The Washington Post
March 26, 2005 Saturday

Music

[parts omitted]

We don’t get enough all-percussion concerts, despite the fact that
today’s wide-ranging percussion ensembles can provide hypnotic
melodies in addition to hard grooves and explosive outbursts. So it
was enterprising of Strathmore’s Art After Hours series to host a
concert by Ko’mm Percussion in the mansion on Wednesday night. The
group, consisting of local percussionists Leon Khoja-Eynatyan,
Richard McCandless, Rich O’Meara and Joseph Jay McIntyre, presented
works by the latter three.

Three of the eight works Ko’mm played stood out. The mesmerizing
minimalist-style marimba arpeggios of O’Meara’s “Island Spinning”
wobbled dangerously after some subtle metrical twists, but the piece
righted itself like a top given an extra spin. O’Meara followed that
with “301,” a work commemorating the official conversion of Armenia
to Christianity, in which Khoja-Eynatyan played breathtakingly quiet
ruminations on the marimba as his daughter Tatevik rang an Armenian
hymn on hand bells. The concert ended with a piece by McCandless
called “Pile Driver,” which he introduced with the half-boast “This
piece is not subtle,” but the poetry McCandless found in the
cacophony made “Pile Driver” absorbing.

Yet even the less successful pieces were interesting; for example,
the world premiere of McIntyre’s “Negative” found the composer using
real mallets to strike a nonexistent drum, cuing two bass drums
behind him to stop rumbling and thus “playing” silence. The
reverberations of the drums prevented the silence from cutting
sharply through sound, but it was fun to see the idea tried. And as
the members of Ko’mm worked hard to make the music sound good, they
proved that the sheer athletic spectacle of a percussion concert can
be a lot of fun to watch.

— Andrew Lindemann Malone

World Expo celebrates future and past, but present butts in

Agence France Presse — English
March 27, 2005 Sunday 1:15 AM GMT

NAGAKUTE, Japan March 27 — The World Exposition that opened here last
week for a six-month run is a celebration of the glories of the past
and the promise of the future, but that has not stopped the realities
of the present from butting in.

After billions of dollars in investment and preparation, including a
new international airport, the first two days of the Expo were marred
by rain and snow which helped to make attendance below expected.

Crowds still had to wait for over an hour though to visit the main
attractions at the 21st century’s first World Exposition, which
organizers hope will draw 15 million visitors.

The longest lines included those to see a frozen mammoth dug up
in Siberia and humanoid robots and virtual reality shows put on by
Japanese companies.

Some guests found the robots were not to their tastes.

Four-year-old Kyoko Shimaya was approached by a neon light-beaming
security robot while she strolled their Expo ground with her mother
and friends on opening day Friday.

The bulky robot with an interactive, touch-panel display monitor —
developed by Sohgo Security Services — works as a tour guide by day
and at night searches for intruders.

“I like robots, but not this one,” she told the security robot,
while Sohgo officials looked on, managing to keep their grins.

For some of the Japanese media, one of the main attractions was the
South Korean pavilion where reporters spotted a map showing a small
island chain as belonging to South Korea. Japan also claims ownership
of the land in what has become an escalating dispute.

But, in a sign of what little attention Japan has paid to the island
row, most Japanese visitors did not notice the map and were more
interested in photos of hugely popular South Korean soap opera actor
Bae Yong-Joon.

“Oh, here is Yon-sama, here is Yon-sama,” a middle-age Japanese woman
said to her friends, using Bae’s nickname in Japan.

Today’s world showed up in a different way at the French site, where
a short film was projected on the walls and the ceiling of a large,
square room.

The audience was bombarded with images of poverty, pollution and
child labour, with the film ending in a message to think about future
generations.

“We wanted to show what was wrong, the ugly side of our world, and
later show what we can do to change,” said Kevin Berthon, a staff
member at the French display.

Current events also crept up for exhibitors from Kyrgyzstan, where
opposition protesters overran the hardline regime of Askar Akayev
one day before the opening of the Expo.

The Kyrgyz display was empty on opening day, with a simple note posted
reading that the exhibit would open soon.

Young Armenian economist Hasmik Muradyan was surprised by the reality
of the cost of living in Japan.

“Yesterday I went to a supermarket. One apple was 200 yen (nearly
two dollars). For that money, you can buy five kilograms (11 pounds)
of apples in my country,” said the 26-year-old, who works as a cashier
at a gift shop of the joint pavilion of the Caucasus countries Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia.

One preoccupation commonly shared, especially for participants from
warm countries, was the weather of central Japan, where occasional
light snow whirled in strong winds.

“One minute, it’s sunny. One minute, it’s snowing. The changing
weather is unique at this Expo,” said Isahk Yeop, secretary general
of the Malaysian ministry of natural resources and environment.

“It’s not like this in Malaysia,” he said.

DOCTOR DONATES FUNDS RAISED TO TREAT DAUGHTER

The Statesman (India)
March 27, 2005

Statesman News Service KOLKATA, March 26. – It was a day of remembrance
for Dr Swati Wohra, as she donated Rs 10 lakh to the Rabindranath
Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences for the proposed
cancer hospital in the city. The hospital is the pet project of Dr Devi
Shetty, the renowned cardiologist. Dr Wohra’s 15-year-old daughter,
Siddhi, died in July 2004 just before she was to be flown to the USA
for a stem cell or bone-marrow transplant.

