Sunday, March 04, 2007

Why The Lost Tomb of Jesus Is a Hoax

The Lost Tomb of Jesus has been all but debunked as a hoax by now. Scholars and archaeologists have explained why it is completely impossible (including that the name on the ossuary for "Jesus" actually says "Hanan").

Bible Belt Blogger (Frank Lockwood) has a more spiritual explanation for why this "documentary" is wrong.

Point 1. Honest Christians gave their lives defending a faith which declares that "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." Some of them died fairly soon after the crucifixion. Presumably, these martyrs would not have died to defend a lie.

But what about those loathsome, dishonest Christians, you ask: the kind that pop up in the DaVinci Code? Maybe they covered up Jesus' death to promote their own economic and political best interests. Which brings me to:

Point 2. Shifty, sneaky Christians wouldn't have left Christ's gravestone lying around Jerusalem for 2,000 years if he had in fact died. From the beginning, critics of Christianity have argued that this "resurrection" was all a hoax. Critics of the Christian faith suggested that his follower's had absconded with his decomposing corpse soon after Good Friday. The gospels raise acknowledge this allegation. Why are Roman soldiers standing watch outside the tomb? To keep graverobbers away.

What does Mary claim (in the book of John) when she discovers that the stone has been rolled away? "They have taken my Lord, and I don´t know where they laid him," she said.

Clearly, if you're trying to convince the world that your spiritual leader has been bodily resurrected, you don't scrawl his name in limestone at the local graveyard and dump his bones in a limestone box.

Point 3. Plenty of people believed Jesus was a con-artist. If he had died and been buried in a tomb with his name scrawled illegibly, his final resting place wouldn't have gone unnoticed for 2,000 years. This con-game would've been exposed long before now.

Well said.