MASTER WITNESS LIST

(Authoritative – Linked to Master Trial Document)

FOUNDATIONAL TESTIMONY

The Plaintiff (Author)

  • Role: Plaintiff and narrating witness

  • Focus: Prophecy as attention; origin of the number framework; motive for bringing the case

  • Aligned Date Fact:

    • 9/8 — shared family birthday (David / Mary)

    • 12/14 — first date

    • 12/20 — second date (Titanic)

    • Numeric set 8–9–12–14–20 carried forward as attention markers

ENCOUNTER WITH THE STORY OF JESUS

Mel Gibson

  • Role: Film director and producer

  • Focus: Art as encounter; The Passion of the Christ as lived experience

  • Aligned Date Fact: Film grounded in Passion chronology culminating in crucifixion narrative

Anne Catherine Emmerich

  • Role: Catholic mystic (historical record)

  • Focus: Visionary accounts of the Passion used as source material for Gibson’s film

  • Aligned Date Fact: Born September 8

Flavius Josephus

  • Role: First-century Jewish historian

  • Focus: Destruction of Jerusalem; historical grounding of Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings

  • Aligned Date Fact: Jerusalem fell September 8, 70 AD (as stated in the record)

Mother Ann Lee

  • Role: Founder of the Shakers

  • Focus: Radical embodiment of Christ-likeness; persecution and martyrdom

  • Aligned Date Fact: Died September 8

Michelangelo Buonarroti

  • Role: Renaissance sculptor and artist

  • Focus: King David as theological and cultural symbol

  • Aligned Date Fact: David unveiled September 8, 1504

HISTORICAL JESUS & APOCALYPTIC EXPECTATION

E. P. Sanders

  • Role: Historian of early Judaism and Christianity

  • Focus: Jesus as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic prophet

  • Aligned Date Fact: Contextual (Temple-era apocalyptic expectation)

Bart D. Ehrman

  • Role: Textual critic and historian

  • Focus: Diversity and vagueness of Second Coming expectations

  • Aligned Date Fact: Contextual (varied eschatological timelines)

N. T. Wright

  • Role: New Testament scholar and theologian

  • Focus: Revelation symbolism; spiritual kingdom language; post-70 AD fulfillment patterns

  • Aligned Date Fact: Revelation 10–11 interlude (symbolic witness period)

SCRIPTURE, SYMBOL & INTERPRETATION

John H. Walton

  • Role: Biblical scholar

  • Focus: Symbolic language; guardrails against superstition; cosmic-temple worldview

  • Aligned Date Fact: Interpretive (symbol over mechanism)

STATISTICS, COINCIDENCE & NON-RANDOMNESS

David Spiegelhalter

  • Role: Statistician and risk expert

  • Focus: Confirmation bias; coincidence; limits of statistical inference

  • Aligned Date Fact: Contextual (non-causal analysis)

POWER, AUTHORITY & MORAL CHOICE

Linda Colley

  • Role: Historian of British political identity

  • Focus: Monarchy, continuity, inherited power

  • Aligned Date Fact: British royal events clustering on 9/8 and 12/14

Ron Chernow

  • Role: Biographer and historian

  • Focus: George Washington; voluntary relinquishment of power

  • Aligned Date Fact: Washington died December 14, 1799

Shelby Foote

  • Role: Civil War historian

  • Focus: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain; mercy and reconciliation after war

  • Aligned Date Fact: Chamberlain born September 8

Doris Kearns Goodwin

  • Role: Presidential historian

  • Focus: Abraham Lincoln; moral leadership and reconciliation

  • Aligned Date Fact: Lincoln assassinated April 14; Civil War framed by numeric markers

Andrew Roberts

  • Role: Historian and biographer

  • Focus: Napoleon; hubris, overreach, collapse

  • Aligned Date Fact: Retreat from Russia — December 14, 1812

Ian Kershaw

  • Role: Historian of Nazi Germany

  • Focus: Mass despair; authoritarian rise

  • Aligned Date Fact:

    • Nuremberg rally climax September 8

    • Siege of Leningrad began September 8

Richard Nixon

  • Role: U.S. president

  • Focus: Abuse of power; pardon; national healing

  • Aligned Date Fact: Pardoned September 8, 1974

Evel Knievel

  • Role: Cultural figure

  • Focus: Fame, spectacle, failure, redemption

  • Aligned Date Fact: Snake River Canyon jump September 8, 1974

Donald Trump

  • Role: Political figure

  • Focus: Modern power, polarization (behavior examined, not ideology)

  • Aligned Date Fact: December 14, 2020 — electoral certification & first COVID vaccination

CATASTROPHE & TECHNOLOGY IDOLATRY

Isaac Cline

  • Role: Meteorologist

  • Focus: Ignored warnings; certainty and catastrophe

  • Aligned Date Fact: Galveston hurricane — September 8, 1900

James Cameron

  • Role: Director and explorer

  • Focus: Titanic; technological hubris

  • Aligned Date Fact:

    • Ship designed 1908

    • Sinking April 14 at 11:40 PM

    • Plaintiff second date December 20

John Henry Patterson

  • Role: Engineer and author

  • Focus: Lions of Tsavo; fear, leadership, survival

  • Aligned Date Fact:

    • First lion killed December 9

    • Second lion killed 20 days later

    • First lion measured 9 ft 8 in; carried by 8 men

Ernest Hemingway

  • Role: Author

  • Focus: Symbolism of the lion; The Old Man and the Sea

  • Aligned Date Fact: Symbolic recurrence of endurance and confrontation

REDEMPTION OUT OF WAR

John F. Kennedy

  • Role: U.S. president

  • Focus: Cuban Missile Crisis restraint; moonshot vision

  • Aligned Date Fact: Soviet missiles delivered to Cuba September 8, 1962

Wernher von Braun

  • Role: Rocket engineer (contextual record)

  • Focus: V-2 weapons → Apollo exploration

  • Aligned Date Fact: First V-2 civilian strike September 8, 1944

Apollo Program (Collective Witness)

  • Role: Scientific and human achievement

  • Focus: Redirection of power toward exploration

  • Aligned Date Fact: Last crewed lunar mission departed Moon December 14, 1972

MUSIC AS REDEMPTIVE FORCE

Ken Burns

  • Role: Documentary historian

  • Focus: Music as cultural memory and healing

  • Aligned Date Fact:

    • Jimmy Rodgers & Patsy Cline born September 8

Peter Guralnick

  • Role: Music historian

  • Focus: Rock & roll; race, faith, redemption through music

  • Aligned Date Fact: Rock & roll emergence tied to 88 and 8/9 symbolism

John Lennon

  • Role: Songwriter and peace advocate

  • Focus: Imagination; nonviolent resistance

  • Aligned Date Fact: Obsession with number 9; born Oct 9; died Dec 8

Pink

  • Role: Contemporary pop-rock artist

  • Focus: Resilience, emotional honesty, refusal of despair in the face of pain and life challenges

  • Aligned Date Fact: September 8, 1979 — born
    Purpose in Record: Demonstrates that modern popular music continues to function as a communal language for processing suffering without surrendering to despair; provides generational continuity with earlier musical witnesses.

Taylor Swift

  • Role: Songwriter and cultural storyteller

  • Focus: Narrative, memory, communal participation with Era’s tour.

  • Aligned Date Fact: Song “22”; Eras Tour; 2023–24 cultural alignment; promotes number symbolism because of her birthday on December 13 but her Grammy winning album was called midnights.

SPORTS AS COMMUNAL MEMORY, PRESSURE, AND REDEMPTION

(Collective Cultural Record) AI Collective Memory (Sports History & Journalism Record)

  • Role:
    Synthetic historical witness aggregating widely documented sporting events, outcomes, and public response patterns across American sports culture.

  • Focus:
    Sport as a shared civic language through which pressure, failure, redemption, restraint, and collective identity are publicly rehearsed—often in moments of national or cultural tension.

CLOSING HUMAN WITNESS

Scarlett Lewis

  • Role: Founder, Choose Love Movement

  • Focus: Lived choice of love after tragedy

  • Aligned Date Fact: December 14, 2012 — Sandy Hook shooting