Siddhi’s parents had just about managed to gather the funds needed
for the transplant. Dr Wohra handed part of the money collected
for her daughter to officials of the Institute today. Speaking
through a teleconferencing system from Bangalore, Dr Devi Shetty, the
institute’s founder said the state government had identified 20 acres
of land over Eastern Metropolitan Bypass for the proposed 500-bed
state-of-the-art cancer hospital. The hospital will see completion
within one or two years along with the bone marrow transplant centre,
he said. The proposed hospital will be set up next to the institute.
Dr Shetty said because of a delay in the construction of the proposed
hospital, the bone marrow transplant centre will come up shortly at
the Institute’s Armenian Church Trauma Centre. Later it will be shifted
to the hospital. ‘There are few centres for bone marrow transplant in
the country. Thalassaemia patients and others needing the transplant
can now avail of it by paying Rs 2 to 3 lakh. The hospital will be
the first of its kind in Eastern India,’ Mr Udayan Lahiry CEO of the
Institute said.

Ottawa Citizen
March 26, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition

Stepping into history: As he travels through the Holy Land, a
plethora of ancient sites helps Bob Harvey trace the 4,000-year
history of Israel. It is a history dogged by bloodshed, littered with
peoples who sought to conquer the country and its capital.

by Bob Harvey, The Ottawa Citizen

JERUSALEM

JERUSALEM – Israel is a tiny, narrow country, just two-thirds the
size of Vancouver Island, yet it is revered as a holy land by half of
the world’s population of three billion Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Their prophets, saints and soldiers have gone, but the stones they
walked are still there to remind us of 4,000 years of bloody history
and miraculous events, as well as holy books that have shaped western
and Islamic cultures. The Bible, and the Jewish Torah and Talmud, all
began here and, according to tradition, the prophet Muhammad received
the Koran after ascending into heaven from Jerusalem.

Because the country is so small, I and three other Canadians managed
to drive from one end to the other in a busy week, viewing a
remarkable array of significant historic sites with the help of
Israel’s ministry of tourism, a $350-a-day tourist guide, a driver
and a van.

One of our first steps into ancient history was at a re-creation of
the village of Nazareth as Jesus would have known it.

The homes have been built near the ancient Nazareth and are made of
stone, the common material used by Jesus and other builders in old
Israel. Donkeys wander freely through the village and there are
storage caves, a synagogue, and one of the last remaining plots of
land that had been farmed by villagers at the time of Jesus.

The crops then and now are olives, almonds, figs, carob, grapes,
wheat and barley, and we see how the whole village would have turned
out to press the olives into oil and tread the grapes into wine. That
experience concludes inside a Bedouin tent with a first-century meal
of lentil soup, pita bread, vegetables and fruit.

On that same day, we drive along the Mediterranean coast from Tel
Aviv and the 4,500-year-old port of Jaffa to Caesarea, the most
important Christian centre of the Byzantine era. Thanks to advanced
computerized imaging, we are greeted by historical figures from the
town’s past, including King Herod, Rabbi Akiva, Saladin, and Saint
Paul, who was imprisoned here.

The most ancient of all theatres in Israel is to be found here. It
accommodated 4,000 spectators for hundreds of years after King Herod
built it, as well as an amphitheatre for horse racing and sports
events and a large artificial harbour.

When the new day dawned, we went sailing on the Sea of Galilee. We
may have been in a modern replica, but this was exactly the kind of
boat in which the fishermen among Christ’s apostles would have taken
Jesus across the water to revive the dying daughter of a synagogue
ruler.

A similar boat from 2,000 years ago is on exhibit in the nearby Man
in Galilee museum. Fishermen found it in 1986 during a drought that
lowered the water levels. They were sitting on the sand, when they
discovered a cache of Roman coins and, beneath the coins, this
8.2-metre boat. Experts were then called in to carefully excavate and
package the boat in Fiberglas and polyurethane foam before floating
it to a specially-built pool, where it was conserved.

The New Testament, in portraying Christ’s calming of a storm on the
Sea of Galilee, says: “Without warning, a furious storm came up on
the lake so that the waves swept over the boat.” Today the biblical
Sea of Galilee is known as the Lake of Kinneret, and violent storms
still sweep down from the surrounding heights.

Among them is the Golan Heights, the scene of many battles since
1967, when Israel took possession of what Syria views as its
territory. Another of the heights around the lake is the Mount of
Beatitudes, the site of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

On that mount, Christ promised that “blessed are the peacemakers,”
yet most of the 4,000-year history of this nation at the crossroads
of Asia, Africa and Europe is one of bloodshed. The “salem” in
Jerusalem means peace, but Romans, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Hittites,
Egyptians, European Crusaders and many others have all sought to
conquer Israel and its capital.

The most revered religious sites in all of Israel are here in
Jerusalem.

Among them is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Christ’s
crucifixion, his tomb and his resurrection. It is hidden away in a
maze of alleys and shops and there is a lineup at almost any time of
the day. Scholars maintain knowledge of the location was handed down
by oral tradition and proved in AD 326 by the investigations of
Rome’s Emperor Constantine, who erected a basilica over the Tomb of
Christ in 335 to mark the site for future ages. He also stopped the
Roman practice of crucifixion. The basilica burned down in 614, and
was totally destroyed in 1009 by the Muslim ruler of the time.
Today’s church was built by Christian Crusaders in 1149.

When we arrive, a Greek Orthodox priest is managing the traffic of
believers. The lineup includes Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and
other Eastern Christians, and we all shuffle slowly up to the tomb of
Christ and do as others do: kneel and reach under the altar to touch
a portion of the rock of Calvary, where Christ was crucified. Some
also kiss the floor.

