“Is this the Gate of Hell? Archaeologists say temple doorway belching noxious gas matches ancient accounts of ‘portal to the underworld.’” For a minute, I thought I must be reading a headline on April 4, 2013 (after checking to make sure it wasn’t April 1) from what had to be the second coming of the late Generoso Pope, Jr.’s Weekly World News, a supermarket “news” tabloid published out of Lantana and later Boca Raton, Florida from 1979 to 2007.
The Weekly World News was renowned for its outlandish cover stories often based on supernatural or paranormal themes with a take on the news that approached the satirical. Counterintuitively printed entirely in black-and-white in an age of colour, its distinctive covers have become pop-culture icons in their own right. It continues to exist as a website at: http://weeklyworldnews.com/, billing itself as “The World’s Only Reliable News.”
I admit to having a soft spot for the Weekly World News going back to at least 1991 when I took Cultural Studies 235 “Media and Society” as a summer course in stately Sadleir House, built in 1892 and then the crown jewel of Peter Robinson College on Trent University’s downtown campus in Peterborough, Ont. The idea that I could spend the summer riding my yellow 18-speed mountain bike across the London Street pedestrian bridge, built in 1876, over the Otonabee River – and get academic credit to read and write an academic paper on the Weekly World News was well beyond delicious.
As it turned out though the “Is this the Gate of Hell?” was not from the Weekly World News nor any other of its supermarket tabloid ilk, but rather the mainstream Daily Mail in London (although admittedly the line between supermarket tabloid and mainstream newspaper is being increasing blurred beyond recognition.) Media outlets around the world had in fact picked up the story. CTV News here in Canada opted for the online headline, “’Gate to hell’ dug up in Turkey,” while Silver Spring, Maryland-based Discovery News opted for the slightly more conservative “Pluto’s Gate Uncovered in Turkey.”
According to the Daily Mail story, which ran April 2, 2013“Archaeologists say they have discovered the ‘Gates of Hell’, the mythical portal to the underworld in Greek and Roman legend.
“The site, in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey, is said to closely match historical descriptions of what was known as Ploutonion in Greek and Plutonium in Latin. In its heyday, a small temple with traditional Greco-Roman pillars was said to have stood next to wall with steps leading down to a cave doorway filled with foul and noxious gasses … The site remained fully functional until the 4th century A.D. and became an important pilgrimage destination for the last pagan intellectuals. Historians believe the site was sacked by Christians in the 6th century A.D., with several earthquakes adding to the damage.”
In his 1889 poem, The Ballad of East and West, the India-born English poet Rudyard Kipling wrote, “OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.” Those who claim religion is not news and has no place in the media (outside of the pages of supermarket tabloids or the church press) are living in a world of false dichotomy. Religion, whether they like it or not, is often the news of the day. The fact such news exists independently of their own interests makes it no less newsworthy, as coverage of U.S. President Barrack Obama’s visit last year to Petra, the fabled “lost city” carved out of red-rose sandstone cliffs in the desert of southern Jordan, demonstrated.
Petra? That would be under “e” for eschatology, the branch of systematic theology, which deals with the doctrines of the last things (ta eschata), and where many evangelical Protestant premillennial dispensationalist Bible scholars think the “Remnant” will escape to mid-Tribulation. That’s Petra.
soundingsjohnbarker 