Fire and Ice 2: Geothermal Boogaloo

The first synchronicity that registered with me as such had to do with Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice." It happened around 1991, and I discussed it in my 2019 post "Fire and Ice."

I was reminded of this today when I received an English magazine with this on the cover:

I also noticed "The Little Helicopter on the Red Planet" in connection with "The Gospel of Luke on Lobsterback." In that post, I discussed the transportation of the "Gospel of Luke" from "Britain" to "Armorica" on "lobsterback" -- all in scare quotes because probably none of those terms is meant literally. "Snails" were involved in this transportation. A helicopter could also be used to transport things across the sea, and the first element in that word is the combining form of Helix, which is a genus of snails. In the post I noted that lobsterback was historical slang for a British soldier, referring to the red coats they wore, and that previous dreams and syncs had introduced the idea of "Britain as another planet." The planet the lobsterbacks are from would naturally be the Red Planet, just as the planet the little skinny creatures are from is the Little Skinny Planet. In fact, in my post "Britain as another planet," I explicitly bring in Mars, referencing, among other things, a Muse music video featuring "a planet that looks like Mars but turns out to be Britain."

Coming back to the main cover story, though, it sent me back to my 2019 post, which included a still from This Is Spinal Tap. (That absolutely perfect movie, together with The Princess Bride, is why I will never denounce Rob Reiner, no matter how much of an ass he has made of himself since then.) The scene I was referencing was this:

Derek Smalls says of his bandmates:

We're very lucky in a sense that we've got two visionaries in the band. You know, David and Nigel are both, like, like poets, you know, like Shelley and Byron and people like that. They're two totally distinct types of visionaries. It's like fire and ice, basically, you see, and I feel my role in the band is to be kind of in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.

Rewatching the clip just now, I noticed the Luke reference ("lukewarm water") and the names Shelley and Byron. Byron is, by a very wide margin, the English-language poet I have read the most and whose poetic style has most influenced my own. I haven't read too much of him recently, but just a few days ago, as documented in "No more a roving," I was nudged by Claire to take down his collected works and see what page was bookmarked. It was "So, we'll go no more a roving." This poem is very prominently featured in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, so that's another link to the Red Planet.

I'm fairly indifferent to Shelley as a poet, though he's been in the sync stream from time to time, mostly in connection with "The Sensitive Plant." When I heard the name Shelley in the video, though, my thoughts immediately went to a children's book I have at my school called What's in My Classroom? It's a very short, very simple book, only 10 pages, in which children give each other clues and try to guess what in the classroom they're thinking of. It ends with this:

Shelly appears to be a red-eared slider, a fairly close relative of the box turtle. In "Fruit grown from a ruby in a cup (with a turtle)," I recount a vision involving a box turtle and compare it to a story by William Wright about a Herbie the Hamster. Herbie lives in a glass enclosure which apparently has no lid, because in the end he succeeds in climbing out of it. Shelly the Turtle, as you can see, also lives in a glass enclosure with no lid, and also gets out of it in the end.

Also, take a look at the books the children are reading on p. 9. The boy's book has pictures of golden autumn leaves -- a major theme here recently. The girl's book has golden flowers, something William Wright has just posted about in "Gold and Red Stars: El-Anor and the Sawtooth Stone." His "Red Star" reference is of course another link to the Red Planet.

Finally, I should mention the possible significance of the book title What's in My Classroom? In a comment on his post "Behold, God's gift! Peter-Pharazon to come back together with John," William Wright links the idea of a classroom with the Mountain (i.e., in his reading, planet) of the Lord's House:

In my story, shoes are associated with reach the Peak, just as changing one's shoes in William's school is also required to ascend the stairs to the classroom. The classroom reference at the top of the stairs is interesting because Isaiah mentions that when the Mountain of the Lord's House is again established in the top of the Mountains, people will want to go there so they can learn, like one does in a classroom.

Update (later the same day): Hours after posting the above, I was preparing for a class and saw these three pictures:

All together on the page, there’s a turtle, a snail, Mars, and a red coat (“lobsterback”).

