The large sucking sound of Messianic Study

The more I learn, the more I know the Messianic study and idea has little to do with the novel, and yet, I continue to read and learn about the Messiah concept. What a mess that is. Don't go there. It hurts the brain after a while and then, most of the rest of the body as well.

I'm basically writing this to remind myself that I'm not studying the messianic stuff any more, I'm finishing up the novel with the first intended story. So if you were looking for an actual blog entry here, that is not what we are doing today. At least not ... now.. today.. maybe later today.

Writing about Ancient Days

The bane of historical sections in fictional novels, is the writer of the fictional novel. Ideas and settings are hard enough to come up with, and when you get a good story line running in your head, the last thing you want is some archeologist coming up with a fact that makes your great idea impossible, or at the very least highly unlikely.

For example, I had a great mental image of Dismas coming down into the Valley of the Shadow, on the east side of Jerusalem. There is a necropolis on the Mount of Olives, just to the south of where he is riding down from the summit. To bring the description inline with the mood of the character, I wanted to darken the atmosphere up a bit, which is rather difficult considering you are looking at Jerusalem from the summit of the Mount of Olives at sunrise.

One of the descriptions I came up with, is to put some fog down in the bottom of the vale, and to put some small lamps on the tome stones in the fog covered area of the necropolis. Small lights in fog are spooky to me. There are names like death watches and dead lights that come to mind when I see these scenes. The trouble was I didn't know if the Jewish people put lamps on tome stones.

After doing some research on the Internet, I came across an article on Stephen Smuts' blog called Ancient Jewish Oil Lamps . In the article Stephen says:

Lamps are common finds in archaeological excavations of private dwellings, villages, as well as in tombs, and are helpful tools for dating.

I really like the word "tombs" in that sentence, because it offered the suggestion that having lamps around the dead would (at least), not be offensive to a Jewish reader. So I wrote Stephen and asked him if there was any Jewish custom he knew about which would put lamps on tome stones. He was very kind in taking time from his day in writing me back.

The answer of course is no, they didn't and don't do that. So in my "writers" mind, these lamps are being left by Roman or Greek friends of the dead, and since there are only a few lamps in the scene, and it isn't and offensive act (wouldn't be considered a desecration), I left the scene in the chapter, but I don't explain it or elude to it after.

Stephen also suggests in his article that the lamps are very useful for dating a discovery, and I take this to mean there are different types of lamps being created over time; different styles and possibly different materials being used as well.

The great temple lamp, the one inside the temple which burns before the door of the Holy center, can only be filled with olive oil. And... this olive oil is made from gathering the first drop of oil from each olive.

The towering lamps in the court yard in front of the temple are also filled with olive oil, and the wicks are said to be made from the old robes of the priests. How true this is, I don't know. There are many basic information areas that we have lost regarding the temple, which is the second bane when writing about ancient days. Some times the information you are looking for, simply doesn't exist.

Map of Alexandria I used for the first Forever Jack Novel

I found this map on Michael Livingston's web site. He did a bit of editing to the version he found. While most of my descriptions are going to be vague, especially concerning places that simply do not exist any longer, in order to write the passages, I need to know what they look like.

I guess it is quite a bit like the characters of a fiction novel. You note and create a much larger profile for them than you will ever use in the novel.

In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Dismas is said to have guarded the passage of Joseph and Mary, with their new child Jesus, into Egypt. This simple statement tells us a great deal about Dismas, and his character if we choose to use it, and I did choose, because there is so precious little to go on.

First off, Dismas is probably between the age of 16 and 20 when this happens. Any older, and he would be past 50 when they capture him as a thief for Crucifixion. Any younger, and he wouldn't have the clout to guard anyone, anywhere.

This also tells us that Dismas is a career thief. A highway man. And, probably from Egypt himself, though not necessarily an Egyptian. I choose to keep him simple, and left the nationality up to the reader to decide. The orphan history is assumed, since for the life he is leading at such a young age, he has to have the skills. To have those skills at 16, he had to grow up with him. Jumping from there to Dismas being an orphan on the streets of Alexandria, seemed almost apparent.

Michael Livingston had some issues with this map, suggesting that it wasn't accurate to where things were according to new information found in recent digs. You can read more about that on his web site. I needed very little from the map. The Jewish quarter, the location of gates, and the rough size of the city. Most of the rest I could manage without.

An outline map of Ancient Alexandria

This looks like it was possibly a campaign map of some sort. Not very detailed