The Crucible of Magic

Scriptural references to the supernatural and occult

© Brian Allan 2004

Word Count: 5,642

Authors' note: Typically of what is written in or attributed to scripture, the meaning of sayings taken from alternative works like the Gospel of Thomas and others forming the Nag Hammadi texts can be extremely obscure and cryptic. However, careful interpretation of specific passages appears to indicate knowledge of a branch of theoretical physics that is only now being proffered to explain many bizarre phenomena. Other quotations from the treasury of apocryphal scripture also give reason to suspect that some of the tenets of Christianity are entirely in accord with eastern faiths, particularly relating to the ubiquity of humanity, spirituality and the universe. Yet other texts indicate that Christ may have been something utterly at odds with the manner in which he is normally portrayed. However, for the benefit of this hypothesis, in order to evaluate some of the claims we must necessarily accept that the sources they come from are the literal truth, for if they not then the people who wrote them created severe logical issues for successive future generations. Where these issues cannot be resolved, the entire subject collapses into issues of faith and belief, which of course require no justification or proof whatsoever.

Foreword

It has frequently been observed that perhaps the only way to make sense of much of what is written in Scripture is to apply contemporary interpretations to many of the gospels. While there is a considerable body of information involved, it is by examining some of the apocryphal works that an alternative and surprising picture emerges. In this instance we shall examine quotations from the Nag Hammadi codices, in particular the 'Gospel of Thomas' and the 'Gospel of Philip'. We shall also address inferences from other sources that Jesus Christ (also called Yeshua bar Josef), was a magician.

And Jesus said, "The kingdom [of the Father] is inside you and all around you." This is a quotation from the contentious 'Gospel of Thomas', which is one of the manuscripts comprising the Nag Hammadi texts. This collection of ancient documents, which also includes the 'Gospel of Philip', was unearthed in 1945 at the village of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered near Qumran at around the same time, over the years this body of work has created ripples of unease in the halls and cloisters of orthodox belief, and as we shall see this may well be justified. In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so far there are more fragments unpublished than published, perhaps deliberately so and this is not due to the fragmentary and fragile nature of the papyri. It is more likely that the as yet unpublished texts threaten the stability and doctrine of the established monotheistic faiths and for this reason they will never see the light of day. From the outset I wish to make it clear that I have no quarrel with any particular beliefs or those who hold them, but due to the nature of the article it is nigh on impossible not to draw comparisons with individual systems of faith, if any offence is caused be assured that it is not intended.

Was Christ an Extraterrestrial?

A fragment of the Nag Hammadi scrolls

The reader should be aware that the ambiguous quotation in bold script contained in the forward to this article and the work that it comes from are regarded as apocryphal by the mainstream Christian church. This means that although the quotation and the source from which it comes may be popular, it does not necessarily make them true and of course on the other hand it does not necessarily invalidate them either. There are many reasons for the rejection, some are for clarity, i.e. the alternatives may dilute or confuse the official message, but in the main it is entirely due to reasons of dogma.

When the early Christian church was founded, it emerged from both oral and written traditions in Greek, Latin and Hebrew and for this reason it was regularised by consensus into an acceptable form at a series of church councils. One of the first and possibly the most influential was the 'Council of Nicea' held in 325 AD, which resulted in a considerable body of tradition being rejected and lost simply because it did not fit into the introverted and self-serving theological views of the nascent church. It was from the discarded information that the many books of apocrypha developed and it is interesting to note that during the Council of Nicea the divinity of Christ was narrowly established by a vote of the attendees Previously, Christ was viewed as an important, influential and charismatic individual but entirely human. The reason for his deification was a masterstroke of pragmatism since it elevated him above mere humanity and consequently could be used to explain any miracles or other dine works attributed to him.

There are two schools of apocryphal works; Jewish apocrypha tends to dwell on the Old Testament which chronicles the birth of Judaism and for similar reasons Christian apocrypha focuses on the New Testament. This is of course quite understandable given the eras when both faiths crystallised. The opening quotation of this article in particular is one that causes much concern in the Catholic Church since it minimises much that they hold dear, particularly the need for lavish and ostentatious buildings and ceremonies to worship their version of the creator. It also appears to suggest that there is no real need for intermediaries in the form of priests or ministers; any communication can be done directly between the individual and their deity, irrespective of its name.