I also got word that a new student is going to join one of my classes, and the English name he uses is Byron.

Then this evening I checked Slate Star Codex for the first time in months and found a newly posted review of Byron’s Don Juan written in the style of the poem itself.

(Don Juan has its moments, but writing it in clunky pentameter stanzas was a mistake. Tetrameter with an irregular rhyme scheme suited Byron perfectly, and a Don Juan written in Giaour-style verse would have been brilliant. No, I’m not going to do it myself.)

Pushed to Zion with songs of everlasting joy

The bovine symbolism associated with the House of Joseph comes from this verse in Deuteronomy:

[Joseph's] glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh (Deut. 33:17).

As I have noted before, the unicorns of the King James Version is a rhinoceros in the Vulgate and a wild ox in most modern English translations. The classic wild ox, the aurochs, is now extinct, but one of its closest relatives, the wild yak (Bos mutus) still lives in the wild. As noted in "The horrible hairy homeward-hurrying hogs of Hieronymus," these three animals -- the unicorn, the rhinoceros, and the yak -- appear together on the cover of Animalia.

Note that in Deuteronomy, Joseph uses his figurative "horns" to "push the people together to the ends of the earth." This is curious phrasing -- how can they be "together" at "the ends of the earth"? -- and has been variously interpreted. The most common reading seems to be that Joseph will "push" (i.e., gore) all the nations, including even those at the ends of the earth, and that he will attack them all at once, or "together."

Today, in my regular daily scripture study, I read an allusion to this imagery in one of the revelations of Joseph Smith:

Keep these sayings, for they are true and faithful; and thou shalt magnify thine office, and push many people to Zion with songs of everlasting joy upon their heads (D&C 66:11).

Here, pushing people together means driving them together and causing them to gather in a group, as a sheepdog would do. That the "pushing" is not a violent attack is evident in the "songs of everlasting joy" upon the heads of those pushed. If the first part of the verse alludes to Deuteronomy, the second part borrows a turn of phrase from Isaiah:

Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35:6-10).

The tongue of the dumb shall sing. The wild yak, as mentioned above, is Bos mutus ("mute ox"), in contrast to its domestic cousin Bos grunniens ("grunting ox"). Repeated references to water -- "waters break out," "a pool," "springs of water" -- suggest that the "highway" by which the pushed-together ransomed will return is the one the Vikings called the "whale-road."

Which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Animalia:

According to Etymonline, yodel is "from German jodeln, from dialectal German jo, an exclamation of joy." Songs of everlasting joy.

The sails of the yaks' yachts are decorated with various things beginning with Y: a Yeoman Warder in a yin-yang symbol, a yeti, an egg with a yolk, a yoke, and even another little yacht. There's also a poker hand -- Two of Hearts, Three of Diamonds, Two of Clubs, Ace of Clubs, Ace of Hearts -- whose connection to the letter Y is a mystery to me. I've looked through glossaries of poker terms and lists of card games but can't find anything beginning with that letter.

Notice that if you go straight down from the egg, you will find a yo-yo. In "Leo, Egbert, Peter," I posted this photo of the shoe shelves at my school.

I was focused on the three names in the post title, but a commenter (whose name happens to be extremely close to Leo Egbert) asked about the lower shelf. Only one name is visible there but isn't very legible in the photo. He thought it might be Sarah, but in fact it's Ivan. The name directly below Egbert is obscured by a pair of slippers, but it's this:

Quite a few kids in Taiwan use Yoyo as their "English" name; I blame that cellist. In the William Wright post that led to my posting photos of shoe shelves in the first place, he interpreted Egbert as meaning "famous egg" and connected it with Humpty Dumpty -- famous as a broken egg that can't be put back together. On the Y page, we have a broken egg above a yo-yo. I suppose the yoke between them even suggests the heel ends of a pair of slippers.

