Jesus: Tales From The Crypt

[ramonmercado]

Yeah & I found the tomb of St Patrick & St Brigid. They were married. I'm a direct descendant, it makes my father the rightful hereditary Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in both the RCC & CoI.

Ken Russel is directing the film.

 

[ghostdog19]

Sounds like crazy talk:

But the filmmakers say statistical analysis shows the odds are at the 600-1 in favour of the tomb being that of Jesus' family.

I had no idea bookies were involved.

It reads: "Mariamene e Mara", an unusual Greek version of the name which can be translated as "Mary known as the Master".

See, if that were the case, then wouldn't Jesus' remains be labeled "son of the father"? rather than "son of Joseph"?

I'm not too keen on Cameron dragging the Beetles into this either.

[EDITED TO PUT SPACES IN]

 

[ghostdog19]

Good Question: Does Tomb Contradict Christianity?
Image

Ben Tracy

(WCCO) "Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?"

In the Bible, that's what an angel asks the women who are awestruck at the sight of Jesus' empty tomb. Many are now just as surprised to hear that two filmmakers think they've uncovered Christ's actual burial site and what's inside may challenge the most important event in Christianity. But what exactly did they discover?

"One of them says 'Jesus, Son of Joseph,'" announced one of the filmmakers at a press conference in New York.

He was referring to an ancient burial box an upcoming documentary on the Discovery Channel says are that of Jesus and his family. The boxes were first found back in 1980, but have been reexamined. They are said to be inscribed with the names of Jesus, his mother, his purported wife Mary Magdalene, and their son Judah.

Skeptics call this another installment of "The Da Vinci Code." Many serious scholars have called the discovery and their conclusions bunk, saying the names on the boxes were all common at the time and could belong to any family.

"I'm first of all a little skeptical," said Dr. Deanna Thompson, who heads the religion department at Hamline University. "How would they know they have Jesus?"

She says, if true, the claims would contradict basic Christian beliefs of a physical ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven.

"We don't understand salvation to be just spiritual," she said. "At the heart of the Gospels is a very real bodily resurrection and ascension."

However, Thompson says even claims like those being made have value.

"Religion is about asking questions," she said. "That's part of what it means to be human to ask those questions. So, rather than shutting it off, I would say ask away, but we do it out of a motivation to deepen the faith and gain a better and deeper understanding."

As for searching for historical evidence to back basic Christian teachings, Dr. Thompson said "I'm not sure our faith ultimately depends on history. It is more than just a historical claim. If it's only faith in what's seen, it's not faith."

For their part, the filmmakers say their findings do not necessarily contradict Christian beliefs of a resurrection and ascension. They note that not all Christians agree on what happened after Christ's resurrection.

Believers do think Jesus ascended to heaven, but they disagree on what that means. Many worshippers think it was physical while others think it could have been spiritual. In that case, even if Christ's bones were found that wouldn't mean the resurrection didn't happen.

The Discovery Channel plans to air its findings in a documentary on March 4.

Source: http://wcco.com/seenon/local_story_057230701.html

 

[OldTimeRadio]

We know from both Christian and Jewish Bible studies alike that as the first New Testament books were being written the Rabbis were circulating their own polemics claiming that the apostles/disciples had removed Christ's body after the Crucifixion and hidden it or perhaps even destroyed it.

But had Jesus simply been interred in a family tomb and left there those Rabbis would surely not have suggested the theft/destruction of the corpse.

"For Heaven's sake," they would have said, "why all the smoke and mirrors - he's buried right over there!" ** points **

And the apostles/disciples would obviously also have been aware of this family tomb and Jesus' interment in it. So why were they so willing to go forth and preach the Resurrection, in the face of persecution and death?

Why die for a lie?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

It's going to be interesting, though, if it can be documented that one of the Marys in the tomb is indeed Mary of Magdala. If that's the case let me suggest four possible scenarios:

1. The tomb is that Mary's own nuclear family. She had a brother, perhaps radically younger than herself, who was named "Jesus."

