gregor

Prax
I apologize if I missed your position amongst the carping with Amaleq. (And I don't know if you have a position on the stone's construction).

If you have a position, are you saying that you think it must be a round stone and there is historic justification for it being round? Thus, it was rolled away.

Or are you saying it could be square ala Glenn Miller, and it flipped end-over-end away.

Amaleq13

The BAR article is no longer available online but I would have thought you would have at least read Carrier's reference. In the article, Kloner refers to a total of four round doors found in tombs dated before the Jewish War and indicates this to represent 2% of the total number found. IOW 98% of the pre-Jewish War tombs found have square doors. If I did the math correctly that means a total of 200 tombs were involved in the analysis.

I believe these tombs were in the vicinity of Nazareth but that location might come from a Finnegan reference.

All four round tomb doors come from large, elaborate tombs belonging to wealthy families.

What sort of scholarship is involved when one doesn't even bother to read the cited reference let alone the original?

I can't believe you are STILL confusing me with Diogenes. That "one quote" was the entire focus of my discussion with you!!! And it became clear that that "one quote" exaggerated the actual amount of support from the evidence for your beliefs.

If it is an impossible identification, then using phrases like "pinpoint accuracy" to describe various locations you believe to correspond would constitute another example of exaggerating the evidence.

Gadara is six miles from the coast where the story takes place. The people running to the city to tell the story and the people from the city running back out to confront Jesus suggests a less marathon-like journey. And the word in your allegedly inerrant text is "city", not "village".

If the story is fiction, I agree that identifying an actual location might be impossible. If the story is true, however, that seems awfully pessimistic for somebody with so much faith. As I pointed out in the thread where this disccusion should be taking place, archaeologists have had no trouble finding tombs all over the place. They've even found them in the mountains around Gadara.

Heck, you should start looking for piles of pig bones in the Sea of Galilee. According to you, Jesus was herding them into the water on multiple occasions!! :rolling:

Amaleq13

My apologies for facilitating the tangent.

If praxeus doesn't think the door was round, then his efforts to undermine Carrier's reference to the BAR article have been entirely pointless.

gregor2

Amaleq

I agree with your supposition on prax's position (and I started this entire tangent from the OP - sorry). Both positions are difficult to defend.

Carrier discusses the problem with the round stone. I have a problem with the physics of moving a square stone. The concept of an end-over-end, uphill movement resulting from an earthquake or one person's effort seems a hollow just-so story by Miller. Further, the "anything can happen with a miracle" defense is a buzz-kill for any logical debate.

andrewcriddle

There was a clash between Jewish and Roman sensibilities on this point. Jews found the refusal of burial even to executed criminals abhorrent See for example. Josephus Jewish War book 4 chapter 5 where while condemming the Jewish rebels for not burying their victims Josephus says This is in accord with the requirements of Deuteronomy 21:23.

The Gospel narrative implies that Pilate, faced with a formal request from a senior member of the Jewish establishment such as Joseph of Arimathea, was prepared to humour local sensibilities.

Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character.

For Pilate to turn over the body for entombment would be tacit to an admssion of innocence. It wouldn't have happened. It didn't happen.

There was no tomb and there were no guards.

Steven Avery

Hi Gregor, I would be slow to say that it *must* be round, as I never even heard of this square end-over-end stuff till the other day. Sounds strange, almost a bit like Holding allowing Damascus or Amman or Jerash to be on the Kinneret, although not nearly so strange IF we have solid evidences of such stones.

Since I believe the Garden Tomb has a good possbility of being the burial site of Jesus, and since it fits the parameters of the Gospel story, it is in the locale, and it has a groove for the round stone, it is not a "family tomb" and as I remember the actual round stone is virtually identified, and I have heard no reasons why the Garden Tomb wouldn't be 1st century, I think all the probabilistic conjecturing is interesting to behold, but really of no consequence.

Even if the tomb of Jesus wasn't the Garden Tomb, unless you could rather conclusively demonstrate the Garden Tomb as post 70-AD, or some sort of strange aberration, it alone would make all of Carrier's calcs mute. Due to its close similarity to all the actual NT parameters, it would be far more important than general calcs about all sorts of tombs that are widely and wildly divergent.

btw.. When you look at these issues, so many things open up. I wondered a simple question.. if a tomb has a round stone is that a factor in dating the tomb ? If so, it makes the whole probalistic analysis of Carrier skewered and circular. Until that question is answered, there really is little point in discussing his calcs.

Shabbat Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Steven Avery

Actually the set of conditions was quite sensible and cohesive, as shown by your strained attempt to respond to each one with *something*, no matter how inconsequential.

Shabbat Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Steven Avery

However the great majority of those would be irrelevant, e.g if they were small tombs, or if they had special enclosure. This sounds almost like one of those "how to lie with statistics" clases. How many of the tombs really are CLOSE in design and size, to what we know from the Gospels, like the Garden Tomb. And I will await the answer to a basic question, do round stones actually effect the dating itself ? If so, the whole issue is mute.

Yet another problem. Burial customs could be different in "Galilee of the Gentiles".

So explain to me how the Garden Tomb was MISSED in this count ? This is sounding fishier by the minute.

I came in late, and am having a bit of a chuckle. As I said (was it in regard to this ?) my sense is that he has let his 'position' as Internet skeptic researcher/gadfly go to his head, and he will dredge up pretty nonsensical stuff. I am still flabbergasted that this thread can go on and on about probabilistics without even discussing the specifics of the Garden Tomb.

And on the web, four great minds, Carrier, Gerkin, Holding and Miller, and NONE of them even mentions the Garden Tomb. ??? (laughing and smiling and hand hitting forehead) Well what do you expect, if Holding can place the country of Jerash on the Galilee without batting an eye, you can't expect the most insightful debates.

Naah.. you started to raise all sorts of other stuff, which led to the good cop/bad cop duo aspect. You would raise an issue, and then Diogenes would act as if it was essential to inerrancy, and you would back off. Law & Order does good/bad cop better.

When all was said and done, the fact is simple, no real argument against country of the Gadarenes on the Kinneret, lots of scholarship references for.

One particular location, singular. Again, when I misstate, I am happy to correct, and the bottom line remains, there is no substantive argument against the country of the Gadarenes on the Kinneret.

However the city was likely a coastal city --
Luke 8:27
And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.

However, you added the running, the Mark and Luke says they fled....
Now, now.. be accurate.

I have no idea what you consider pessimistic. If we identify the place more precisely, or the tombs, that will be excellent. However, there is no errancy requiirement. And I'm sure if the pig bones are found, they will be sluffed off just like the animal bones at the Exodus crossing, such as those discovered, as I recall, by Aaron Sen.

Shabbat Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Amaleq13

According to an article by Gabriel Barkay (“The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?� Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1986) the Garden Tomb is in an area with numerous other tombs cut into the rock but they all date from 7th-8th centuries BCE. The Jerusalem tombs that date from the Second Temple period are located further north of the city.

It has been a while since I read the article (it was online when it was first published) but, IIRC, the tombs were dated by other means and the observation about the doors was secondary.