Besides the poker hand, one other element in the picture puzzled me because of its lack of any obvious connection to the letter Y:

This is a reference back to "The Gospel of Luke on lobsterback," keeping in mind that the Gospel of Luke is symbolized by the ox or bull (or yak, same difference). The Beefeater on the sail, dressed in red, is a link to the other meaning of lobsterback, a red-coated British soldier.

The Gospel of Luke on lobsterback

In Animalia, as discussed in "This episode is brought to you by the letters G and L," the Gospel of Luke appears on the back of a lobster. No, not like the Judgement Tablet on the back of a cicada! It's in ordinary book form, if a bit thicker than the Gospel of Luke as we know it, but the book is supported by a lobster.

I've already written a bit about the possible significance of the Gospel of Luke, but I didn't say anything about the lobster. It's been nagging at me, though, and I finally figured out its relevance: "The Lobster-quadrille"! The G and L post prominently featured a griffin, also shown together with something representing sacred records, and the Gryphon in Alice is the one who, with the Mock-turtle, sings "The Lobster-quadrille." (That word quadrille originally meant "one of a set of four," which has obvious relevance to the Gospel of Luke.) In the song, lobsters are thrown out to sea from England, so far that they nearly reach the northern shore of France:

You can really have no notion how delightful it will be

When they take us [the whiting and the snail] up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!

. . .

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

The further off from England the nearer is to France --

Normandy is on the northern shore of France, and of course there were later Normans in England as well, so there is possible relevance to Minbad the Mailer. Besides being written correspondence, mail is also a kind of armor, and Normandy and Brittany belong to what was once known as Armorica -- so perhaps the Norman Mailer is sending "mail" (in the form of sacred writings) back to his homeland of Armorica. What was once just called mail is nowadays known as snail mail, and "The Lobster-quadrille" makes it clear that the lobsters being thrown toward France are accompanied by snails.

Where was I reading about Armorica recently? Oh, right, Rimbaud's A Season in Hell:

Hélas, l’Evangile a passé! l’Evangile! l’Evangile. J’attends Dieu avec gourmandise. Je suis de race inférieure de toute éternité. Me voici sur la plage armoricaine.

Alas! The Gospel has gone by! The Gospel! The Gospel. Greedily I await God. I am of an inferior race for all eternity. Here I am on the Breton shore.

Louise Varèse has "the Breton shore" in her translation, but the original French is clearly referring more generally to Armorica as a whole. That geographical reference was all I had remembered as possibly relevant, but when I looked it up I saw that it is juxtaposed with "The Gospel" repeated three times. The third Gospel is, of course, that of Luke.

So we have Rinbad (Rimbaud-Tolkien) waiting on the Armorican shore for the Gospel of Light to be sent over from Britain on lobsterback by Minbad the Norman Mailer. Lobsterback is 18th-century slang for a British soldier, so perhaps it is soldiers who travel from Britain with the Gospel. Or perhaps I should say from "Britain," in scare-quotes, as labels do not always mean what they seem. When I dream, I dream about books -- and one of the books I've dreamed about, back in 2020, was titled Britain as Another Planet. In "How can these books not exist?" I describe looking at some books inside a dome-shaped indigo building (supposedly a "convenience store") called Blue Harbor:

One of these was a "round book" -- that is, its pages were circular rather than rectangular -- and I wanted to look through it but couldn't because it was shrink-wrapped. The others were ordinary books and didn't look very new. I perused the spines and noticed these three titles:

• Things Soon to Come
• Britain as Another Planet
• I Tried to Be Parents

Rereading that now, I was struck by the "round book," since a recent dream has featured Plates (sacred records) in the form of a round disc.And "I wanted to look through it but couldn't because it was shrink-wrapped" -- what is that but another way of saying, "I cannot read a sealed book"?

This idea that a "round book" of plates has something to do with the "Gospel of Luke" received minor but interesting synchronistic confirmation today. I was, for complex psychological reasons, praying the Rosary while lying supine on a tile floor. On Thursdays, one prays the Luminous Mysteries, or Mysteries of Light (Luke means "light"), and as I was doing the third of these five meditations (Luke is the third Gospel), a single copper coin fell out of my pocket and onto the floor -- a little metal disc.

