$10 says some whackjob blows the tomb up in a year.
Dynamite…yeah…there’s a theological argument! :rolleyes:
This is nothing new. Such claims have been made before.
Amos Kloner — the guy who oversaw this expedition, and who debunked (well, mostly) the James ossuary — has declared this to be bullshit.
But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. “It makes a great story for a TV film,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “But it’s impossible. It’s nonsense.”
Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that “Jesus son of Joseph” inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.
“There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb,” Kloner said. “They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.”
And besides all that, what the hell is the alleged Mary Magdelene doing there?
I find it difficult to even come up with a way to conclusively prove that the man in the tomb is Jesus. Without a valid concept of how it can be proven I see no reason to entertain what would it mean to me personally if Jesus’ tomb was found.
BUT to the OP’s big What If- what would I do if it could be demonstrably proven that Jesus did not rise from the dead?
Well, some moral beliefs would be the same, but not others. I wouldn’t go around killing, raping or stealing, and I would generally treat people as I would like to be treated. BUT I would happily despise my enemies, turn the other cheek only if the offense wasn’t too bad or striking back wouldn’t be prudent, and- yay, fornication!
I would still believe in a Creator. I wouldn’t be too sure about Him being a compassionate one, as the evidence for God as Emmanuel would then be missing. I would still regard the history of the Jews as a Divine evidence. The religions I would find most appealing would be an old time morally & politically conservative Unitarianism, maybe even a laid-back Noachidism, or a variation of Wicca. I would not regard Jesus as a great & wise teacher but as a first-century Emperor Norton who could also do magic tricks, who meant well and said some good things, but whose radical message of love & forgiveness could be happily set aside.
I knew this sounded familiar.
I presume she is suppose to be the mother of Judah, son of Jesua.
Better nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Why not just ignore it like other parts of his message that didn’t work out, like when he said he’d return in the lifespans of those who were alive at the time?
I’m quite sure that Dan Brown will be happy to let James Cameron take over as the target of Christian indignation.
Inspite of them being common names, what are the odds of getting those specific names all together in the same room?
And I suspect that the non-mention by any other contemporary sources of some guy coming back to life and flying off into the air is probably a better indicator that there wasn’t a ressurection, either way. Even having found a tomb, who’s to say Jesus didn’t die a second time (for permanent)?
Not just common; the most common. And not even exactly the same.
“The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus,” [Kloner] conceded.
“But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE,” he added.
http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=210067
(emphasis mine)
Setting aside the “absence of evidence” guideline for the sake of your argument, there is also no contemporary denial of rumors about an empty tomb. If anyone had a vested interest in exposing a conspiracy, it was contemporary Pharisees and Romans.
Heads and tails are common results in flipping a coin, but the odds of getting a particular set of ten is a one in 1024 proposition.
I would generally think that those who had first-hand witnessed a ressurection would be more likely to believe what words the ressurected had said. Instead, the Jewish people by and large didn’t convert to Christianity.
Christians in Japan survived for hundreds of years, worshipping in secret. So I have to imagine that cries of “conspiracy” don’t mean much. If people saw something believable, they would have kept with it and spread that knowledge. Spreading a tale 200 years later to a bunch of gullible Italians doesn’t show much.
The chance of getting a royal flush is one in 649,750. So what?
But the Jewish people by and large didn’t witness the resurrection first hand. In fact, no one did. And only a tiny handful saw the resurrected Christ.
The chance of getting a royal flush is one in 649,750. So what?
But the Jewish people by and large didn’t witness the resurrection first hand. In fact, no one did. And only a tiny handful saw the resurrected Christ.
Neither does revising what happened. Even the most skeptical dating of Mark predates that by far.
I hope James Cameron enjoys his retirement, because he’s never getting another big budget film again.
Anyway, something stinks here. The presence of Mary Magdalene is particularly bothersome. The Biblical Jesus wasn’t married to Mary, heck Mary as popularly conceived is actually a compilation of several characters, and the Dan Brownish claims that they did are just based off of conjecture from a single touching moment after the Resurrection as recorded in the Bible. That these people would be proven right about the marriage is a more eyebrow raising coincidence than a bunch of people (what’re these people doing in Jerusalem, anyway, wouldn’t most of them have been buried in Nazareth?) who have similar names to Jesus and company.
What I want to know is the approximate age and cause of death for this Jesus. If he was ~33 and was crucified, then we can talk.
Well so say that that the odds are similar to getting a royal flush. In a country with a population of 50,000 people, you’re essentially guaranteed that this would be the tomb of the one family that matches.
And so it begins; the naive and gullible will buy this ‘evidence’ to support their beliefs, or how well it’s proven by real science to be a load of horsefeathers.
Wasn’t Jesus buried in a tomb donated by a wealthy follower located in Jeruselum though, at least according to the Bible? And it would make sense that Joesph and Mary would have their remains placed there, if for no other reason then it would probably be nicer then whatever burial arangements they could afford in their hometown. Again, I doubt this tomb is as advertiesed, but I’m not conviced that this is such a great argument against it. Indeed a middle class tomb near Jeruselum is exactly the type of place I would assume Jesus would be buried in just going from a reading of the bible.
Not necessarily Mary M., Jesus had a aunt with the name Mary as well, and if it was a common name in the family perhaps other female relations held the same name as well (sister, daughter, etc.)
Makes sense to me, too. Jesus, if nothing else, was the leader of a religious movement which had quite a few wealthy followers. Seems reasonable that one of these followers would want the leader and his family buried in a respectable tomb.