Despite its significance, the church lacks a sense of holiness. The
walls have been blackened by generations of candles, there is little
light, and, before we know it, we are filing out the door. The
responsibility for the Sepulchre is uneasily shared by Roman
Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic priests. Not long
after we left the church, Israeli police had to intervene to settle
an argument between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Franciscans over
whether a door should be open or closed.

Most of these sites have recorded histories that back the claims for
the events said to have made them holy. One of many examples is the
Room of the Last Supper. It is here that wine and bread were shared
by Jesus and his disciples, establishing the Christian rite of the
communion or Eucharist. It is near the Dormition Abbey in the Old
City of Jerusalem, in the remains of a Judeo-Christian synagogue, the
traditional location of the Upper Room.

Canadian Catholics donated $105,308 during last year’s annual Good
Friday collection for the upkeep of such religious sites in the Holy
Land.

In the centre of Jerusalem sits the Temple Mount, a holy place for
Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Jewish tradition teaches that,
about 4,000 years ago, Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice
to God here on a rock that was once part of the Garden of Eden. In
1006 BC, King David brought here the ark of the covenant, a box
covered with gold and holding symbols of the divine presence among
the Jews, including the 10 Commandments that God is said to have
carved on stone tablets. According to legend, David, the young
shepherd boy who succeeded Saul — Israel’s first king — also
deposited the head of Goliath here.

Today, the Temple Mount is the home of one of Islam’s oldest shrines,
the Dome of the Rock, and Al Aqsa, one of its most beautiful mosques.

The Dome of the Rock was built 50 years after the Muslim conquest of
Jerusalem in AD 638 and is an expression of the growing power of
Islam in that era, and what would become Muslim rule of Israel for
most of the next 1,300 years.

It was built either on or near what is believed to be the site of the
Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 and its golden dome
still dominates the city’s skyline. One of the ornate inscriptions
inside this shrine affirms that God is One and not three; and that
Jesus was an apostle of God and His Word, and not His son.

The Temple Mount is seldom opened to non-Muslims, The first known
exception was made for the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward
VII, when he visited in 1862.

The one remaining remnant of the Second Temple is the Western Wall, a
must-see for Jews and Christians at the base of the Temple Mount. It
was a supporting wall of the temple and is sometimes called the
Wailing Wall, a term that most Jews dislike. They come here to
celebrate bar mitzvahs and other religious events and press written
prayers into the cracks of the wall.

It is the most sacred spot in Jewish religious and Israeli national
consciousness and tradition because of its proximity to what was once
the Holy of Holies in the temple, from which, traditional sources
say, the Divine Presence never departed. It became a centre of
mourning over the destruction of the Temple and Israel’s exile, on
the one hand, and of religious and national communion with the memory
of Israel’s former glory and the hope for its restoration.

Beneath the wall, there are now tunnels excavated by archeologists
and, if you walk them, you will step on stones that Jesus trod on his
way to teach in the temple. The tunnel also includes an engineering
marvel: huge stones, which were placed at the base of the Wall to
stabilize it and withstand earthquakes. Today’s best cranes can lift
only 250 tonnes, but these stones weigh 500 tonnes and were put in
place with manpower, pulleys and long-forgotten techniques.

There is so much to do in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, including
walking the Via Dolorosa and stopping at each of the stations of the
cross where Jesus stopped for a sip of water or a goodbye to his
mother, Mary, as he carried his cross to Golgotha.

Once you see the Holy Land, many passages from the Bible also take on
new meaning.

In a land where rain is scarce, Deuteronomy 11 includes God’s
promise: “If you faithfully obey all the commands I am giving you
today … then I will send rain on your land in its season, both
autumn and spring rains. … I will provide grass in the fields for
your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied.”

One of the last treats of our journey was a swim in the Dead Sea. It
is one of the the lowest places on Earth, 400 metres below sea level,
and is also known as the Salt Sea because of a concentration of salts
and minerals in the water. Because of those salts and minerals, even
heavy non-swimmers can lay down and float effortlessly.

Nearby, there are also some of the caves once inhabited by the
Essenes, the ascetic scribes who penned the Dead Sea Scrolls,
including Old Testament manuscripts that are 1,000 years older than
any previous version and other scrolls that have provided a wealth of
information on the times leading up to, and during, the life of
Christ. John the Baptist spent almost two years there, but left
before he could become a full member.

High above these caves and the sea itself, there is Masada, a
sprawling fortress atop a mountain where 967 Jewish men, women and
children held off 10,000 to 15,000 Roman legionaries for several
months. Toward the end of a Jewish revolt that began in AD 66, the
last of the rebels retreated to Masada, erected a synagogue, a public
hall and ritual baths and took advantage of the fortifications and
palaces built earlier by Herod as a refuge from his potential
enemies.

After conquering Jerusalem in AD 72, the Romans marched on the last
holdout of the rebels: Masada. They surrounded it and carried
thousands of buckets of dirt to its western slope to construct an
embankment that would open the way for them to surge up the mountain
and overwhelm the rebels. Today you can climb a steep path to the top
in 45 minutes. Most tourists take a cable car to reach the top.

Josephus Flavius, one of the leaders of the revolt, abandoned what
had become a hopeless cause and became a Roman citizen and a
historian. He wrote that, when Masada’s leaders saw they could no
longer hold out, “they then chose 10 men from amongst them by lot,
who would slay all the rest: every one of whom laid himself down by
his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them,
and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot
executed that melancholy office.”

