(Discovery Channel) the Tomb of Jesus.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

And why does Jesus always look so depressed in these pictures? Must be all the in-fighting on CAA.

Well, it could be that he found out he had to be tortured and die on a cross via suffocation.

Naaaaaaaaaah, it's probably because we keep fighting.

[Nate]

Seriously, a new tomb is found that is at least unique.

Actually the point we're making is that it isn't unique in the slightest. It's an ossuary, which is a common finding, that contains names that were common to the time period. This is why when it was first discovered in the 80s, you didn't hear anything about it on the news. Because archaeologists said, "It isn't unique or interesting."

I can see what you're saying without an example but Scripture does not teach a flat earth in very clear terms...

Not trying to resurrect this, but I'm agreeing with you there. Scripture doesn't say the earth is flat, in clear terms. Like I said, it's all in the interpretation. It was interpreted wrong by many to believe that the Bible teaches a flat earth (which it does not). That's why I'm saying, interpretation can completely change what a verse means.

[macguy]

Most educated Christians would have been well aware that the Earth was a sphere,

So "only" the educated Christians believed in a spherical earth? The problem is, only a handful so-called intellectual scholars believed this and somehow it was taken as if they represented the whole church. People were aware of the idea, but this doesn't mean that they believed it. Lactantius converted to christianity during his mid-life from all greek teachings. In effect, that caused him to deny a spherical earth. The church fathers saw these beliefs as heresy. Again, these documents were assumed to be what people believed in back then.

While the descriptions are fairly poetic they do reflect the Mesopotamian cosmology (from which the Biblical descriptions were doubtless derived). This was a flat Earth cosmology, so at least a few books of the bible were probably written by someone who adhered to it.

Most, if not all of the passages that people claim to be of a flat earth is unsubstantiated at best. Oh, where did you get the idea that it is derived from Mesopotamian cosmology?

Science never makes claims to absolute truth, although it can state that which is false. However, the changing nature of science is hardly a weakness. Our descriptions of the universe become ever closer to the "truth" as we progress.

It makes the claim that they will reach absolute truth not that they have done so already. At least this is what some of the scientific community believes. Soon they will supposedly answer all life's questions. If you view it as a "evolutionary" development in this evolution pardigm then yes but this is precisely why i encouraged others to read Thomas Kuhn's works. He demonstrates that this is a false set of thinking.

It is a media event, not a scientific one.

This discussion got into science because of the DNA part. Oh well, doesn't every forum seem to go off-topic a bit these days? I'll stop though with this last post if mods think that I'm the cause of this.

[Radical Dreamer]

Faith is not belief in something without proof. It is trust without reservation.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
(Hebrews 11:1, I believe).

That sounds a lot like belief without proof to me. XD]is[/i] the ultimate truth, so whatever gets discovered by the media, a teacher, even a pastor, should be tested by God's Word and no other source.

My two cents. XD

I hope this isn't resurrecting any old arguments...if so, I'll be happy to edit it. XD;

[Technomancer]

As my answer to macguy's questions are somewhat off topic with regards to the OP, I will send them as a PM (unless people really want to see them of course )

[bigsleepj]

I'm curious to see them, but since they're off topic they'll have to remain in the PM.

[macguy]

I doubt that someone wants to eagerly see me talk. Haha...

[Mr. SmartyPants]

I doubt that someone wants to eagerly see me talk. Haha...

Okay, dude. Your arrogance has been annoying me. You're intelligent, I'll give you that. But you're also being incredibly arrogance. First with the macs/pcs, now this.

Just cut it out. It's annoying.

[macguy]

I am NOT intelligent. I'm not saying that i am better when it comes to macs or PC's but I just like macs. By the way, how am I being arrogant when I don't think anyone wants to see a 15 year old talk? I'm serious now. Reading Technomancer's post, I can see that he knows more about this topic and has done some sufficient research. Very prudent fellow might I add. I'm just say that I may not have anything good to show for and others probably don't want to debate topics like that. Perhaps I go a bit overboard with Apple but I fail to see the "arrogance" in my post.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

I doubt that someone wants to eagerly see me talk. Haha...

