gnosis92

The NT claims there was a man named Jesus, son of Joseph, and had a brother named James, and mother Mary.

Doesn't the Jesus family tomb show there was at least 1 person named Jesus, son of Joseph, "Mary", and patina analysis links James ossuary to this tomb, all in the first century.

So the claim that "Jesus never existed" is simply false as we have a tomb here of "Jesus" who has some degree of match with the NT Jesus in terms of family structure. Granted there is no proof that this Jesus is the same Jesus as the NT, 51% chance is pretty good by standards of antiquity, and rules out the claim that "Jesus never existed"

EssEff

It depends on whether you accept the notion that the Jesus is *the* Jesus, and then if you do, you would have to accept that *the* Jesus wasn't ever resurrected, but died a normal death, decayed in a bone box, and was interred somewhere on Earth like a normal mortal.

We could probably find the grave of someone named "Tom Sawyer" who lived near the Mississippi during the mid-19th Century but that doesn't mean it was *the* Tom Sawyer, even if there was a "Becky" interred nearby.

gnosis92

While what you say is true, what tips the scale IMHO is the fact that there does not appear to be any Christian or pagan groups that dismissed the NT as pure fiction. Celsus, for example, accepted the historicity of Jesus.

Splarnst

Stop right there. What Jesus family tomb?

There's probably a tomb somewhere that says "Mickey Mouse".

Where the hell are you pulling this 51% number from? You can't just assign probabilities on a whim and expect people to respect them.

suttsteve

There's also the strong possibility that it's just a hoax, much like the Shroud of Turin was.

Chris Weimer

There's no such thing. The only people making this accusation are fundy Christians or people wholly ignorant of what's going on.

DougWeller

http://www.joezias.com/jacob.html
Joe Zias compares the 'James ossuary' with the 'Jesus' ossuary, following on from James Tabor's comparison on his blog: http://jesusdynasty.com/blog/

CJW

TEACH The CONTROVERSY!

Cege

The "Jesus family tomb" is one only in the meaning that an ossuary with the name Jesus was found there, and that families were likely entombed in a single place when possible and practical. There's no agreement by scholars or archeologists that the tomb in question was the tomb of the family of the biblical Jesus of the NT.

It does, though, seem possible to me that the missing ossuary from that particular tomb could be the same as the "James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" ossuary so much in the news the past couple of years.

Scientific comparison of the ossuaries should be able to bring some kind of resolution to the question, but even with science there are plenty of controversies and disagreements so I won't expect a 100% agreement among all who examine the ossuaries and/or examine the resulting reports.

DougWeller

There isn't necessarily a missing ossuary. You are probably referring to ossuary 80.509 which Kloner says was uninscribed and Joe Zias says was put in the courtyard. It is missing from the official catalogue though. People are now talking about an '11th' ossuary.