Archaeologists discover 'Gate to Hell' | Hacker News Reader

Archaeologists discover 'Gate to Hell'

abc.net.au

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"…destroyed by the early Christians in 6AD" — there's something wrong with that statement.

Edit: according to http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/gate-to-hell-f..., it was in the 6th century AD.

Only off by a couple hundred years, no big deal.

When the worlds only a few thousands years old, that's quite a margin of error.

It was in fact destroyed by the 6 year old Jesus.

According to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas [1], the 6-year old Jesus was regularly breathing life into clay birds, making people blind and killing other children by will, so it seems reasonable that he may have destroyed the Gate of Hell as well.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas

The Infancy Gospel sounds like horrible Jesus fanfiction.

That's kind of exactly it, I think.

I don't know anything about the Infancy Gospel other than what I just read in that Wikipedia article, but I'm familiar with two old ballads that are right along the same lines:

"Cherry Tree Carol": Joseph is being mean to the pregnant Mary because he's not the father, so Jesus speaks up from the womb and commands a cherry tree to bend over for Mary so she can pluck cherries without reaching. Then Jesus (after being born) prophecies his own death. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch054.htm

"Bitter Withy": Three "young lords' sons" won't play ball with little Jesus because he is poor, so he builds a bridge of light and walks it; when they try to follow him they fall and drown. Their mothers complain to Mary, and she spanks him with withy branches. He then curses the tree. http://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/thebitterwithy.html

Christianity has a lot of fanfiction, and large chunks of it have been merged with the canonical scripture in the popular imagination. Ever noticed how the devil doesn't actually feature in the bible anywhere? Yeah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha

Accidentally downvoted you, sry.

> Ever noticed how the devil doesn't actually feature in the bible anywhere?

Sorry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_in_Christianity#Sources_o...

Oh there are lots of references to "satan," but what is he? God's opposite number? A fallen angel? A non-fallen, benign angel? Man's own sinful nature? Previously popular pagan entities? It's a long way from the modern theological concept of the devil.

Since then we have post-rationalised all these vague biblical references into one guy with horns and goats feet who hangs out in a lake of fire, but that is a (comparatively) recent idea, as you will find if you examine your own wiki link a little more closely. (BTW the lake of fire barely gets half a sentence either. That's also very much something that came with the "expanded universe" books. Actually they were paintings rather than books, but you can look that up for yourself.)

You could also watch this superb recent BBC documentary on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1aa9q1RULg

Wait until you hear about god's first attempt at woman, Eve's predecessor, who went bad! There's a lot of fun stuff that modern christianity has chosen to throw out.

> according to http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/gate-to-hell-f..., it was in the 6th century AD

...Wouldn't that fail a reasonable definition of "early Christian"? At that point Christianity had been the state church of Rome for 150 years.

...Wouldn't that fail a reasonable definition of "early Christian"?

There may be a reasonable definition of "early Christian" that it fails, but it certainly wouldn't fail all reasonable definitions of the phrase.

I really wish articles like these would include photos, the referenced writings or at least the coordinates.

I know - I had to search for it. This piece includes a bit of video as well:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/travel/news/archaeologists-...

Not to mention commas.

In general the Perseus Project hosted by Tufts holds all the original material, and most translations, from the Classical period one could want. Unfortunately it still seems to be running on the same hardware it was back in 1996 when I was making heavy use of it.

So instead, here is a public domain translation of the relevant section from Strabo's Geography. You're looking for paragraph 14, about halfway down the page:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/13D...

Some photos here

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/gate-to-hell-f...

Once again, the comments on a non-HN site have further diminished my faith in humanity.

Another amazing place in the running for the title Gate to Hell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_to_Hell

This is what first came to mind for me as well.

Flickr pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flydime/4671890953/

That... is an actual anomaly from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Amazing.

And to think I thought they had known where Oracle's headquarters were all along.

That explains the dead birds all over RWC.

Anyone else here is wishing you had time to pack up some breathing gear and cross the gate to see what is inside?

Nothing new, there are loads of them all over the UK. For locations just see here http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/.

The new thing is that this is the gate to hell which Strabo visited. And which also is situated close to a Pluto temple.

The greatest website on the entire internet? It's a hard argument to refute...

Anyone have the coordinates to the site?

I don't have the coordinates of the excavation site but the ruins of the old baths are located at: 37°55'29"N 29° 7'29"E

Awesome, thanks. Now, let the jokes begin. (:

Did they follow a road paved with good intentions?

Damn I was hoping for Doom III status.

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