That sounded like an arrogant statement to me. Misinterpretation? Perhaps, but I digress.

Nonetheless, before the topic gets derailed any further, I'm going to let this matter go.

[macguy]

Well if it did make that implication then I would apologize to everyone here. My intention isn't to annoy anyone. Thank you for understanding.

[Mave]

Revelations 6:18- 23

"23 Then, I saw a troubled time where a tomb found will receive claims to contain the Blessed Son’s physical remnants. 22Disaster will strike the minds of the wise and all over the world, those who believe in the Resurrection will exchange teachings within the fellowship. 21Unbelievers will question the faithful and there will be confusion and doubt in the hearts of the believers but Rejoice! I heard the angels say. 20Have no fear! The Truth will be revealed one day. 19Until then, be respectful and gentle to each other as the Lord commands. 18Yes, I’m talking to you, the church of CAA.â€

[termyt]

I see things are a little heated here. The lesson to be learned is that the kind of intellectual discourse that is represented by the majority of this thread is a good thing. There is no harm is simply discussing events as they unfold and weighing the evidence presented. It is an excellent way to learn and expand one’s own knowledge and understanding.

No idea is so base or foul that it should never be expressed and no speaker should ever be immediately dismissed simply for expressing an unpopular or unlikely idea.

To be a bit extreme, if I were to espouse the notion that God were dead and provided some evidence or research to support it, it should not be interpreted as an attack on you personally that needs to be defended. There is not crime in being wrong and those who are wrong do not need to be beaten into submission or otherwise dismissed or flamed.

Unfortunately, we don’t have many good examples of right way to discuss issues today. Even our own Congress mostly bickers back and forth often attempting to win arguments by discrediting opponents rather than through the strength of their positions, so it is no wonder that topics like this one can not be discussed without getting defensive and hurting others.

My desire for CAA would be to raise the level of our discourse here to where opinions and evidence could be presented on any topic in a way that demeans no one and folks who have different opinions would not be easily offended by others – no matter how ridiculous and resistant to reason they are. If we could reach that level, there would be no need for a do-not-discuss list.

[mitsuki lover]

One of the many tihngs that even secular scholars point out about it is the commonalty of the names.Also there was only a very weak evidence to connect any of them to each other.The only 'fact' that they were supposedly ossuaries of a single family were that they were found together.

[Fish and Chips]

And would Jesus' family have been wealthy enough to afford a tomb? Christianity was looked down on socially for quite some time until Constantine I believe.

[Hakaii]

:D

I see things are a little heated here. The lesson to be learned is that the kind of intellectual discourse that is represented by the majority of this thread is a good thing. There is no harm is simply discussing events as they unfold and weighing the evidence presented. It is an excellent way to learn and expand one’s own knowledge and understanding.

No idea is so base or foul that it should never be expressed and no speaker should ever be immediately dismissed simply for expressing an unpopular or unlikely idea.

To be a bit extreme, if I were to espouse the notion that God were dead and provided some evidence or research to support it, it should not be interpreted as an attack on you personally that needs to be defended. There is not crime in being wrong and those who are wrong do not need to be beaten into submission or otherwise dismissed or flamed.

Unfortunately, we don’t have many good examples of right way to discuss issues today. Even our own Congress mostly bickers back and forth often attempting to win arguments by discrediting opponents rather than through the strength of their positions, so it is no wonder that topics like this one can not be discussed without getting defensive and hurting others.

My desire for CAA would be to raise the level of our discourse here to where opinions and evidence could be presented on any topic in a way that demeans no one and folks who have different opinions would not be easily offended by others – no matter how ridiculous and resistant to reason they are. If we could reach that level, there would be no need for a do-not-discuss list.

