A Series Nobody Explained

~ Sunday, October 7, 2018 ~

In September 2012, Czech Television broadcast a three-part crime series called Ztracená brána — Lost Gate. Written by Arnošt Vašíček and directed by Jiří Strach, it told a story about a serial killer investigation in Prague that turned out to involve the Voynich manuscript, a secret order of guardians, and a prophecy about a gate that would open on a specific day. It received reasonable reviews, an IMDB rating of 7.8, and then largely disappeared from public discussion. Not many crime series disappear this completely when their reviews were this good.

I have been trying to explain that for six years.

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The Seventy and the Problem of Names

~ Sunday, June 3, 2018 ~

In the tenth chapter of Luke, Jesus appoints seventy — or seventy-two, depending on which manuscripts you follow — and sends them out in pairs to every town he is about to visit. They go. They return. They report. And then Luke never names a single one of them. The mission is recorded; the missionaries are not.

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The Lists That Don’t Agree

~ Sunday, January 14, 2018 ~

The four canonical gospels agree that Jesus had twelve apostles. They do not agree on who those twelve were. The discrepancy is not a matter of copyist error or manuscript corruption; it is present in the primary texts themselves, and it has been there from the beginning.

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