Vorkosigan

This little doozy back in May....

Does Witherington Use Ossuary to Promote Christ-inanity?

...nah....

• Witherington believes God uses antiquities to bring humanity closer to Biblical truths. "I think that the further we get away from the time of Jesus, the more evidence God produces," said Witherington. "This ossuary brings to light the evidence to support what the New Testament says."

Did apologists take their case to the public to drum up support?

nah.....

<lights another victory cigar>

Vorkosigan

Sauron

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Vorkosigan
LOL. Sure Sauron....the Chinese dinosaurs in National Geographic...oh yeah, that turned out to be a fraud too. Are we sensing a pattern here?


http://www.sltrib.com/2002/Nov/11222002/utah/4223.htm

Oh, yes. I had forgotten about liaoningensis. A fossil that was deliberately assembled by a Chinese peasant working the dig site, in order to increase the value of the fossil to collectors. He was not a professional, only moonlighting. And he mixed parts of two dinosaur skeletons, several yards apart.

Enter National Geographic. They see, they like. They want to publish the article and the first photos. A decision which they would soon regret, for National Geographic did not follow proper scholarly procedure. You see:

1. the X-ray studies of the skeleton - which would have raised doubts as to whether one creature or two were indicated - those X-ray studies were never accounted for in Natl Geographic's analysis (i.e., ignoring data that 'gets in the way' of the conclusion); and

2. Moreover, the liaoningensis fossil was also being examined by Science and by Nature, in a process known as (ahem) peer review. Both Science and Nature turned down the article and the fossil. But Natl Geographic, smelling a story, went ahead and printed it anyhow.

Which ultimately forced them to print a five-page retraction.

So ossuary promoters, what lessons have we learned here?

1. Do not skip proper scholarly process. It is slow and methodical for a reason;
2. Pay attention to the peer review work of others who are investigating the same artifact, and wait for their conclusions;
3. Be wary of amateurs selling you artifacts that appear to be too good to be true;
4. Be wary of such artifacts, especially when their provenance cannot be reliably established;
5. Don't rush to take strong affirmative positions

Class over.

Sauron

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/4653069.htm

In an interview, Hershel Shanks, the magazine editor who published the report, said there were at least two reasons to doubt the accusations of forgery.

"If a modern forger did it, for a couple of hundred dollars he could get a blank ossuary, and it would be a dumb forger who doesn't start from scratch, so the writing is consistent," Shanks said. "Also, you've got to assume the forger knows how to forge patina, something not known by others. All these things are possible, but extraordinarily unlikely."

Sauron

There is one new point in the Ha'Aretz article that deserves attention:

The Geological Survey of Israel - one of whose experts participated in the panel that unanimously ruled the inscription fake - originally declared the inscription to be authentic. Dr. Uzi Deri, who chaired the panel that investigated the inscription's patina, said the the carbon-14 dating tests used by the survey in its original determination proved to be irrelevant.

Combine this data point, and an earlier one:

http://www.archaeology.org/magazine..../ossuary/index

In the case of the Jehoash Inscription, the geological verdict was as damning as the epigraphic one. The Survey of Israel geologists had even misidentified the rock type. It was not arkosic sandstone from southern Israel or Jordan but low-grade metamorphic greywacke of a type found commonly in western Cyprus and areas still further west, but not in the Levant south of northern Syria. The back of the stone was covered by a hard patina, as the earlier experts had stated. But this patina was now found to be composed of silica only, most likely resulting from the siliceous composition of the rock. Yet such patination is unlikely to be created on a stone that was buried in the entirely calcareous environs of Jerusalem.


All of which confirms what I tried to tell Layman et. al. earlier: the GSI is *not* a forensic investigation unit. They're like the National Park Service here in the USA: an arm of the government, that does research for the govt. In the GSI's case, they collect data on things such as earthquakes, groundwater and mineral deposits. They aren't trained or equipped to spot high-tech forgeries.

So anyone resting their argument for authenticity on the IGS report was making a serious mistake.

aikido7

Ossuary--Genuine or Fake?
Jesus--Man or Myth?

After recognizing the fact that attempts at measurement always somehow disturb the subject under investigation (resulting in a lack of precision), theoretical physicist Karl Heisenberg became known for the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Although dealing with the subatomic world of quantum mechanics, could the principle be applicable here?

I have noticed that most fundamentalists prefer clarity to truth.

Celsus

TV scheduling is typically carried out months in advance. It may yet come out with a disclaimer.

Joel

Vorkosigan

The forger's error was going public. I suspect he was trying to sell it on the private market. If he had only stayed private, he probably never would have been caught. Shanks is, as usual, spinning.

Vorkosigan

Haran

You have got to be kidding me! Did you read her first article, the one I critique in my own?

So you are of the same stripe as Vork, that because she had been "attacked" it was ok for her to attack others?? Sick. What did I do to get attacked by her??

If I had the time, I would post links to some of her biased and mistake-filled early posts. Perhaps it would be a waste of time anyway because the other apologists here would simply try to explain how she was justified in some way to do what she did... Phooey! Did that give her a right to attack me when I had only been nice to her?? Phooey!

Finally, for Vork, Rochelle was wrong and she is still wrong. Besides, which of her posts and articles do you believe anyway? The ones where she was trying to unfairly bash me and was saying that she never wrote that it was a 'fake! Give me a big break, guys!

I have to admit that the absurdly confident rhetoric is having the very opposite effect from what is desired. It is causing emotions that will lead some further into finding out whether the committee was wrong and whether they simply twisted the information.

Congratulations, because the other apologists here will soon be responsible for pushing this thing straight into the new Shroud of Turin as an unintended effect of their unthoughtout words.

I will leave this thread to the gloaters (always a crude bunch). I will also be checking very closely into the committee when I find the time. If the scholars do not seem to have much bias, then I will accept their verdict. Otherwise, this thing will live on because everyone has their own biases - the committee is no different. I cannot believe that there are those here who want me to accept "on blind faith" as they do, the committee's response.

I sincerely hope many of you do not approach the rest of history in such a biased fashion.

Peter Kirby

Wouldn't it be more productive to examine whether the conclusions follow from the facts noted? You don't have physical access to the ossuary, but you can evaluate the inferences made. Or do you think they might be lying about what the facts are? I don't know how one can be honestly mistaken about the chemical composition of the patina in the inscription after doing the necessary tests.

best,
Peter Kirby

godfry n. glad

I'm rather curious as to how Haran thinks that the biases of the IAA commission members might change how anyone is to interpret that the inscription had been cut through the varnish-like patina of the admittedly ancient ossuary?

If we were to find that not a single member of the commissions did not believe that Jesus Christ was their personal savior , would that really change anything?

'Course, he's gone off in a huff...

godfry