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Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is still revealing secrets

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The Last Supper — relentlessly studied, scrutinized, satirized and one the world’s most famous paintings — is still revealing secrets. Researchers Olivier Bauer, Nancy Labonté, Jonas Saint-Martin and Sébastien Fillion of the Université de Montréal Faculty of Theology have found new meaning to the food depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous artwork.

We asked ourselves why Da Vinci chose those particular foods, because they don’t correspond to what the Evangelists described,” says Bauer. “Why bread, fish, salt, citrus and wine? Why is the saltshaker tipped over in front of Judas? Why is the bread leavened?”

The four researchers don’t buy into the farfetched hypotheses introduced by Dan Brown in his best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code, yet they agree the artist included symbols and commentary in his depiction. He purposely attempted to confuse and fool the observer with contradictory symbols and double-meanings.

For instance, a fallen saltshaker is traditionally a sign of bad luck. The researchers question if instead of indicating the mischief of Judas, the fallen saltshaker could suggest his rehabilitation. He could have been chosen to play the role of the traitor. And why is he the only one with an empty plate? It could mean he is full and mischievous or that he is the only one who isn’t fooled?

The fish has also been the topic of several studies. It is clearly a reminder that Jesus spent most of his life around Lake Tiberias and that he selected his Apostles among local fishermen. Yet it isn’t clear whether the fish is herring or eel. Some argue Da Vinci was deliberately ambiguous about the species of fish. Eel in Italian is aringa, although when it is spelled arringa it means indoctrination. And herring in northern Italy is renga, meaning he who denies religion.

The painting continues to fascinate and mystify. Its restoration, which took place between 1979 and 1999, has brought to light new details that along with new technology has spurred a new wave of research and interpretation of one of the world’s most famous artworks.

Source: sciencedaily.com

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Religion

Was The Pillar of Fire and Cloud A UFO Encounter?

Some researchers believe that The Pillar of Fire and Cloud (Exodus 13:21-22) were UFOs and that God used them to guide the Israelites.

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Was The Pillar of Fire and Cloud A UFO Encounter?

Some researchers believe that The Pillar of Fire and Cloud (Exodus 13:21-22) were UFOs and that God used them to guide the Israelites.

The Pillar of Fire and Cloud: A UFO Encounter in the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of miracles and supernatural events. One of the most famous stories is the account of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.

In this story, the Israelites are led out of slavery by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day.

These pillars are said to have guided the Israelites through the wilderness and protected them from the Egyptians.

Some people believe that these pillars were UFOs. Several pieces of evidence could support this theory.

First, the pillars are described in very unusual terms. The Pillar of Fire is said to have been “like a column of smoke,” and the Pillar of Cloud is said to have been “like a Pillar of Fire.”

These descriptions are very similar to those of UFOs that people have reported today.

Second, the pillars are said to have performed some very unusual feats. The Pillar of Fire is said to have led the Israelites through the wilderness and protected them from the Egyptians.

The Pillar of the Cloud is said to have provided shade during the day and warmth at night. These feats are very similar to the feats that have been attributed to UFOs.

Third, the Pillars are said to have disappeared after the Israelites reached the Promised Land. This suggests that the pillars were not natural phenomena but were instead something else.

Of course, there is no way to know for sure whether or not the pillars were UFOs.

However, the available evidence is certainly suggestive.

If the pillars were indeed UFOs, then this would provide strong evidence that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth in the past.

The Pillar of Fire and Cloud  – Exodus 13:21-22

21 The Lord went before them as a pillar of cloud during the day to guide them on their way, and as a column of fire during the night to give them light so they could travel day and night. 22 During the day, the pillar of cloud never disappeared off the people, nor did the column of fire during the night.

Other Possibles of UFO Encounters in the Hebrew Bible

The Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-6)

The Burning Bush

In this passage, Moses is tending to his flock when he sees a bush that is on fire but is not consumed. When he goes to investigate, he hears the voice of God speaking to him from the bush. Some people believe that this bush was a UFO and that the voice of God was the voice of an alien being.

The Chariots of Fire (2 Kings 2:11-12)

In this passage, Elijah is taken to heaven in a chariot of fire. Some believe this chariot was a UFO and aliens abducted Elijah.

The Watchers (Genesis 6:1-4)

In this passage, it is written that “the sons of God” came down to Earth and had children with human women. Some believe these “sons of God” were aliens who came to Earth to study and interact with humans.

The Book of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:4-28)

The Book of Ezekiel is full of strange and fantastical imagery, including descriptions of creatures some people believe to be UFOs. For example, in Chapter 1, Ezekiel describes seeing a “wheel within a wheel” and “creatures with four faces.” Some people believe that these creatures were aliens and that they visited Ezekiel.

