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19 April 2014

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The Twisted Genius

Leaves me with thoughts of the ultimate DLIC (detachment left in contact) and all that entails.

"Was crucified, died, and was buried:
He descended into hell;"

My old Irish boyo from the bogs of an intel sergeant used to sing, "Jesus was an A Team Leader."

Charles I

DLIC - that's an expanded acronym as cold as a tomb. Every day somebody here gives the civvies a little glimmer. Thanks

William R. Cumming

If memory serves the search for THE TOMB did find some possible sites but required excavation?

turcopolier

WRC

I am a member of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, the archeology is very clear. What is left of the tomb is in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher. pl

David Habakkuk

All,

Following the Hemingway, another retelling.

A classic novel of the Stalinist terror is 'The Master and Margarita’, by the former White Army doctor Mikhail Bulgakov. It mixes a story of the Devil – but he is a very odd devil – visiting contemporary Moscow, with a bizarre retelling of the meeting of Christ and Pilate.

The Pilate of ‘The Master and Margarita’ is a portrait of a certain kind of Stalinist official, but also has features reminiscent of Bulgakov’s depiction of the White General Khludov from ‘Flight’, his play of the Civil War, who talks obsessively with the shadow of one of the (many) soldiers he has had hanged.

Meanwhile Bulgakov’s Christ – Yeshua – has elements of a traditional Russian ‘holy fool’. He dreams of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, and thinks it is going to happen.

In Bulgakov’s retelling, Pilate does not want to crucify Christ, who he regards as a naive fool but also needs, indeed cannot really do without. Bound up with this is the fact that this Pilate both hates the Empire he serves, and cannot see any better alternative.

And, confronted by Yeshua’s denunciation of the spirit of that ‘evil empire’, Bulgakov's Pilate is simply too terrified not to let its system of ‘justice’ take its course, in particular as he knows that failure to do so will mean that Caiaphas denounces him to Tiberias.

A phrase that runs through the book – ‘cowardice is the greatest sin.’

turcopolier

All

I must confess that I have a weakness for the director's cut of "The Kingdom of Heaven" where all is explained and my taste for woman and salvation are nicely merged. pl

William R. Cumming

Thanks PL!

GulfCoastPirate

Wasn't Eva Green in that movie? Beautiful woman.

confusedponderer

Happy Easter to all of you.

Highlander

My Lord! Who would have thunk it?

There are a bunch of single malt swilling Jesus freaks among the hard asses around here.

Happy Easter to all. He is risen!

Thomas

Thank you for the book recommendation, I checked it out of the library yesterday and was up until 2am reading it.

So far I take the essence of the story to be the private conversation between Pilate and Caiaphas. When unable to convince the High Priest to release Yeshua over Bar Abba, Pilate damns him for unleashing of future horrors. This appears to be Bulgakov's testimony to his own generation of having rejected the holy fool (Tsar) you are dealing with the consequences of choosing the blood shedding Nationalist (Bolsheviks).

Charles I

"I once fought for two days with an arrow in my testicle."

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