Catholic and Enjoying It!
…and the extraordinary weirdnesses of popular pieties throughout the ages, featuring T0m McDonald, Knower of All Arcana!
For still more McDonaldian arcana, go here for The Mystery of the Copper Scroll, featuring an actual Treasure Map from none other than Qumran.
When you dress like Indiana Jones and sport a kafiyah, you pretty much are born to be an International Man of Mystery:
PS: If you are wondering what a Titulus is, it’s the sign designating the charges for which a certain miscreant named “Jesus of Nazareth” was executed. It is kept in the Santa Croce in Gerusalemme Church in Rome.
Curiously, the charges are all written from right to left, suggesting either that the scribe who wrote them was used to writing in Hebrew or perhaps that they were intended for an audience that typically read Hebrew. (Given that one of the main functions of crucifixion was to tell the subject population not to step out of line *and* to induce Stockholm Syndrome in the population by getting them to side with the crucifier against the crucified–a technique that worked well in the case of Jesus–it is possible that this form of writing was an accommodation to that crowd.) Anyway, here it is:
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