bizarre stories Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Were Mythical Creatures Inspired by Fossils?

It is popularly believed that stories about dragons and other mythical creatures must have arisen when ancient peoples discovered fossils of prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs. As we shall see in a moment, there is definitely some evidence that ancient peoples did sometimes discover fossils of prehistoric creatures and interpret them as the remains of mythic beasts.

Fossils, however, seem to have only rarely been the source of belief in such mythic creatures to begin with; it seems to have been far more common for people to interpret fossils in light of mythic creatures they already believed in, rather than inventing entirely new mythic beasts to explain the fossils.

Furthermore, the vast majority of claims about specific mythical creatures being inspired by specific prehistoric creatures don’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny. There is almost no solid evidence to support the assumption that dragons, Cyclopes, or griffins were inspired by prehistoric fossils and there is actually quite substantial evidence against these assumptions.

Was Scaphism a Real Thing?

In November 2019, I published an article about how most supposed “medieval torture devices” were actually never used during the Middle Ages. A number of people responded to that article by asking whether or not scaphism was real. I have therefore decided to write an entire article specifically dedicated to this question.

In case you’re unfamiliar with scaphism, it is a method of execution that was supposedly used in ancient Persia. Supposedly, it involved sealing the victim between two boats, feeding him milk and honey, and covering his face with milk and honey so that flies would swarm around his face. Then, as the victim defecated inside the boats, flies and maggots would grow up inside and slowly begin to devour his flesh. Thus, the victim would die an incredibly slow, agonizing death.

Scaphism is known for being quite arguably the most disgusting, horrible way a person can possibly die. It is hard to say, though, whether the ancient Persians ever actually executed anyone in this manner, since there is only one independent ancient source for the use of scaphism and there are some very good reasons to doubt this source’s reliability.

The Strangest Books in the Bible

The Bible is a collection of various ancient texts that are considered by Christians to be the inspired Word of God. The number of books in the Bible varies depending on which branch of Christianity you happen to belong to. The standard Protestant Bible only has sixty-six books, the standard Roman Catholic Bible has seventy-three books, and the standard Eastern Orthodox Bible has seventy-eight books.

Many of the texts that are included in the Bible seem rather strange—at least when you read them for the first time. There are some books in the Bible that are a bit peculiar in the sense that they don’t fit in well with the other books in the Bible. Then there are other books in the Bible that just seem downright bizarre—at least until you decipher what they’re talking about.

In this article, I want to talk about five of the most unusual books in the Bible. These are books that are striking either because they are so different from the others or because they employ such bizarre imagery.

No, Public Universities Aren’t Dominated by Evil Atheist Professors Seeking to Destroy Students’ Faith

The idea that evil, liberal, atheist professors are forcing their students to renounce their faith is an extremely longstanding and pervasive fear among conservative evangelical Christians here in the United States. Right-wing evangelicals have been blaming universities and their supposedly evil, liberal, atheist professors for increasing secularization in society since at least the late nineteenth century.

The trope of the atheist professor forcing his students to renounce God can be found in political speeches, cartoons, internet memes, and even films. Despite the longstanding prevalence of this idea, however, it is, for the most part, entirely unsupported by evidence.

No, Easter Is Not Named after Ishtar

Around this time of year it is common to see people sharing memes claiming that Easter is really an ancient pre-Christian pagan holiday that was hijacked by Christians. I wrote an article all the way back in April 2017 debunking some of the more general claims that you often hear about various Easter traditions such as the Easter bunny and painting Easter eggs. This year, though, I want to specifically debunk the popular claim that Easter originated as a festival of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

This is a claim that has circulated ever since the middle of the nineteenth century. Although it was originally only popular among the most die-hard of Protestant fundamentalists, it has, unfortunately, recently become very popular among atheists. It is, quite frankly, a completely ridiculous claim to anyone who knows anything about ancient Mesopotamian religion, but this sadly has not deterred the claim’s popularity.

In reality Easter is—and has always been—a Christian holiday. The only thing about the holiday that is verifiably of ancient pagan origin is the holiday’s name in English, but even the name doesn’t come from Ishtar, but rather from a totally different goddess worshipped half a world away from Mesopotamia.

