News that will change the history of the world!
0 comments | Posted by Steven Layson on 11 Aug 2007 in From Steve's Study ::
Some of you will have seen the documentary that was aired on Monday night entitled, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, which also aired on the Discovery Channel some time ago. The advertising for this documentary claimed that it would reveal “news that will change the history of the world.”
In short, the documentary claimed to have found the tomb which contained the “ossuaries” (bone boxes) of Jesus and his family. They claim that in this tomb were found the boxes that held the bones of Jesus himself as well as Mary, Joseph, James (his brother), another brother (Jose), another family member named Matthew, Mary Magdalene (Jesus’ wife) and Judah the son of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
If true, this is rather worrying news for the Christian faith since we believe, as the Apostle Paul did that, “If Christ has not be raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith… you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:14,17). In other words, if this box does contain the remains of Jesus, then he clearly was not raised from the dead & as such, all that we have believed in for all these years has been a complete hoax – we have no salvation and no eternal life… as I say, a little worrying!
The documentary is certainly compelling viewing, being described by one critic as “Part Indiana Jones, part The Da Vinci Code, and part Discovery Channel with a bit of CSI and Numbers thrown in for good measure”. There are a number of “experts” and “scientists” interviewed, with plenty of white coats and high-tech machinery thrown in for good measure.
However, without going into too much detail, there are a number of problems with the theories they put forward. Here are just a few:
- This tomb was probably used by many families over a long period of time, as evidenced by the different languages used for the inscriptions.
- Not everyone agrees that the inscriptions have been deciphered correctly; and the claims that ‘Mariamene e Mara’ is equivalent to ‘Mary Magdalene’, and that ‘Mathew’ and ‘Jofa’ refer to brothers of Jesus, are both very unlikely.
- The DNA evidence only shows (inconclusively) that the two individuals were unrelated. Hence the speculation that ‘Jesua’ and ‘Mariamene’ could have been married is insecure, and ignores several other possibilities.
- The attempt to connect the James ossuary with the others is tenuous, especially since the ossuary has been denounced as a forgery and its owner has been charged with fraud.
- In the twenty-seven year gap since the ossuaries were discovered, no professional archaeologist has thought the tomb was that of Jesus of Nazareth. This recent claim comes not from a historian or an archaeologist, but from a journalist and a filmmaker.
- The documentary’s claims bear no resemblance to what is known of Jesus from the best historical records we have, the Gospels of the New Testament: the ossuary site is nowhere near where Jesus lived; there is no record of Jesus marrying or having a son; many claimed to have seen and touched his living body a few days after his death, and no dead remains were produced to refute them. The empty tomb of Jesus was essential to the logic of the first public Christian sermon [Acts 2], which succeeded because of the public consensus that Jesus’ body no longer lay anywhere.
- Finally, and most significantly, the whole argument finally rests on a big “if” – “If the disciples took the body”.
There is no explanation given as to how the disciples could have changed from the scattered & disorganised cowards we see on the day of the crucifixion, to be able to overpower the elite Roman soldiers & steal the body. On top of this, they would need to explain why the disciples, who knew his resurrection was a fake, were prepared to give their lives for such a fraud.
If you are interested to find out more details about this issue, let me encourage you to go to the Sydney Anglican Media website (http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/) and search for “ossuary”, which will provide a number of links to in depth articles and books.
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