"The kingdom [of the Father] is inside you and all around you". What then does this statement mean? It is one of many ambiguous quotations appearing throughout scripture and in the course of this essay we shall examine a few of them. As already stated, for our purposes we are using the Gospel of Thomas as our main reference and although much of what it contains finds direct parallels in traditional scripture there are many quotations that do not.

However, in this case the generally accepted meaning is of course that in a real and spiritual sense the fusion of God, Christ and Holy Spirit (the Holy Trinity), exist in a literal form and we, as creatures of the creator, in spirit at least are a part of this. At face value this glib explanation may be sufficient, yet the suspicion remains that at a slightly deeper level we may find comparisons with many Eastern traditions categorically stating that everything is inexorably linked, the well-known tenet of 'All is one'. When we compare both statements with the nature of electromagnetic (EM) energy and the 'Zero Point Field' we quickly discover that this is absolutely correct. At the sub-atomic level we are surrounded by a ubiquitous energy field that flows around and through us, it is the field that supports all life, visible and invisible, perhaps more importantly it is the same field that organises and fuels consciousness. It is important to realise that consciousness connects us with the energy field that is the creator and it is consciousness that joins us to one another and perhaps cryptically, the quotation concerning the Kingdom of God being inside you is but another extension of this. Likewise we must not lose sight of the fact that once again at the subatomic level we as human beings are little more than frequency-dependent, swirling clouds of particles, which is why the EM environment is vitally important to our well being if not our very existence.

For obvious reasons the religious establishment considers it desirable that we do not view God in this manner because it makes the concept of a separate, unique, all powerful being less easy to accept. This was also true when the medieval church introduced/invented the concept of ethereal, intermediaries, i.e. humanoid angels with wings. The process is called anthromorphisation because it makes it much easier to identify with and worship an entity that at least looks humanoid (albeit highly stylised). It comes as no surprise therefore to learn that although from childhood we assume, by almost subliminal implication, that God vaguely resembles a cross between Zeus on Olympus and Santa Claus, this in fact is not the case. The traditional interpretation of what God looks like insists that God made us in His image, do we assume therefore is that He is humanoid? No, we are told we do not; 'His image' is a direct reference to the spiritual similarity between God and His creations. This may be so, but it also appears to describe a physical similarity and even if it does not, it equally appears to insinuate that we resemble the creator and it with us at some more fundamental level. An obvious rationalist and humanist interpretation is one that embraces the ubiquity of the Zero Point Field

Another statement originating from the Gospel of Thomas is as follows: "Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father. Of the many quotations in the work, this is perhaps the most enigmatic and ambiguous, however one must assume that traditionalists view it as a direct reference the nature of the creator him/it self. Christ says that His father, presumably God, by His very nonhuman nature could not have been born of woman and is therefore worthy of veneration. On the other hand could it be that this is a reference to cloning since true clones are not conceived and 'born of woman' in any conventional sense? The Gospel of Philip seems to reinforce this concept by stating: Some said, "Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman? As well as casting doubt on the nature of the Holy Spirit it is even possible that it carries resonances of the biblical version of the creation where the first man, Adam, was made from dust and his partner, Eve, was constructed from one of his ribs, therefore neither were in any sense born of woman. Viewed through modern eyes, this reads as if describing a scientific procedure and if God Himself created Adam and Eve then the true nature of God becomes even more puzzling. It is easy to extrapolate from this to include the birth of Christ without the need of a human father, we are told that his mother, Mary, was 'visited by an Angel' (the Holy Spirit?) who conveyed the message that she was pregnant with the Son of God. From highly ambiguous statements like this it is easy to see where organizations and cults like the 'Raelians' draw their credo that the human race was created (for unknown reasons) by extraterrestrial beings.

