Lazarus Bowl: Contemporary Prehistory

Transcript of X-Files episode of April 30, 2000. It dealt with"The Lazarus Bowl," a ceramic bowl that was being thrown by a nearby potter when Jesus ordered Lazarus to rise from the dead. His encantation was caught in the still wet clay and still had the power to raise the dead.

SCULLY:
We had this one wacky Nun in Catholic School, Sister Callahan, we used to call her Sister Spooky cause she'd always tell us scary stories.

MULDER:
Twisted Sister--my kinda nun.

SCULLY:
She'd show us an old piece of wood with a rusty nail in it and say this is an actual piece of the cross that Christ's wrist was nailed toor she'd show us a vial of red liquid she said was John the Baptist's blood.

MULDER:
She'd be in prison today, you realize that.

SCULLY:
She used to tell us that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, there was an old woman, Lazarus' aunt or something, who was spinning a clay bowl on her wheel nearby and that Christ's words, the actual incantation to raise the dead, were recorded into the clay grooves of the pottery kind of like music is recorded onto vinyl.

MULDER:
Now you're making me wish I'd gone to Catholic School.

SCULLY:
Sister Spooky said that the words in the ceramic still had the power to raise the dead, just like Jesus raised Lazarus.
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And just now a STRANGE NOISE from the back of Mulder's office gets their attention and they see----

Chuck Burks fiddling around in Mulder's back office again.
CHUCK BURKS:
I teased out something very interesting from your pottery there...layered beneath the ambient noise...

Sounds continue to come from the pottery---at first weird slurry and unidentifiable but somewhat human, slowing down, speeding up and then settling into an actual human voice speaking a language which is not readily identifiable.The Agents puzzle over this...

CHUCK BURKS:
Guess what language that is?

They shake their heads. Chuck offers Mulder the phone.

CHUCK BURKS:
You can use a life-line to call anyone in America or you can poll our studio audience...

MULDER:
Sounds like Arabic or something.

CHUCK BURKS:
I had a linguist in here. It's a dead language. It's Aramaic.

SCULLY:
That's the language Christ spoke.