gnosis92

So at 3 hours and it's inconclusive?

WTF?

Paul Doland

I haven't seen a thread on this here. If there is already a thread, sorry.

Anybody else watch? I went ahead and watched, and also the Ted Koppel debate after it.

The Christian argument about commonality of names, to me, seemed to be reasonably answered. Though I DO NOT BUY their probability calculation! The probability calculation might show the probability that those exact names might happen to be there, but, there would be a fair number of other possible combinations that they would have also accepted as being indicative of being the tomb of Jesus. So, that makes the probability calculation specious.

Still the thrust of the argument, seemed to me to be fairly strong. There may have been lots of "Jesus's" (whatever the original language was.) And lots of "Joseph's", "Mary's", etc. But, how likely would it be to have a family tomb that had so many Christian names? In the debate, the researcher admitted it is at least possible to be coincidental, it just seemed unlikely. I'm certainly no expert, but, it did seem to me as well that the likelihood of that many Christian names be in the tomb being just coincidence to be low.

Among other arguments, they said that some of the names had unusual spellings, but those spellings are the way they were spelled on the ossuaries. The weakest was for Mary Magdalene. The spelling wasn't really the right spelling for "Mary" nor had a reference to "Magdalene". But, they said that in some non-canonical Christian writings, they had Mary Magdalene with this other variation of "Mary" that is on the ossuary.

So, the Christian critics jumped on that, saying that the ossuary doesn't say Mary nor Magdalene, nor is there any canonical writings with that variation of Mary. And, if I was a Christian, that is probably the response I would have. But, on the other hand, I have to agree with the researchers that said that it was an amazing coincidence that this unusual variation of Mary is on the osssuary and at least on some Christian-based works.

I've personally be a mythist, meaning that I haven't been convinced that there even was any historical Jesus at all -- though I haven't been "dogmatic" about it. Also, I know that these kinds of documentaries often are slanted, presenting the evidence in ways that are misleading. So, I'm not totally convinced by the documentary.

But I'm interested in what someone that has more historical knowledge to comment as to how valid the arguments presented are. They seemed reasonably good to me, other than the poor probability calculation. But I've been fooled by documentaries before, so I'm reserving judgement.

Toto

Hi Paul - I don't know how you missed this thread, but I merged your post.

I was just reading this rather sharp take by Joe Zias:

http://www.joezias.com/tomb.html

coloradoatheist

Just looking at that, one of the big problems and I won't go through them is making the assumption Jesus of Nazereth. We have no idea where Jesus was from and from the discussions here it's most likely the gospel authors misrepresenting his place of birth to make him fulfill scripture.

Hopefully IAA will open up the tomb and find the bones that were buried. Until those two things happen it will be controversial.

Mike

coloradoatheist

I had a question for the experts on names.

How confident are scholars of the names surrounding Jesus based on the idea that we have no manuscripts close to their writing date?


Mike

gilly54

I watched 3 hours and shut it off when the theologians came on. I found it quite interesting, but thought the dramatizations were unnecessary and cheapened the show.

I agree with others' assessments that more DNA testing and crypt exploration and more solid linking of Mariamne to Mary Magalene needs to be done.

Also, I'd like to see:

-explore the ^ symbol more
-solidify the evidence suggesting that Peter/Simon-bar-Jonah's ossuary/remains are in Jerusalem, not under the Vatican.

But more importantly, I'd like an investigation into Biblical archeologists.

Maybe I'm prone to conspiratorial thoughts, but I've always thought these archeologists are told by their superiors, or agree amongst themselves, to delve only so far in their research for obvious reasons. This could explain the indifference or lackadaisical treatment by the IAA to these ossuaries, something that was hinted at in this show.

lee_merrill

I'm no expert, but the Koine Greek papyrii are very extensive, and many Jewish people were fluent in Greek, note the Jewish writers of the New Testament using Greek virtually exclusively when they wrote for a general audience, or even for a Jewish one. There also it seems are two ossuaries inscribed "Jesus son of Joseph", and they have cataloged the inscriptions on the ossuaries, which would plausibly be a fair sample of names on ossuaries.

coloradoatheist

But as I understand the copies we have are almost all post 4th century. And I was more interested in the other names like Mary (multiple) Jose and Joseph.


Mike

lee_merrill

Hi Mike,

No, the papyrii are right at the first century, and would be expected to include various Hebrew names when written by Jewish people, or about them.

Now copies of some other documents (Plato and Aristotle, for instance) do have late dates (900-1100 AD), also the Masoretic Hebrew text, but maybe this wasn't what you refer to here?

Regards,
Lee

coloradoatheist

Please provide a link to which full papyrii date to the first century?

Mike