An even more extreme interpretation may be that this quotation from Gospel of Thomas refers to an artificial intelligence, in effect a highly developed machine. Certainly this would fit neatly into a variety of modern, revisionist commentaries made about the meaning of certain biblical passages. Predictably, orthodoxy insists that this interpretation is at the very least incorrect if not actual heresy or blasphemy, so perhaps we should look at other quotations from the same source. Before we do this, the reader should bear in mind that the Gospel of Thomas is most inconvenient for mainstream Christianity, which regards all apocryphal works with great suspicion. However, considering that it was allegedly written by Christ's twin brother, 'Thomas Didymos', it might contain considerably more truth than is tolerable. Once again we find the walls of orthodoxy rearing up before us; a twin brother, how can this be? As far as the name goes, Thomas is Hebrew for twin and Didymos is Greek for twin, therefore the clear implication here is that he is Jesus' twin, and even if this is not the case, Christ had yet another sibling, another brother 'James the Just' to whom he frequently refers. According the gospel of Thomas, when his disciples asked him what they should do if he were ever lost to them, he told them to seek James the Just and follow him. Another suggestion, this time from the Gospel of Philip, appears to insinuate that not only did Christ have brothers he may also have had a sister. 'There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary' (my emphasis). It is however typical of early scripture that the role and even the very existence of any of Christ's siblings is minimised if not actually denied. Why should such an important personage as James only be mentioned as a relatively minor character in the hierarchy of saints, particularly since after the death of Christ he carried on the ministry for many years to come? It was at the hand of James that the original teachings and philosophy derived from Orthodox Judaism were honed into a semblance of the Christian religion that is now practiced worldwide. It is also fair to comment that since it was finally formulated there have been so many alternative interpretations and translations placed upon the original scriptures that they would surely be unrecognisable to their authors.

Yet another quotation from the 'Gospel of Thomas' reads: And Jesus said, "Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being." This is also repeated in the 'Gospel of Philip' although slightly differently, i.e.: The Lord said, "Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be." 'Came into being before he came into being?' This is a strange comment that presents a considerable puzzle, what does it mean? Perhaps it suggests a fully functional yet passive synthetic human organism created from a series of chemical and electrical processes; a human prototype but without the necessary neural programming to generate consciousness and therefore mind. Is it even possible that the original human organism was created, not as a flesh and blood construct, but as a type of computer programme, an entirely artificial entity, complete in every detail, yet by definition non-human?

This is not as absurd as it might appear since there are today relatively simple computer programmes that evolve, change and 'grow', which is also a technique used by researchers who study the concept of artificial intelligence. Therefore, the most obvious conclusion to this line of reasoning is that the model for Christ was created as a programme and imprinted or overwritten upon a host brain. This, if one thinks about it, is no more bizarre than many of the claims made for miracles carried out during Christ's time on earth. Before leaving this section it is worth considering another, non-Christian quotation this time from the Koran [5:113]; which says that infidels attributed Jesus' miraculous healings, the raising of the dead and his making birds from clay to sorcery. The Hayat of al-Damiri calls Jesus an "enchanter, son of an enchantress," and Mandæan literature calls him a false prophet and a magician, 'emanating from the planet Mercury', (my emphasis).

Christ as a Magician

This is another claim that may have some basis in scripture since it is arguable that depending on the prevailing culture religion is a form of ritual magic with the celebrant substituting for the magician. We should not forget that according to the bible, when Christ was born he was visited by three wise men (or magi), which of course can be translated as magicians. If one considers some of the attributes credited to Christ, we should remember that they were also credited to other biblical magicians, which may also include John the Baptist.

	1. Baptizing to purge from sin;
	2. Being made a magician by the descent of the spirit;
	3. Being declared a god;
	4. Experiencing mystical phenomena in the wilderness;
	5. Exorcism and cures of certain types;
	6. Teaching with authority;
	7. Calling disciples, who joined him as if enchanted;
	8. Travelling as master and holy man, with disciples;
	9. Successful and famous as an exorcist and healer, so that other magicians use his name;
	10. Developing opposition from neglect of laws, especially concerning fasting and Sabbath keeping,
	11. Associating with low life, so that stories were spread about his evil magic;
	12. Initiation of the disciples into his own magical experience (hints only);
	13. Twelve given the power to exorcise;
	14. Being seen by several people in a vision with supernatural beings.

