The Resurrection Maker Quotes

“without Excalibur the Grail cannot be discovered”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Our oral history goes back to the time of Christ. A great alchemist named Nehor found the Grail stone, presumably a one-of-its-kind meteorite, and fashioned it into this bowl. He discovered it functioned as a portal. These days we talk about the multiverse. We shall see about that. Jesus drank from it, the dark matter entered his body and the rest is history. Did he go to heaven? A parallel universe? Are they one and the same? Do you see this melding of theology and science? Nehor, it is said, did the same as Jesus, drinking from the Grail, inside or near Jesus’ tomb. It is also said he had one of his followers kill him but the Grail was stolen before he could, well, be resurrected. For two millennia the Khem have been looking for the Grail. Our aim was to bring it back to the exact spot where Nehor died.” “We don’t know how extradimensionality works,” Neti said, “but according to oral tradition, the place where you come back has to be the place where you died.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Arthur ignored everyone in the chamber but Claire. He turned to her and forced her to look at him. “You’re one of them.” Her lips quivered and her eyes began to water. “I was curious, of course, and also honored to be asked to join. Neti was my mentor, Simone, my friend—okay, my lover—the men involved, some of the greatest living physicists. They told me things about the Grail that had been passed down over two thousand years, from alchemists to chemists to physicists. We’re all rational. We don’t believe in magic, we don’t believe in mystical things. We believe in science so we knew that the Grail had to have properties not from the earth but from the cosmos. Ever since dark matter was discovered we thought the Grail might be made of it.” “And now we know it is,” Harp said.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Gulping, he lifted it until the box was fully open. The room became as bright as a sunlit day. The Grail was shining like a beacon. It had changed color from jet black to snow white. He felt Claire beside him and heard her say, “My God.” He was scared to touch it out of fear it was hot but when he realized that there was no intense heat he put his hand closer until his finger made contact. It was the same temperature as before. Behind him he heard Neti say, “It’s happening,” and he assumed she was talking to them, but he was mistaken.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the chapel got a few shades brighter. He thought it was his imagination but Claire and Neti noticed it too. The three of them stood when the source of the extra light became clear. It was the Grail. Bright light was leaking through the seal of the box lid. Neti’s face changed. She seemed younger, more aggressive. “Open it!” she shouted. “Go ahead and open the box.” Arthur took a hesitant step forward and flipped the two latches. At that, the lid partly opened and the light was brighter still. “All the way! Open the lid,”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Where’s the Grail?” she asked. “In the rotunda,” Arthur said. “Should I leave it there?” “You can bring it in. It’s okay.” He left and returned with the lead-lined box. “Where should I put it?” “You can put in on the rolling stone altar. They didn’t say I couldn’t put something on it. It’s covered in glass anyway, which is probably not so clean since visitors kiss it all day.” Arthur gently placed the box on the altar and sat on the marble floor beside Claire. He looked up at the smoke vent and the fifteen hanging oil lamps. He wondered what the chapel would look like if they were all lit and the harsh battery lamps were shut off.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Keep in mind this Edicule has been built and rebuilt four times over the centuries and the church around it has also undergone enormous periodic changes. This structure we’re in is from the nineteenth century. Essentially the Edicule is like a Russian nesting doll, one building inside another inside another. The actual tomb is probably below us but it would take an earthquake literally to get the church authorities to agree to any kind of modern archaeological exploration.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“This was less than three hundred years after the crucifixion so it’s not far-fetched to think that people actually had a good idea. And they told her, ‘there,’ in the rubble of one of Hadrian’s old temples, which had been erected on the site of Golgotha but had recently been demolished to build a new church for Constantine. That’s where she was said to have found pieces of the True Cross, the Stone of Calvary and this tomb.” “But this is inside the city walls,” Claire said. “Now it is. Back in A.D. 33 this area was outside the Old City walls.” Arthur looked around. “I’m sorry, but this looks nothing like a rock-cut tomb.” “No it doesn’t,” Neti agreed. “Keep in mind this Edicule has been built and rebuilt four times over the centuries and the church around it has also undergone enormous periodic changes.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“I agreed I wouldn’t put any instruments on the burial slab but we can use the floor.” “You think this is a good candidate for the actual tomb?” Arthur asked. “Well, probably better than the Garden Tomb,” Neti answered, “and certainly Catholics and Orthodox Christians think this is the right place. The history goes back to the fourth century when Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to accept Christianity, came to Jerusalem looking for the tomb. So, this is a smart woman by all accounts and maybe she could be described as the first anthropologist because what does she do? She asks the people in the area where they think Jesus was buried.