That was in AD 73, and the last man still standing then set fire to
the royal palace and ran his sword up to the hilt in his body.

Masada became a symbol of willpower and heroism, and has been
declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Images of more than 100 priceless artifacts from Israel, including
some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as brief outlines of important
moments in Israel’s history, have been posted on the web at
It is an online virtual
exhibition of the popular Ancient Treasures and Dead Sea Scrolls
exhibition that attracted record-breaking numbers at The Canadian

Museum of Civilization from December 2003 to April 2004.

– – –

Israel has neither diamonds nor oil and depends heavily on the
tourist industry.

One of the government’s goals is to change the country’s image. It
has more security checks than any other western nation and car
accidents probably kill many times more people than terrorists do.

But, when you mention an upcoming trip to Israel, friends and
colleagues ask: “Aren’t you afraid?”

The number of visitors to Israel reached its peak in 2000, when 2.7
million came from around the world.

But when the second intifada broke out at the end of that year, the
numbers started to drop, and in 2002, only 980,000 tourists arrived.
In 2004, the number began to rise again and by the end of October,
1.5 million, including 36,000 Canadians, had visited Israel.

A Capsule History of Jerusalem:

1900 BC: Abraham, who made the covenant with God that established the
Jewish people, knows Jerusalem as Salem, a city ruled by Amorite
kings

1011-971 BC: David seizes the fortified city from the Jebusites,

re-names it the city of David and makes it the spiritual and
political heart of the nation.

971-931 BC: David’s son, Solomon, builds the first temple.

586 BC: The Babylonians destroy the temple and Jerusalem and carry
the resident Jews to Babylon as slaves.

539 BC: The Persians defeat the Babylonians.

515 BC: Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem and build the second
temple on the remains of the first.

334 BC: Under Alexander the Great, the Greeks conquer the Persians
and conquer Jerusalem.

168 BC: Another Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, persecutes the Jews
and blasphemes the temple by sacrificing a pig on the site. The Jews
are outraged and the Hasmonean revolt, led by Judah Maccabee,
liberates Jerusalem and purifies the

temple.

63 BC: Pompey, a Roman, seizes the land of the Jews.

37 BC: Another Roman, Herod the Great, seizes Jerusalem, names
himself king and rebuilds the temple.

AD 70: The Jews revolt once again and Roman legions destroy the city
and the temple.

AD 135: Another Jewish revolt and this time the Roman emperor bans
Jews from Jerusalem and renames it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, a Roman
colony dedicated to the pagan god, Jupiter.

AD 200: Most of the Jews have left Israel and settled elsewhere.

AD 333: Helena, mother of Constantine, the Romans’ first Christian
emperor, lifts the ban on Jews living in Jerusalem, but makes it an
almost entirely Christian city.

AD 638: The Muslims conquer Jerusalem and, in 684, begin building
Islam’s second most sacred shrine, the Dome of the Rock, on the site
where the temple once stood.

AD 1071: Radical Muslims, the Seljuk Turks, capture Jerusalem and
defile the Christians’ holy sites.

AD 1099: Christian Crusaders reclaim the city and establish Jerusalem
as a kingdom.

1291: The Mamelukes, slaves seized from non-Muslim families and
trained as cavalry soldiers, drive the Crusaders out of the

Holy Land.

1517: The Ottoman Turks, also Muslims, conquer the area.

1881: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, one of the first Zionists, moves to
Jerusalem, with his wife, Deborah, to dedicate themselves toward the
rebirth of the nation of Israel, in its own land, and resurrecting
Hebrew, their own tongue, which had not been used conversationally
since the second century AD. Together they establish the first
Hebrew-speaking home in modern Israel and Eliezer teaches Hebrew and
coins new Hebrew words for objects and verbs that did not exist in
ancient Israel. He is credited with the revival of Hebrew as a modern
language.

1897: Thanks to Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist, the
first Zionist Congress meets in Basle, Switzerland, and declares:
“Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine
secured under public law.”

1918: The British drive the Turks out of Israel.

1948: Jews form the reborn state of Israel. But, in the war that
immediately follows, they lose East Jerusalem to Jordan.

1967: Jews and Arabs fight the Six-Day War and the Jews reclaim the
entire city of Jerusalem.

1980: The Israeli government declares the entire city of Jerusalem is
the capital and promises to protect all holy sites from desecration.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DID JESUS REALLY RISE FROM THE DEAD? – THE CASE OF THE EMPTY TOMB
by: John Cornwell

Australian Magazine
March 26, 2005 Saturday

The crucifixion and resurrection define Christianity, but scholars –
and a best-selling book – question what really happened.

The Da Vinci Code is only the latest in a series of books challenging
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. John Cornwell examines
both sides of the argument.

Holy Saturday: Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. Within the
ancient, ornate shrine, arguably the holiest place in all Christendom,
worshippers from many denominations and ethnicities – Greek and
Russian Orthodox, Armenians and Ethiopian Copts, as well as Catholics,
Anglicans, Lutherans, Christian Zionists and Evangelicals – ponder
a crucial question. Is this church, with its crypts, murky chapels,
forests of silver lamps and smell of incense, the actual site of
Christ’s tomb? And did Christ actually rise from the dead on this spot?

Answering these questions is like exploring the history of the Holy
Sepulchre church itself. It’s a bewildering rabbit warren of an edifice
that has been knocked down, rebuilt, and fought over by Jews, Muslims
and, scandalously, by and among Christians, ever since Helena (mother
of Constantine the Great) identified it as the site of Christ’s tomb
in the fourth century.