Hooah! I couldn't say it better myself!:rock:

[Nate]

There is not crime in being wrong and those who are wrong do not need to be beaten into submission or otherwise dismissed or flamed.

Agreed that there is no crime in being wrong. There also is no crime in sensationalizing a common ossuary in order to make money and gain media exposure, but perhaps there should be.

James Cameron isn't a swell guy who happened across this and presented it as evidence for anything out of the goodness of his heart. This ossuary has been known about and dismissed as unimportant. Cameron is only doing this to gain media exposure and make a documentary about it out of greed.

While he has committed no "crime" in the legal sense of the word, producing something like this simply to get money is at the very least reprehensible and I can't see how his actions should be condoned in any way.

I'm not trying to say we should flame others or whatever, but remember even Jesus gave a very scathing and harsh speech to the Pharisees of his day, calling them "Sons of Hell" and telling them they were liars and hypocrites. We're not God and we have no place to judge others, and the Pharisees had long been a thorn in Jesus' side, but my point is that there is a time to dismiss others and be harsh to them.

Do I think this is that time? Not really. I don't think Cameron is trying to actively attack Christianity with this, but that's still no excuse for his actions. "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions," as they say.

[termyt]

I'm not trying to say we should flame others or whatever, but remember even Jesus gave a very scathing and harsh speech to the Pharisees of his day, calling them "Sons of Hell" and telling them they were liars and hypocrites. We're not God and we have no place to judge others, and the Pharisees had long been a thorn in Jesus' side, but my point is that there is a time to dismiss others and be harsh to them.

Well, I don’t know what Mr Cameron’s motives for making the movie were. It could be he was intentionally attempting to discredit Christian teaching. It could be pure profit. The key difference between this and how Christ dealt with the Pharisees is that Christ dealt with them directly. I have no problem telling a guy he’s wrong, but I believe it should be approached differently if you are telling other people what you think rather than telling that person directly.

[Hakaii]

Back to the point, aside from Camerons findings, what does everyone think about the raw evidence? What I mean is, ignore what the director told you about the evidence and tell me what the raw data means to you.

[mitsuki lover]

Not much.Other than the fact that Jesus,Mariamene and Judah were very common Jewish names in the First Century.

[Nate]

Back to the point, aside from Camerons findings, what does everyone think about the raw evidence?

Uh...WHAT raw evidence? Raw evidence that...an ossuary was found that contained human remains? I really don't see how a tomb that has bones in it is somehow newsworthy.

So the tomb has the names Mary and Joseph on it...uh, so? Wow, a tomb with common names from that time period. Like mitsuki lover said, I fail to see what "evidence" this is other than, "Hey, Joseph and Mary were pretty popular names back in the day."

By the way, Stephen Pfann, president of Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land and an expert in Semitic languages says that the name on the tomb would be more properly translated as "Hanun" rather than "Jesus."

So...what raw evidence? Evidence that James Cameron can't read Semitic languages? I don't see what "raw evidence" you're referring to. There's a tomb with human remains in it with common names from the time period. Wow. Raw evidence that tombs existed in the days of Christ. That's...not really newsworthy. At all.

[Tommy]

it states that the existence of the tomb does not conflict with the central beliefs of Christianity, because the article states that ascension described in Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9-11 do not specify whether it was a physical or spiritual one.

All I have to say on the matter is that the tomb is physical and it is empty.

My Father has been to the exact tomb that Jesus was buried in on a mission's trip to Israel.

As for finding Jesus' remains, I don't believe that for a second.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Uh...WHAT raw evidence? Raw evidence that...an ossuary was found that contained human remains? I really don't see how a tomb that has bones in it is somehow newsworthy.

So the tomb has the names Mary and Joseph on it...uh, so? Wow, a tomb with common names from that time period. Like mitsuki lover said, I fail to see what "evidence" this is other than, "Hey, Joseph and Mary were pretty popular names back in the day."

