And, no, this one's not political.
The Discovery Channel has a new special coming out (during Lent, no less) on the discovery of a tomb that the founders claim is that of Jesus of Nazareth.
New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.
The findings also suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Judah.
The DNA findings, alongside statistical conclusions made about the artifacts — originally excavated in 1980 — open a potentially significant chapter in Biblical archaeological history.
Atheists are probably applauding this hokey pseudo-science program. I long ago gave up on such fake history programs filled with so-called "experts" speculating about events but never giving any real evidence to support the theories.
Captain Ed dissects this new theory pretty well.
Jesus was a well-known agitator whose crucifixion creates a cult following, in the eyes of the Romans and the leading Jews of the time. The basis of that cult formed around the notion that Jesus rose from the dead. If the Romans knew where his body was buried, why then did they not produce it as proof of his immutable death? In order to be placed in an ossuary, he would have to lie in the tomb for a year, decomposing to skeletal remains. During that time, the Romans could easily have produced the body -- or the cult followers could have stolen it and buried it elsewhere to prevent it.
The familial ties also seem rather odd. In the first generation of Jesus, no one mentions his marriage or family. Yet his familiy and followers -- ossuaries of Matthew and James are supposedly among the discoveries -- supposedly felt it of no moment to bury him with his wife and son, despite their refusal to acknowledge a marriage. By the time his son would have died, the Gospels would already have been written and prophesied in the region and further to Greece and Rome.
And all of this evidence would have been left in the open, in a tomb in the middle of the largest city in the region, where anyone could have discovered it.
Scholars, atheists, and other interested parties have spent two millenia trying to figure out the sleight of hand Jesus's followers used to dispose of his body after the crucifixion. After all, the resurrection had to be a fake, right?
Unfortunately for the naysayers, they've never found the body, which leaves them with a real hole in the "they hid the body" theory. Not to mention all those martyrs who died horrible deaths to cover the sham of Christianity.
Why is it easier to believe that early Christians found a surefire way to hide Jesus's body and were then willing to be tortured and martyred for the cause, than to believe that Jesus was who He said He was and that his followers knew it? It seems that believing Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had a son, and all three died without fanfare or notice by the Romans is a bit more farfetched.
UPDATE: A.P. writer Marshall Thompson has an article disputing the Discovery Channel "documentary."
Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.
"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
"How possible is it?" Pfann said. "On a scale of one through 10 _ 10 being completely possible _ it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."
Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun."
Kloner also said the filmmakers' assertions are false.
"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."
Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker's claim that the James Ossuary _ the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel _ might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.
"I don't think the James Ossuary came from the same cave," said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus."
|