This episode is brought to you by the letters G and L

This past weekend, I picked up a little alphabet book called Animalia at a used bookstore for no other reason that the author's name was Graeme Base, and William Wright had recently posted "Golden Graham Plates." Two of the letters have since turned out to be significant.

"Stink Gorilla More" (June 14) linked the word Gorilla to the word Bigfoot. Then William Wright's June 16 post "Bigfoot: Seek and it shall find you" led me to revisit my October 2023 post "Bigfoot? Bigfoot," featuring a big green foot:

Base's image also features the Holy Grail -- not exactly first on most people's list of things that begin with G! -- and a golden griffin perched on a gong in the form of a golden disc.

In one of my dreams, Golden Plates took the form of a disc, as mentioned most recently in "Plates among the dead leaves." This disc, too, is in a room full of leaves, though not dead ones.

Then there's L:

It's a library with two lions in it. Among the books in it are Lassie Come Home, Limericks by Edward Lear, The Leopard [...], King Lear, Little Boy Lost by L. L. Lucky, Lover's L[...], Lacrosse, Let's Learn Latin, Life of Luxembourg, Leonardo, Love's Labour's Lost, Levitation, Doctor Livingstone, Living Legends, Lady Chatterly's Lover, and books by Longfellow and John Locke -- but the one that really got my attention was The Gospel of Luke:

Two large golden animals in a room full of books syncs with the waking dream I relate in "Étude brute?" in which there were two large golden "Bulls of Heaven," one of which went with me into a cavern full of books and told me that one of the books "is the Cherubim. Not the Book of the Cherubim, but the Cherubim themselves."

In trying to make sense of that cryptic statement, I thought first of the Four Gospels. In Ezekiel, the Cherubim are represented as having four faces: those of an ox, a man, a lion, and an eagle -- but in one place (Ezek. 10:14) these are given as the faces of a cherub, a man, a lion, and an eagle, implying that the Cherubim are primarily bovine in nature. I would naturally have assumed that the two heavenly Bulls I saw were themselves the Cherubim had one of them not said what it did about the book. A very old Christian tradition associates each of the Gospels with one of the component creatures of the Cherubim -- and the ox or bull is almost invariably mapped to the Gospel of Luke. In the illustration below, from the (French) St. Riquier Gospels, a heavenly Bull holds a banner with the opening words of Luke: "Quoniam quidem multi conati sunt" -- "For indeed many have tried."

Before I entered the library in my vision, the two Bulls had been standing on either side of a Nativity scene -- and the classic Nativity scene with the manger and all that also comes from the Gospel of Luke.

Another interpretive angle is to note that there were two golden Cherubim on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant -- above the Ark but also part of it. In William Wright's June 11 post "The Brass Leafy Plates and all roads lead to France," he proposes that the Brass Plates are currently in France and compares the Plates themselves to an "Ark," specifically mentioning the Ark of the Covenant. Now look back up at that picture of the golden griffin perched on the golden gong. As I have mentioned in many posts, the word griffin may be related to the word Cherubim. A disc of light-colored metal (possibly gold or brass) has appeared in my dream as a "Plate" with engravings on it. If the Brass Plates are, symbolically, the Ark of the Covenant, then they are, or include, the Cherubim as well.

How does the Gospel of Luke fit in? Perhaps the significance is in the name itself: Luke means "light." In his post, William emphasizes a quote from the Book of Mormon about how the Brass Plates must "retain their brightness" -- a Bright Gospel, a Gospel of Light.

In William's post, he refers to the engravings on the Plates as "Marks," capitalized. The Graeme Base picture shows two lions in a library -- and, yes, the Evangelist whose symbol is the lion is Mark.

In "Plates among the dead leaves," I record -- in a somewhat joking tone which William found "douchey" -- the hunch that if the Brass Plates are indeed in France, they may be behind the altar in the Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse. As discussed at great length in my 2018 post "The Throne and the World," this church contains an engraving of a beardless Christ surrounded by the four Cherubic creatures, which I believe may have played an important role in the development of the Tarot de Marseille. This Christ holds a book in which is written "Pax Vobis," and he bears a striking resemblance to Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.

