by Christopher Fulkerson
CF's Desk at His Capp Street Studio
Offensive, indeed incendiary remarks with barely sufficient photography to merit listening with the sound off. This film has to be a setback for any proper Petra Studies. This is not archaeology, so don't expect a city plan, or even lots of views, of the supposedly 20 square miles of the city, a ghost for 1400 years. There is a steady stream of Biblical blathering of the sort of disconnected scriptural quotes without sense that the worst lowbrow Christian preachers, one of whom you will meet, engage in. Through an unexplained connection which the narrators accept as proven the Palestinians are supposedly the "remnant of Edom," being the "hated Edomites." I will spare you other excuses for hatred that abound in this "documentary." The Battle of Armageddon and the Antichrist figure here; interesting these people know so much about the Antichrist's methods, including the use of the bar code, but they don't know the Battle of Armageddon happened in antiquity. The Herodians were supposedly Edomites and were "stooges of Rome" because they didn't help the apostle Paul, never mind that the sect of Judaism that would become Christianity was an insignificant group following a dead leader whose execution was unnoticeable in the ancient world. Jordan is promised escape from the supposedly future catastrophe (as usual no actual explanation is offered as to why, this is simply put forward, like all the rest, as established "fact") and a carefully calculated one million Jews will hide in Petra, never mind it has been uninhabitable for 1400 years. Excuses are made about how the 120 mile trip to Petra would be made by people who don't have time to pack a picnic lunch. We are told that the drying up of the Dead Sea will facilitate the flight. But feeding the one million will be achieved since "the Jews are the masters of agriculture" (because they supposedly export more fruit than any other country); again, never mind that Petra is carved in solid rock. But here's the really incendiary and dangerous rubbish: in the future conflagration "all who refuse the Messiah will be killed." That's right, this "documentary" is actually a straightforward threat in plain words. This is the kind of mindless prophetic boilerplate that must at least embarrass any thinking person of any kind of background or belief. Muslims are to be thanked for any patience they can muster with this sort of stuff in the world. Since there is that actual physical death threat to every person on Earth who doesn't accept the Messiah, I think this "documentary" should not be permitted publication.
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Posted 10/11/2010.