The Appearance of the Angel of the Lord

The Angel of the Lord appears many times throughout the Hebrew Bible; some believe these were UFO encounters. For example, in Genesis 16:7-13, the Angel of the Lord appears to Hagar in the desert and tells her that she will give birth to a son. Some people believe that this Angel was an alien being and that he came to Hagar to help her.

The Appearance of the Cherubim

The Cherubim are angelic and often depicted as having human-like bodies with wings and animal heads. They usually appear throughout the Hebrew Bible; some believe they are aliens. For example, in Ezekiel 1:4-28, Ezekiel has a vision of four Cherubim, each with four faces: a human face, a lion’s face, an ox’s face, and an eagle’s face.

Some people believe that these Cherubim were aliens and that they came to Ezekiel to give him a message from God.

Common scientific explanations for the Pillars of Fire and Cloud

Dust Devils

Dust Devil

In the context of this passage, the mention of a “pillar of cloud” by day and a “pillar of fire” by night suggests a continuous and distinct phenomenon that guided the Israelites during their journey.

While this passage is often interpreted as a miraculous event, it’s worth considering how natural occurrences could offer plausible explanations for these phenomena. One such reason involves dust devils:

A dust devil is a small, rapidly rotating column of air that picks up loose dust and debris from the ground, creating a visible column that resembles a miniature tornado.

These phenomena are common in arid and desert regions where dry, sandy conditions prevail. Dust devils are usually harmless and are often observed to move across open spaces, leaving a distinct trail of swirling dust behind.

Now, let’s apply this meteorological knowledge to the Exodus passage. It’s possible that the “pillar of cloud” mentioned during the day could have been a significant and persistent dust devil.

During the day, the sun’s heat could have warmed the desert surface, creating areas of uneven heating. As the heated air rose from the ground, it could have generated a rotating column of air carrying dust and debris.

His would result in a visible column of dust swirling upwards, giving the appearance of a pillar of cloud. This dust devil would have had the potential to move ahead of the Israelites, guiding them as they journeyed through the desert.

Similarly, the “pillar of fire” mentioned at night could have manifested the same natural phenomenon.

During the day, the desert surface absorbs heat from the sun. This heat radiates back into the atmosphere at night, creating temperature differences between the ground and the air above.

These temperature differences could generate small vortices of rotating air, which, in the dark, could appear as a glowing column due to the scattering of starlight or moonlight by the dust particles within the vortex.

This would give the impression of a pillar of fire.

Fire Tornado

Fire whirl

Let’s explore how a fire tornado could align with this description.

A fire tornado is a rare meteorological phenomenon that occurs when a fire generates sufficient heat and turbulence to create a vertical column of rotating air.

This column can pick up burning debris and ash, making the appearance of a swirling tower of flames.

Fire tornadoes are most likely to occur in wildfire conditions, where intense heat and strong winds interact with the fire to create the requirements.

In the context of the Exodus account, a large-scale wildfire in the desert could have given rise to such a fire tornado.

During the day, the intense heat from the sun, coupled with the dry and explosive nature of desert vegetation, could have ignited a substantial wildfire.

As the fire spread, it could have generated powerful updrafts of hot air.

These updrafts, combined with the wind patterns of the region, could have created a vertical column of rotating air engulfed in flames and carrying burning debris.

During the night, the temperature differences between the heated desert surface and the cooler air above could have led to the continuation of these fiery updrafts, resulting in a column of swirling flames that would be visible in the darkness.

This appearance would resemble a pillar of fire, as described in the Exodus passage.

The same phenomenon could have manifested as a column of smoke and ash during the day, giving the appearance of a pillar of cloud, which is also mentioned in the text.

The Implications of a UFO Encounter in the Hebrew Bible

If the pillars of fire and cloud were indeed UFOs, then this would have several implications for our understanding of the Hebrew Bible and the history of the world.

First, it would mean that the Israelites were not the only people to have encountered extraterrestrial life.

Many other cultures around the world have stories of UFO encounters.

This suggests that UFOs are not just a modern phenomenon but have been visiting Earth for centuries if not millennia.

Second, it would mean that the Hebrew Bible is not just a religious text but also a historical document.

The story of the Exodus is one of the most critical stories in the Hebrew Bible.

If it is true that the Israelites were led out of Egypt by UFOs, then this would mean that the exodus happened.

This would have a profound impact on our understanding of the history of the world.

Finally, it would mean that we are not alone in the universe. The existence of extraterrestrial life would force us to re-evaluate our place in the universe.

It would also raise some critical questions about the nature of reality and the purpose of life.

Whether or not the pillars of fire and cloud were UFOs, they are a fascinating mystery.

The available evidence is certainly suggestive, but it is ultimately up to each individual to decide their beliefs.

