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The New York Times Accuses Author of Fabricating History, Except He Didn't

11/10/2022

This week in the New York Times, novelist Marcel Theroux reviewed The Lion House, a new history of sixteenth century Ottoman imperialism by historian Christopher de Bellaigue, and Theroux’s review is both a case study in how not to review history and an example of how fact-checking and expertise has drained away from the editorial level of journalism. Theroux accused de Bellaigue of fabricating material, and no one thought it worth checking to see if it were true.

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A Medieval Italian Chronicle Might Offer Insight into the Zeno Hoax

10/10/2021

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Over the summer, Paolo Chiesa published an article in Terrae Incognitae describing a passage in a medieval Italian chronicle briefly mentioning the land west of Greenland which the Norse had named Markland, and it made the rounds of online news sources a couple of weeks ago. Chiesa said that this passage, from around 1340 CE, is the oldest mention of North America known from the Mediterranean region. On its own, this is not earth-shattering news since the northern European peoples had been speaking of these lands since Adam of Bremen described Vinland around 1035 CE. But it does have interesting implications for the notorious Zeno Narrative and its role in fringe history’s elaborate narrative about Henry Sinclair learning of and visiting North America.

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Researchers Offer New Evidence in Ongoing Effort to Prove Bible's Sodom Story Real

9/22/2021

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Fifteen years ago, evangelical Christian archaeologist Steven Collins claimed that the site of Tall El-Hammam was the Biblical Sodom, presenting evidence that the ancient city had suffered a massive and sudden fiery destruction around 1600 BCE. The History channel’s H2 spinoff network turned that claim into an episode of The Universe in 2014. The idea that Sodom had been destroyed by a comet, asteroid, or some other non-supernatural blast from the heavens goes all the way back to 1743, so it isn’t exactly news.

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Diana Muir Plans Multi-Season Templar TV Show with Scott Wolter

9/15/2021

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Diana Muir has spent the past few years unsuccessfully promoting a line of self-published books claiming to be the personal journals of Henry I Sinclair, 1st Earl of Orkney, a minor medieval figure that an accident of Victorian pseudo-scholarship has led thousands to believe secretly transported Templar secrets to the Americas long before Columbus. In a recent Facebook posting, Muir announced that she is working with former America Unearthed host Scott F. Wolter on a potential television series about the journals that the pair hopes will run for five to ten seasons in the style of Curse of Oak Island.

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Classicist Disputes My Analysis of Brian Muraresku's Joe Rogan Appearance

10/6/2020

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Last week, I wrote about the recent appearance of Brian Muraresku on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss the use of psychedelic drugs in ancient times, particularly in the mixed drink known as kykeon served to initiates during the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece. Part of their conversation revolved around the 1978 book The Road to Eleusis, whose coauthor, Carl Ruck, consulted with and advised Muraresku in his own work. This past week, I heard from Ruck, who argued that my commentary was incorrect and has asked me to retract my blog post due to the “dismay and distress” it has caused his associates. He copied the email to Muraresku.

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Review of "War of the Gods" by Erich von Däniken

9/23/2020

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Years go by with the inevitable cycle of the seasons repeating their majestic rounds. After winter, summer. After summer, winter. And with the regularity of the season, so too does Erich von Däniken release a new book, and with the same repetition as the seasons. Each book is the same as all the books before, and each one begins with the ritual of pretending otherwise. War of the Gods, originally published in German 2018 but released in English for the first time this month, starts with a letter in which von Däniken (henceforth EVD) proclaims with great excitement news that he imagines will surprise his readers: “In this book, I present new findings!” Unfortunately, there is an ominous note: “But it is only possible by building on previous experiences.” Each winter brings a different snowstorm but you always know it will snow. So, too, do you know that whatever soupçon of new material appears in War of the Gods will be buried in a blizzard of recycling. He frequently refers to his own books, the books of guests on Ancient Aliens, and to claims made on the Ancient Aliens television show itself, recycling in an endless loop of previous claims tracing back to his own earliest efforts to recycle Morning of the Magicians to his own advantage.

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Did Lucian Parody the Book of Revelation in His Satirical "True History"?

9/1/2020

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Classicist Peter Gainsford made an interesting case on his blog that the humorous ancient Greek science fiction satire of Lucian called The True History includes a close parody of the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. I can definitely see Gainsford’s point, but my gut instinct is that Lucian wasn’t directly drawing on the Christian text in imagining the fantastical paradise on the Isle of the Blessed where the heroic dead reside. Let’s take a quick look at what Gainsford says in order to puzzle out whether he’s right and whether Lucian had it in for Christianity’s most psychedelic text.

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Review of Forbidden History S06E10 "The Secret Life of Moses"

6/9/2020

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Over the years, legends have arisen to describe and discuss the history of Moses in order to fill in gaps in the Biblical narrative. Modern cable TV parasites routinely link him to the pharaoh Akhenaten or to space aliens. But the stories go back much farther, and are much weirder. Jewish legends claimed he was a giant who battled other giants in superhuman feats of strength. Contrary to what Forbidden History claims in this episode, there is a long historiographic tradition in Greco-Roman literature of discussing Moses as a historical figure (though they were undoubtedly reporting Jewish claims), and there is even bizarre figure, Osarseph, in Manetho’s famous Egyptian history who was a renegade Egyptian priest who led all the lepers out of Egypt and changed his name to Moses—and that story, more than Moses’s, was likely inspired in part by Akhenaten, according to Jan Assmann. Naturally, Forbidden History knows nothing of this and devotes its time to the same tired old arguments we’ve heard a hundred times before on countless bottom-scraping cable shows.

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Review of Forbidden History S06E05: "Search for Noah's Ark"

5/19/2020

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Since I was able to obtain episodes of the current season of Forbidden History, which airs on a channel not included in my cable package, I am going to devote some of this week to picking up on reviews of episodes I haven’t seen yet. Today I plan to review the May 3 episode investigating Noah’s Ark. The search for the Ark that saved life from the Flood is older than the Abrahamic faiths. According to the most ancient authorities, the peoples of Mesopotamia believed that the Ark used by the Mesopotamian flood-hero (variously Atrahasis, Ziusudra, Xisuthros, Utnapishtim, etc.) had come to rest on a mountain and could still be seen in historic times. They wrote that there had been an active trade in wood from the Ark, which was collected to be used in magical amulets. This belief carried over into Jewish and Christian practice, and it inspired the hunt for Noah’s Ark. Forbidden History sees it a bit differently.

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Review of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch S01E02; Plus: Did the Akhbar al-zaman Predict Coronavirus?

4/9/2020

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On Tuesday, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch aired its second episode, and it should surprise no one that it immediately degenerated into the “hurry up and wait” style of The Curse of Oak Island, even to the point of introducing Oak Island narrator Robert Clotworthy into the show to narrate its title sequence. Last week, the pilot episode ended on a cliffhanger in which ranch owner Brandon Fugal created false drama by forbidding Ancient Alien talking head Travis Taylor from digging on Skinwalker Ranch due to the contents of a mystery briefcase. The result was… disappointing.

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