Director James Cameron rewrites religion!

I was reading about this last night at the discovery channel site on their forum. From what I've read it's a tomb dating to the first centure C.E. of a middle class jewish family with a grouping of names that were fairly common to the era and coincidental to those of some key figures in the bible. What is interesting is all the fuss being made over the inscription on one ossuary 'Judah son of Jesus' and the other that is said to translate to 'Mary the one master' alledgely refering to Mary Magdalene.

It could be great fun watching the faithful get all frothy over this.


:popcorn1



Boo
 
kmortis said:
But you cut it off before my favoite part.

Pope: There were 12 disciples and one Christ!
Mike: ONE!
Pope: Yes, one. What made you think it was ok to paint 3 Christs?
Mike: The two skinny ones help balance out the fat one.
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hehe or the last bit:
"Pope: Look! I'm the bloody pope, I am! May not know much about art, but I know what I like! "

:) :)

To stick with the matter How on earth are they going to proove it is Jesu toomb? Compare it with DNA from the Shroud of Turin? ;)
 
Libertarian said:
Giant sucking sound?? I humbly disagree. Finding Christ's body would not make ONE SINGLE, SOLITARY, IOTA of a difference to the true believers. Not one. Not any. None. Nope.
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Agreed. Look at all the evidence for evolution and an ancient universe that is ignored by fundies. No amount of archeological evidence would be accepted.

Even those that are more liberal wouldn't accept it. If the evidence were TOO clear cut (a sign around the skeleton's neck saying, "This is the same Jesus Christ that was crucified under Pontius Pilate and that they make such a big deal about in the Nicene Creed"), it would be declared a hoax. Too obvious. If it were more open to interpretation, on the other hand, there wouldn't be nearly enough certainty to convince anyone.

Also, the New Testament could always be re-interpreted. It does say at one point that the risen Jesus appeared "in another form". The resurrected Jesus could simply be redefined as a non-corporeal vision separate from the body.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Look at all the evidence for evolution and an ancient universe that is ignored by fundies. No amount of archeological evidence would be accepted.
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Be fair. I haven't heard of any archeologists accepting Cameron's "evidence." Virtually no one on the planet is accepting it (except for a few "skeptics," who appear to gleefully accept virtually anything anti-Christian).
 
Beady said:
Be fair. I haven't heard of any archeologists accepting Cameron's "evidence." Virtually no one on the planet is accepting it (except for a few "skeptics," who appear to gleefully accept virtually anything anti-Christian).
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Merely speaking hypthetically!
 
Ove said:
To stick with the matter How on earth are they going to proove it is Jesu toomb? Compare it with DNA from the Shroud of Turin? ;)
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Nah. They've just got to compare DNA against a wafer available from any local Catholic suppliers. :)
 
Highly amusing, but nothing more. We have names one would not expect in the family tomb, and lack names we would - like those of Jesus' known brothers, according to the Bible. I'm a Christian, and think the whole thing is great fun, but I'm afraid the claims of 600 to 1 on it being the Jesus of faith's tomb, rather than another Jesus - nah, I have no idea why they would claim that.

I'll explain my reasons for scepticism if anyone is really interested.

cj x
 
Anyone remember the faked "James ossuary" debacle? It originally said just "James", but the words "Brother of Jesus" were carved in by person or persons unknown.

Quite a few people fell for that one!
 
cj.23 said:
Highly amusing, but nothing more. We have names one would not expect in the family tomb, and lack names we would - like those of Jesus' known brothers, according to the Bible. I'm a Christian, and think the whole thing is great fun, but I'm afraid the claims of 600 to 1 on it being the Jesus of faith's tomb, rather than another Jesus - nah, I have no idea why they would claim that.

I'll explain my reasons for scepticism if anyone is really interested.

cj x
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I'm more interested in hearing how evidenced-based reasoning led you both to Christianity AND disbelief in Cameron's claim.
 
Beady said:
Be fair. I haven't heard of any archeologists accepting Cameron's "evidence." Virtually no one on the planet is accepting it (except for a few "skeptics," who appear to gleefully accept virtually anything anti-Christian).
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That's true. So far the experts seem to range from skeptical to outright dismissive of this claim. But the evidence isn't going anywhere, so I look forward to a more thorough debunking. For example, I haven't heard a good debunking (or even analysis) yet of the statistical claims. Most have been very poor such as "all the names were common" or "names that should be there aren't, and names that shouldn't be there are". I'd like to see a solid statistical analysis.
 
Dave1001 said:
I'm more interested in hearing how evidenced-based reasoning led you both to Christianity AND disbelief in Cameron's claim.
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I'll pass on explaining my faith position till I have more time. Problems with the tomb holds 'that' Jesus hypothesis...

many hundreds if not thousands of ossuaries have been found, in many many cave tombs in Jerusalem. This one, found in 1980, is probably 1st century - right period. So what might we expect?

I think it entirely possible that there is the body of a Jesus and the other named folks in a tomb - they are all very common names of the period. If I found the bodies of a John Paul and George, it would be dangerous to jump to any conclusions -- a Ringo and maybe i would have a case. The claim this is 'that' Jesus is based on a combination of names, significant in the New Testament, and which one chap has claimed the odds of occurring together by chance are 600 to 1 against - so it's overwhelmingly likely to be 'that' Jesus's tomb.

