Toto

The Gospel of Jesus' Cat

Dateline Cairo, April 1:

The Egyptian ministry of Tourism announced an astonishing new find that might shed light on the historical Jesus.

It is a scrap of papyrus that contains a sentence in Coptic, referred to as the gospel of Jesus' Cat. Paleographers have translated the words as:

And Jesus said to his disciples "You [schmucks]. I have had more intelligent [conversations?] with my cat."

This raises the intriguing possibility that Jesus had a cat.

There is no evidence of domesticated cats in the Bible, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Indeed, in Biblical studies, absence of evidence can often be turned into evidence.

Cats were prevalent in Egypt, and were worshiped there, and there are early attestations linking Jesus to Egypt. It is entirely conceivable that Jesus' family brought a cat from Egypt, and that some of his followers would have viewed the cat as the source of his enlightenment and healing powers.

Furthermore, scholars argue, it is plausible that Jesus' village of Nazareth would have had resident cats, since cats play a role in peasant grain-based agriculture. Unlike that other domesticated species that begs for scraps at the table, cats earn their keep. Many cats who start by catching mice have risen through the ranks to supervisory positions or middle management, such as personnel work.

It is possible that Jesus' reference to his cat is metaphorical, or that it was an interpolation from Egyptian followers of the goddess Bastet, or even that it is word play indirectly linked to Marcion. But scholars point out that this statement meets the criteria of embarrassment and dissimilarity, and also the criterion of "sounds good to me," which are all tools used by scholars who study the historical Jesus.

Scientists are preparing to do DNA testing of the Shroud of Turin to look for cat hairs.

Read more about this find here

wordy

Happy this was posted on April First

Now we have the Argument from lack of Cats in the Bible.

The fact that there is no mentioning of that Jesus or any of his many fans
had a good relation to a cat shows that all of the Bible is pure fiction.
Had it had any basis in real history they have told us that Jesus loved his cat dearly.

Tommy

I noticed quite a lot of stray cats in Jerusalem old town in 2008 so it's quite possible that some of Jesus' later groupies could have been cats. You know you've been in Israel too long when you look at a group of cats/seagulls/goats and think "I wonder which ones are the Arabs and which are the Jews?".