All of the above have been attributed to Christ, and if he did in fact carry out these actions then by what means was this possible? The conventional explanation is that there is no foundation whatsoever to the claims that he was a magician, black or white, however, these claims are not by any means recent and date back to the gospels themselves. In fact, it has been suggested that when Christ was brought before Pilate for judgement it was on charges that he was a magician. The charge itself said (among other things) that he was a mischief-maker and evildoer or 'malefactor' who was 'perverting the nation'; the Hebrew term for 'malefactor' can be translated into Latin as 'malithecus', which is also a word for magician. The catch-all charges of evildoer and mischief-maker, although recognised as crimes against the state, did not carry the death penalty, but the charge magician did.

We are therefore presented with evidence that Christ could work miracles, which is in itself a form of powerful magic and although he was not unique in this respect in his case it was acceptable. Other prophets and magi also were credited with magical ability and at first it was very difficult to differentiate between the miracles and magic of Christ and that of, for example, Simon Magus. Simon is mentioned in the Book of Acts in this manner: "But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Sama'ria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, "This man is that power of God which is called Great'. And they gave heed to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic." It is also noted that he approached the apostles Peter and John offering them money to be given access to greater power, a request that they immediately rejected. This gives rise to the legitimate assumption that both the apostles, Peter and John, were also regarded as magicians of some note. It also helps lend credence to how religion in general was viewed in the ancient world, it mattered not whether the deity was an invisible, all-powerful entity or a marble image in a temple, their essential purpose and function was magical. The crucial difference here is in whose name the magic is performed and since Christ used a word of power, the ineffable or secret name of God (the Tetragrammaton, YHWH which is usually taken to refer to Yahweh or Jehovah,) then the rest had by inference to work their feats in the name of Satan. There is one other great word of power, one that is comparatively rare, it's only recorded use was by Moses when he parted the Red Sea and it is called the 'Shemhamforash'. This word is reputedly comprised of seventy-two syllables and it must be pronounced with great care, for even one mistake in pronunciation or intonation can cause the latent power to rebound on the person using it. The origin of this word is not clear but its use, along with that of the Tetragrammaton, is yet another demonstration of scriptural accounts of biblical magic. It was vital for the fledgling Christian church to make the division between acceptable and non-acceptable magic absolutely clear. It is a division that still echoes through religion as it is practised today; since taken at its most basic level and in spite of all the justifications, religion irrespective of denomination is ritual magic by any other name with the celebrant taking on the role of the magician or magus. This is particularly true of the Roman Catholic faith during the mass when the sacrament of transubstantiation is performed prior to receiving Holy Communion and the wafer and wine take on the attributes of the body and blood of Christ. It is also still Roman Catholic practise to segregate examples of mystical phenomena into blessed states or otherwise by the application of apparently arbitrary criteria. If the person who undergoes the experience is spiritually uplifted by it or in some other manner experiences heavenly visions, then the experience is deemed divinely inspired. If on the other hand the person suffers illness or depression or a host of other negative experiences, then the experience must come from a satanic or demonic source and is therefore condemned. However, as has recently been implied by quantum physicists, magic, irrespective of what type, secular or non-secular, may in the last resort all stem from one basic premise and that is the focus, intent and ability of the person working the invocation. It is this ability that has inspired and motivated all magicians from the distant past to the present day, from Apollonius to Aleister Crowley and beyond.

It is most regrettable that over the years, magicians and by association magic, has by and large gathered considerable negative publicity and it is almost certainly due to a mixture of ignorance, fear, misunderstanding and jealousy. This heady brew of intolerance was eagerly seized upon and manipulated by the educated misogynists who comprised the hierarchy of the early Christian church. Since before the dark ages the imagery of magic has been fairly standard, witches and wizards straddled on broomsticks, wearing tall hats and black, rune embroidered cloaks.