2. Mary, who would seem to have outlived Jesus Christ by many years, eventually married. Her husband was named Jesus and this was his family tomb.

3. Mary instead married a man named Joseph. She named her son "Jesus." "Judah" was thus her grandson.

4. The tomb was simply a common resting place for a number of very early Christians, including Mary of Magdala.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

According to the Associated Press:

"Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was quoted in the documentary....is even unsure the name 'Jesus' on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks its more likely the name [is] 'Hanun.'"

But "Hanun" and "Judah, son of Hanun" doesn't quite have the same cachet, does it?

 

[ghostdog19]

But "Hanun" and "Judah, son of Hanun" doesn't quite have the same cachet, does it?

I think it is probably indicative of Cameron's 'faith' in his assumptions.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I think it is probably indicative of Cameron's 'faith' in his assumptions.

Yeah, the wheels on this particular juggernaut seem to have started falling off less than 48 hours out of the gate and a full week before the documentary's going to have its first broadcast.

 

[Anome]

Don't be silly. Cameron knows it's really Jesus, not Hanun. That scholar's just mistaken. While the Vatican are deliberately misleading people by saying the same thing.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

In followup to EnolaGaias post is it any wonder that the Catholic Church is so much on the defensive at the moment when nearly every historical discovery and attached theory - with a religious link - are spun into apparent attacks on christianity.

I wouldn't go as far to say that the attacks are co-ordinated or part of a plan but just that they are in vogue at the moment.

But surely if these remains were the real thing, (and I'm not saying they are) then the proof of Christ's existance can only be a good thing for the church.
So they might have to revise their facts about him being married, or Joseph being his father, or for that matter Mary being a virgin, but so what? Scientists revise their information all the time, and it would help the subsiquent revised version of the bible become a little more believable to the uninitiated.

 

[ghostdog19]

I think it is probably indicative of Cameron's 'faith' in his assumptions.

Yeah, the wheels on this particular juggernaut seem to have started falling off

As I was saying earlier, this sounds a lot like the "Patricia Cornwell's Jack the Ripper 'theory'" scenario (or as she has it, "solution") where you have someone with a lot of money spend a lot of money to come up with bupkis. So there's going to be numerous instances with this where it seems a square peg is getting forced into a round hole. IMHO, their wallet and ego gets the better of them and overrides their conviction till nothing can sway them. I still have yet to see the documentary but from everything we're hearing, and I don't mean from Christian reaction, rather from scholarly reaction what with numerous doubts and statistics that are way open to interpretation and immune to validation, this doesn't sound great.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Not trying to be (overly... 8) ) facetious or provocative, but ...

It strikes me that the single most 'dangerous' test that could be done on these remains would be a DNA analysis intended to evaluate the 'paternity' of the Joseph remains vis a vis the Jesus remains.

Even a tentative or suggestive 'positive for paternity' result would really heat up the controversy ...

 

[Kondoru]

Look, theres lots of guys named Joe...what worry?

 

[ghostdog19]

Even a tentative or suggestive 'positive for paternity' result would really heat up the controversy ...

It already is tentative or suggestive, isn't it?

 

[EnolaGaia]

Even a tentative or suggestive 'positive for paternity' result would really heat up the controversy ...

It already is tentative or suggestive, isn't it?

???? ... The only claimed DNA analysis result I've seen on this story is that the 'Mary Magdalene' bones aren't from the same close family as X (sorry - I forgot which of the other bone sets were supposedly analyzed).

If you're referring to the 'Jesus son of Joseph' inscription ... Inscriptions don't necessarily count for much (cf. the flap over the James ossuary last year), and an ascription of Joseph as 'father' doesn't threaten doctrine.

... but an ascription of Joseph as *biological* father would really make waves ...

 

[EnolaGaia]

Look, theres lots of guys named Joe...what worry?