OK, so it's a family tomb - and we would expect to find Jesus' known family, including his named brothers in it. We can name Jesus brothers from the Bible, and his uncle, though his sisters names are not known.
If you are rusty on Jesus' family tree, here goes --
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tree.html

Now the Bible could well be wrong - but if so the naming case falls apart anyway. So the name we might expect - Joseph, Mary, Jesus, James, Joses, Simeon, Jude, and perhaps Mary, Cleopas and Simeon -- all known relatives.

And what do we get?

Five of the 10 discovered boxes in the Talpiot tomb were inscribed with names believed to be associated with key figures in the New Testament: Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph and Mary Magdalene. A sixth inscription, written in Aramaic, translates to "Judah Son of Jesus."
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So Matthew is said to be the disciple Matthew - why buried in the tomb? And two Marys - so one is conveniently claimed to be the Magdalene, alleged to be Jesus' wife. So what we have is not names which correspond with the known family of Jesus, but which do fall in to the set - "people who are mentioned in the NT"

The names are all common - and many have several forms - the second Mary is actually a Miriam - well Mary is Miriam. And the name Jesus for example is not uncommon - 17 Jesus exist in the historical record for this period, and then we get in to the variants - Hosea, Hoshea, Jehoshua, Jeshua, Jeshuah, Jesus, Osea, Oshea are all suggested as readings for this name on one site I looked at. Probably not our man then, especially as i have seen no claims the body had been crucified, and if the Gospels have any truth I think the Romans and Jewish critics like Saul (later Paul) might have dismissed the Resurrection pretty quickly if Jesus had been buried in the family tomb -- a bit of an open and shut case?

So on the whole i think its rather unlikely, and can't figure the 600 to 1 claim - sure they might be the odds of these names all coming together i suppose, assuming one of them is rare, but that in itself is utterly useless if they are not the names which should be there. How many combinations might replacing Matthew with each of the other 11 disciples (12 if oyu count Judas) manage? How rare would they be?

Amusing, but, sorry...

cj x
 
aggle-rithm said:
Agreed. Look at all the evidence for evolution and an ancient universe that is ignored by fundies. No amount of archeological evidence would be accepted.

Even those that are more liberal wouldn't accept it. If the evidence were TOO clear cut (a sign around the skeleton's neck saying, "This is the same Jesus Christ that was crucified under Pontius Pilate and that they make such a big deal about in the Nicene Creed"), it would be declared a hoax. Too obvious. If it were more open to interpretation, on the other hand, there wouldn't be nearly enough certainty to convince anyone.

Also, the New Testament could always be re-interpreted. It does say at one point that the risen Jesus appeared "in another form". The resurrected Jesus could simply be redefined as a non-corporeal vision separate from the body.
Click to expand...


Actually, according to our (temporarily, we can only hope) exspurt* on Jesus, Jesus invented anal sex so we can just look for signs of same on that specific body.






* Davidjayjunkins
 
I thought that this was an Onion Article at first...

Either way, if he really believes it then he is standing to make a bundle of cash off his lunacy....if he does not than he stronger in the darkside than Vader.
 
Not only is this always going to be completely inconclusive, it really does nothing to worry ANY Christian. I mean, if Christians aren't worried about the hundreds of contradictions in the apparently perfect Bible, why would this worry them?

We are talking about the MASTERS of denial and twisting.

A Christian can interpret a Bible passage to mean absolutely ANYTHING, and they're even better with scientific evidence. A lot of them believe the Earth is merely thousands of years old! They won't care if you have DNA, they'll just say the Devil put it there, or that the ascension was spiritiual, or the evidence faked like the old Earth nonsense and EVILutionISM.

Move on guys, there's nothing of interest here for anyone.
 
Humphreys said:
We are talking about the MASTERS of denial and twisting.
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Humphreys, I see where you're coming from but I don't think every Christian can be fairly characterized by the above statement. I think we have to be fair and understanding of a diversity of world views. Absolutely I would describe some infuriating bible thumpers I've had to endure that way but many Christian people do not fit that description.
 
kitakaze said:
Humphreys, I see where you're coming from but I don't think every Christian can be fairly characterized by the above statement. I think we have to be fair and understanding of a diversity of world views. Absolutely I would describe some infuriating bible thumpers I've had to endure that way but many Christian people do not fit that description.
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Someone who is very close to me, who is not at all fundamentalist in her biblical interpretations, who know I am atheist, and who is not evangelical, told me not too long ago during one of our discussions that "It wouldn't matter if you irrefutably disproved the whole bible. I would still believe."

She wants to. She has to. She will not change.

I suspect most are like that.
 
Garrette said:
Someone who is very close to me, who is not at all fundamentalist in her biblical interpretations, who know I am atheist, and who is not evangelical, told me not too long ago during one of our discussions that "It wouldn't matter if you irrefutably disproved the whole bible. I would still believe."
.
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Well technically the Bible is not the centre of Christian faith, so she has a point. I would change though - see my posts above for a Christian response to this issue of the tomb. If there was proof -- I'd change.

cj x
 
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