mysteries magazine reviews
DESCRIPTION
These book reviews by Robert Lebling were published in Mysteries Magazine between 2003 and 2007.TRANSCRIPT
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 1/8
The Lost Treasure of King Juba
The Evidence of Africans in America Before Columbus
By Frank Joseph ISBN: 1-59143-006-2$18, Bear & Co., 2003
This is a story about a treasure cave. Tales about gold and jewels hidden in chambers
beneath the earth have been part of human folklore since earliest days. Remember Ali
Baba’s cave? Occasionally such underground hiding places turn out to be real, and once
in a rare while they actually contain treasure.
This book about the mysterious Burrows Cave in southern Illinois by Frank
Joseph, editor of Ancient American magazine, is tantalizing and frustrating. The historical
hypothesis underlying it – refugees from Roman-era Morocco fleeing to the New World
– is fairly well constructed and described. The problem begins when the story moves to
Illinois. Then things begin to unravel.
According to the book’s theory, the ruling elite of Mauretania (present-day
Morocco and Algeria) fled by sea from attacking Roman legions. They took with them
the royal Mauretanian treasures, including the gold sarcophagi of Queen Cleopatra Selene
(daughter of the famous Cleopatra) and King Juba II. They also took Juba’s
“encyclopedic library,” assembled from all parts of the ancient world by this renowned
scholar king and man of science. In about 40 AD, the Mauretanian fleet sailed west, usingthe same prevailing currents that carried Columbus to the Americas 14 centuries later.
The fleet sailed through the Caribbean and up the Mississippi to the Ohio River,
then the Wabash, then the Embarras River. The Mauretanians settled in what is now
Richland County, Illinois. They improved a network of natural caverns, and buried the
royal treasures and library in its chambers.
Fast-forward to April 2, 1982: Russell E. Burrows, a woodworker and amateur
caver, discovers the cave of the Mauretanians. He finds mounds of gold coins and ingots,
a bowl of diamonds, golden life-sized statues, gold coffins, armor, black discs carved
with human portraits and jugs crammed with scrolls written in a strange language.
Well, more than 20 years have passed since the alleged discovery, and Burrows
Cave remains an enigma. Controversy continues to swirl over three points:
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 2/8
(1) Where is the cave? Burrows apparently blew up the entrance, and won’t say where it
is. He seems to fear being prosecuted for violating burial laws.
(2) What happened to the gold? Some claim Burrows removed it, melted it down and
sold it. He says he put it back in the cave after photographing it.
(3) What are the black discs? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of portraits of
Roman-era heads in profile. Many are now kept at the Sonotabac Indian Mound Museum
in Vincennes, Indiana. Some claim they are modern frauds.
For this reviewer, another question nags: What happened to the vast “encyclopedic
library” of Juba II? The only hint is the report of some scrolls in jars inside the cave.
Burrows claims he hasn’t touched these. But they are the one thing that could prove the
legitimacy of his claims, if the old scripts can be identified and the scrolls subjected to
carbon-14 dating.
- Bob Lebling
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 3/8
The Magdalene Legacy
The Jesus and Mary Bloodline Conspiracy
By Laurence Gardner ISBN: 0-00-720186-9
$27.95, Element, 2005
For fans of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, here is a serious look at the facts and
fictions behind one of the novel’s central conspiracy threads – that Jesus Christ married
Mary Magdalene and created a royal bloodline that moved from Palestine to the south of
France. The author uses very careful research to show us which elements of the novel are
based on reality and which are simply imaginative fictional tools used to advance the plot
of Brown’s book.
Gardner, a historian and author of several books on the Holy Grail and other ancient mysteries, makes a persuasive case for the claim that Mary Magdalene was
actually Jesus’s wife. He shows us that the Magdalene was not a prostitute, as Church
leaders have claimed. Her important role in the early Christian community was
suppressed and she personally was discredited during a political battle for control of the
Church between the original Jerusalem-based followers of Jesus, led by his brother James
the Just, and the Rome-based faction led by Peter and Paul. Eventually the Rome-based
leadership prevailed, and the Jerusalem church was ruthlessly suppressed. Much of this
story has never really been a secret, Gardner maintains, but the evidence has been a bit
difficult to pull together. This book does a creditable job in this area.
Jesus and Mary Magdalene had three children, according to the evidence: a
daughter Tamar (Damaris), and two sons, Jesus II Justus and Josephes. Jesus Christ
appears to have survived the Crucifixion due to a deception (as the Muslims have always
contended), carried out with the help of Simon Magus, and lived for many more years,
dying in about AD 73. He is said to have continued his ministry, preaching in such places
as Crete, Malta and central Asia Minor – perhaps even India.
