Holy Fire
The ceremony of the Holy Fire is led by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and is usually attended by priests and believers of different Christian denominations.
[6][7] The Holy Fire is taken to Greece by special flight,[8] and similarly to other Orthodox countries or countries with major Orthodox churches, such as Syria, Georgia, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Romania, Egypt, Cyprus, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, being received by church and state leaders.
[9] Despite these previous instances, the Holy Fire is believed to have been first recorded by the Christian pilgrim, Bernard the Wise (Bernardus Monachus), in 867.
[15][16] The ceremony was marred in 2002 when a disagreement between the Greek Patriarch and the accompanying Armenian bishop over who should emerge first with the Holy Fire led to a struggle between the factions.
[20] According to Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, the 13th-century Ayyubid ruler Al-Muazzam Turanshah (r. 1249–1250) is mentioned as having discovered the fraudulence of the Holy Fire; however, he allowed the monks to continue their fraud in exchange for money.
[22] Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), wrote scathingly about the alleged phenomenon in the concluding volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth century, was devoutly cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects, who impose on the credulous spectators for their own benefit and that of their tyrants.
In 2005, in a live demonstration on Greek television,[citation needed] Michael Kalopoulos, author and historian of religion, dipped five candles in white phosphorus.
The candles spontaneously ignited after approximately 10 minutes due to the self-ignition properties of white phosphorus when in contact with air.
Repeated experiments showed that the ignition can be delayed for half an hour or more, depending on the density of the solution and the solvent employed.Kalopoulos also says that chemical reactions of this nature were well known in ancient times, quoting Strabo, who states: "In Babylon there are two kinds of naphtha springs, a white and a black.
(Strabon Geographica 16.1.15.1-24) He further states that phosphorus was used by Chaldean magicians in the early fifth century BC, and by the ancient Greeks, in a way similar to its supposed use today by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.
[26] Russian skeptic Igor Dobrokhotov[27] has analysed the evidence for an alleged miracle at length on his website, including the ancient sources[28] and contemporary photos and videos.
[1]: 89 In the same book, Archbishop Gerason Theofanis states that the Holy Fire does not light up in a miraculous, but in a natural way, and it is then blessed by the Patriarch.
In a news segment aired on Israeli Channel 12 on March 10, 2018, Agoyan shared that during his involvement, the Greek Patriarch ignited the fire with the assistance of a lamp.