Each year on the Vigil of Easter Day, however, there is another more
tangible and immediate test of faith and reason. The contentious
assortment of Christians, tensely watched by Israeli police, gather
to celebrate the most enduring alleged miracle on the planet. Within
a tiny inner chapel known as the aedicule, said to be the site of
Christ’s actual burial slab,

a “holy fire” miraculously self-combusts, traditionally observed
in strictest secrecy by the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem,
accompanied by a senior Armenian Orthodox priest. Heaven, on schedule,
is favouring eastern Christians with a token of the truth of the
Resurrection of Christ’s body from the dead. The priests light their
candles from this holy fire, which is said to be at first pale blue
and cold, incapable of burning even the skin on your face. They emerge
into the main body of the church to share the miraculous flame with the
massed congregation, many of whom have queued for a day and a night
to get a good spot. The holy fire is then rushed to the airport at
Tel Aviv in special lanterns, which are dispatched to Moscow, Kiev,
Istanbul and Athens to be spread throughout the Christian Orthodox
world on Easter Day.

In an investigation of the basilica, the ceremony and its significance,
Victoria Clark, author of a new book, Holy Fire: The Battle for
Christ’s Tomb, recently winkled from a senior official of the Greek
Orthodox church in Jerusalem the admission that for some years now
the Easter fire has been generated not by a miracle but by a common
or garden plastic lighter.

The revelation, repudiated by the aghast faithful, is only marginally
less scandalous, though substantially less harmful, than the tensions
that have reigned among the warring Christian guardians of the Holy
Sepulchre and the punch-ups that routinely occur there. Intricate and
pedantic rights exerted by different denominations over the sacred
space, right down to shared ownership and cleaning rights of a tiny
manhole, are jealously measured in square millimetres. Even on the
roof of the basilica, where Ethiopian monks and nuns live in squalid
shelters without water or electric light, territorial disputes with
the neighbouring Egyptian Copts are intense to the point of physical
aggression.

But nothing compares with the conflicts in the heart of the basilica.
In 2002, the patriarch and the Armenian prelate came to blows within
the aedicule over who should ignite the lighter; two Orthodox monks
joined the fray and Israeli police had to storm the chapel to restore
peace. This was nothing new. Back in 1834, the holy fire ceremony
prompted an affray that caused a stampede and the deaths of several
hundred onlookers. An English writer described the church walls
“spattered with the blood and brains of those who had been felled,
like oxen, with the butt-ends of the soldiers’ bayonets”.

The Orthodox faithful will no doubt learn to live with the news that
their holy fire is less than miraculous, just

as Catholics now have mostly come to terms with the prosaic fact that
the annual liquefaction of martyr San Gennario’s blood in Naples
Cathedral is a special clay found in the vicinity of Vesuvius that
boils at a low temperature.

What Christians will resist, however, is the proposition, currently
spreading like out-of-control bird’flu, that Christ did not in fact
die on the cross.

Successive fictional versions of the death and resurrection over
more than 200 years culminating in Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982),
by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln – stunningly
boosted by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which has sold 17 million
copies since 2003 – have served to promote the notion that the empty
tomb was not evidence of the death and resurrection but that Jesus
survived the crucifixion and escaped the tomb alive (hence no need
for a resurrection). The issue is crucial: without the death and the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no Christianity.

>>From the outset there were attempts to undermine the reality of
the resurrection story. Matthew’s gospel claims that enemies of the
disciples were insisting that the body had been stolen from the tomb.
Heretical sects in the second and third centuries argued that a
substitute for the Messiah had been crucified, while the real Jesus
lived to ridicule their mistake. The Koran records that Christ,
a human rather than a divine prophet, was not killed; he survived
and lived to rejoin his disciples.

In the modern period, “rationalists” have drawn close parallels
between the “Christian resurrection myth” and widespread mythologies
of gods who die and become reborn. In oriental religions there are
multiple legends featuring dying and rising gods and goddesses,
including Adonis, Isis, Dionysus, Demeter, and assorted corn-kings
and corn-mothers. In the dark and ancient north, moreover, Balder
the Beautiful, offspring of Odin, dies only to rise again. Fertility
rights in spring, and the gift of eggs, are a pagan backdrop to the
Christian story. Is Jesus, ask the clever anthropologists, just one
more of these myths? But they ignore the fact, according to one of
the world’s most distinguished Resurrection scholars, the Australian
Jesuit, Professor Gerard O’Collins of the Gregorian University in Rome,
that Christ rose only once, and that he was God and not “a” god.

But the story that Christ actually survived his passion, rather
than resurrected, assumed powerful imaginative impetus from the
mid-18th century onwards with the publication of a fictional version
of the Christ story by the German writer Karl Heinrich Venturini
(1768-1849). Venturini exploited the existence of the Essenes,
a community of radical Jews at Qumran by the Dead Sea, proposing
that they took Him down from the cross still alive and subsequently
revived him in their monastery.

Albert Schweitzer, a physician in an African leper colony and himself
author of a life of Jesus, commented in 1906 that the Venturini story
“may almost be said to be reissued annually down to the present day,
for all the fictitious lives go back to the style which he created.
It is plagiarised more freely than any other Life of Jesus, although
practically unknown by name.” Today Schweitzer would have recognised
in The Da Vinci Code a precise example of the prediction.