The Magdalene went to Provence with her children, under the protection of James
the Just, who had been discredited as leader of the “heretical” Jerusalem-based church.
James, incidentally, went by another name familiar to all of us: Joseph of Arimathea. The
bloodline of the Desposyni or “royal family” of Jesus (descended from the Hebrew House
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 4/8
4
of David) was reputedly carried on in Provence by Christ’s second son Josephes, and
became one of the lines that made up the Merovingian dynasty of medieval France.
Gardner sets forth his arguments with skill and with abundant footnotes. He also
deflates some of the claims set forth in The Da Vinci Code:
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s own notes about his painting, The Last Supper , prove that
the feminine-looking figure to his right is not Mary Magdalene, but indeed a
youthful John, whose appearance is in keeping with Renaissance tradition.
• Jesus’s “Beloved Disciple” was not the Magdalene but Lazarus, whose given
name was Simon Zelotes, and who was one of those in Jesus’s circle who
accompanied the Magdalene to Provence.
• The Priory of Sion registered as a French society in 1956 by Pierre Plantard and
several others, was essentially a hoax, as was the false genealogy it propagated
claiming Plantard was descended from the Merovingians.
Gardner also presents us with a number of other historical surprises, most
convincingly argued. He asserts that Mary Magdalene, far from being a prostitute, was
raised as a type of nun in an ascetic religious community at Qumran, to be joined in
dynastic marriage with eventually with Jesus. The wedding feast at Cana, mentioned in
the Gospels, was the celebration of this betrothal. Mary Magdalene is also identified as
the author of the Gospel of John.
The Da Vinci Code, of course, is a novel, whose plot was woven from various
historical conspiracy theories, some of them persuasive and some not so convincing. This
book, on the other hand, has a much greater burden, since it purports to be true. In my
opinion, the author has done a fine job of making his case.
-- Bob Lebling
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 5/8
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus
Translation from the Coptic, introduction and commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup ISBN: 1-59477-046-8
$14.95, Inner Traditions, 2005
In AD 397 at the Council of Carthage, the bishops of the Christian Church, under the
direction of the Emperor Constantine, compiled the collection of scriptures we call the
New Testament. This collection consisted of gospels, epistles and other writings related
to the life of Jesus Christ and his Apostles. Many works did not make the cut at Carthage,
either because they were considered spurious or because they did not meet the doctrinal
requirements of the Roman Church.
The rejected works became known as the Apocrypha. The Church did its best toroot out and destroy these writings, but a number of them survived. One of the survivors
is the Gospel of Thomas, one of 53 ancient parchments known as the Nag Hammadi
library, discovered in the desert of upper Egypt in 1945, which have revolutionized the
study of early Christianity.
The Gospel of Thomas is not a narrative of the life of Jesus, but rather a collection
of his reputed sayings and aphorisms. The document was first translated into English
from Sahidic Coptic, an Egyptian tongue that succeeded the language of the Pharaohs, in
1959. The Apostle Didymus Judas Thomas is perhaps best known to us today as
“Doubting Thomas,” because, as the story goes, he refused to believe that Jesus had risen
from the dead until he put his hand in his lord’s wounds.
In this edition, French scholar Jean-Yves Leloup has given us a new translation of
the Gospel of Thomas, alongside the original Coptic text, as well as a commentary on
each of the 114 logia, or sayings, of Jesus (here called by his Aramaic name Yeshua) that
were collected by Thomas.
Here, for example, is one of the shorter logia (singular: logion):
Logion 82
Yeshua said:
Whoever is near to me
Is near to the fire.
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 6/8
6
Whoever is far from me
Is far from the Kingdom.
This particular saying demonstrates well that the Gospel of Thomas is both
independent of the canonical New Testament and parallel to it. The saying was quoted by
a number of early Christian writers, including Origen.
Interestingly, in the Gospel of Thomas (Logion 12), Jesus names his brother
James, and not Peter, as Christ’s successor on earth. He tells his disciples: “Go to James
the Just: All that concerns heaven and earth is his domain.” There was in fact a
Jerusalem-based Christian church under James’s leadership, which eventually lost out to,
and was eliminated by, the Rome-based church of Peter and Paul.