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the Tomb Chamber. This room was less than half the size of the other, and half its area was taken up by the stone burial couch. Directly ahead, partially obscured by Neti, he saw a painted icon of the Virgin Mary that overlaid a cupboard that, she told him, could be opened to reveal an older layer of the Edicule. To his right at knee height was a marble bench topped by Christ’s supposed burial slab. Over the bench was a red marble shelf with the colorful iconography that represented the three controlling churches.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“led to a second chamber. The arched passage, framed by creamy marble elaborately carved into a curtain motif, was low, preventing anyone from entering without bowing down.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the Chapel of the Angel, was not much larger than a generous garden shed, its floor inlaid with panels of orange, white, and black marble. Dead center was a square marble altar, a pedestal with a flat glass top covering a slab of stone the size of a chessboard. “That’s supposed to be a piece of the rolling stone which an angel pushed away,”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the central gallery, the Catholicon. “Down there and up the stairs is the shrine of Calvary: there’s a stone with a hole where the cross was supposed to have been placed. It looks a little different from the Garden Tomb, no?” Arthur nodded. “Night and day.” “You have to remember that this is all built on an area that in A.D. 33 would have looked not so different from where we were last night. It’s impossible to even use your imagination it’s so altered by two thousand years of successive shrines and churches. I think that’s why ordinary people have a stronger connection to the Garden Tomb, while a majority of scholars favor the authenticity of this place.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the features that made the Church of the Holy Sepulcher different from any cathedral he had ever visited. For under the ornate dome of the rotunda, surrounded by massive marble columns, was a self-contained rectangular building, modest in proportions, with a fancy onion-domed cupola. “The Edicule,” Neti said, drawing their attention. “That’s where the tomb is. That’s where we’re going.” They set the equipment and Grail box down on the marble floor.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located within the Christian Quarter of the Old City adjacent to the maze of streets of the ancient Muristan district. Erected over the site many believed to be the true biblical Golgotha, the church in modern times is administered jointly by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches, and Neti had been able to secure nocturnal visitation rights for scientific study from the triumvirate.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Joseph decided it was safe to come out from hiding and flee Judaea. He devoted his life to keeping the Grail and spreading the Gospel of Jesus. Before he died, Joseph passed the Grail for safekeeping to a group of early Christians in the Roman province of Tarraconensis, who kept and venerated the relic but understood from his teachings that its power was best kept hidden lest evil men exploit it. And generations later the Grail ascended, some would say closer to God, carried by monks to a high peak in Hispania to a mountain that would come to be called Montserrat.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“a controversial theory,” Claire said, “that proposes that dark matter, which we know is invisible in our universe, is ordinary matter from another universe. There’s also a theory that our Big Bang resulted from a collision between two parallel universes and that this was only one in perhaps an infinite number of Big Bangs to occur in the multiverse. So maybe the two theories are compatible. Maybe dark matter, like the dark matter in the Grail, came to us from another bubble.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“The math is very rigorous even if the idea is shocking. We may be only the thinnest curtain away from entire parallel universes. But the curtain can’t be penetrated by us, only by gravity. Unless …” “Unless what?” “Unless dark matter is a bridge.” “She was on strong footing until now,” Neti piped up.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“communication between each universe is impossible because we’re glued to our own three-dimensional membrane by the physical forces of quantum mechanics like a fly is glued to flypaper. Only gravity, which is responsible for the warping of space-time, can make the jump into other universes.” “How far away are they?” “Maybe closer than you think. A lot closer than you think. One set of calculations concerning gravity says that other universes can be as close as a millimeter away from us.