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Editor's note: This article is cross-posted at JohnHanlonReviews.com “The road to despair is becoming ever easier,” actor Brendan Gleeson (Braveheart, Into the Storm) noted recently during a roundtable interview in Washington D.C. The three-time Golden Globe nominated actor was in the city to promote his new religious film Calvary and both he and writer/director John Michael McDonagh sat down to talk to film critic Nell Minow and I about the project. Gleeson stars in the drama as Father James, a local priest in a small Irish community who is faced with a deadly threat as the film begins. A male...

U2 frontman Bono talks about his faith and answers the question "Who is Jesus?" in the video below. Click play to watch. Link Here with Video (2 mins 46 secs)

The canonical Bible is filled with mysterious characters, many of whom drop in for a cameo, do their thing, and then slide out, never to be heard from again. Some are merely extras, but some have a contextual presence that begs further examination. And some are, well, just weird. 10 MelchizedekProbably the single most mysterious figure in the Bible, Melchizedek was a priest-king of Salem (later known as Jerusalem) in the time of Abram (Abraham), suggesting a religious organization, complete with ritual and hierarchy, that predated the Jewish nation and their priestly lineage from the tribe of Levi. He is...

Barak Hussein Obama's introduction to the world in 2004 occurred on July 27 July. The date on the Jewish Calendar was Tisha b'Av. The 9th of Av. The same date of virtually all major Jewish Calamities occurred: (see them below) The First Temple built by King Solomon and the Kingdom of Judah was destroyed The Second Temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was destroyed by the Romans The Romans crushed Bar Kokhba's revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 100,000 Jews Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Roman commander Turnus Rufus plowed the site of the Temple and the...

Twelfth-century Hindu temple breaks with tradition after Supreme Court rules against two Brahmin families who have claimed exclusive ancestral rights to choosing priests for centuriesA twelfth-century Hindu temple that attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually is to admit women and lower-caste men as priests for the first time. The historic break with tradition came about after India's Supreme Court ruled against the two Brahmin families, Badve and Utpat, who had provided the temple's priests for centuries. The court ruled against their claim to exclusive ancestral rights over the earnings and rituals at Vitthal Rukmini temple, in the town of...

For some, “God doesn’t believe in atheists” is just a clever (nor not-so-clever) jab directed against the faithless in our culture. But based on the findings of secular researchers, the statement may not be so far from reality. That is because multidisciplinary research is increasingly backing the idea that human beings are hard-wired to believe in God, according to Science 2.0 writer Nury Vittachi in an article titled, “Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke.” “[A]theism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” Vittachi cites avowed atheist Graham Lawton as writing in New...

The Mystery of the Copper Scroll By Chris Mitchell CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief Saturday, July 11, 2009 JERUSALEM, Israel - In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd wandered the hills of Qumran in search of a missing sheep. He threw a stone into a cave, hoping to drive the lost animal outside. Instead, the sound of shattered pottery drew the shepherd inside the cave. There he stumbled on the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century: the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Copper Scroll In the years that followed, archaeologists found eleven caves and more than 900 documents here at Qumran....

Tengrists pray to their ancestors, to the spirits of nature, and to Tengri, the eternal blue sky, to cleanse and empower them. (Photo: David Trilling) Tengrists believe that the holy tenants of their faith are found in Kyrgyz traditions, culture, and national games such as horse wrestling and kyz-kuumai (“catch the girl”), where a young man and young women race on horseback while the man tries to steal a kiss. (Photo: David Trilling) Arslanbek Maliyev grew disillusioned with Islam when he realized foreign missionaries who came to Kyrgyzstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union were more concerned with building...

It’s not much of a stretch to believe that getting stoned in the Stone Age was as popular among prehistoric Europeans as it is now. However, new evidence suggests that marijuana, mushrooms, alcohol and other mood-altering substances were used for more than zonking with Zonk – they played crucial roles in spiritual practices, especially burial rituals and communications with the after-world.Elisa Guerra-Doce of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain has documented the cultural contexts in which forms of alcohol and drugs were used in prehistoric Europe. The forms she looked for were fossilized leaves and seeds of psychoactive plants, residues...