One of the most famous subsequent versions of Venturini appeared a
century later in The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story by the Irish writer
George Moore. Moore depicts Jesus as a crude shepherd philosopher who
suffered the delusion that he was the Messiah. As Moore puts it, Jesus
is lifted from the cross in a coma. When he comes round he perceives
that he was “mistaken in all things: angels did not come down from
Heaven to lift him from the cross and bear him back to his father,
and the world still subsists the same as before”. He is buried in a
tomb owned by a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, who finds him revived
there the next day and takes him away. Christ then returns in secret
to his life as a shepherd with the Essene community on the brook of
Kerith. It is Paul of Tarsus, according to Moore, who invents both
the resurrection story and the Christian Church after his vision on
the road to Damascus. Meanwhile, the real Jesus has come to believe
in a form of pantheism – the idea that God is everything.

Moore’s book invokes natural explanations for everything, including
Christ’s appearance to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The
disciples were suffering, he argues, from a simple case of mistaken
identity. Moore ends his account by suggesting that Christ travelled
eastwards and spent his final years as a missionary in India. To this
day there are Muslim sects in India who venerate a tomb of Christ.

Similarly sensational in its time was D.H. Lawrence’s novella
The Man who Died (1931). Lawrence has Christ saying to onlookers
after his supposed death on the cross: “I am not dead. They took
me down too soon.” He comes round in the tomb and simply walks out
to be cared for by compassionate peasants until meeting up with Mary
Magdalene, who conspires with him to perpetrate the resurrection story.
Subsequently he meets by chance some of his disciples (who swallow the
resurrection account), and eventually escapes to the Lebanon where he
becomes involved with a woman who runs a temple to Isis. She falls
in love with him, believing him to be the god Osiris, and together,
in true Laurentian style, they discover the meaning of sex and earthly
existence. When she falls pregnant with his child, however, he abandons
her, saying: “I have sowed the seed of my life and my resurrection,
and put my touch forever upon the choice woman of this day, and I
carry her perfume in my flesh like the essence of roses.”

Another bizarre alternative is that of Robert Graves, poet and author
of the famous First War memoir Goodbye to All That. Graves’s book,
Jesus in Rome, purports to be a factual account, but it is a tissue of
conjectures and sources regarded as apocryphal by biblical experts. A
crucial feature of Christ’s survival, according to Graves, is the
embalming ointment donated by Joseph of Arimathea and the “extreme
sultriness of the weather” which combined to create a sort of life
support system for the half-dead Jesus in the tomb. Graves has the
Roman soldiers breaking into the tomb to steal this ointment only to
find Jesus alive. The sergeant not only lets Christ go, but later
accepts a bribe from Nicodemus to broadcast the news of the bogus
“resurrection”.

In 1966 came The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield, a Jewish writer
who used his own translations of the gospels to argue that Jesus
conspired with the disciples to arrange his death. Jesus is depicted
as ransacking the Old Testament for prophecies of his passion. He
takes a drug before his arrest which enables him to suffer torture and
crucifixion and the eventual semblance of death. He is buried alive
but revives the next day, whereupon he finally succumbs and dies for
real. Mary Magdalene, Christ’s close friend, is described as demented;
she believes that everybody she meets is the Christ.

The American novelist John Updike added to the fictional survival
accounts in 1971 with his New Yorker story, “Jesus on Honshu”. Basing
himself on the members of the Japanese Mahikari cult, Updike has Jesus,
aged 21, travelling to Japan where he is taken on by a guru called
Etchu. Aged 32 he returns to Jerusalem to choose his 12 apostles. In
a passion and death worthy of a parallel universe, it is Judas who
is executed. Christ meanwhile escapes via Siberia back to Japan where
he lives until the age of 106 as a teacher and miracle worker.

Donovan Joyce’s Jesus Scroll, published in 1973, repeats the survival
story and expands on the link between Christ and Mary Magdalene that
would become familiar in the Holy Blood, Holy Grail concoction and
The Da Vinci Code. Basing himself on the Gospel of Philip (regarded
as apocryphal by scholars), Joyce asserts that Christ was married
to Mary Magdalene, who anointed him before his triumphant entry
to Jerusalem with the aromatic ointment spickenard, a symbol of
kingship. Joyce claims that Christ, accompanied by Mary Magdalene,
escaped Jerusalem after causing an uprising; eventually he joins the
Essene community at Qumran by the Dead Sea.

With Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), by Michael Baigent, Richard
Leigh and Henry Lincoln (Sir Leigh Tebbing, in The Da Vinci Code,
is drawn from the authors’ names), the Christ story begins to shoot
off in wildly eccentric trajectories. The book claims that Christ
married Mary Magdalene at the feast of Cana. Among their children
was Barabbas, the criminal released by Pontius Pilate at the request
of the Jews. The authors argue that Christ’s family bribed Pilate
to give the body to Joseph of Arimathea. But the crucifixion was a
staged affair in which the victim was a substitute. Baigent and his
colleagues are not forthcoming about the whereabouts of the escaped
Jesus, but they claim that Mary Magdalene went with the children to
southern France. The sacred bloodline, sang real, or royal blood,
which is the Holy Grail, rather than the cup of the Last Supper,
continued through the Merovingians, the Carolingians and the House
of Lorraine to the Habsburgs.

More recent books with scholarly pretensions, notably J. Duncan
Derrett’s The Anastasis (1982) and Barbara Thiering’s The Gospels
and Qumran (1992), repeat the survival theory. Thiering, who has
gained much publicity because of her claims to have deciphered the
secret code of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, insists
that Jesus lived for many years after his crucifixion, travelling
around the Mediterranean before dying in his sixties. She claims
that Jesus had three children with Mary Magdalene; that he divorced
her and married Lydia (who appears in the Acts of the Apostles),
passing his latter years in Rome.