It has normally been held that all forms of non-sanctioned magic are synonymous with Satanism and the dark side, a view that eventually culminated in the abominations of the inquisition and its infamous handbook 'The Malleus Malleficorum' written by two Dominican monks, Jakov Sprenger, and Heinrich Kramer. This odious work translates as 'Hammer of Evil Doers' although it is more often (and incorrectly) translated as 'Hammer of The Witches' and it was aimed almost exclusively at women. This view, which again illustrates the venomous misogyny rife in the medieval Catholic Church, was of course eagerly promoted, and due to the degree to which the Church held sway over the populace, it became a virtually universal view throughout the secular population of Europe. By design, it played upon the basest fears and prejudice of the populace and demonstrates the degree to which the Church was prepared to stoop in order to maintain its grip on power. In fact it could legitimately claim to be one of the first examples of psychological mass-manipulation and a clear forerunner of the 'hearts and minds' policy frequently employed in military conflicts. Despite the best efforts of organised religion, magic has never been eradicated and still flourishes worldwide in various forms, ranging from shamanism to chaos magic but all have one common trait; the ability to alter perceived reality.

Did Christ Actually Exist?

This is surely one of the most profound enigmas of all time; it is also one of the ultimate heresies, for if the Christ does exist and if he genuinely is the Son of God, then logically God must exist. The preceding sentence is phrased in the present tense, since if, as is suggested, that God is eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, then leaving aside his alleged birth of a human being, so is the Christ. If one disregards The Bible, Talmud and Koran as the sole sources evidence for the existence of Christ, then there is contradictory information suggesting that he never actually existed and was based on various ancient, sun worshiping traditions of a dying and rising God. Alternatively, if one follows the conclusions reached in certain theories of quantum physics to their logical conclusions, then it may be possible that Christ and indeed God was created to serve the express needs and desires of generations of human beings.

While on this subject is important to examine some of the alternative explanations to biblical accounts of the existence of The Christ, the God/man and consider whether the alternatives are as valid as the traditional sources. In one account it is suggested that Jesus Christ was created as an idealised version of Julius Caesar, the 'Pontifex Maximus', and 'Common Saviour of Mankind', to fulfil a deep-seated, almost visceral need in the hearts of the Roman people to remember and immortalise the man who virtually established the Roman Empire. The Roman commentator, Manilius, wrote, 'He is dutifully added to the power above, on a higher plane than shines the belt of the Milky Way'. Other contemporary comments include; The Julian star gleams amid all others like the moon amid lesser lights - (Horace) and 'Even the lions of Carthage roared their grief at your extinction!' - (Virgil) There also entirely different account of the birth of Christ, but not based on scriptural accounts. To counterpoint the depressing weather, the Romans had one of their biggest festivals in the winter, 'Saturnalia'. This was a celebration of the ancient God of vegetation, Saturn, who as a god, symbolically died only to be reborn the following spring. It was the only time of the year when all men were equal, when slave and master could meet as equals, drinking and eating, the tradition still exists today as Christmas parties when workers and employers socialise and celebrate. It was and still is a traditional time of peace on earth and goodwill to all men, another tradition taken from the Romans whose laws specifically forbade beginning hostilities during the Saturnalia. The choice of December the 25th as Christ's birth is also interesting, prior to the Council of Nicea in 354 AD his birthday was set at various times ranging from the 6th of January to 25th of April. However, amongst other things the Council of Nicea decreed that in the interests of conformity, since Christ was symbolically a sun god, his birth should be set at December the 25th to align itself with the festival of 'Sol Invictus', the 'Unconquered Sun,'

Another parallel can be found in the worship of Mithras, an Aryan Sun God also born of December the 25th. Tradition says he was conceived and born without the need of an earthly father, his Persian worshipers believed he had come to Earth to redeem men from sin. Like Christ he had been born of a virgin mother, as indeed was Horus, the sun god of the ancient Egyptians and Dionysus and Adonis and a dozen other Gods who were born without the intervention of a man. Therefore as we can see, to quote Pope Leo X, 'This myth of Christ has served us well'.

It also intriguing that The 'Dead Sea Scrolls' make no mention about Christ, and anyone who had caused such a profound effect on society would surely have merited a reference. The Druids also venerated Christmas as a manifestation of renewal with the Winter Solstice and the death of the Sun. The solstice marked a period of waiting for the winter to die in turn allowing the sun to renew itself. It is the same atavistic fear that drove the Aztecs to commit blood sacrifice at sunset to ensure the sun arose the following morning. It may even have found expression in the crucifixion of Christ, allowing the body to die in order that his spirit is set free to intercede with the father for the collective soul of humanity, once again the dying and rising God. Curiously, the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl also has strong resonance with the Christ story although there can have been no possible contact between either culture or belief system.

