GRM 5.1
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
«The water we have been hoping for, for such a long time, and that for three days seemed so close, has not yet come and the land is parched. We are lucky to have a spring so near and so rich in water. I have opened the channels. It is a small sigh of relief for the plants which have withering leaves and are covered with dust: just enough to keep them alive. If it would only rain…» Joachim, with the eagerness of all farmers, looks at the sky, while Anne, tired, cools herself with a fan that seems to be made of the dry leaf of a palm interwoven with many-coloured threads keeping it firm.
Anne’s companion interrupts: «Over there, beyond the Great Hermon, fast clouds are arising. There is a northern wind. It will refreshen and perhaps bring rain.»
«The breeze has risen for three days and then it sets when the moon rises. It will do the same again.» Joachim is discouraged.
[...] [They return at home when a storm hits the region, then calms down].
The storm drops suddenly, after one last thunderbolt that is so violent that it throws the three men against the side wall; and in front of the house, in the garden, a black smoky cavity remains as its memory! Meanwhile a cry, one resembling the tiny plea of a little turtle-dove that for the very first time no longer peeps but cooes, is heard from beyond Anne’s door. And at the same time a huge rainbow stretches its semicircle across the sky. It rises, or seems to rise, from the top of Hermon, which kissed by the sun, looks like a most delicate pinkish alabaster: it rises up in the clear September sky and through an atmosphere cleaned of all impurities, it crosses over the hills of Galilee and the plain to the south, and then over another mountain, and seems to rest the other end on the distant horizon, where it drops from view behind a chain of high mountains.
Annotation
The Great Hermon or Mount Hermon (2,814 meters above sea level), visible from Nazareth, is 95 km away, heading northeast.
At the same moment, an immense rainbow unfolds in a semicircle across the entire sky. It emerges, or at least appears to emerge, from the summit of Hermon, which, under the sun's caress, appears to be an alabaster color of the most delicate pinkish-white. From Nazareth (alt +400/450m), if we turn our backs to the setting sun (Azimuth 278° that evening) to observe a rainbow, we have Mount Hermon (+2800m) to the left, Lake Tiberias (-200m), the plain and hills of Galilee (0 to +100m) opposite, and Mounts Ebal (+938m) and Garizim (+868m) to the right.
Under the right circumstances, a rainbow can be doubled, and in exceptional cases even tripled.
Physics dictates that a rainbow can only be observed in the morning or evening. It covers a field from 80° to 84.8° if it's single, and from 102° to 107.4° if it's double.
A simple protractor placed on a map of Palestine, zero point on Nazareth and perpendicular to azimuth 278°, verifies the extraordinary plausibility of this description: it would be false at any other time of year, given the orientation of the sun at sunset.