Jarod,
Have a lot to do in the next few days (let alone a lot on my mind). I will be in + out all weekend. Sorry, but can't go to Syracuse. Can't wait until Niagra Falls.
Sorry,
Jon
I wi[...]k to you when you call this week.
The winner of the 1999 Mass Challenge was Tim Esaias, who presented the following analysis of the text:
The Chambéry Conjecture
By Timons Esaias
Upon first reading the text of the Jarod Epistle, I focused upon the apparent place names of Syracuse and Niagra (sic) Falls. The fact that there is a town of each name in the State of New York, and that New York borders our own Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where the Jarod Epistle is alleged to have been recovered, leads the mind to investigate the possibility that these are indeed place names, and that the writer is discussing two distinct proposed trips to that region; to wit, a trip to Syracuse which the writer will not be taking, and a later trip to Niagara Falls that is still in hopeful contemplation.
This would be, perhaps, the simplest conclusion. It would be the conservative solution, the solution suggested by Occam’s Razor. But it would be an insult to the Rascals to pretend that such reasoning is appropriate in this day and age. My philosophical friends assure me that the time of Occam’s Razor, of not multiplying entities beyond need, is past. Today we more commonly employ Occam’s Depilatory, which functions by smearing as much inference on as many entities as one can, within the limitations of time and other resources.
Obvious and simple answers are now passé, and good riddance to them. Modern thinkers move from the evidence to the Unlikely; and through thinner evidence to the Probable; thence to the Nearly Certain on the basis of guesswork; and finally, with the liberal application of sheer implausibility to the Truth.
So, beginning again, I focused on the misspellings of Niagara, Jared, and John, if John it is. The writer also seems to be under the impression that "be in" is one word. This suggested that this epistle may have been composed before or soon after the publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, which did so much to regularize spellings. I tested the hypothesis that it was written during the French and Indian War between soldiers and officers of His Majesty’s army commanded by Sir William Johnson. Under this hypothesis, Niagra Falls would not be a place name, but the obvious outcome of the siege of Fort Niagara in 1759. However, the town of Syracuse was not founded until 1788, nearly thirty years later, so this seems unlikely as a solution.
It could be that the writer was a British sympathizer during the War of 1812, when Fort Niagara fell again to the British, but I was unable to find evidence of any known Jareds or Jarods in the area at that time. Perhaps another investigating Rascal has been more successful.
Having met a barrier in that direction, I turned my attention to the curious scorch marks obscuring two words in the post criptum. It was then that I achieved understanding, for these marks seemed terribly familiar. They are, in fact, nearly identical to scorch marks on the Shroud of Turin, marks that were made during a fire in the Saint-Chapelle of Chambéry during the night of December 4th, 1532 and partially melting the silver casket in which the Shroud was kept. More astonishing, the marks on this Xerox of the Jarod Epistle, are almost the exact size of the marks in this photograph of the shroud in the book The Mysterious Shroud! [show photograph] If the actual marks were similar in size, it might be coincidence. But for _representations_ to match is proof.
I concluded then that the Jarod Epistle was undoubtedly stored with the Shroud of Turin, and probably became separated from it during the rescue efforts at the fire. I have found no documentary evidence of the subsequent history of the Jarod Epistle before its recent rediscovery, but the presence of several large relic collections in this area, and Dan Morrison’s recent investigations of the relic trade, are suggestive. I leave that matter to other scholars.
So the question then arises, why did the cultists of Christ of that day store this letter in the same casket as the Shroud? Obviously, because they deemed it of similar value as a possible Christian relic. I think we can easily see what they were thinking. The writer, in their mind, would be the Apostle John, probably already ensconced in Ephesus, writing to one of Paul’s party when they were setting off on that final trip to Rome. The letter was probably delivered to Paul’s ship at Myra, in Lycia, or perhaps was brought out to it as they passed Rhodes. In any case, John declined to go to Syracuse, and by inference to Rome.
But who is Jarod? I suspect that the Christians reasoned thusly: John seems to have written his own name improperly, using what could be a reversed Hebrew letter yod instead of hn; perhaps in a move to obscure his real identity. Hence the misspelled name Jarod may also be code. And the reference to Syracuse, a mere way-station, rather than to the real destination of the trip, the Imperial city of Rome, may give the symbolic key to this code.
We know from Acts 28, 12 that Paul and his party put in at Syracuse and stayed three days. In Christian symbolic reasoning, this would immediately indicate that Paul’s visit in Syracuse is an emblem of the three days Jesus reportedly spent harrowing Hell before his resurrection. Modern tourists confirm that visiting Syracuse is not unlike a descent into Hell, especially in the summer. Which brings us to the name Jarod, which derives, from the Hebrew word for "descent". I suggest to you that the Christians suspected that the "Jarod" of the letter, the Descender, if you will, was Paul himself, doomed like Jesus to death at the hands of the Romans. And imitating Jesus’ life with an emblematic descent into Hell on his way to glory.
The interesting reference to Niagra tends to support this reasoning. Not, as one might assume, a misspelling of Niagara, it is instead the Roman god or spirit who was the opposite of the deity Viagra, the spirit of tumescence, of upwardness and erection. Niagra, of course, represented impotence and downward tendencies. Niagra can be said to be the god of descent, and John would be supposed to refer to the underworld, perhaps to Satan himself, by this remark.
By this interpretation the post scriptum would refer to some form of telepathic communication common to the Apostles, or perhaps John was still somewhere along the southern coast of Asia Province at the time and expecting Paul’s ship to "make a call" at the unnamed port in question.
This is, I suspect, what the medieval Christians thought of this letter. They were, most probably, wrong. Before I get to the underlying truth, however, I should address the question of why the letter, if written so long ago, should appear to us in English, if badly spelled English. The answer, quite simply, is that this is a clear miracle, and confirms our suspicion that it once resided alongside the equally odd and anachronistic shroud. If it were not the genuine article it would appear in Greek or Aramaic.
Or, as I will now argue, logically it would be in Hebrew. But why should it be misspelled? Well, surely we would all agree that miracles today are not what they were.
Now to return to the argument. While it is true that John the Apostle had a lot on his mind, and could have written such a letter, I believe the letter is actually thousands of years older. The addressee of this letter, I assert, is the original Jared, he of the fifth generation of Man, as we learn in the fifth chapter of Genesis. A close reading of this chapter will disclose that Niagra was troubling the early men terribly, they usually took many decades to father a child, which must have been very frustrating. Jared himself was a hundred and sixty-two before he was able to procreate effectively. No wonder the defeat, or "Fall" of Niagra was eagerly awaited.
This very early date might also resolve the question of spelling, particularly of the o for e in Jarod, for Hebrew at the time was notoriously negligent in the question of vowels, especially as writing systems had yet to be invented.
But who wrote the Jarod Epistle? I believe it was the product of that belated procreative event, his son Enoch the father of Methuselah. Enoch would definitely have had a lot on his mind, because he, according to many authorities, was to live forever. ("Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.") The reference to Syracuse, a city not yet founded at that time, would be appropriate for one who would never die and could take the very long view.
The signature, therefore, I scan thus: it is a poorly wrought fish symbol, the same that the Christians would later use to indicate eternal life, and the abbreviation for "Junior" on each side. This would be a logical designation for a son who was to live forever when writing to dear old Dad.
The End