Possible Earliest Artifact Identifying Jesus?

Kimpatsu said:

John, James, Joseph, Jesus and Judas were the most common names in Arimathea at the time.
HTH.
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Prof Lemaire of Sorbonne University(apparently the worlds leading authority Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions) is quoted as stating that James, Joseph and Jesus were quite common in 1st century Judea. Of 233 ossuaries from the period found to date, 19 mention a Joseph, 10 a Jesus, and 5 a James.

Lemaire has calculated that, assuming each man had an average of two bothers, a total of 0.05% of the population would have fitted the ctireria 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'. Given that there were around 40,000 males in Jerusalem in the mid 60's AD, that would mean around 20 men fitting the criteria.

So even if the box is genuine, it would still not be proof of the existence of Jesus Christ.
 
ReasonableDoubt said:
I would suggest that any verdict is premature.


 I would agree. ' Verdict' was a poor choice of word .. I was just making an observation..


This seems like a non sequitur. How is being "the first ever" evidence of being "too perfect"?
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I'll have to review the definition of ' non sequiter ' for my own enlightenment, however, I trust your use of it is correct.

With that in mind, if you did not get my point, I would suspect that you are not part of my target audience.
 
I may have mentioned this before and the conversation moved on, so if so, please excuse me.

One of the problems of this "find" from what I've read on the links provided here, is that the box was found in the hands of a private collector. One of the archeological issues, it seems to me, must be the context/site where the box was originally found...and so far as I can tell, that is an unknown. Did I miss something, or was there in one of the links a discussion of the original finding of the box?

My point is that without knowing more about the context of the finding of the box, location, other boxes near it, any contents now missing, etc. it would seem to be difficult to conclude that this may be a box for a James, maybe of the 1st Century (thopugh I suppose there are tests that can date it reasonably accurately), who had a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus.

Much more than that, it doesn't tell us much. I mean it really doesn't confirm the bible, per. se., any more than any other archeological find. Indeed, while the "context" I seek might not reveal much more either, I think it important. Having King Tut's mask without knowing how it was found, what else was in the tomb, at the site, etc. Would tell us very little about King Tut except that a death mask was made for someone by that name (assuming that the name was actually on the mask, and if not, it would tell us nothing about King Tut specifically, only about Egyptian royal funierial art)...at least I think this is a fair analogy.
 
headscratcher4 said:

My point is that without knowing more about the context of the finding of the box, location, other boxes near it, any contents now missing, etc. it would seem to be difficult to conclude that this may be a box for a James, maybe of the 1st Century (thopugh I suppose there are tests that can date it reasonably accurately), who had a father named Joseph and a brother named Jesus.
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But even if the box is genuine, it proves little. See my earlier post. The James,Joseph,Jesus combination is far from unique for that time.
 
RonSceptic said:


But even if the box is genuine, it proves little. See my earlier post. The James,Joseph,Jesus combination is far from unique for that time.
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Don't get me wrong...I completely agree with you (though apparently in a very inarticulate way), the box, by itself, proves little.
 
PotatoStew said:
Diogenes:


What archaeological evidence would you reasonably expect to find?


You would have to talk to some archeologists about that..

The part of my statement in quotes was from the article in the " Biblical Archaeology Review ". They seem to think it is significant that there is a lack of evidence, regarding the subject at hand.







Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism, and didn't have its own architecture in the beginning, plus with the destruction of the temple and scattering of the Jews in 70ad as well as the early persecution of Christians, the odds are further decreased that we would have any significant archaeological evidence, even if Jesus was in fact an important person at the time.

 Nothing for me to argue with there, unless you want to consider the following an argument.


1. It is assumed that person A is important (sort of a 'celebrity' of their time. We have credible ( something like the equivalent of a newspaper review of one of their concerts) evidence that they were . ( It is not my intention to speculate about who 'A' might be. We beat that one pretty hard recently.:) )

2. It is assumed that person B is important (sort of a 'celebrity' of their time). We have no credible ( assuming that 'anecdotal evidence' is not sufficienct by itself) evidence that they were.



Can we draw the conclusion that person B is just as likely to have been ' important ' as person A ?

I wouldn't.
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headscratcher4 said:
... the box, by itself, proves little.
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It is, at best, acknowledged circumstantial evidence - one more wet jacket suggestive of rain.

At the same time, I wish I could somehow manufacture and sell strung ossuary-limestone beeds to the more anxious skeptics. The idea would be for them to find some quiet place, perhaps light a candle, and finger their way through the string chanting:
  • [*]the box means nothing ... [*]the box means nothing ... [*]the box means nothing ... [*]the box means nothing ... [*]the box means nothing ...
This is really fun to watch ... :D :) :D
 
Diogenes:

It is assumed that person B is important (sort of a 'celebrity' of their time). We have no credible ( assuming that 'anecdotal evidence' is not sufficienct by itself) evidence that they were.
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The first problem is that I don't think that "anecdotal evidence" (by this I assume you mean the gospels) should be excluded for purposes of determining "celebrity" ...I'll grant you that I can see why you might not allow it for determining all the actual details, but I still think it shows "celebrity". For instance, 2000 years from now if all the evidence we have of Britney Spears is a few websites put together by her fans I still think it would be reasonable to conclude that she was a celebrity even if you didn't trust the details.