The GREAT PROPHET MOHAMMED was mentioned by name in the forgotten gospel of Barnabas,who was one of the disciples of THE GREAT PROPHET JESUS CHRIST. The gospel is here: www.barnabas.net/ in the aforementioned site,make a search for the word "mohammed". heres a sample: from part 97 Then said the priest: `How shall the Messiah be called, and what sign shall reveal his coming?' Jesus answered: `The name of the Messiah is admirable, for God himself gave him the name when he had created his soul, and placed it in a celestial splendour. God said: "Wait Mohammed; for thy sake I...

Iran’s Basij Press is claiming that a version of the Gospel of Barnabas, found in 2000, will prove that Islam is the final and righteous religion and the revelation will cause the collapse worldwide of Christianity Turkish authorities believe the text could be an authentic version of the Gospel of Barnabas, one of Jesus’ apostles and an associate of the apostle Paul. This version of the Barnabas Gospel was written in the 5th or 6th century and it predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammad and the religion of Islam, the Basij Press claims. The Christian world, it says, denies...

Iran’s Basij Press is claiming a purported Gospel of Barnabas, discovered in 2000, will prove that Islam is the final and righteous religion, causing the collapse worldwide of Christianity. In the Barnabas text held by Turkey, chapter 41 states: “God has hidden himself as Archangel Michael ran them (Adam and Eve) out of heaven, (and) when Adam turned, he noticed that at top of the gateway to heaven, it was written ‘La elah ela Allah, Mohamad rasool Allah,’” meaning Allah is the only God and Muhammad his prophet. According to the Barnabas Gospel in Turkey’s hands, Jesus was never crucified,...

<p>KORMAKITI, Cyprus - If the people of this remote village were to travel back to Jesus' time and hear him preach, they would not need an interpreter to understand the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the prodigal son.</p>

An example of ancient Hebrew script...a derivation of proto-Canaanite During the years I've been researching [My name is Reuven; An English teacher by profession, I...possess an insatiable desire to research anything pertaining to my Jewish roots. Born [and] raised in New York City, I have been an Israeli citizen for more than 30 years, and reside in the charming Galilian town of Karmiel] the Hebrew language and alphabet, I've been astounded to discover that the overwhelming majority of Jews and Christians - even observant ones - have been unaware of the existance of the original ancient Hebrew alphabet, the script...

A secret Bible in which Jesus is believed to predict the coming of the Prophet Muhammad to Earth has sparked serious interest from the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI is claimed to want to see the 1,500-year-old book, which many say is the Gospel of Barnabas, that has been hidden by the Turkish state for the last 12 years. The £14million handwritten gold lettered tome, penned in Jesus' native Aramaic language, is said to contain his early teachings and a prediction of the Prophet's coming. The leather-bound text, written on animal hide, was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation...

The minister of culture and tourism on Thursday confirmed media reports suggesting that a 1,500-year-old Bible that was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000 is being kept in Ankara today. According to media reports on Thursday, the Bible was seized from a gang smuggling artifacts during a police operation in southern Turkey in 2010 and reportedly preserves its originality and many traces of the period in which it originated. The gang was reportedly convicted of smuggling various items seized during the operation, including the Bible, and all the artifacts were kept in a safe at an...

NICOSIA (Reuters Life!) - Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus. The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old. The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script. Experts were however divided...

Dallas Theological Seminary professor Daniel B. Wallace has said that newly discovered fragments from the Gospel of Mark could be the oldest New Testament artifacts ever found and date from the first century A.D., or during the time of eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection. Wallace announced his findings at UNC Chapel Hill on Feb. 1, 2012, during a debate in front of 1,000 people, where he unveiled that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered – six of them he said were probably from the second century, and one of them, the Gospel of Mark, probably from the first. The...

The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years. High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots. The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and...

BREAKING: Archaeologists Report 1st Direct Evidence of Jesus