COURT EXHIBIT -- THE SEPTEMBER 8 SACRED RECORD

COURT EXHIBIT — THE SEPTEMBER 8 SACRED RECORD

BEFORE THE TESTIMONY OF KEN BURNS

SPOCK Before the next witness is called, Affirmative Counsel has indicated they wish to present a court exhibit. Proceed.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM) Thank you, Your Honor.

The proceeding asks the court to receive the following as a formal exhibit — documented historical facts requiring no witness testimony, entered into the record on their own evidentiary weight before the next witness takes the stand.

The exhibit is titled: The September 8 Sacred Record.

September 8 is a date this proceeding has been watching since its first exhibit — the V-2 rocket striking London for the first time on September 8, 1944. The proceeding has watched it accumulate across the technology section, the power section, and now the music section. But before the court receives what the music tradition has placed on this date, it must first receive what was already there. What was there before the weapons. Before the missiles. Before the music.

What was there is this.

September 8, 70 AD.

The Roman general Titus breached the final walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. The city fell. The old covenant order ended in fire and stone. Jesus of Nazareth had stood in that Temple forty years earlier and told his disciples: do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another. Every stone will be thrown down. Matthew 24. Mark 13. Luke 21. Three gospels record the prophecy. September 8, 70 AD is the documented date of its fulfillment.

The proceeding enters this as documented historical fact.

September 8, 1504.

Michelangelo's David was unveiled to the city of Florence in the Piazza della Signoria — to the admiration, the records say, of all people. The Galleria dell'Accademia, which now houses the original, states it precisely: on 8 September 1504, the statue was unveiled to the city.

The marble from which the David was carved had been rejected by every sculptor who examined it before Michelangelo. It sat abandoned in the cathedral courtyard for twenty-six years. The document describing it called it badly blocked out and laid on its back. Two sculptors had tried and failed. Michelangelo took the rejected stone at twenty-six years old, worked it in secrecy behind wooden fences for three years, and produced what the world regards as the greatest sculpture ever made.

David is the ancestor of Jesus Christ in both the Matthean and Lukan genealogies. Every Gospel account of the Messiah traces through David's line. The shepherd boy who killed the giant with a stone and a sling. The king from whose lineage the Christ would come. His image — carved from the stone every other builder had rejected and abandoned — was unveiled to the admiration of all people on September 8.

The proceeding notes: the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone is the verse Jesus quotes about himself in Matthew 21:42, citing Psalm 118. The greatest image of the ancestor of the Messiah was carved from the rejected stone. It was unveiled on September 8.

The proceeding enters this as documented historical fact.

September 8, 1774.

Anne Catherine Emmerich was born on September 8, 1774, in Westphalia, Germany. She was an Augustinian nun and mystic whose visions of the life and Passion of Jesus Christ were documented in extraordinary detail — the routes he walked, the dimensions of the rooms he entered, the specific injuries he sustained. Her visions were recorded by the poet Clemens Brentano and published as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They became the primary source material for Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004. She was born on September 8.

The proceeding enters this as documented historical fact.

September 8, 1784.

Ann Lee died on September 8, 1784, at Watervliet, New York. She was the founder of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing — known as the Shakers. Her followers believed she was the female second coming of Christ. She had spent years traveling through New England preaching that message, met repeatedly by violent mobs who beat her and her companions. When her body was later examined upon reinterment, she was found to have a fractured skull — from the beatings she had received. She died of those injuries on September 8, 1784. Her last words, documented by her followers, were: I see Brother William coming in a golden chariot to take me home. She died singing in unknown tongues, sitting in her rocking chair.

The woman her followers believed to be Christ returned in female form died a martyr's death on September 8. Her fractured skull was the evidence. Her last vision was a golden chariot.

The proceeding enters this as documented historical fact.

The court now has four September 8 encounters with Jesus in the record.

The Temple destroyed — his prophecy fulfilled to the stone, forty years after he spoke it.

The ancestor of his messianic line unveiled in marble, carved from the stone every other builder had rejected and left for dead.

The mystic who documented his Passion with greater precision than any historical record — born on the date.

The woman her followers believed to be his female return — dying on it, a fractured skull, a golden chariot in her last breath.

Four encounters. Across fifteen hundred years. On the same date.

The proceeding does not argue that September 8 was chosen by divine design. It enters what the record contains and asks the jury to hold it.

What the record contains is this: the date that carries the fall of the Temple, the unveiled ancestor, the birth of the Passion mystic, and the death of the woman believed to be Christ returned — is the same date that carries the V-2 striking London. The missiles arriving in Cuba. The solar storm. The first day of school at Sandy Hook. And as the next witness will establish — the Father of Country Music, the first woman in the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a country musician who died on his way to the stage.

The dark accumulation and the sacred accumulation are on the same date.

The proceeding holds both without resolving the tension between them.

The jury will consider what it means that the date carrying the weapon also carries the ancestor of the Messiah carved from rejected stone.

SPOCK The court receives the September 8 Sacred Record as a formal exhibit.

The following are entered as documented historical facts: the destruction of the Second Temple on September 8, 70 AD. The unveiling of Michelangelo's David on September 8, 1504. The birth of Anne Catherine Emmerich on September 8, 1774. The death of Ann Lee on September 8, 1784.

The court notes the A-Team's observation that the dark accumulation and the sacred accumulation occupy the same date. The court does not resolve that tension. It holds it and instructs the jury to do the same.

The exhibit is admitted.

Affirmative Counsel, call your next witness.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM) The court calls Ken Burns.