioned today, there's Guyenne, which is compared to the Gehenna of Fire. You'll realize that very close there is Mount Sion, it, by the way, still exists on the border in the Upper Savoy department in France, on the French/Swiss border there is the modern Swiss city of Sion, everyone knows it, no one just connects it with these events. Moreover, if anyone is interested, you can look up what Lake Geneva used to be called and whether it has anything to do with Lake Genisaret. Well, biblical toponymy is scattered all over Gaul and partially touches the modern territory of Spain, Iberia, whatever you want to call it, and partially, a little goes into northern Italy. Gaulish territory.
Moreover, if you look at the Gospels, for example, Christ went around preaching for 3 years. A good question is where can one preach for 3 years in Israel, with the distances that are offered to us. Another good question is where does one get such discernment about wine? Remember the scene in Cana of Galilee when at the wedding feast Christ turns water into wine. If you remember, the master of the feast tells the host in a very interesting way that usually they give good wine first, and then they give anything else, but you saved that good wine for the very end of the feast - a rarity. This is to the question of wine culture and to the question of what kind of wine culture there was in ancient Israel. Now it exists, but you have to understand very firmly where it comes from - the whole current Israeli wine culture is the Rothschilds, this is the 19th century.
There really are amazing vineyards now, there really are very tasty wines, but almost all of those vineyards are from Rothschilds and 19th century. And the French winemaking has a centuries-old tradition and if people at the feast are still able to distinguish which wines are better, which are worse, you still have to look at the degree of preservation. Could wines in Israel be preserved like that? What kind of winemaking can we talk about in this territory, such deep winemaking where people still understand which wine is better, which is worse, also a good question in line with carpentry, with wood and so on. In fact, there are a lot of these questions, I do not list the various chronological inconsistencies, it is not even interesting to talk about them anymore.
So, returning to the question of Fomenko and versions of history, that is, what I am talking about is just a version, a version quite heretical, probably, although it seems to me that I just confirm that it really was a matter of faith and geography is a different issue. So, Fomenko's version is also quite interesting, but again, Fomenko mentions southern France and the city of Cannes in connection with Christ and he says that one of the miracles could happen in the city of Cannes, that is, in France. And he considers Constantinople to be Jerusalem. In this case, we must somehow explain how the Gallic Sea suddenly turned out to be the Mediterranean Sea, and there is no answer to the question - in what particular territories did Christ preach. Besides, let us remember that in the territory of modern Turkey or in the territory of Byzantium Christianity certainly has very deep roots. Nevertheless, even though it has deep roots and a very respectful attitude up to now to Christian shrines, Christian evangelical toponymy has not survived in the same volume as in Gaul of France.
Of course, we can say that something has been lost there, something has not been noticed, something has not been paid attention to, and so on and so forth. But the fact is that in France we have a kind of quintessence, some kind of product that we can almost already touch. Look, everything here is quite compact and everything is consistent, everything agrees very well with the Apocrypha and Scripture, which, by the way, is also rare to be consistent with both, because if you move the place of action to Palestine, then you will have many differences between Scripture and the Apocrypha, here the Apocrypha and Scripture converge, traditions converge. Fomenko - Nosovsky version certainly deserves attention and discussion. Moreover, Fomenko was precisely one of the first to draw attention to this problem. Fomenko, like Morozov, like Postrinkov, like Kesler, like many other talented researchers, did a great job and they found a lot of interesting, important, necessary and, not fearing to swear, exclusive information.
So moreover, when a very important point in their research is the dating, when they move it all closer to our time, that is 12th, 13th, 14th century. And, really, if you move it by time, you realize that you don't have any other obstacles in general. The only thing, I am somewhat skeptical about that part of his research, which says about the stay of "Andronicus" Christ in the territory of Russia, Byzantium, but again, this is my personal view of the subject and I in no way want to say that I am right here unequivocally, And Fomenko is completely wrong and understands nothing about history, no, I urge everyone who is interested to read Fomenko, certainly read Fomenko, because even with the ambiguous attitude to him that exists, Fomenko has a huge number of sensible and interesting ideas and thoughts from all points of view.
In fact, I have great respect for everyone who is looking, who is trying to look, who is even making some mistakes and stumbling towards something, this is much more interesting and, in my opinion, more correct than just sitting in a chair and doing flea hunting. It's just that, perhaps, there is a certain common critical view of the version of history that exists, because what is now passed off as the only version of history, the only possible version of history, it is flawed from every point of view and people who are now already writing some work on history, they are unwilling, they are detached from life, they are terribly far away from the people. If you look at how history is written today, even look at the history of the 20th century, how it is created before our eyes, how it is mythologized.
I remember when I was educated in the Soviet Union, and we were brought up on the idea that in October 1917 the Winter Palace was stormed and so on and so on. When I was taken into pioneer service, a participant in the storming of the Winter Palace, a living man, told us about the storming, the battle, how everything was burning and cracking, the myth was created before our eyes, with the help of the living participants, even though in the 20th century there is radio and television, newspapers, books, so there is more than free access to information. And yet, even though all information is accessible even in the most closed societies, it is still possible to construct myths. Especially since it is clear that any chronicler, any historian of the 19th, 18th, 17th century wrote exactly the same under dictation, exactly the same by order, as modern scribes do.
That is, nothing changes, well, for some reason it is believed that the ancient chroniclers, ancient historians must be believed unconditionally, and if it is written that in this or that century or year, this or that prince, count, king, whatever, did this and that, then it was so, neither a year earlier nor a year later. For some reason it is not taken into account that there are always interested parties, there are always those people for whom it is written. Why were all these chronicles created at all, why were all these chronicles created, why, for whom, where, under what conditions? Let's rewind the tape and we will realize that all chronicles, all history, any of the same documents there, which are now called one hundred percent proof, they were always fabricated in any era, forged.
Moreover, since the 16th century there is such a business as the antiques business, which has its own lobby, which is ready to throw rotten tomatoes at Anatoly Fomenko and Yaroslav Kesler and everyone else who doubts the antiquity of artifacts, antiquity, that some things were created in the ancient era. Try it, fight this lobby. And this is just one example of the fact that in order to make history older and to show it in the right way, to illuminate it from the right side, a huge number of people are interested, and people in power, who, let's say, will stop at nothing. You have to be critical of all sources and that's how I approached it. I always approach history from this point of view.
And for me in general, the era was very interesting, the era of early Christianity and the era of medieval Europe was very interesting. When I began to read, to compare, I realized that one is inseparable from the other. I sincerely hope that I have not touched anyone's religious feelings, I want to repeat this, because I myself have a great respect for people of faith, but I believe that the issues of faith and geography can be quite easily separated. So, I hope that I have not touched anyone's religious feelings, and I hope that someone learned something new for themselves and maybe will start reading more on this topic, will find something else interesting that I have not reached and maybe convince me that I am not right in the fact that these events took place somewhere else.
Well, that's about it.
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