I agree ... The only basis for touting this set of ossuaries is that the tomb happened to contain a set of remains labeled with the expected set of names (all of which were common in the place and time ...).

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this story was an analogy to someone walking into a graveyard, noticing four adjacent tombstones labeled John, Paul, George, and Richard, and then claiming he'd found the Beatles' burial site.

 

[Kondoru]

Thats a good analogy

 

[ghostdog19]

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this story was an analogy to someone walking into a graveyard, noticing four adjacent tombstones labeled John, Paul, George, and Richard, and then claiming he'd found the Beatles' burial site.

Except that they're claiming they found Ringo (when I read that bit in the original article, I did think that he was about to announce that the whole "Paul is Dead" legend was true also.

 

[ghostdog19]

???? ... If you're referring to the 'Jesus son of Joseph' inscription ...

I meant generally, the whole story.

Inscriptions don't necessarily count for much (cf. the flap over the James ossuary last year), and an ascription of Joseph as 'father' doesn't threaten doctrine.

Exactly. Jesus, "son of the father" on the other hand (which is basically Jesus Bar-Abbas, the name alone carries its own implications).

... but an ascription of Joseph as *biological* father would really make waves ...

So I guess this is where the 'statistical evidence' plays a part.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

... but an ascription of Joseph as *biological* father would really make waves ...

But even THAT'S assuming the bones actually are those of the biblical figures in question, which was extremely iffy to start with and seems even less likely from news coverage over the past two or three days.

By the way, WAS the name "Jesus" (or "Hanun") on the ossuaries rendered in just five Semitic letters? I've always been under the impression that "Jesus" was merely the Western European version of the Aramaic "Yahoshua" or "Yehoshuh," which it would be impossible to render in five chacters. (I'm assuming the vowel-points would be included in both cases.)

P. S. Could someone more alert than I manage to track down additional information on the 1996 BBC coverage concerning this find?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Graylien posted the following to the "Erroneous Childhood Beliefs" thread on January 28, 2006:

"When I was in infant's school, I somehow got the idea into my head that a rather elaborate war memorial in the local park was, in fact, the tomb of Jesus."

I move that we all swear ourselves to absolute secrecy on this one. Can you imagine what might happen if James Cameron learns about it?

 

[decipheringscars]

Theologian chiming in here...

If somehow they could prove that those were Jesus' bones, all that would happen is John Shelby Spong and John A.T. Robinson and James A. Pike (all Anglican / Episcopal bishops, BTW...) and folks like that would suddenly become a lot more popular.

There are many Christian theologians who don't believe in a bodily resurrection. Of course, many of them don't believe Jesus was anyone special, either, but some do. A popular way of getting around it is basically that the disciples had an experience of Jesus that was so real and profound and life-changing that it was as if he had risen bodily, but really he was just in whatever form we all end up in when we die.

I'm not doing them justice, but the point is this: Christianity arose in the first place because a group of religious Jews had their faith assumptions so shaken, they had no choice but to question and alter them. Christianity has always had a sort of self-negation or self-critique built into it - although its institutions haven't always been very good at upholding that. There's very little Christianity couldn't survive in some form or another. You can see that in the variety of Christianities that exist formally in denominations, and even more so in the theologies of people within those denominations. Whatever you thought was essential to Christianity, there's a Christian somewhere who denies it.

That said, I personally don't understand why someone would want to deny certain things, such as the deity (in some understanding of the word or other) of Jesus Christ, and still be "Christian," when there are plenty of more recent examples of good humans, teachers, martyrs, etc., that we could look to as icons of God. I believe in a bodily* resurrection by default, but my faith's not dependent on it.

I've enjoyed reading this discussion so far, even though I'm a bit of a latecomer. I tend to agree that the names in question were very common, and I'd be interested whether they could really get useable DNA from bones that old. Maybe?... Of course, it would have to match the DNA from all those Eucharistic miracles on another thread here (i.e., altar bread that literally changed to flesh, reportedly).




