Literary Fiction or Ancient Astronomical and Meteorological Observations in the Work of Maria Valtorta?

• Main Authors: Emilio Matricciani, Liberato De Caro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-06-01
• Series: Religions
• Subjects: astronomy; Gospel; Holy Land; Jesus Christ; meteorology; rain; Roman Palestine; Valtorta Maria; mystic visions
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/6/110

In The Gospel as revealed to me, Maria Valtorta reports a lot of information on the Holy Land at the time of Jesus: historical, archaeological, astronomical, geographical, meteorological. She states she has written what seen “in vision”. By a detailed astronomical analysis of explicit and implicit calendar information reported while she narrates detailed episodes concerning the three years of Jesus’ public life—possible because of many references to lunar phases, constellations, planets visible in the night sky in her writings—it is ascertained that every event described implies a precise date—day, month, year—without being explicitly reported by her. For example, Jesus’ crucifixion should have occurred on Friday April 23 of the year 34, a date proposed by Isaac Newton. She has also recorded the occurrence of rain so that the number of rainy days reported can be compared to the current meteorological data, supposing random observations and no important changes in rainfall daily frequency in the last 2000 years, the latter issue discussed in the paper. Unexpectedly, both the annual and monthly averages of rainy days deduced from the data available from the Israel Meteorological Service and similar averages deduced from her writings agree very well.