The supper at Emmaus, and Christ's saying "Pax Vobis," both occur in the final chapter of, you guessed it, the Gospel of Luke.

The 40-day fast

In my December 2 post "Was baptism an ordeal," I mention Jesus' "David Blaine-like 40-day fast" just after his baptism.

A few days later, on December 5, I followed a Synlogos link to the Didactic Mind post "It's not a mystery at all," which linked to a video by one David Wood called "Muslim Scholar Warns about 'Avalanche' of Apostasy." For some reason, I clicked on the link, didn't watch the video, but did scroll down in the comments a bit, and found this: "I appreciate how David is casually open about the fact he is a psychopath and his history but has been healed and exalted through Christ!"

That piqued my interest enough to go to David Wood's main YouTube page and watch the featured video "Why I Am a Christian."

It is, as advertised, a psychopath's story of coming to Christ. Wood casually and unemotionally tells the story of how he attempted to murder his own father with a ball-peen hammer just for the hell of it, and of how he eventually became a Christian after realizing that his narcissism was philosophically incompatible with nihilism (because if nothing mattered at all, then neither did he himself). I take it all with a grain of salt (it is, after all, a tale told by a psychopath), but it's a compelling story.

Before his conversion, Wood had a Christian cellmate who used to fast, and Wood always tried to one-up him by fasting just a bit longer. Finally his cellmate goes for a 40-day water-only fast (because Jesus fasted for that long), and Wood decides to do 42 days. It is at this point that the prison authorities intervene, thinking he is attempting suicide by self-starvation, put him in solitary confinement, and force-feed him.

So the sync fairies are drawing my attention to the idea of a 40-day fast, and how it tests the limits of what the human body can endure. (Wood says something like, "Here I was trying to be like Jesus, and they thought I was trying to commit suicide!")

The general rule is that a person can live for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Fasts longer than that are certainly possible -- David Blaine famously survived for 44 days on nothing but water -- but they clearly belong to the category "death-defying stunt."

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When Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, "he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water" (Ex. 34:28; see also Deut. 9:9). After seeing the Golden Calf and breaking the stone tables, he did it again: "I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins" (Deut. 9:18). It is not clear whether he ate or drank anything between the first 40 days and the second, so it may well have been a continuous 80-day fast. Either way, Moses' surviving this fast or fasts was strictly miraculous; not even David Blaine can go 40 days without water.

Long after Moses, Elijah would duplicate this feat: An angel having provided "a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water" (1 Kgs. 19:6), Elijah "did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God" (19:8).

As for Jesus, all three synoptic Gospels mention a 40-day period of temptation in the wilderness just after his baptism, but only Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus fasted. Matthew says, "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred" (Matt. 4:2). Luke says, "And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered" (Luke 4:2). Both accounts focus on food and hunger and say nothing about water, so it is possible that Jesus' fast was (just barely) humanly possible, a water-only fast like David Blaine's. Given the obvious parallels to Moses and Elijah, though, it seems more likely that it was a total fast, without even water, and that Jesus' surviving the ordeal was miraculous.

That Jesus should have done something miraculous is scarcely surprising, but the 40-day fast is made puzzling by the immediate context of his temptation in the wilderness. Here is one of the ways in which the devil tempted him.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.'"

Jesus said unto him, "It is written again, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'" (Matt 4:5-7; cf. Luke 4:9-12).

The essence of this temptation seems to be to do something which would, in the ordinary course of nature, be suicidal, trusting God to intervene with a miracle and save you. And while God may well be willing to intervene with miracles to save your life, it would be a sin to "test" God by deliberately and artificially creating a life-threatening situation from which to be saved.

But isn't that just what Jesus did by choosing to go out in the desert and eat (and possibly drink) nothing for 40 days? Isn't that every bit as suicidal as jumping off the top of the Temple, and doesn't it "tempt God" in the same way? Why was the 40-day fast more acceptable to God than the proposed Temple jump?