The Bible is full of mysteries and facts that can be clarified and explained by correcting mistranslations and Archeology making the Bible much more impressive and powerful.

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Archeology

What you know about the Unicorn is Wrong

What you know about the Unicorn may need to be corrected. What if I tell you Unicorn is or was a real animal as described in the Bible?

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What you know about the Unicorn is Wrong

What you know about the Unicorn may need to be corrected. What if I tell you Unicorn is or was a real animal as described in the Bible?

Like many other world religions and mythologies, the Bible contains stories of extraordinary creatures.

In the Old Testament, we find mentions of beings such as Unicorns, the Behemoth, the Leviathan, the Nephilim, and Giants.

These creatures have captured people’s imaginations for centuries, and their potential origins are as unbelievable as their descriptions.

What you know about the Unicorn is Wrong.

One of the creatures found in the Old Testament is the Unicorn.

What really is a Unicorn?

Surprisingly, it is mentioned quite a few times in the Bible.

In the Book of Numbers, the Bible describes God as a unicorn, stating:

“God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.”
– Numbers 23:22
“God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.”
– Numbers 24:8

The Deuteronomy:

“His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.”
– Deuteronomy 33:17

In the Book of Job, God rhetorically asks

“Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”
– Job 39:9-10

In Psalm:

“Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.”
– Psalm 22:21
“He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.”
– Psalm 29:6
“But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.”
– Psalm 92:10

However, in the original Hebrew Bible, the creature is not called a unicorn but “Re-em.”

But what is a Re-em?

When the Greeks began translating the Bible, they translated the Hebrew word “Re-em” to “Monokeros,” Mono (single) Keros (Horn), which means one horn.

Similarly, the Latin speakers translated the word “Unicornis,” from which we get our word unicorn.

However, the Greeks and Romans did not feature unicorns in their mythologies.

Instead, they are featured in ancient Greco-Roman natural encyclopedias.

These ancient nature textbooks did not think unicorns were mythical beasts but real-life creatures as natural as a cow, lion, or horse.

Some scholars believe it is a case of mistaken identity, and the one-horned creature is a Rhino.

A Unicorn may be a mistaken description of a Rhino.

When early travelers went to faraway lands, they spoke of strange creatures they saw on their way.

For example, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder describes a creature as fierce animal called the Unicorn, which is the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a bull, while the rest of the body is like a horse.

Scholars believe Pliny offers an imperfect and simplistic description of a rhino.

He likely heard a second or third-hand description of one and is recounting it in his book.

The definition of the unknown creature became distorted, with each telling a bit like a game of telephone.

Another possibility for the Unicorn’s identity?

The original description of a rhino may have been distorted when it first got translated.

Another explanation for the unicorn’s identity is that the Hebrew word for the unicorn, “Re-em,” actually means a creature similar to the “Rimu” animal that the nearby Acadians called the “Aurochs,” an ancient ancestor of modern-day Cattle.

Therefore, when the Bible talks about unicorns, it may refer to an ancient Bull type.

the Aurochs an ancient ancestor of modern-day Cattle maybe the answer to the Unicorn legend.

If initially, the Bible described the Unicorn as a Bull or a Rhino, I’ll let you decide.

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Archeology

What No One Tells You About Nephilim and Giants?

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What No One Tells You About Nephilim and Giants

Is this a legend or a truth? Giants, the Nephilim once trod the earth’s surface, did they not? Can archaeology find the solution to this statement made for TV Shows and Scientists?

Genesis 6:4 in the Book of Genesis makes a very bizarre diversion from the tale of how man came to be.

It reveals:
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also, after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bear children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
King James Version (KJV).

The Guinness Book of World Records lists hundreds of men and women who have grown to heights of 8 feet or higher. Enormous individuals have always existed.

The most well-known giant in the Bible is a huge strong person named Goliath.

How tall was Goliath?

 the young Israeli shepherd David stood on the battlefield, facing off against the Philistine warrior giant Goliath.Everyone is familiar with the David and Goliath tale.

David uses a sling to launch a stone. Goliath suffers a brain injury. Before you know it, David has chopped off the head of Goliath and will soon become king.

Did a giant Goliath exist?

But how tall were the others, like David, in comparison to Goliath? Weren’t they all short?

During the iron period, a person would have been roughly a meter sixty tall.

Goliath is described in the Bible as being three meters tall and something else.

This exceeds the NBA scale in size. It’s roughly nine feet tall.

The narrative of Goliath is not only told in the Bible. The Goliath story is also told in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in a desert cave in 1947.

The scrolls give Goliath’s height as being two full cubits shorter than the Bible’s measurement of six cubits and a span.

