A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 30

This is the fifth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Mystery structure beneath Sea of Galilee stumps archeologists.

TIBERIAS, Israel (AP) — The massive circular structure appears to be an archaeologists dream: a recently discovered antiquity that could reveal secrets of ancient life in the Middle East and is just waiting to be excavated.

It’s thousands of years old — a conical, manmade behemoth weighing hundreds of tons, practically begging to be explored.

The problem is — it’s at the bottom of the biblical Sea of Galilee. For now, at least, Israeli researchers are left stranded on dry land, wondering what finds lurk below.

The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 70 meters (230 feet), emerged from a routine sonar scan in 2003.

“It’s very enigmatic, it’s very interesting, but the bottom line is we don’t know when it’s from, we don’t know what it’s connected to, we don’t know its function,” said Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa who is one of several researchers studying the discovery. “We only know it is there, it is huge and it is unusual.”

— —

The cone-shaped structure is found at a depth of between three and 12 meters (nine and 40 feet) beneath the surface, about half a kilometer (1,600 feet) from the sea’s southwestern shore. Its base is buried under sediment.

The authors conclude the structure is man-made, made of stones that originated nearby, and it weighs about 60,000 tons. The authors write it “is indicative of a complex, well-organized society, with planning skills and economic ability.”

The rest is a mystery.

Okay, let’s go out with this year’s A Story Idea Each Day for a Month series with a bang.

You’ve got this incredibly mysterious structure at the base of the Sea of Galilee.

Scientists don’t know how old it is. For our purposes, let’s just say it dates from… picking a random number here… 2014 years old.

Awright, so you see where I’m going here, right? When I hear Sea of Galilee, my many days attending Sunday School as a youth immediately have my mind make the connection with Jesus. His ministry centered around the Sea of Galilee. The Gospels report that Jesus performed miracles there including walking on the water.

Could the Sea of Galilee and the activities of Jesus focused there be tied to this structure?

What if the Star of Bethlehem which per the Gospels was associated with the birth of Jesus actually was an alien structure, plummeting through the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space?

What if at the moment of Jesus’ birth, this alien structure plunged into the Sea of Galilee?

What if at the precise instant, some sort of energy was emitted from the structure striking Jesus as he emerged from Mary’s womb?

Yes, I’m going there!

What if Jesus’ powers were alien in origin?

It’s The Last Temptation of Christ meets E.T. the Extraterrestrial, an alternate history of Jesus’ life as he learns about his powers. And the Father he speaks to when he prays? Those are alien entities guiding him in his activities. And his resurrection? Empowered by the aliens. His ascension into Heaven? Going to be with his alien benefactors.

Jesus spent most of his time around the Sea of Galilee because that structure below the water’s surface is the source of his miraculous energy.

The parables, Sermon on the Mount, and much of his wisdom would derive from the knowledge Jesus gathered from communing telepathically with the aliens. Given my background in theological studies, how much fun would it be to go through the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life as well as Gnostic texts, and see which of his words could make sense, relating them to his association with aliens?

And then the kicker: What if this is something the aliens have been doing throughout the universe, sending this mysterious structure — like the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey — to create ‘saviors’ from one planet to the next?

There you go, a big, super controversial concept. My thirtieth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day this month, I have invited you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). Let me know if you’ve enjoyed this series. Should I do it again next year?

Tomorrow a new series: Classic 90s movies.

Comment Archive