There is also some evidence that Christ and the New Testament were the inventions of a high-ranking, politically astute and powerful Roman family, the Piso's. These accounts tell that 66AD, one Arius Piso attacked Jerusalem defeating the Jews, and in 70AD with the aid of a relative, Titus, he razed the temple to the ground,. To commemorate his victory he and his family created a religion involving Jesus Christ to keep the slaves in check. They intended Christ to supplant Julius Caesar as the head of the new state religion of Rome, Christianity. Whether any of this has merit is probably beside the point since belief in Christ is already deeply interwoven into the psyche of millions of people, and it is this very belief that leads us to perhaps the most bizarre proposition of all, was Christ the creation of a subconscious desire?

The Power of Magic

One of the central tenets by which magic functions is the absolute and unswerving belief of those who practise it which is quite different from the vast majority of humanity. The casual and entirely normal desire to win money or cure some ailment belies a deeper and more fundamental power at work in these idle wishes. From within the invisible and imponderable discipline of quantum physics evidence is emerging that the very desire for something to happen, intangible as that is, can influence reality and nudge the wish into reality; it is the basis of chaos magic. If, as has been suggested, every single conceivable action and situation exists in stasis as a 'probability wave', then the action of thinking about any possible line of action collapses the wave and makes it a reality. Obviously this does not happen as a matter of course, for if it did the world we inhabit would be in a state of continual and whimsical change and upheaval, however, in some specific instances the phenomenon appears to operate.

Perhaps the best illustration of this is if one truly desires something to happen just as one wants, and sometimes through a chain of events it does. A typical example of this is as mundane as taking a car into town during a busy part of the day, as often as not if one goes about this with the expectation that you will find a parking place, the chances are that you will. This is not an ideal example, but it is at least easily testable. We attribute it to luck or good fortune, anything but the actual physical expression and fulfilment of desire. On the other hand if we actively pray for something to occur and it does, then it must be due to the actions of a supernatural entity, viz. God, the last thing we attribute it to is a manifestation of pure will, in other words magic. In addition, it seems as if the greater number of people who concentrate on a given wish or desire, the greater the chance that it will happen, and when and if it does, once again it is deemed a miracle rather than magic in operation. Once again we are faced with the choice of what is acceptable and what is not, divine intervention is acceptable but magic is not. Is it then conceivable that if this phenomenon is real, and if successive generation of people have unquestioningly accepted something as true, then it becomes true and a physical reality? If for example Christ was a figment of someone's imagination, but was sold so convincingly that the story was accepted as real, then he became real. In more recent times the so-called 'Philip Experiment' may be a case in point. During the 1960's in Canada, an experiment was devised by a group of people from the Canadian Society for Psychic Research to see if an 'artificial' spirit entity could be created. They gathered together at intervals over a period of some weeks as if they were holding regular séances and during their meetings they invented the life and background of the imaginary entity, Philip. Gradually they began to receive responses from their creation, table rapping and tilting etc as if the creation had developed a measure of sentience, this experiment has been replicated several time with similar results. This type of phenomenon was also exploited by the traveller Alexandra David-Neil who, in the early part of the 20th century while travelling in Tibet succeeded in creating a type of entity known as a 'Tulpa' which allegedly is, in effect, a solid being created through intense meditation and concentration. Unfortunately over the space of some weeks the entity became increasingly sullen and difficult to control and eventually had to be dissimilated using lengthy meditation techniques.

If this is true and if these results were achieved by only a few people, what then could be realised by the combined will of millions of people applied over millennia? Does this demonstrate that magic is only a matter of applied will and concentration and does it also indicate that in the correct setting, if religious services are magical rituals then prayers are effectively spells? What this also appears to indicate is that physicists are correct and reality can be altered by desire alone. Of course this is not appealing to either orthodox mainstream science or in most circumstances the church and as such it will be vigorously refuted. However, the blindfold is slowly slipping from the eyes of the public and clarity is beginning to cast light into centuries of lies and obscuration, perhaps soon they will emerge, blinking into the light of truth.

Sources:

'Et Tu Judas, Then Fall Jesus', by Gary Courtney, pub Barnes and Noble