The Gospel of Thomas, like the rest of the Nag Hammadi parchments, is an
example of Gnostic Christianity, a strain of belief that focuses on the quest for self-
knowledge, and on becoming one with the universe and God. This approach was
considered heresy by the Roman Church.
Leloup’s commentaries focus on these reputed aphorisms of Jesus as examples of
Gnostic wisdom, compares them with canonical New Testament materials and presents
them as nuggets for personal meditation.
Even those who do not choose to use the Gospel of Thomas for their own self-
enlightenment will find this material fascinating. The sayings, presented by Thomas asthe actual words of Jesus, offer a different and refreshing glimpse into the early Christian
world.
-- Bob Lebling
.
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 7/8
Earth Under Fire
Humanity’s Survival of the Ice Age
By Paul LaViolette, Ph.D. ISBN: 1-59143-052-6
$20.00, Bear & Company, 2005
LaViolette, who holds degrees in physics and systems science, is president of the
Starburst Foundation, a scientific research organization based on his stunning theories
about the cosmos. For a number of years he was praised by conventional scientists for his
brilliance and creativity. Now he is viewed by these scientists with some suspicion.
LaViolette’s papers still appear in mainstream science journals. But he makes the
establishment nervous, because he believes the Big Bang Theory is obsolete, and because
he is convinced that the earth has been – and will continue to be -- slammed periodically by cosmic-ray “superwaves” from the core of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
These superwaves, according to the theory, are generated by periodic galactic
core explosions. They push vast quantities of cosmic dust to the far reaches of the
galaxy’s disc. The explosions are said to occur about every ten thousand years. The last
one, according to LaViolette, heated up the sun and brought on a period of global
warming that ended the last Ice Age. That cosmic event occurred about twelve thousand
years ago, and lasted “anywhere from several hundred to several thousand years.” He
suggests that we may be overdue for another one.
LaViolette was the first to discover high concentrations of cosmic dust in polar
ice cores dating back to the Ice Age. This discovery has not gone unchallenged; some
opponents have claimed the ice samples were somehow contaminated – but no one has
been able to prove it.
Earth Under Fire argues that human memories of the last galactic superwave and
the cataclysms it wrought are encoded in a wealth of ancient legends and myths,
including those of the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Hindus and even Native
American peoples like the Mayans and Aztecs. LaViolette has been developing this
hypothesis since the 1970s, and has marshaled an impression array of information to
support it. He was first drawn to this notion by the celestial zodiac, when he discovered
that the arrow of Sagittarius and the stinging tail of Scorpio were both pointing toward
5/14/2018 Mysteries Magazine Reviews - slidepdf.com
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mysteries-magazine-reviews 8/8
8
the center or core of the Milky Way. Of course, when we deal with myths and legends,
we are in the realm of metaphor and imagination. It’s pretty unstable territory.
On a scientific level, LaViolette paints a fascinating picture of the cosmos, once
the reader has mastered his often-complex fundamentals. Basic to his cosmology is a
physics theory he calls subquantum kinetics, which still has far to go in winning support
from the scientific establishment. Subquantum kinetics provides the justification for the
galactic core explosions. He sees these eruptions not as evidence of black holes, as some
Big Bang theorists would assume, but as examples of the continuous creation of matter
and energy, a hypothesis advanced years ago by astronomers supporting the Steady State
theory of the universe, such as Sir James Jeans and Sir Fred Hoyle.
To understand where LaViolette is going with this book, it helps to read his
earlier work, Beyond the Big Bang: Ancient Myth and the Science of Continuous
Creation (1995). A concept explained in that book, etherons, furnishes the underpinning
for the constant creation of energy and matter in the galactic center of each galaxy.
LaViolette describes etherons as extremely small subatomic particles that constitute the
“transmuting ether” permeating the universe. These etherons, which have neither mass
nor charge, can change from one state to another in “chemical-like” reactions, and in fact
are responsible for the creation of matter and energy.
Readers may recall that the “ether” is an ancient concept that goes back beyondAristotle. The concept of a pervading substance in the universe has been largely rejected
by modern science, but it can’t totally be ruled out, as LaViolette argues. His etherons,
however, have a problem that this reviewer hasn’t been able to resolve.
LaViolette says that because etherons have no mass or charge, they cannot be
measured or even detected, and “thus we cannot know for sure the true nature of
etherons” ( Beyond the Big Bang , p. 61). If that’s so, then we have to take the very
existence of etherons – and the entire theory of subquantum kinetics -- on faith. That
doesn’t leave us much to be certain about.
-- Bob Lebling