Jesus Born In The Torres Strait?

[songhrati]

In my job as a journalist I was recently in the Torres Strait of Australia (a remote area located between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea) and interviewed the Bishop of the Torres Strait. I’m not religious so this may not be out of the ordinary but the Bishop made the statement that “Jesus was born on the shores of the Torres Strait”.

Can someone tell me if it’s normal for Bishops to claim that Jesus was born in places other than Bethlehem or that this is a special case?

FYI – The Bishop is nominally Anglican although I understand that there was a break from the general Anglican synod over some issues and that Christianity in the Torres Strait is a bit of a fusion of Christianity and traditional beliefs.

 

[GNC]

I've heard of Christ visiting various locations around the world, but as far as I know Bethlehem is pretty much always the point of origin. It would be interesting to hear this bishop's reasoning. There was that bloke in the 19th century (?) who thought the events of the Bible happened in Britain, but he didn't get much support.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Can someone tell me if it’s normal for Bishops to claim that Jesus was born in places other than Bethlehem or that this is a special case?

In general, I've found that I don't care for bishops, but, no, this bishop's claim is quite unusual.

 

[emina]

I've heard of Christ visiting various locations around the world, but as far as I know Bethlehem is pretty much always the point of origin. It would be interesting to hear this bishop's reasoning. There was that bloke in the 19th century (?) who thought the events of the Bible happened in Britain, but he didn't get much support.

It was the 20th century, and his name was William Comyns Beaumont. He was a posh, self-educated type. Apparently, a staunch British patriot and alleged anti-Semite. He reasoned that all of classical history up until the roman emperor Constantine, took place in Britain and Ireland. A near run in with a comet caused the earth to tilt and made Britain's climate cold and rainy, so the ancients disassembled the pyramids, Parthenon and Rome etc. and rebuilt them in nice warm sunny places. I can't remember all the details, but I think Leeds was Damascus, Ireland was Crete, galilee was somerset and Edinburgh was definitely Jerusalem. He had Jesus being crucified out near the airport. All of which was much more believable, in his opinion, than the suggestion that foreigners could've been responsible.

As you say, not much support, but one very vocal prodigy in the form of Emanuel Velikovsky. Google for more detailed info, and the odd crank who still believes it

 

[GNC]

That's the fellow, thanks!

 

[emina]

That's the fellow, thanks!

Strangely enough, there's more recent equivalent theory, formulated by a Russian Professor called Anatoly Fomenko, whereby the whole of human history started in the 8th century and took place in and around Russia, central / eastern Europe and Turkey. This is all based on what he sees as similarities between 'different' astromical events, lengths of reigns of various kings, mistranslations and a pile of conspiracy theories, and has led him to 'merge' the histories of all humanity into one bite size nugget.

According to Wikipedia's page on the theory, he places Jesus in Turkey:

Fomenko claims that the most probable prototype of the historical Jesus was Andronikos I Komnenos (allegedly AD 1152 to 1185), the emperor of Byzantium, known for his failed reforms; his traits and deeds reflected in 'biographies' of many real and imaginary persons. The historical Jesus is a composite figure and reflection of the Old-Testament prophet Elisha (850-800 BC?), Pope Gregory VII (1020?-1085), Saint Basil of Caesarea (330-379), and even Li Yuanhao (also known as Emperor Jingzong or "Son of Heaven" - emperor of Western Xia, who reigned in 1032-1048), Euclides, Bacchus and Dionysius. Fomenko explains the seemingly vast differences in the 'alleged' biographies of these figures as resulting from difference in languages, points of view and time-frame of the authors of said accounts and biographies.

Fomenko also merges Jerusalem, Rome and Troy, contrary to the conventional history that places them in different locations of the Ancient World separated by hundreds of years, and identifies them as: "New Rome" = Gospel Jerusalem (in the period 12-13th centuries) = Troy = Yoros Castle. To the south of Yoros Castle is Joshua's Hill; (allegedly Gospel Calvary).

The Biblical Temple of Solomon was not destroyed, says Fomenko - it is still known to us as the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople = Old Testament Jerusalem (in the period 14-16th centuries). The biblical Solomon himself is identified as sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566). The historical Jesus may have been born in 1152 and was crucified around AD 1185 on the hill overlooking the Bosphorus. The city that we now know as Jerusalem was known prior to the 17th century as the nondescript Ottoman village of Al-Quds, where biblical "Palestine" is actually the Palatina, along the Rhine, between Basel, where Erasmus Rotterdamus wrote the "New Testament" and between his hometown Rotterdam. It is also likely it wasn't named "Al-Quds" i.e. "the holy", before Scaliger decided it would have been the "Holy city" of "Jerusalem".

Needless to say, he doesn't have much support in the world of academia either, but apparently he's sold a million books in Russia and Gary Kasparov is a believer. It should also be noted however, that although Fomenko is a professor at Moscow State Univesity and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he is a mathematician rather than an astronomer, historian or archeologist. Comyns Beaumont was a journalist by trade and had no astronomical, historical, or archeological training either