One difference, I suppose, is that the Temple is in a public place. If Jesus had jumped off the Temple and been saved by angels, this would have been a public demonstration, "proving" to the people that he was the Son of God. Jesus was generally very careful not to give this kind of public demonstration, working miracles in private and often specifically instructing people not to spread the word. This may be why he chose to conduct his 40-day fast out in the wilderness; he would later tell those that fast to make an effort to "appear not unto men to fast" (Matt. 6:18), which would scarcely have been possible in the case of an extreme fast such as this one. No amount of "anointing thy head and washing thy face" (Matt. 6:17) could have covered up the fact that he was on the point of dying of starvation.

One other possibility is that Jesus never fasted for 40 days at all. Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are dependent, says only that he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and says nothing about a fast. We learn elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus and his disciples were specifically noted for not fasting (Mark 2:18, Matt. 9:14). When compared with John the Baptist, who did fast, Jesus came across as "a man gluttonous, and a winebibber" (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34). Aside from the temptation story, the only other indication in the Gospels that Jesus ever fasted is when he casts out a devil which his disciples could not cast out and then explains that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21).

The first temptation in the wilderness was for the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Combining this with the fact that he was in the wilderness for 40 days, and that both Moses and Elijah had fasted for 40 days, Matthew and Luke may have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had done the same.

Distinctive vocabulary of each of the four Gospels

A reader has provided me with a spreadsheet of all the words in the King James Version of the New Testament, with the number of occurrences of each word in each book. Using this data, I have put together these lists of the most distinctive words in each Gospel.

To be included in the list for a given Gospel, a word had to (1) occur at least 10 times in that Gospel and (2) have a frequency (per 1000 words) at least twice as high as its frequency in any of the other three Gospels.

• Matthew: begat, deliver, end, field, gather, heaven, hypocrites, multitudes, O, prison, reward, righteous, talents, think, wherefore, wise

• Mark: asked, began, hands, immediately, James, looked, ship, straightway, such, themselves, unclean

• Luke: angel, certain, company, named, pass, returned, rich, sight, ten, years, Zacharias

• John: abide, am, answered, bear, because, beginning, believe, believed, believeth, born, die, disciple, doeth, ever, except, Father, feast, flesh, glorified, greater, hast, honour, I, Jews, judge, keep, knew, know, known, Lazarus, life, lifted, light, love, loved, me, might, mine, myself, now, Philip, record, scripture, seek, seen, seeth, sent, sheep, Simon, sin, true, truth, verily, water, whence, whither, whom, witness, words, work, world, yet

There's obviously a lot of noise here, but one can still see the familiar areas of emphasis of each Gospel. Matthew is the most moralistic (righteous, hypocrites, reward, prison). Mark is the fastest-paced (immediately, straightway) and has a special focus on exorcism (unclean spirits). Nothing in particular stands out about Luke. John is, of course, the most distinctive; aside from the familiar themes (believe, know, life, light, love, truth), we can see that it is the Gospel in which Jesus talks the most about himself (I, me, mine, myself, am). It is interesting to note that sin (singular) occurs almost exclusively in John, while sins and sinners are more typical of the Synoptics. This is consistent with the idea (see here) that John means something else by sin than "moral transgression."

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It can also be interesting to look at the words that meet the converse requirements: (1) occurring at least 10 times in each of the other three Gospels and (2) being no more than half as frequent in the target gospel as in any of the other three. No words meet these requirements for the Gospel of Matthew, but here are the lists for the other three.

• Mark: hast, law, light, nor, prophet, then

• Luke: answered, disciples, king, saith, sea, verily

• John: against, began, children, devils, enter, fell, great, house, kingdom, multitude, or, over, pass, scribes, their, upon, wife

We can see here how John differs from the Synoptics in hardly mentioning the kingdom of God, which (with its Matthean variant kingdom of heaven) seems in the Synoptics to be the center of Jesus' whole message. The complete absence of devils (plural; the devil is mentioned about equally in all the Gospels) reflects the fact that there are, uniquely, no exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel.