Can we draw the conclusion that person B is just as likely to have been ' important ' as person A ?
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Even if you can't say it's "as likely" that doesn't mean you can say it's "not likely" (which seems to be what you are doing).
 
PotatoStew said:
Diogenes:



The first problem is that I don't think that "anecdotal evidence" (by this I assume you mean the gospels) should be excluded for purposes of determining "celebrity" ...

 Where did I say " excluded " ?

Since you missed it, I said 'anecdotal evidence' is not sufficienct by itself '. Which implied, that anecdotal evidence, accompanied by archeological evidence would build a better case for 'A' or 'B'.


I'll grant you that I can see why you might not allow it for determining all the actual details, but I still think it shows "celebrity". For instance, 2000 years from now if all the evidence we have of Britney Spears is a few websites put together by her fans I still think it would be reasonable to conclude that she was a celebrity even if you didn't trust the details.

 Oh, I would say recovering a few thousand CD's that could be dated to have been manufactured during Britney's lifetime, would be a bit more reliable than a recollection, written down 100 years after her death.

Even if you can't say it's "as likely" that doesn't mean you can say it's "not likely" (which seems to be what you are doing).

 I make no pretense ( and I acknowledge, respectfully, that you don't either) about which camp I am in. That said, I find it pretentious of you to suggest, that I don't know that , scarcity of evidence does not equal bad evidence.

So how does it strengthen your position, to point out that I might 'think' - ' Not Likley ', when I point out that one position appears to be 'more' likely, than the other?
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Diogenes:

Where did I say " excluded " ?

Since you missed it, I said 'anecdotal evidence' is not sufficienct by itself '.
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Exactly... if anecdotal evidence is not sufficient by itself, and all we have is what you would consider anecdotal evidence, then you are saying that the anecdotal evidence *is not* sufficient, which sounds to me like you are excluding it. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting you or reading too much into your statement... if so, I apologize.

Oh, I would say recovering a few thousand CD's that could be dated to have been manufactured during Britney's lifetime, would be a bit more reliable than a recollection, written down 100 years after her death.
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Probably more reliable, yes.

That said, I find it pretentious of you to suggest, that I don't know that , scarcity of evidence does not equal bad evidence.
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Then what is your point? We agree that archaeological evidence would make it easier to say that it was more likely that he was important. Yet we also agree that this lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't. So why emphasize the "missing" evidence? (especially since "missing" seems to imply that it should be there, which hasn't been established by any stretch.)

So how does it strengthen your position, to point out that I might 'think' - ' Not Likley ', when I point out that one position appears to be 'more' likely, than the other?
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I'm not trying to "strengthen" my position, I'm only saying that "less likely" than hypothetical person A does not equal "not likely". You seem to agree with this, which leaves me confused as to why you would say something like, "It is quite clear he wasn't very important, to very many people till many years after his supposed death. ...His apparant lack of importance is exemplified in all of the 'missing archeological evidence', that would make this find less questionable." which to me sounds like "not likely". But again, maybe I just misinterpreted you. Are you saying "less likely" or "not likely"?
 
PotatoStew said:
Jesus didn't actually serve the guests... in fact, turning the water to wine would be more like serving the groom since it would probably be embarrasing for him to run out of wine.
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Exactly. Once I was at a friend's wedding reception and they ran out of beer, and I made a run to the store to buy more.

In 2000 years, will this be "proof" that I was actually the groom?
 
Re: pattern matching

corplinx said:
I haven't read of anyone jumping the gun yet and setting up a shrine to relic and claiming that touching cures warts yet, but feel free to post links to articles that do so we can make fun of them.
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That is because it is not in the hands of Catholics.
 
Exactly. Once I was at a friend's wedding reception and they ran out of beer, and I made a run to the store to buy more.

In 2000 years, will this be "proof" that I was actually the groom?
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Probably not. But maybe proof that you turned money into beer?
 
ReasonableDoubt said:
Your reasoning only works on your "target audience"?
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I'm not concerned about my reasoning 'working' on anyone.

If no one got my point, I can assume I did not express myself very well.


If you didn't get it, the above could still apply, or it could mean, well, you just didn't get it.
 
PotatoStew said:
Diogenes:



Exactly... if anecdotal evidence is not sufficient by itself, and all we have is what you would consider anecdotal evidence, then you are saying that the anecdotal evidence *is not* sufficient, which sounds to me like you are excluding it. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting you or reading too much into your statement... if so, I apologize.



 I see your point here. I can't fault you for pointing this out. I can admit, ' I ' would tend to dismiss/exclude anecdotal evidence in the absence of other evidence.

You might be more inclined to consider the anecdotal evidence in light of other information that you consider valid.

Perhaps this is a case where we can agree to disagree.
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