Professor Gerard O’Collins and, independently, world-class
scripture scholars such as T.N. Wright (now bishop of Durham), J.
Murphy-O’Connor and the late Raymond E. Brown protest that the
non-fiction exponents of the survival theory routinely misuse
documents, indulge in outlandish interpretation techniques and invoke
shadowy sources unavailable for checking by bona fide scholars. At
least Dan Brown, who sometimes gives the impression that he believes
the Holy Blood, Holy Grail thesis, has had the good grace to name
one of his lead characters Bishop Aringarosa, which translates as
red herring.

Scepticism of the survival theorists, however, does not indicate
that we can trust the story of the death and the resurrection in
the same way as we trust the death and the burial, say, of Princess
Di. But Christian biblical scholars assert that there is sufficient
evidence to make their belief reasonable. They stress that there is
ample evidence for Jesus’s death, pointing out that the Romans were
good at killing people and that there is clear evidence that they
finished him off – the lance thrust into his chest, producing a gush
of water and blood, is firm and plausible, they say. That the tomb was
found to be empty by reliable witnesses who had no motive to lie, they
argue, is also supported by the evidence. Here is Mark, for example:
“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James,
and Salome brought aromatic oils, intending to go and anoint him …
They went into the tomb, where they saw a youth sitting on the right
hand side, wearing a white robe; and they were dumbfounded.” The
young man, who we can take to be an angel, or perhaps a good-looking
gardener, told them: “He has been raised again; he is not here.” He
tells them that Jesus has gone on ahead into Galilee.

The accounts of his appearances after the resurrection differ from
each other but they are impressive. Mary Magdalene sees him in Mark’s
version, then “two of his followers” see him, and eventually the 11
remaining apostles encounter him. Paul, who is given most credence by
scholars as an early witness (as early perhaps as two years after the
death and alleged resurrection), reports that Jesus appeared to Peter,
then to the apostles, and later to more than 500 of “our brothers
at once, most of whom are still alive, though some have died”. He
concludes: “In the end he appeared even to me.” The facts that Jesus
ate meals, and that the resurrected Lord invited Doubting Thomas to
put his finger in his Lord’s side, indicate for believers that he
was neither vision nor hallucination.

The difficulty for any reader following the gospel stories of the death
and resurrection, however, is that we are not dealing with reportage in
the style of a modern-day journalist or historian. The gospel texts are
fraught with religious significance. They are as much, metaphorically,
about the story of the spiritual redemption of humankind as they are
about supposedly actual events. And yet, even practised journalists
who know the difference between factual and fictional accounts, and
stories that are essentially although not necessarily strictly true,
have been impressed by the detail and vividness of the gospels.

A telling and intriguing testimony is given by Graham Greene, a
Catholic writer who throughout his life was agonised by scepticism.
Not long before he died, I interviewed Greene at his home in Antibes,
on the French Riviera. We were talking about belief in the resurrection
and I had commented, “It sounds as if belief is a struggle for you.” He
said: “What keeps me to … it’s not strong enough to be called
belief … is St John’s gospel. It’s almost a reportage – it might
have been done by a good journalist – where the beloved disciple is
running with Peter because they’ve heard that the rock has been rolled
away from the tomb, and describing how John manages to beat Peter in
the race … and it just seems to me to be first-hand reportage,
and I can’t help believing it … I know that St Mark is supposed
to be the earliest gospel, but there’s just the possibility of St
John’s gospel having been written by a very old man, who never calls
himself by name, or says ‘I’, but does describe this almost funny race,
which strikes me as true.”

However compelling the story, however authentic the feel of the
evidence, in the final analysis it comes down to a decision to believe
or not to believe. And beyond belief are the consequences of faith
and of faith communities of all kinds.

As the Christians meet once again in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre
there appears to be hope for a new beginning for the peace process
between Arabs and Jews in the land of what Christians traditionally
call the holy places, the holiest of which is the site of the tomb of
Christ. With any luck the ceremony of the holy fire will have passed
off peacefully; but it is an apt time to ponder, as Victoria Clark has
put it, “the mistakes made and the crimes committed by a succession
of Christian powers over hundreds of years” in the Middle East. On
the pretext that they were reclaiming and protecting the site of the
death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Crusaders massacred
Jews, Muslims and fellow Christians, and the conflicts prompted for
ownership and control of the Christian holy places have continued
to the present day. The latest claimants are Christian Zionists who
have made common cause with radical Jewish Zionists calling for the
territorial integrity of ancient Israel and the ousting of Muslims
and Christian Arabs alike in the expectation of the reconstitution
of the promised land and the second coming of the Messiah.

In a region tragically riven with ethnic and religious hatred, a
Christian is inclined to wonder whether the redemptive story of the
resurrection at the heart of the Christian message would not best
be exemplified by the relinquishing, at last, of the Holy Sepulchre
church. For it appears after centuries of conflict not so much a holy
focus of Christendom as a living metaphor for all that is delusional,
violent and divisive in Christianity’s turbulent internal history
and its relationship with other religions.

John Cornwell is the author of Pontiff in Winter: the Dark Face of
John Paul II’s Papacy, published by Viking-Penguin. His last story
for the magazine was “Stranger than fiction” (Feb 12-13), on the
Vatican’s secret history.