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“How many universes are we talking about?” “A big number,” Neti said. “One estimate is that there could be a googol of them,” Claire suggested. “That’s a one followed by a hundred zeros: trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of them. Other models suggest it’s maybe bigger, maybe infinite.” “Okay, I get the concept,”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“The equations which arise from an eleven-dimension superstring theory suggest something more amazing. It seems the universe may be a three-dimensional membrane floating in eleven-dimensional space-time and before you get hung up on this impossible concept here’s the important payoff. It raises the very real possibility that our universe exists in a multiverse of other universes. Try to picture a vast collection of bubbles or membranes, each one a separate universe, floating around in an unimaginably massive sea of eleven-dimensional hyperspace.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“One of the features of the theory is that the strings can only vibrate in specific dimensions of space-time. Actually, only eleven dimensions. Any more, any less, the theory breaks down mathematically. Of course, in our universe we can only perceive four dimensions so the other seven must be, well, think of them as curled up and inaccessible to our reality, very hard to describe in words, easier to conceptualize in the formulae.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“the concepts come from superstring theory, which we talked about in Modane: the mathematical attempt to unify quantum mechanics with the peculiarities of gravity into the elusive theory of everything. It was something Einstein was hoping to find but never did. We think that we can explain the properties of subatomic particles by thinking about them as different vibrations on a string as though they were tiny rubber bands. The string vibrates one way, it’s one particle. It vibrates another way, it’s a different one.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“weeping room. It was small but large enough for the women described in the bible to have prayed and lamented over the body of Jesus. Through a low portal and down a single stone stair were four diminutive burial chambers including the longest in the northeast corner, the one said to be where Jesus was laid out.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“tall doorway leading to the so-called weeping chamber apparently had been enlarged at some more recent time: the original doorway was only a third the size and more compatible with biblical descriptions of both John and Mary Magdalene stooping down to look inside. To the right of the doorway was a nephesh, or soul window, through which, according to Jewish tradition, the spirit of the deceased departed after the third day in the tomb.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“At the bottom of the quarry wall Gordon had found an ancient tomb chiseled into the limestone with a small entrance and groove cut into its base, which he thought surely was intended for the rolling stone that had covered Jesus’ tomb. As far as Gordon was concerned, everything fit the biblical picture of this being the true tomb of Jesus, for John also had written, “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There they laid Jesus” (19:41–42).”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“garden to be a tranquil oasis within the bustling city. There was a fragrance of trumpet lilies and a pleasant rustling of shade trees. In the darkness he couldn’t well distinguish the outcrop of quarry rock above the garden, notable for a formation that very much resembles a human skull. It was precisely this deep-socketed natural sculpture that led Charles Gordon, a British general visiting Jerusalem in 1883, to explore the site further: as stated in the Gospels, of Jesus and the crucifixion, “And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha” (John 19:17).”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“The mass of dark matter with its neutralino–antineutralino collisions is a continual source of neutrino production. If Jesus drank from the bowl and incorporated enough of these fundamental particles into his tissues, the neutrino release after death could explain the images on his shroud.” Neti agreed. “No need for dematerialization to explain the shroud.” “But his tomb was empty,” Arthur said. “What about the resurrection?” “You’re not Jewish, are you?” “Church of England.” Neti shrugged. “I don’t want to interfere with your religion. Maybe the accounts of the Gospels were made up to promote a new religion. Maybe someone stole his body. Maybe the resurrection was real. All I’m saying is that my theory on neutrinos and the shroud mesh very nicely with your Grail. So I agree with Claire. The possibility exists to complete the picture.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“Neutrinos could produce an image on cloth?” “Absolutely. A burst of neutrinos emanating from a body would oxidize the cellulose layer in linen and produce the precise negative image of the body upon the cloth. But neutrinos are very weakly interacting particles so nothing else would have been disturbed. Now here comes your Grail and here comes a possible explanation,”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker

“hypothesis. In fact, I don’t know what else could have made this image. You press a piece of linen against the corpse of a bloody man, you anoint him with oils, leave him in a hot place, a cold place, any place, and you’re not going to get this kind of a perfect, almost photographic negative of a human body complete with the stigmata of the crucifixion spikes, the dumbbell-shaped scourge marks from the flagrum—the Roman whip—the blood and serum stains from where his lung was punctured by the spear.”
― Glenn Cooper, The Resurrection Maker