The Overblown Claims of a "Jesus Burial Site"
By now many readers will have heard about the alleged burial site of Jesus, about which James Cameron has produced a documentary. Ben Witherington, III, has an excellent piece that highlights the unimpressive nature of the statistics upon which Cameron's program is largely based. (E.g., the names on ossuaries found in the tomb do match some people associated with Jesus in the NT, but these names are all so common as to prove nothing at all. There would have been plenty of "Joshua, son of Joseph"'s running around Palestine in the first century.) In short, don't lose sleep over the claims. They cannot be supported by the actual evidence (which, btw, has been substantially known since 1980). I commend Witherington's piece for your consideration.
posted by Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) | 9:42 PM
1 Comments:
I guess it is true that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
So far, only the press in Witherington’s native Kentucky have delicately raised the issue of the pot calling the kettle bla…that is, the pot calling the ossuary cracked in Witherington’s overheated (the gentleman protests too much) protestations against the latest “biggest New Testament find”* in his lifetime.
Lexington County Herald, 2/27/07
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/nation/16791591.htm
On his blog, Witherington fired a final salvo by referring to the Titanic and saying Cameron “has now jumped on board another sinking ship full of holes, presumably in order to make a lot of money before the theory sinks into an early watery grave. Man the lifeboats and get out now.”
In 2003, Witherington and co-author Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, wrote in The Brother of Jesus that they believed an ossuary bearing the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” was authentic.
A few months after The Brother of Jesus was published, Israel’s Antiquities Authority decided that the ossuary was a fake. It charged the ossuary’s owner, Oded Golan, with fraud and illegally selling archaeological artifacts outside of Israel. His trial continues, 21/2 years after it began.
Witherington said that he and Shanks stand by their conclusion that the ossuary is authentic and are not likely to change their minds, regardless of the trial’s outcome.
—–—
* “This is probably going to be the biggest New Testament find in my lifetime, as big as the Dead Sea scrolls,” said Ben Witherington, a New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.
National Geographic News
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1021_021021_christianrelicbox.html
—–
If Witherington can be such a zealot about HIS OWN wacky claims about HIS OWN phony ossuary, it would only seem sporting that he would cut Simcha Jacobovici (Witherington’s former partner in crime. He was the man who helped Witherington create and hype his documentary on the phony “James Ossuary” about 4 years ago - shown on, you guessed it! The Discovery Channel!) and James Cameron some slack.
Post a Comment
<< Home