'Jesus Tomb' Controversy Rages as Archaeologists Explore Another 2,000-Year-Old Tomb
http://abcnews.go.com/International/jesus-tomb-controversy-rages-archeologists-explore-2000-year/story?id=16111993#.T4WCKnr7UmYArchaeologists working in Jerusalem claim that a discovery they made inside a burial tomb, dating back to the time of Jesus Christ, could shed new light on the origins of Christianity.
Biblical historian James Tabor, professor and chair of religious studies at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, is working with the team, led by controversial filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici. Using a camera mounted on a robotic arm, the team found a 2,000-year-old engraving, which they claim depicts Jesus' resurrection, on an ossuary -- a limestone burial box that contains human bones -- in a first-century tomb.
Viva_La_Revolution
(28,791 posts)rbixby
(1,140 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)It is all about proving it never happened.
And when you watch the video you see that the proof is pretty lame.
rbixby
(1,140 posts)its not like it'll change anyone's beliefs if it was in fact Jesus in that box.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)One side wants to believe in the resurrection and the other is sure such thing are impossible. And so they both want to prove that their faith is right and the other wrong which proves that their faith in what they believe is the right one.
You win the game by proving the other side wrong.
The Magistrate
(95,257 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)Because of course they know the truth for a fact....and can tell you how everything works and everything about history and the origin of man and the earth....they have faith that they know all...and some have faith that they do.
And just like those that do believe in it those that don't think that they can possibly be wrong. They have faith that they have it all figured out.
But do we really?..the more we learn the more we find out that we don't know shit...case in point..the need for string theory...which basically says that all things are possible.
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
The Magistrate
(95,257 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)But it is a whole thing different to say that the dead stay dead and to say that you know it has never happened.
To do that is to have faith that you know all about how things work.
It may be a fact that there are only 118 stable elements but that is much different than saying that you know that is all there is and that there has been no other stable elements.
It takes faith to believe that you have it all figured out...that is my point
I feel that the only honest ones in this debate are the agnostics and the Buddhist..(and others) who believe what they believe but also know that they could be wrong or that they don't know it all.
The Magistrate
(95,257 posts)Your problem is that faith, by definition, cannot make appeal to, and claim to rest on, fact or reason: to have faith is to believe as true things that cannot be proved by fact or demonstrated by sound reason.
The statement that 'the dead stay dead' rests on the observed fact of how corpses behave. Where there are literally billions of examples, to extrapolate a general law is well within reason, given the facts available. 'Faith' is not required.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And in my experiences I have never seen a dead body come to life...but I don't say that it never happened or could never happen...that is the difference.
so in order to prove that it could never happen or that it never did happen is beyond my experience and not something I wold claim as a fact.
But ego tends to make us think we have it all figured out and so we make claims like that out of faith that we do have it figured all out.
And sound reasoning would be that we have been shown in the past that we do not have it all figured out and that reality is far more complicated than we can imagine...and science has shown that to be true...and in fact is a fact.
Thus things like string theory to try to explain things we cannot explain.
If you think you know all about something you cannot learn.
The Magistrate
(95,257 posts)"There are no so blind as those who do not want to see."
zeemike
(18,998 posts)cause "you can't talk to a man when he don't want to understand"
yurbud
(39,405 posts)LiberalFighter
(51,170 posts)DCKit
(18,541 posts)earthside
(6,960 posts)I am a bit over halfway through Tabor's and Jacobovici's latest book "The Jesus Discovery".
It expands on the archeological revelations Jacobovici made in "The Jesus Family Tomb".
It becomes rather clear to me that there is reasonable and compelling evidence that the tombs of Jesus and his immediate family, and now of another very, very early 'Christian' tomb have been found.
Of course, hardly anybody wants to admit this. As Bart Ehrman points out in his latest book "Did Jesus Exist", a certain faction of agnostics, atheists and mythicists don't even want an actual grave of Jesus to exist (nonexistent people don't have bones). Naturally, orthodox Christians can never admit that Jesus has any remains left on the earth (he floated away to heaven), and the Israel government (and the Israeli Jewish establishment) certainly don't want any trouble that might adversely effect the Christian tourism industry or endanger foreign aid from Christian politicians in the U.S. and other countries.