How "dead" were those raised by Jesus?

Vasily Polenov, The Raising of Jairus' Daughter (1871)

I have been reading Sylvan Muldoon's very interesting book The Projection of the Astral Body (1929), based on the author's own extensive experience with fully conscious astral projection, supplemented by the scholarship of paranormal researcher Hereward Carrington. He explains that the during an out-of-body experience, the astral body is connected to its material counterpart by a "line of force" or "astral cable" -- something like an ethereal umbilical cord -- and that this is what keeps the physical body alive while out of coincidence with the astral body which normally animates it. This is what distinguishes astral projection from death; in the latter condition, the astral cable is severed.

When the astral body is absent for a prolonged period, the physical body enters a state of deep catalepsy something like hibernation, in which its physical needs (for food, water, even oxygen) are minimal, and this state may easily be mistaken for death.

It is obvious that, during an extensive and prolonged projection [of the astral body] the material counterpart might assume the characteristics of a corpse, and the temperature drop exceedingly low -- even to such an extent that the misunderstanding people of the world would pronounce the subject "dead." I have concluded, as the result of a study of this subject, that the heart may actually cease beating for some time, and yet the astral cord may not be disconnected. . . .

Mr. Carrington has . . . summarized many cases of premature burial. "There can be no doubt," says this authority, "that many hundreds of persons have been buried alive, during the centuries which have preceded us. Societies for the Prevention of Premature Burial have actually been formed in England, America, etc. Cases of trance, catalepsy, suspended animation, etc., were mistaken for death, before our modern methods of diagnosis were introduced."

Muldoon cites many examples of people returning from deep, death-like trances (understood by him to be cases of astral projection, whether deliberate or spontaneous), of which the following -- apparently well attested by trustworthy witnesses -- is one of the most remarkable.

Some years ago, a celebrated fakir from the Province of Lahore, India, was buried for a period of thirty days, under the supervision of Prince Ranjeet Singh and Sir Claude Wade. The fakir was placed in a sack -- after entering the state of catalepsy -- which was securely tied. This sack was then placed in a box, which was locked -- the keys being kept by the British General.

The box was then deposited in a brick vault, the door of which was sealed with Ranjeet Singh's seal, and a guard of British soldiers was detailed to guard the vault day and night. At the end of the thirty days, the vault was opened, the box and sack unfastened, and the fakir -- very emaciated, but still alive -- was resuscitated by his friends!

Muldoon then goes on to draw parallels between such cases and biblical accounts of raising the dead.

In the Bible there are several accounts of individuals who were brought back to life. Take, for example, Christ's resurrection of his friend Lazarus [in John 11]. If Lazarus were actually dead and the astral cable disconnected, then Christ did perform a miracle; but it the cable was still engaged, it was an apparent miracle, and the resurrection was merely a resuscitation. 

Christ was a marvellous occultist and seer, the peer of mediums, and was a friend of Lazarus. Might it not be possible that Lazarus was an astral projector? There seems to have been some misunderstanding on the part of the disciples as to whether Lazarus was really dead or not. Christ first of all told his followers that Lazarus was not dead: "This sickness is not unto death." Next He told them that Lazarus was asleep: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go now that I may awake him from sleep." 

Christ next went to the grave where Lazarus lay -- a cave with a stone upon it; He ordered the stone to be removed and with a loud voice cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" And he that was dead came forth. Could not a similar demonstration be given to-day -- by a hypnotist and an astral projector? 

Another Bible instance of resuscitation is the bringing to life of a certain ruler's daughter [the daughter of Jairus, in Mark 5]. "And he cometh to the house of a ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. And when he was come in, he said unto them, 'Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.' And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entered in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and he said unto her, 'Talitha-cumi'; which is, being interpreted: 'Damsel, I say unto thee, arise!' And straightway the damsel arose and walked." 

