Posted on 04/01/2014 11:54:00 AM PDT by NYer
Just in time for Easter, from The New York Daily News:
Two historians claim the search for the Holy Grail is over.
The famous cup used by Jesus Christ during the Last Supper was identified in a book written by Margarita Torres Jose Manuel Ortega del Rio, titled “Kings of the Grail” and published last week, as the jewel-encrusted goblet on display at the San Isidro Basilica in the northwestern Spanish city of Leon.
News of the discovery caused masses of people to flock to the historic church to view the precious chalice – forcing the operators of the museum to pull the piece from the exhibit, according to French news agency Agence France-Presse.
The museum’s director told AFP that they were looking for space large enough to accommodate the crowds.
“It was in a very small room where it was not possible to admire it to the full,” Raquel Jaen told the agency.
There are more than 200 golden cups that have been thought to be the one used during the Last Supper, but Torres and del Rio identified the Spanish goblet during a three-year investigation that started with a piece of Egyptian parchment found at the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the agency reported.
What he probably did was work in the limestone mines which abound over there. They still do today.
Working in a mine as a common laborer would, in the minds of most theologians, be more of a job for the poor. Jesus was part of his family so HE too probably worked in the many mines.
From Google:
The highlands of Israel and the Palestinian territories are primarily underlain by sedimentary limestone, dolomite and dolomitic limestone. The stone quarried for building purposes, ranging in color from white to pink, yellow and tawny, is known collectively as Jerusalem stone.
Soft Senonian limestone is found to the east of Jerusalem, and has long been used as an inexpensive building material. Stone of the Cenomanian layers, known in Arabic as mizzi ahmar and mizzi yahudz, is far more durable than Senonian limestone, but is very hard and was expensive to quarry using pre-modern methods.
Turonian layers yield mizze helu and meleke, the most prized building stones. The thin layered mizze helu is easily quarried and worked.
Meleke is soft and easy to chisel, yet hardens with exposure to the atmosphere and becomes highly durable. It was used for the great public buildings of antiquity, and for the construction of the Islamic period city walls and buildings.
Ahh.. sorry, missed the reference.
:o) GOOD one.
Perhaps it's time to read the article?
I was sort of thinking the same thing, as those jewels looked tacked one. USUALLY expensive gemstones are embedded deeply and securely INTO the object.
However, my knowledge of grails and other EXPENSIVE things is very limited. I couldn't point out a CHALICE if my life depended on it.
I DO know expensive stones worn when in jewelry....THAT I know.
A fancy grail? With gold and jewels? Did you actually read the article or simply look at the photo and then post your comment? Had you read the article, you would have learned that the cup is made of alabaster and dates to the 1st century. The gold and jewels are part of a 2nd cup that holds the original. Did you not catch this?
It wasn’t his cup.
I used to work as a tour guide to Christian religious sites, in Israel, so oddly enough I am very familiar with this.
The Holy Grail was (allegedly) the Seder cup of Joseph of Arithmea.
By all historical accounts, he was quite wealthy, and his Seder cup would have undoubtedly been a fine piece, probably silver.
MY bad. I’ll be more careful from now on.
“That is not the cup of a carpenter!”
Guys, read the article. It’s two simple stone cups which were combined with the gold long after they were made.
thanks Jewbacca,
>>”The Holy Grail was (allegedly) the Seder cup of Joseph of Arithmea.”
So we could have a theory for both a simple cup and an expensive one.
I think we’d need to go more into the research and evidence used here.
are you Indiana Jones?
No thanks. Already got one.
The actual "grail cup" is encased in the gold and jewels. . . it's made out of onyx. . . Stone. When Jesus might have used it, it looked like a stone bowl. That COULD have been the cup used by a carpenter at a home of a wealthier man hosting a meal.
Not ceramic. . . Stone. Onyx.
Gibbon was being facetious or truly did not know what he was talking about. An inventory of relics done recently that took measurements of the relics of the "True Cross" found that there is sufficient surviving wood (if all are genuine, which is doubtful) to only reconstruct about two-thirds of the Patibulem (the horizontal cross piece). The Roman practice was to leave the Stripes (the upright posts) of their crosses permanently in place and only requiring the condemned person to carry the 100 pound cross piece to his or her execution site. The anti-relic remark by Gibbon was simply not based on fact, but there was a thriving market in fake relics for gullible pilgrims.
Exactly right. In fact, it is agreed by most historians that Jesus' arrival on a donkey was to mock the high priests. This was enhanced by the throngs of people laying palms before him. He was entering the Holy City for the Passover Festival as an actual King would. It was the beginning of his week of agitation in Jerusalem. It's the beginning of what got him killed.
Jesus was an activist (of the good kind). He was a leader, a man of action. He got the job done.
Leave it to the Catholic church...They invent a bejeweled golden chalice and then spend centuries looking for it...HaHa...It never existed...But I'll bet they come up with one anyway...
(Shakes head)
Was on the way out the door and didn’t read the whole article, my bad.
Try to correct that behavior in the future.
Thank you for that interesting information on a Seder cup.
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