Most interesting I think, are the reactions of conservative Christian theologians to these discoveries -- like the one featured in the video. They are so mocking and scornful that they really do make a person want to know just why they are so upset ... and it is because their insulated environment of embellished theology may be crumbling about them.
The ironic thing is that the Jesus tomb and the second tomb demonstrate Jesus' existence and gives clues into the beliefs of the earliest Christians -- yet the fundamentalists, conservatives and orthodox must still reject this concrete evidence of the origins of their religion.
You gotta love this stuff.
get the red out
(13,468 posts)That sounds very interesting. I will check into those books. I'm interested in stuff like that. Fascinating!
fifthoffive
(382 posts)The existence of these tombs demonstrate the existence of one or more people named Jesus. They prove nothing about the truth of the Biblical Jesus. What is depicted on these ossuaries is unclear.
[link]http://www.michaelsheiser.com/M%20Heiser%20Ossuary.pdf[/link]
saras
(6,670 posts)He had eleven brothers, but that's one of the books they left out of the Bible. The two gay ones went to India, where they had pretty good lives.
Either that, or the guy had the biggest foreskin you have ever IMAGINED, judging by how much of it is in boxes in churches.
hue
(4,949 posts)National Geographic put together a cover story & TV series on some of the lost and/or discarded manuscripts that shed
light on who Jesus actually was. Much of the manuscripts were authenticated. But the catholic church and Papacy threw out
many documents in order to "cut & paste" a story that fit their agenda in order to maintain a powerful religious oligarchy.
This was completely opposed to the core message of Jesus, like the oligarchy/1% of today. Yet the religious fundamentalists seem to support the antithesis of Jesus' teachings. There is none so blind as those who refuse to see!
Besides the Gospel of Judas there are many other writings regarding Jesus and the apostles. Some have been authenticated, some are still in the process. Yet the catholic church will not admit any new data of course--no matter how absolutely sure archeologists are in validating it.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)Life of Saint Issa
Notovitch claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." His story, with the text of the "Life," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English[9], German, Spanish, and Italian.
Notovitch's account of his discovery of the work is that he had been laid up with a broken leg at the monastery of Hemis. There he prevailed upon the chief lama, who had told him of the existence of the work, to read to him, through an interpreter, the somewhat detached verses of the Tibetan version of the "Life of Issa," which was said to have been translated from the Pali. Notovitch says that he himself afterward grouped the verses "in accordance with the requirements of the narrative." As published by Notovitch, the work consists of 244 short paragraphs, arranged in fourteen chapters.
The otherwise undocumented name "Issa" resembles the Arabic name Isa (عيسى , used in the Koran to refer to Jesus and the Sanskrit "īśa", the Lord.
The "Life of Issa" begins with an account of Israel in Egypt, its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age of thirteen the divine youth, rather than take a wife, leaves his home to wander with a caravan of merchants to India (Sindh), to study the laws of the great Buddhas.
Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves them to spend time among the Buddhists, and spends six years among them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. Issa spent six years studying and teaching at Jaganath, Rajagriha, and other holy cities. He becomes embroiled in a conflict with the Kshatriyas (warrior class), and the Brahmins (priestly class) for teaching the holy scriptures to the lower castes (Sudras and Vaisyas, laborers and farmers). The Brahmins said that the Vaisyas were authorized to hear the 'Vedas' read only during festivals and especially not to be read to the Sudras at all who are not even allowed to look at them. Rather than abide by their injunction, Issa preaches against the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, and aware of his denunciations, they plot his death. Warned by the Sudras, Issa leaves Jaganath and travels to the foothills of the Himalayas in Southern Nepal (birthplace of the Buddha).
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)framed by an account of Mark (of Gospels fame) witnessing events in the life of Jesus. It was written in the 1950s, but I can't remember its title or the author.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)If I recall correctly, I've found Jesus' tomb in about six different locations in Mexico. But then I wasn't really looking that hard.