For these few singular demonstrations Christ gained the reputation of being capable of resurrecting the dead; but in every case Jesus himself stated that the subjects were not dead, but sleeping. If the persons were literally dead -- if the line of force had actually been severed -- and still they were brought back to life, is it not a wonder that more were not likewise revived? Surely there were others, begging to be reunited with their loved ones -- innocent children crying for their mothers, lovers begging for their sweethearts who lay in death -- pathetic mourners all about -- and yet only a few were resurrected!

This line of speculation, with its implication that Jesus did not in fact have the power to resurrect the dead, strikes at the heart of Christianity, even suggesting that Jesus' own resurrection -- the Resurrection -- may not have been quite what it appeared to be. It also represents a somewhat unique challenge because it is not based on the assumptions of materialism or on dismissing the gospel accounts as fables. Muldoon accepts the accounts as factual and accepts a "supernatural" explanation of what took place -- but a different supernatural explanation, one that would make Jesus merely a "marvellous occultist and seer, the peer of mediums," able to rectify the occasional astral projection gone wrong, rather than someone who was fully divine and brought genuine salvation from death.

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So, how plausible is the Muldoon theory?

In the case of the daughter of Jairus, I think Muldoon's theory makes perfect sense. Jesus actually says that "the damsel is not dead," and the miracle is not prefaced with any "I am the resurrection and the life" type claims about being able to raise the dead. Jairus had previously said, "My little daughter lieth at the point of death" -- possibly in the cataleptic state described by Muldoon -- and after her resuscitation he "commanded that something should be given her to eat," perhaps suggesting that like the Indian fakir, she was still alive but in a greatly weakened state and required careful nursing back to full health.

What about Lazarus? Muldoon makes much of Jesus' statement that Lazarus was asleep but rather misleadingly elides the two verses that follow this statement: "Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." He had told the mourners of Jairus's daughter not to weep because she was not dead -- but when he saw Lazarus's grave, Jesus wept -- because he was dead. To Lazarus's sister, he says not, "Thy brother is not dead," but, "Thy brother shall rise again. . . . I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." If Lazarus was not actually dead, such talk can only be interpreted as deliberate dishonesty, as pretending to be able to raise the dead.

Finally, and most importantly, what about Jesus' own death and resurrection? Muldoon doesn't explicitly venture into such controversial waters, but his theory certainly implies that Jesus, too, may have been resuscitated from a cataleptic state rather than raised from the dead. There are, if one is looking for them, hints of this possibility in the Gospels. Mark reports that "Pilate marvelled if he were already dead" -- meaning that crucifixion would not normally have killed a man so quickly. Jesus' legs were not broken (which would have killed him if he were not already dead), and his body was never embalmed (ditto). After coming out of the tomb, he still had his crucifixion wounds, which on the face of it is more consistent with survival in a wounded body than with resurrection in a perfect, immortal body. Against this survival hypothesis we have the fact that Jesus looked different (was unrecognizable) after his resurrection and was also reportedly able to walk through walls and such -- and, of course, explicit claims by Jesus and his disciples that he had died and returned to life.

It is obvious that belief in, or rejection of, Jesus' resurrection must be based on something more substantial than speculations based on the rather sparse accounts that have come down to us all these centuries later. Opinions may differ about Lazarus and the others, but if Jesus himself was not resurrected, Christianity is pointless.

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Traditional Christian opinion is that Jesus himself was the first to be properly resurrected and that those who preceded him -- Lazarus (John 11), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5), and the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7) -- were merely restored from death to ordinary mortal life (meaning that, unlike resurrected beings, they would still die again). I have slowly brought around (by Bruce Charlton) to the opinion that Lazarus was in fact resurrected in the fullest sense -- that he was the first, and Jesus himself the second -- but what of the others? Muldoon makes a good point: If Jesus had the power to restore the dead to life, why did he so seldom exercise it? He seems to have been willing to heal just about anyone who needed healing, so why are the accounts of his raising the dead so few and far between? Lazarus was Jesus' closest friend (and perhaps brother-in-law), but what was so special about the daughter of Jairus and the young man of Nain? Perhaps, as Muldoon suggests, what was special about them was that they were not actually dead but in the sort of cataleptic state he describes.