No, “Secretary” Does Not Mean “Secret-Keeper”

There is a popular claim that has been circulating for a long time claiming that the word secretary comes from Latin meaning “keeper of secrets.” This idea stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of the Latin word secretum, which is the source of our English word secret but usually has a slightly different meaning in Latin.

No, Nostradamus Didn’t Predict COVID-19—But I Did!

The French esoteric writer Michel de Nostredame (lived 1503 – 1566), who is better known by his Latinized name “Nostradamus,” is famous for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of quatrains published in 1555, which Nostradamus’s supporters claim contains accurate predictions of future events.

Immediately after any major event happens, Nostradamus’s supporters always flock to claim that he predicted it. They are especially keen to claim this after major disasters and international tragedies. It is only natural, then, that Nostradamus’s supporters are now claiming that he successfully predicted the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hundreds of years in advance.

Unfortunately for fans of the famous French mystic, he did absolutely nothing of the sort. Some of the alleged “prophecies” attributed to Nostradamus online are just outright hoaxes; others are real things he wrote that have just been contorted and misinterpreted to make them seem like genuine predictions.

There is someone, though, who did correctly predict this pandemic long in advance: me!

No, Aristotle Is Not Telling You to Unleash Your Inner Rage

Most people today believe that the word catharsis refers to the necessary release of negative emotions and destructive impulses for the sake of “purging” oneself of those emotions and impulses. Many people see this “purging” of negative emotions—usually specifically anger—as healthy or even necessary. This idea of catharsis as emotional purging is usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC).

Psychological experiments, however, have shown that unleashing your anger does not cause that anger to go away. In fact, actually has a tendency to make people even more angry than they were originally. Furthermore, while Aristotle did use the Greek word κάθαρσις (kátharsis) in his Poetics, he certainly didn’t use that word to mean what many people today think he meant by it.

Plague Doctor Costumes Were Actually a Good Idea

There are a lot of unfortunate misconceptions out there about the infamous bird-beaked costume worn by plague doctors. One misconception is that this costume was worn during the Middle Ages. Another misconception is that the costume was supposed to protect the doctor by “scaring” the disease away. Another misconception is that the costume was totally ineffective.

In reality, the plague doctor costume was only invented in the seventeenth century and the beak was supposed to protect the doctor by supposedly filtering infectious vapors from the air he breathed, not by “scaring” the disease. Plague doctor costumes were undoubtedly flawed, partly due to limited understanding of how disease was spread and partly due to technological limitations, but the idea behind them was actually a good one and they probably did provide doctors with some degree of protection from the plague.

The Shroud of Turin Is Definitely a Hoax

The Shroud of Turin is probably the most famous supposed relic in existence. It is a 4.4-meter-long linen shroud bearing the image of a crucified man. Supporters of the shroud claim that it is the actual burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth and that the image on the shroud is the true image of Jesus, created at the moment of his resurrection.

It is easy to see why this idea is so appealing. If the shroud were authentic, it would be a remarkable source of information about Jesus the human being. Unfortunately, we can be virtually certain that the Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France in around the 1350s AD by an artist trained in the Gothic figurative style as part of a faith-healing scam.

We know this primarily because there is no definitive record of the shroud prior to the fourteenth century and the earliest definitive record of the shroud is a letter recording that the forger who made it had confessed, but also because of a wide array of other factors. For instance, the shroud doesn’t match the kinds of funerary wrappings that were used in the Judaea in the first-century AD or the specific description of Jesus’s funerary wrappings given in the Gospel of John. The fabric of the shroud has also been conclusively radiocarbon dated to the Late Middle Ages.

Additionally, the proportions of the figure on the shroud are anatomically incorrect, but they closely match the proportions of figures in Gothic art of the fourteenth-century. The bloodstains on the shroud are not consistent with how blood flows naturally, which suggests the stains have been painted on. Finally, the fabric of the shroud was made using a complex weave that was common in the Late Middle Ages for high-quality textiles but was not used for burial shrouds in the time of Jesus.