Tomb Tidbits
Here are some recent Tomb posts from around blogdom ...
* Mark Goodacre has a post - Jesus Family Tomb Website: Errors and Inaccuracies - on the Jesus Family Tomb Website . Here's one of those he cited ....
- # Gospel of Mary: "Recent controversy has surrounded the role of Mary Magdalene as wife and companion of the historical Jesus. Some scholars believe that remaining by the side of the crucifixion confirms the role of a wife and widow, while others believe that the washing of feet represents an old marriage ritual. Others contest that the Bible never explicitly states that Mary was a prostitute, and that indeed she comes from a royal bloodline that would make for an ideal marriage between Mary and Jesus": I don't know of any scholars who think that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' "wife and companion", or that "the washing of feet represents an old marriage ritual". The latter is not connected with Mary Magdalene in any Gospel (Luke 7.36-50, anonymous; John 12.1-11, Mary of Bethany). It is inaccurate to say "Others contest that the Bible never explicitly states that Mary was a prostitute". It is a fact that she is never called a prostitute. The "royal bloodline" comment here takes us even further into Da Vinci Code territory.
* Stephen C. Carlson has a post - The Talpiot Tomb, James Ossuary, and Statistics - that discusses the statistical analysis of Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D. (U.C. Berkeley, physics) on the tomb. Here's a bit os the post ...
To arrive at his answer, Ingermanson (like many others) assumes that there were 80,000 men in Jerusalem in the appropriate time frame. Using the Rachel Hachlili’s numbers that 14% of the names are Joseph and 9% are Jesus, he figures that there are 1008 ± 32 men in Jerusalem called “Jesus, son of Joseph.” Factoring in the information from the Talpiot tomb that this Jesus, son of Joseph, has two female relatives or associates named Mary and at least two additional people with names of Jesus’s brothers and/or disciples, he calculates that 11 Jerusalem men “fit the profile of the Jesus of the tomb.” Unlike other treatments of the question, Ingermanson does not attribute any significance to the naming variations, e.g. Maria versus Mariamnenon. Now, 1 chance out of 11 is already a low probability that we've got the right Jesus, but Ingermanson goes further: he tries to address the fact that there is also an ossuary for a certain “Judas, son of Jesus” .....
* Jim West has a post - The Tomb that Keeps on Giving - citing an email from Mike Heiser, PhD. Here's a bit of it ...
... Well, it appears that having the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Matthew, and Martha (”Mara”) on ossuaries at one location isn’t as improbable as Jacobovici, Pellegrino, and Tabor would have the world believe ...... I want to draw your attention—and the attention of scholars and interested parties who read your blog—to a SECOND site that has all those names. In 1953-1955, Bellarmino Bagatti excavated the site of Dominus Flevit (”The Lord wept”) on the Mount of Olives. The excavation uncovered a necropolis and over 40 inscribed ossuaries – including the names of Mary, Martha, Matthew, Joseph, Jesus. These ossuaries are not, as far as I can tell, in Rahmani’s catalogue. I’m guessing the reason is that they are not the property of the Israel Antiquities Authority (see Rahmani’s Preface). The necropolis was apparently used ca. 136 BC to 300 AD. Here is a link that discusses the site. A few scanned pages of Bagatti’s excavation report (written in Italian) can be found here as well ..... One more really intriguing thing about the Dominus Flevit site is that it is referenced by Jacobovici with respect to his argument about the cross symbol’s antiquity, and Bagatti’s book is in his bibliography. And yet he and Charlie Pellegrino somehow overlooked the fact that ossuaries were found at that site with all the names accounted for. One can only guess whether the omission was due to careless scholarship or an effort to deceive the public ...
* Mark Goodacre has a post - Jesus Family Tomb Website: Errors and Inaccuracies - on the Jesus Family Tomb Website . Here's one of those he cited ....
- # Gospel of Mary: "Recent controversy has surrounded the role of Mary Magdalene as wife and companion of the historical Jesus. Some scholars believe that remaining by the side of the crucifixion confirms the role of a wife and widow, while others believe that the washing of feet represents an old marriage ritual. Others contest that the Bible never explicitly states that Mary was a prostitute, and that indeed she comes from a royal bloodline that would make for an ideal marriage between Mary and Jesus": I don't know of any scholars who think that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' "wife and companion", or that "the washing of feet represents an old marriage ritual". The latter is not connected with Mary Magdalene in any Gospel (Luke 7.36-50, anonymous; John 12.1-11, Mary of Bethany). It is inaccurate to say "Others contest that the Bible never explicitly states that Mary was a prostitute". It is a fact that she is never called a prostitute. The "royal bloodline" comment here takes us even further into Da Vinci Code territory.
* Stephen C. Carlson has a post - The Talpiot Tomb, James Ossuary, and Statistics - that discusses the statistical analysis of Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D. (U.C. Berkeley, physics) on the tomb. Here's a bit os the post ...
To arrive at his answer, Ingermanson (like many others) assumes that there were 80,000 men in Jerusalem in the appropriate time frame. Using the Rachel Hachlili’s numbers that 14% of the names are Joseph and 9% are Jesus, he figures that there are 1008 ± 32 men in Jerusalem called “Jesus, son of Joseph.” Factoring in the information from the Talpiot tomb that this Jesus, son of Joseph, has two female relatives or associates named Mary and at least two additional people with names of Jesus’s brothers and/or disciples, he calculates that 11 Jerusalem men “fit the profile of the Jesus of the tomb.” Unlike other treatments of the question, Ingermanson does not attribute any significance to the naming variations, e.g. Maria versus Mariamnenon. Now, 1 chance out of 11 is already a low probability that we've got the right Jesus, but Ingermanson goes further: he tries to address the fact that there is also an ossuary for a certain “Judas, son of Jesus” .....
* Jim West has a post - The Tomb that Keeps on Giving - citing an email from Mike Heiser, PhD. Here's a bit of it ...
... Well, it appears that having the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Matthew, and Martha (”Mara”) on ossuaries at one location isn’t as improbable as Jacobovici, Pellegrino, and Tabor would have the world believe ...... I want to draw your attention—and the attention of scholars and interested parties who read your blog—to a SECOND site that has all those names. In 1953-1955, Bellarmino Bagatti excavated the site of Dominus Flevit (”The Lord wept”) on the Mount of Olives. The excavation uncovered a necropolis and over 40 inscribed ossuaries – including the names of Mary, Martha, Matthew, Joseph, Jesus. These ossuaries are not, as far as I can tell, in Rahmani’s catalogue. I’m guessing the reason is that they are not the property of the Israel Antiquities Authority (see Rahmani’s Preface). The necropolis was apparently used ca. 136 BC to 300 AD. Here is a link that discusses the site. A few scanned pages of Bagatti’s excavation report (written in Italian) can be found here as well ..... One more really intriguing thing about the Dominus Flevit site is that it is referenced by Jacobovici with respect to his argument about the cross symbol’s antiquity, and Bagatti’s book is in his bibliography. And yet he and Charlie Pellegrino somehow overlooked the fact that ossuaries were found at that site with all the names accounted for. One can only guess whether the omission was due to careless scholarship or an effort to deceive the public ...
posted by crystal | 11:38 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Crystal. Thanks for reporting on this -- I don't know why, but I find it all very amusing.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Post a Comment
<< Home