Something else just struck me. Joseph was a pretty established man by the time he married Mary, yes? Could it then be assumed that perhaps he was a widower? If this was a family ossuary, then its very likely that his other wife would have been there as well.

[mitsuki lover]

I think we have pretty much gotten the fact established that the names on the ossuaries were quite common for that particuliar time in Palestine,so we could possibly go on and talk about something else when it comes to this.
As far as Joseph goes,other than the fact that he was an established Master Carpenter we know very little about his life.It can be concluded though that he died before Jesus reached his 30s because the Gospels imply that Jesus was the head of the family by then.

[termyt]

Back to the point, aside from Camerons findings, what does everyone think about the raw evidence? What I mean is, ignore what the director told you about the evidence and tell me what the raw data means to you.

The evidence was in no way compelling to me, however, I think it is worth discussion, which is what we are doing here, so, yeah.

[mitsuki lover]

It should be noted that there is a underground movement in places like Israel where
forgeries are created and passed off as the real thing.However it does appear that these ossauries are real and not forgeries,though I believe that the so called James
Ossuary was later to be found out to be such a fake.

[Nate]

though I believe that the so called James
Ossuary was later to be found out to be such a fake.

Yep, the Israeli Antique Society said the writing was bogus, and I think the guy who owned it is undergoing (or underwent) prosecution.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

Nevermind that it would have been marked iacob. That'd just occured to me in church during a reading of James. >.o I learned this when looking in to the background of my own name. See, my name is James. Turns out James was a reference to the french word Jamnes which has a similar meaning to the Hebrew/Aramaic Iacob: It's a reference to Jacob's lame leg! Jame's real name would actually be Jacob. I think this all really struck me because I also have a less than stellar leg to work with, so I thought it was pretty cool that I shared a trait with a pseudo namesake in scripture.

[Lady Macbeth]

Nevermind that it would have been marked iacob. That'd just occured to me in church during a reading of James. >.o I learned this when looking in to the background of my own name. See, my name is James. Turns out James was a reference to the french word Jamnes which has a similar meaning to the Hebrew/Aramaic Iacob: It's a reference to Jacob's lame leg! Jame's real name would actually be Jacob. I think this all really struck me because I also have a less than stellar leg to work with, so I thought it was pretty cool that I shared a trait with a pseudo namesake in scripture.

The inscription on the James Ossuary (fake or otherwise) was in Aramaic: "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua." The English translation is "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." The reason the script raised doubts initially was because of questions about how and when it was carved, not if it read correctly.

Etymologically speaking, Ya'akov bar Yosef reads correctly. Ya'akov is, linguistically, the same name as both James and Jacob - it became Iakobos in New Testament Greek. (Y became I became J - same reason that "Jehovah" was spelled with an "I" in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Any other historical or Biblical quibbles I had with the movie aside, they highlighted that particular problem in transcription because it's not one that Americans realize intuitively.) Iakobos then became Jacomus and Jacobus in Late Latin - prompting the split into "James" and "Jacob" when they became English names.

Ya'akov is recognized as a Biblically important name because its origins are derived from the Old Testament (Genesis 25:19-34)- "holder of the heel" or "supplanter". He was born holding his twin brother Esau's heel, which was an omen of things to come - he would later take advantage of his brother's "Achilles heel" and take Esau's birthright as first born and get the blessings due therein. Jacob later became known as Israel (Genesis 32:24-32) (Yisra'el - "God contended/wrestled") after wrestling with a stranger in the night who injured his leg and would not give a proper name, but instead told Jacob he had "striven with God and with men, and have prevailed" and then fled before sunrise. This name (Israel) is what was passed down to the descendants of Jacob.

Thereafter, the name Jacob and its variants became important (and popular) among mothers who wanted their own sons to have similar qualities.

[termyt]

The slavic form Yakov is also the same, as wel as my personal favorite and a favorite of many Shakespeare fans, Iago.