*In general, as I understand it, Christian belief generally denies that this post-Resurrection body would be much like our bodies are now. The theology is that all of us will be resurrected like Christ some day, and most of our bodies will have been long decomposed. St. Paul compared it to a seed "dying" in order to become a plant, something VERY different than the seed was. It's one of those categories in Christian theology where it's actually best to leave a lot of room for mystery - something we Fortean types usually don't have a huge problem with: refusing to come to a conclusion until all the facts are in!

 

[EnolaGaia]

Theologian chiming in here...

If somehow they could prove that those were Jesus' bones, all that would happen is John Shelby Spong and John A.T. Robinson and James A. Pike (all Anglican / Episcopal bishops, BTW...) and folks like that would suddenly become a lot more popular. ...

Many thanks for the comments from a theologian's perspective!

This struck a chord with me ... I don't claim to be theologically 'knowledgeable', but I do remember Bishop Pike very well. His name crossed my mind when ruminating on this story, essentially for the same reason (i.e., that some theologians are less demanding of 'absolute literal facticity' for the Biblical narratives, and that such relatively more 'flexible' or 'accommodating' orientations might have little problem with there being physical remnants of Jesus).

Another thought I had along this line was that a diehard 'literalist' might still avoid having to accept 'totally metaphorical' status for the Resurrection, etc., if he / she were to accept an interpretation of the Ascension in which some supra- (if not super-) natural 'component' or 'aspect' of Jesus ascended while leaving an associated corporeal 'component' or 'aspect' (e.g., physical body) behind.

I mention this last part not to recommend it, but rather just to illustrate that even a 'literalist' might not necessarily have to feel threatened by the notion of physical remains ...

... though the 'bottom line' here is that there is no conceivable basis for ascribing these physical remains to that particular 'Jesus' ...

... save for what can only be described (ironically ...) as 'faith' ...

 

[svart]

surely without a sample of Jesus' DNA to compare it to whatever they find from these bones proves nothing.

I think it is generally thought that the Shroud of Turin is a fake, but if they could get DNA from that and compare it to any they might get from the bones (assuming it's possible) and they matched, well that would be interesting :shock:

 

[QuaziWashboard]

surely without a sample of Jesus' DNA to compare it to whatever they find from these bones proves nothing.

I think it is generally thought that the Shroud of Turin is a fake, but if they could get DNA from that and compare it to any they might get from the bones (assuming it's possible) and they matched, well that would be interesting :shock:

Ahh, that's the thing isn't it. With no known holy DNA to test it against, theres no real danger to the church. If there was, believe me, there'd be a hell of a lot more uproar about this than we've seen.

 

[GNC]

I'm still waiting for them to uncover the tomb of Mithras.

 

[ghostdog19]

Ahh, that's the thing isn't it. With no known holy DNA to test it against, theres no real danger to the church. If there was, believe me, there'd be a hell of a lot more uproar about this than we've seen.

I'm surprised Cameron hasn't offered up Jesus' foreskin as relevant data.

 

[ghostdog19]

I'm still waiting for them to uncover the tomb of Mithras.

You mean JC's prototype? Me too.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

If somehow they could prove that those were Jesus' bones, all that would happen is John Shelby Spong and John A.T. Robinson and James A. Pike (all Anglican / Episcopal bishops, BTW...) and folks like that would suddenly become a lot more popular.

Pike was a tortured Christian (the operative word there being Christian, not tortured), but I suspect he got his answers in the hours immediately preceding his death in the Israeli desert and that he died entirely at peace with his God (who is also mine).

My gut feeling as a Conservative Christian is that Bishop Pike's death was not a tragedy but a Glory.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I tend to agree that the names in question were very common....

One of the stray facts I picked up from television news this week in this connection is that FORTY EIGHT PERCENT of Jewish women at the time were named with some permutation of "Miriam."