TURKEY EXPECTS US TO HELP AFTER USING INCERJLIK BASE

Qatar News Agency
March 25, 2005 Friday 2:01 PM EST

Doha, March 25

TURKEY EXPECTS US TO HELP AFTER USING INCERJLIK BASE ANKARA, MARCH 25
(QNA) – THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT OF RECEP TAYYEP ERDOGAN IS REPORTEDLY
CONTEMPLATING THE IDEA OF GIVING ITS CONSENT TO A US REQUEST ASKING
FOR A BROADER USE OF THE INCERJLIK AIR BASE IN SOUTH TURKEY IN
EXCHANGE FOR WASHINGTON S HELP IN THE CONTROVERSIAL HISTORICAL
ALLEGATIONS ABOUT A SO-CALLED TURKISH MASSACRES COMMITTED AGAINST
ARMENIANS, TURKISH PRESS REPORTS SAID.

THE ISTANBUL-BASED HURRIYET NEWSPAPER QUOTED FOREIGN MINISTRY SOURCES
AS SAYING THAT THE FINAL GOVERNMENT DECISION IN THIS RESPECT WOULD BE
MADE BY THE 24TH OF NEXT APRIL, HINTING THAT TURKISH AUTHORITIES
WOULD MOST PROBABLY GRANT WASHINGTON AN UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO USE
THIS MILITARY BASE, WHICH IS STRATEGICALLY SIGNIFICANT FOR THE US
ARMY TO AIRLIFT LOGISTIC SUPPLIES TO AND FROM AFGHANISTAN.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LAWYER RUBEN SAHAKIAN’S APPLICATION CONTESTING RESULTS OF ELECTIONS
OF CHAIRMAN OF ARMENIAN LAWYERS’ CHAMBER TO BE EXAMINED BY JUDGE EDIK
AVETISIAN

YEREVAN, MARCH 25, NOYAN TAPAN. On March 23, Chairman of the court
of the first instance of the Kentron and Nork-Marash communities of
Yerevan assigned Judge Edik Avetisian to examine the application of
lawyer Ruben Sahakian requesting that the results of the elections of
chairman of the Chamber of Lawyers of Armenia be considered invalid and
new elections be designated. Judge Edik Sahakian told NT correspondent
that he has not yet received the case, and the issue of taking it into
examination will be decided on March 24. According to the plaintiff,
the person who received the simple majority of the votes must have
been recognized as the winner, whereas the calculations show that
this was not the case – 363 persons participated in the vote, 181 of
whom voted in favor of Enok Azarian, who would have been the winner
if he had received 50% plus 1 vote, that is, 182 votes. As a matter
of fact the counting commission admitted this and did not make any
decision regarding the Chamber Chairman’s elections. R. Sahakian
demands the elections should be considered invalid and new elections
of the Chamber Chairman be called within 15 days.

PanArmenian News
March 26 2005

FRANCE DELIBERATELY HAMPERS PARTICIPATION OF OTHER EU COUNTRIES IN
KARABAKH SETTLEMENT, AZERI FORMER FM SUPPOSES

26.03.2005 05:02

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ According to former Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan
Tofik Zulfugarov, Azerbaijan should call the EU to play a more active
role in the solution of the Nagorno Karabakh problem. Zulfugarov has
positively evaluated the appointment of the EU representative for the
South Caucasus and noted with pleasure that the selected candidate
is successful one, as «Finnish diplomat Heikki Talvitie, who has
earlier co-chaired the OSCE Minsk Group, is well familiar with the
region and is a very experienced diplomat. The former Minister did
not agree with the position like «you come to peace yourselves,
then we will assist you.» «I suppose that Talvitie should be
included in the work of the MG and Azerbaijan should itself author the
initiative,» he noted. According to Tofik Zulfugarov, being an EU
member France as a Co-Chair of the Minsk Group deliberately hampers
active participation of other EU countries in the settlement of the
Nagorno Karabakh problem.

–Boundary_(ID_wIHVw1P7GqlPPEmdHp4f4g)–

CENTRE OF RUSSIAN BOOK OPENS IN ASCC BUILDING

YEREVAN, MARCH 25, NOYAN TAPAN. The opening ceremony of the Centre
of Russian Book was held in the building of the Armenian Society of
Cultural Contacts and Cooperation with Foreing Countries on March 25.
Liudmila Putina and Bella Kocharian, the first ladies of Russia and
Armenia attended the ceremony. The Centre will include a library,
a video archiv and a reading hall.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NO VIOLATIONS OF CEASE-FIRE REGIME FIXED IN COURSE OF MONITORING OF
NKR AND AZERBAIJAN ARMED FORCES CONTACT-LINE

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 25, NOYAN TAPAN. On March 25, the OSCE
Mission held a regular monitoring of the Nagorno Karabakh and
Azerbaijan armed forces contact-line on the eastern section of the
village of Talish. From the positions of the NKR Defense Army,
the monitoring mission was led by Field Assistants of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Officeâ~@~Ys Personal Representative Miroslav Vymetal
(Czechia), Peter Kii (Great Britain) and Torsten Aren (Sweden).
According to the NKR FM Press Service, in the course of the monitoring
violations of the cease-fire regime were fixed. Unlike the Armenian
party, the Azerbaijani one did not lead the OSCE representatives to
its front borders as a result of which the visual contact between
the OSCE groups conducting the monitoring from opposite positions
was defective. From the Karabakh party, representatives of the
NKR Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense accompanied the OSCE
monitoring mission.

–Boundary_(ID_cWZTk/jvQd7MmNEpF2LU6A)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress