Yeshua, the mythical Christ and his magical works and wands
Replica of the Templar grafitti engraved on stone at Domme, France on display in the Templar Museum at Domme
Jesus turns water into wine with his magic wand.
A figure persumablt Jesus - Yeshua holds a rod or wand.
The Crucifixion is a symbolic representation of the mythical Tetrapolar.
Is this where we get the Star Wars references?
Here is some very interesting information regarding the writings of Paracelsus on Magic, Sorcery and the Mythical Christ.
Jedi: Jesus - Disciples - Je-Di?
Is this the Force they refer to?
What's really going on here?
Taken from: Paracelsus by Dr. Franz Hartmann
Figure 1.
Jesus Raising Lazarus from the dead, Fresco,
Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome, mid 3rd century
Figure 2.
The Raising of Lazarus, Fresco, Roman catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus,
end of 3rdcentury to early 4th century
Figure 3.
Raising of Lazarus, Fresco, Catacomb cubiculum
O, Rome, 4th century
Figure 5.
The Raising of Lazarus, Fresco, Catacomb of St. Priscilla;
Rome, 3rd century
Figure 6.
The Raising of Lazarus, Detail of sarcophagus, 3rd century
Figure 7.
The Raising of Lazarus, Sarcophagus in Lateran, 4th century
Figure 9.
Sarcophagus with Scenes from the Life of Peter
4thcentury, Arles, Musée Réattu
Figure 10.
The Sarcophagus of the Child,
Catacombs of Saint Callixtus, Mid-4th century
Figure 11.
Jesus raising the dead and the adoration of the magi, sarcophagus,
Vatican Museo Pio Cristiano, 4th century
Figure 12.
Nativity, baptism of Jesus, and Jesus raising Jairus' daughter, sarcophagus, Vatican Museum, Rome, 4th century.
Figure 13.
Abraham offering Isaac, Jesus healing the man born blind and the paralytic,
Sarcophagus, Vatican Museum, Rome, 4thcentury
Figure 14.
Jesus with Peter and Paul, sarcophagus, Vatican Museum, Rome, 4th century
Figure 15.
Gilt Glass Bowl, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 4th century
Figure 16.
Ivory diptych with miracle scenes, Ravenna, Museo Archeologico Nazionale
6th century
Figure 17.
The Andrews diptych, ivory, north Italian, mid 5th century
Figure 18.
Peter’s Water Miracle, sarcophagus, Museo Nationale delle Terme,
Rome, 4th century
Figure 19.
Moses striking a rock to get water. Catacombs wall painting,
Rome, 4th century.
Figure 20.
Moses striking the rock, Catacombs of St. Peter and Marcellinus,
Rome, 3rd century
Figure 21.
Moses crossing the Red Sea, Catacomb fresco, Rome, 4th century.
Extract from Helen Ingram (2007) Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels, PhD, The University of Birmingham, UK.
That’s Jesus at the top of the image. He’s healing a paralytic who appears firstly on his bed on the right and then carrying his bed and walking away on the left. It’s like a graphic novel that you read backwards. This is likely to be a depiction of an incident that occurred in Capernaum and is recorded in all three synoptic gospels (Mt. 9:1–8, Mk.2:1–12, and Lk. 5:17–26). In the picture Jesus is wearing a Roman style toga and has his arm outstretched towards the paralyzed man. There’s not much more we can tell about how people in the third century imagined Jesus to look, other than that he was a miracle-worker of great power.
There’s more to see in this second image. It is from either the third or fourth centuries and depicts Jesus feeding the multitude.
This picture was discovered in the Via Anapo catacomb underneath Rome. Those objects on the ground are the five loaves and two fishes that Jesus used to feed the multitude, the only miracle—aside from the resurrection—recorded in all four gospels (M. 14:13-21; Mk 6:31-44; Lk 9:12-17; Jn 6:1-14).
Jesus is again wearing a Roman toga and is barefooted. He has short hair and is clean-shaven in the Roman style of the time. There’s no great controversy about a Roman Christian depicting Jesus as a Roman. What else might he or she have imagined Jesus to look like if they’d never met a Galilean or anyone from the Middle East before? But what has interested scholars is that Jesus seems to be performing this miracle with a wand in his hand. And the wand doesn’t only appear in this picture. This door below, dated from around 430 AD in Rome, is decorated with the carvings of three miracles — the raising of Lazarus from the dead (top), the feeding of the five thousand (middle) and the turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana (bottom).
As you can see in all three panels, Jesus is performing his miraculous signs with the use of a staff or a wand. That might conjure (pun intended) images of wizards and magicians. And that might bother you somewhat. Was Jesus seen as a magician? But surely, his miracles aren’t mere magic tricks. They’re meant to be signs of Jesus’ identity as the promised Christ.
In an article titled “Jesus the Magician? Why Jesus Holds a Wand in Early Christian Art” in the Biblical Archeology Review, Lee Jefferson writes, “The implement that Jesus holds (sometimes called a virga or rabdos) is portrayed as either thick and ruddy… or thin and reed-like, such as in catacomb paintings. He uses it in the performance of a miracle, leading several scholars to conclude that early Christians understood Jesus as a magician. The problem with this identification is that early Christians greatly maligned magic. For early Christians, Jesus performing miracles with the staff was not magical. Rather, it was intrinsically biblical (recalling Moses) and innately ecclesial (touting the supremacy of the Church).”
In the gospels, Jesus is regularly alluded to as being like Moses only far greater. And the Old Testament regularly mentions Moses’ use of a rod or staff in performing miracles. He used one to part the Red Sea, and to produce water from a rock. His staff was even transformed into a snake and back at one stage. It would make sense for the early Christians who saw Jesus as a kind of super-Moses to replicate Moses’ use of a staff.
But the Jewish tradition of the staff-wielding miracle worker doesn’t end with Moses. In the first century BC, there was a Jewish scholar named Honi HaMe’agel (the Circle-drawer) after a particularly flashy display of miraculous power. During one unusually dry winter, Israel was teetering on the edge of a catastrophic drought so Honi drew a circle in the dust with his staff and stood within it. He then declared that he wouldn’t leave the circle until it rained. When it began to drizzle, Honi raised his staff and scoffed, demanding more rain from God. When it began to pour, Honi asked God to ease it off to a calm but steady rain and God complied. Or so the story goes.
Whether Jesus used a staff or wand, and whether he was clean-shaven and short-haired, is neither here nor there, really. The point is that when the earliest Christians came to depict Jesus, their favorite posture for him was that of all-powerful miracle worker. They didn’t believe his miraculous power was derived from any magic wand. The miracles were seen as signs of Jesus’ own innate power and authority. They were performed as signs of his kingship and his coming kingdom. As John Dickson writes in A Spectator’s Guide to Jesus:
“Jesus’ deeds are portrayed in our texts as a sign within history of the restoration of all things at the end of history. Jesus’ power over sickness, evil & nature itself are a preview, you might say, of God’s coming kingdom… As the second last chapter of the New Testament envisions: ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev 21:4). But what is merely promised in prophecy and vision here in the book of Revelation… was temporarily experienced within history… in the ministry of Jesus: evil was overthrown, frail bodies restored, nature itself was put right. The ‘kingdom of God’ had in miniature come upon them.”
This idea is depicted in this early drawing of Jesus, found in catacombs, and dated around 375 AD.