Not an April Fool's Joke Archives

St. Paul’s Anchor Offer

If you hurry, you can get a special copy of The Lost Shipwreck of Paul by Robert Cornuke.

According to the email advertisement, you don’t want to miss this:

BASE Institute has in it’s [sic] possession a small piece of lead from anchor #3 of the 4 anchors believed to be from Paul’s Shipwreck. This unique offer will include Robert Cornuke personally taking the piece of lead and drawing the image of an anchor on the front page of the book. Also, a signature will be included by Robert Cornuke certifying that the lead transfer image is from the actual anchors as described in The Lost Shipwreck of Paul book.

Cornuke sounds like one of those televangelists.

In unrelated news, if you purchase the complete set of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands right now, the author will personally glue a few grains of sand to the CDs and his signature will certify that these are actual pieces of dirt from the land where Jesus walked. Don’t wait; order now!

For links to several articles on the Malta shipwreck, see here. For other previous appearances of the former policeman on this blog, see here, here, here and here.

Tagged Not an April Fool's Joke, Pseudo-Archaeology

Man with Goat Arrested before Passover

The Passover celebration began last night, and yesterday afternoon police arrested a man allegedly preparing in an illegal way. From the Jerusalem Post:

Jerusalem District police officers detained extreme right-wing activist Noam Federman Monday afternoon, after he was caught driving his vehicle with a kid – a young, male goat – in his car.
Federman is suspected of intending to ritually slaughter the animal in the recently renovated Hurva Synagogue located near the Temple Mount in the Old City.
Police said right wing activists threatened repeatedly this week to come up to the Temple Mount and conduct ritual slaughter there during the Pessah holiday. They also suspect Federman was planning to slaughter the animal on the Temple Mount proper, and not in the synagogue.
Federman was taken in for interrogation and the innocent animal was transferred to the Agricultural Development Unit in the Agriculture Ministry.

This article raises several questions in my mind. How did police know the goat was in Federman’s car? Is there a law against having a goat in your car? Is there a law against having a goat in your car with certain intentions in your mind? How does the reporter know that the animal is innocent?

The full story is here.

Tagged Jerusalem, Not an April Fool's Joke, Temple Mount

Holy Sepulcher Brawl

Did Jesus ever imagine that a few hundred yards from where he told the disciples that Christians would be known by their love that Jewish authorities would break up a brawl among his followers?

And not just once, as “brawls are not uncommon at the church.”

Israeli police rushed into Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre to break up fist fights between dozens of Greek and Armenian worshippers on Orthodox Palm Sunday, witnesses said.
Some 20 officers intervened after Armenian worshippers threw a Greek Orthodox priest out of the church, sparking a free-for-all, they said.
Several worshippers then started beating the police officers with palm fronds they were holding for the Palm Sunday celebrations that mark the return of Jesus to the Holy City a week before he was crucified.
After the incident, dozens of members of Jerusalem’s Armenian community marched from the church to the Old City’s police headquarters in protest at the detention of two Armenians.
Brawls are not uncommon at the church, which is shared by various branches of Christianity, each of which controls and jealously guards part of site — considered one of the holiest in Christianity.
Precisely in order to prevent such disturbances, two Muslim families have been entrusted for the past 800 years with opening and closing the gates of the church, a cavernous labyrinth of chapels and crypts built on the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.

The full story is here.

Tagged Jerusalem, Not an April Fool's Joke

Golf Where Jesus Prayed

I’ve heard talk about a golf course planned on Arbel overlooking the Sea of Galilee for years, but this JPost article makes it sound like it’s getting closer to realization. (Interpreted for those unfamiliar with the Israeli system, that means that there are now less than 472,325 legal obstacles remaining.)

Here are a few numbers mentioned in the article:

2: Number of 18-hole golf courses in Galilee

150: Cost of the ultra-luxury resort (in millions of dollars)

8: Cost of water treatment plant already built (in millions of dollars)

The official website: www.israelbythesea.com

There will also is a golf course planned for Eilat, and JPost has a computer-generated image of what it might look like.

This blog post title is an allusion to the idea that Arbel may have been the mountain on which Jesus withdrew to pray (Matt 14:23; Mark 6:46; Luke 6:12). I should trademark it and trade it to the developers for one of the gazillion-dollar memberships.

Arbel and the Sea of Galilee from the west

Tagged Galilee, Not an April Fool's Joke

Bethlehem Brawl

I suppose that Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without the monks at the place of Jesus’ birth duking it out.

For a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event.

Tagged Not an April Fool's Joke

Buy Land in Israel

In the category of “why-didn’t-I-think-of-that,” the “Israel Land Development Corporation” is now offering plots of land in Israel for sale online. Without leaving the comfort of your own home or having to sign closing papers, you can own some of the Holy Land “forever.” The details are here, but before you punch in your credit card details to pay $118 for that one square foot of dirt, know that I personally have a special going on right now. For only $99, I will send you a better map than they are offering, and a much more beautiful certificate. Just mail me a check and there will be lots of warm fuzzy feelings of “joy and pride.” If you don’t feel them, I will.

Tagged Not an April Fool's Joke