Goliath is described as standing four cubits tall in the narrative of Samuel found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Goliath is roughly two meters tall, or 6′ 7″ or something, which is considerably closer to regular stature.

Even by modern standards, he was tall, but not absurdly so.

Most experts concur that the two distinct heights are the result of scribal mistakes because the

Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest copies of the Biblical scriptures.

Academics generally accept the Dead Sea Scrolls’ measurements.

Gath was the hometown of the Philistine warrior, as stated in the biblical writings.

Giant-sized bones were never discovered in Gath by archaeologists. And we won’t be able to know for sure without them. How large actually was Goliath?

What does the Bible mean by giants in the Holy Land?

A Giant with an entire arsenal of armor swords and spears

The Bible Specify yet another behemoth, even greater than Goliath.

The narrative of the second giant in the Bible is told in Deuteronomy 3:11 when he ruled his own biblical Kingdom.

Og, the Vashon king, engaged in combat with the Israelites in the Battle for the Holy Land but came up short.

According to the Bible, Og was the last survivor of a group of giants known as the Rephaim, and he slept in a bed that was 13 feet long by 6 feet wide.

There has never been a Middle Eastern skeleton discovered that was taller than 1.93 meters or 6 feet 4 inches.

Has a mistake been made?

The word “giant” does not appear in the Book of Genesis in the Genesis giants reference in the ancient Hebrew Bible.

Another word is employed, and that word has absolutely nothing to do with enormous.

A Case of miscommunication

Nephilim is the word that is used.

The Nephilim were supposedly the enormous offspring of fallen angels having sex with human women, according to Jewish and Christian legend.

The word “Nephilim” does not even translate as “large” or “giant” in Hebrew. Nephilim literally translates to “The Fallen Ones” in English.

Instead of adhering to the original nephilim, the Greeks who translated the Bible were inspired by their myth about a massive race of titans. The exact Greek equivalent would be “peptokotes.”

Additionally, the term “nephilim” had entirely been replaced with the term “giants” by the time the King James Version was composed in the 1600s.

What about these Nephilim, though?

Hebrew term for “nefal” This is slang for “fallen,” “lower down,” or “subpar.”

According to the Bible, some beings were entirely human in appearance and intelligence at the time of Adam, but they were not actual humans.

The Nephilim that are referenced in chapter six is referring to another life form that coexisted with early humans if chapter six of Genesis is actually recounting early human history.

The passage reads as follows when properly translated:

“There were Nephilim in those days; and also, after that, when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.”
– Hebrew Bible.

Starting to become evident from the verse is that whoever these nephilim were, they were some sort of hybrid offspring, the offspring of both “the sons of god” and “the daughters of men.”

Then again, who were these divine sons?

So far, according to the fossil record, two more hominids coexisted with Homo Sapiens, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

Neanderthals and contemporary humans already have very large skulls, so Denisovans have the widest skulls ever known. In addition to larger teeth and longer dental arches than humans.

A comparison of a Neanderthal, a Denisovan, and a contemporary human’s skulls.

Denisovans weren’t giants, but they were likely strong and stocky.

Denisovans are supposed to just be normal-sized men, between 5 and 6 feet, covered in black fur, and immensely strong.

Oceania had populations that had the highest percentage of ancient DNA, 2 percent Neanderthal and 5 percent Denisovan, according to a study from David Reich (HMS).

Could the Nephilim be the offspring of Neanderthals and humans?

Archaeologists in northern Israel have discovered an area where Neanderthals and humans coexisted.

The Neanderthals originated in Europe, whereas early humans known as homo sapiens originated in Africa and traveled north.

The two eventually collided at the Carmel Mountain Range some 60,000 years ago.

Archaeologists discovered evidence that the two societies may have coexisted in one of the caverns. Where they discovered human and neanderthal remains in the same stratigraphic strata.

That is how we can be certain they inhabited the same cave throughout the same period.

They had a similar culture since they engaged in similar activities and manner of life.

The food they were eating was the same, and they both buried their loved ones in the same manner.

Archaeology, however, cannot establish their mating.

a group of Neanderthals with humans close together by a cave mouth on north Israel desert

But a complete skeleton was found, which some experts believe to be a Neanderthal and others believe to be a Homo sapiens.

And yet another portion refers to him differently.

These bones could provide the answer to a biblical puzzle if they are the remains of some sort of hybrid hominid.

After their famous encounter at Mount Carmel, the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have been content for a while, but their partnership ended about thirty thousand years later.

The earth was populated by Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals went extinct.

Now that we know it was a mistranslation, we may understand why the Bible references a race of giants.

The King James Version interprets the phrase as “giants,” as opposed to the Jewish Publication Society version, which simply transliterates the Hebrew nephilim as “Nephilim.”

It was a race of nephilim, not a race of giants.

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