He's got some boxes with bones in them. Inscribed on the boxes are some names familiar to Christian myth -- names like Joseph and Mary and Jesus (Jesua). So naturally they must belong to the Son of God and his adoptive father and mother. How can Cameron or Jacobvici prove these bones belong to these specific people? Wouldn't they require something more precise than carbon dating to get to "precisely the same time in history" as Jesus was reputed to have wandered around Judea performing his mission? What good does DNA samples do other than to say, yeah all these people were related to one another.
I'll predict what will happen here. Cameron and Jacobvici will tromp around proclaiming they have finally unearthed the truth. The Catholic Church (indeed all mainstream Christian religions) will deny there is any truth to any of what Cameron has alleged. Cameron and Jacobvici will contend they are under attack by religious bigots wanting people to act like sheep and blindly accept what they preach. The religions will issue proclamations to their flock (nothing sheeplike there, is there) that they must not watch or attempt to analyze anything Cameron and Jacobvici have to say. Angry demonstrators will pop up in front of wherever the Discovery Channel has its headquarters and then later they'll show up at Blockbuster and Best Buy and anywhere else the inevitable DVD will be marketed. The religions will get to proudly proclaim themselves as victims of a heresy and defenders of the faith. Cameron and Jacobvici will do dynamite DVD business.
Tending to final details.
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Protests?
Tue Feb 27, 2007 at 04:38:19 PM EST
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Maybe, maybe not. The field of Biblical archeology is still going strong- perhaps stronger than ever- and Cameron et al. won't be attacked just for looking. Books on the search for the Ark have been published in the last five years; the Shroud of Turin debate still continues, IIRC; and a geographical site called Lot's Wife is a popular tourist destination in Israel, if your tastes run that way (though there have been locals churlish enough to point out that this is the sixth or seventh such object.) What will sink Cameron is the extravagance of the claim, and I'm not sure this is a subject that will bring out the protesters-- well, no more than any issue seems to any more. (Cue up Lehrer's "Folk Song Army", and take it up several notches.)
The difference between this and, say, The Last Temptation is that there have been several discoveries in the last century or less that altered the field considerably: the Dead Sea scrolls, for one instance, and the Nag Hammadi texts for another (the latter were found in 1945, but translations were delayed by decades.) The general trend has been for "big news" to come out of the area, and the reaction in the general public (except for the more excitable folks like Josh McDowell), has been, "well, we'll see." Twenty or thirty years ago, the assertion that Jesus had a family might have been cause for outrage, but with the success of authors like Umberto Eco, Lewis Perdue, and (the biggie) Dan Brown, that heresy has moved straight into the center of public discussion. The usual suspects will complain, but I just don't see too many sparks coming out of it, certainly not as many as came out of the Da Vinci Code release.
OTOH, I could be wrong . . .
Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras
Amos Kloner, the archeoligist who oversaw the excavation of the tomb when it was discovered in 1980 is unimpressed:
What do you make of the assertion that Jesus and his family were buried there?
It makes a great story for a TV film. But it's completely impossible. It's nonsense. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle class family from the 1st century CE.
But there is apparently such a confluence of resonant names.
The name "Jesus son of Joseph" has been found on three or four ossuaries. These are common names. There were huge headlines in the 1940s surrounding another Jesus ossuary, cited as the first evidence of Christianity. There was another Jesus tomb. Months later it was dismissed. Give me scientific evidence, and I'll grapple with it. But this is manufactured.
What of the assertion that the 10th ossuary disappeared from your care and may be none other than the "James" ossuary?
Nothing has disappeared. The 10th ossuary was on my list. The measurements were not the same (as the James ossuary). It was plain (without an inscription). We had no room under our roofs for all the ossuaries, so unmarked ones were sometimes kept in the courtyard (of the Rockefeller Museum).
Why, if you dismiss the claims, has the IAA loaned out ossuaries to the filmmakers?
I don't care what the IAA gets up to. I don't work for the IAA anymore. but it's very foolish. The left hand there doesn't know what the right hand is doing."
I'm predicting that this spawns a whole new branch of Christianity. It'll start when some Catholic goes to see the tomb and has a 'vision' or some other nonsense, then gets excommunicated for blasphemy.
Tipping Sacred Cows
This is interesting and all but it misses the key aspect of religion -- faith. A good religion doesn't much pay attention to scientific findings and I say this with no amount of ill will, irony or sarcasm. It lets science be science and focuses on the spiritual aspects of humanity that depend upon having and keeping faith. A strong faith can only be enriched by such "challenges."
To make a movie like this in the hopes that it might "disprove" a religious faith is not far afield from the extremists who look to creationism to "disprove" evolution. They are both non sequiturs and non-starters. Science and religion are separate disciplines and are each served best when maintaining that separation so that they might serve people each in their own way.
ps
the spell check isn't recognizing non sequitur no matter how I spell it.
God forgives. The press only forgets.
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Re: True Faith Should Be Strengthened
Thu Mar 01, 2007 at 05:07:46 PM EST
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First, I agree that religion is, at this point, essentially invulnerable to scientific attack. If you have a religion based on, for example, the belief that the sun orbits around the Earth, and you then proved them wrong, they'd merely intellectualize away their prior dogmatic belief, call it all metaphorical, and keep on plugging away at their religion.
It lets science be science and focuses on the spiritual aspects of humanity that depend upon having and keeping faith.
Like what? I mean, I hear this all the time, but I can never get an answer to this, so maybe you can help: What possible fields of human interest are there that science will never be able to shed light upon? When is faith ever necessary?
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Re: True Faith Should Be Strengthened
Thu Mar 01, 2007 at 09:32:20 PM EST
5.00 (astute)
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What possible fields of human interest are there that science will never be able to shed light upon? When is faith ever necessary?
Where will I go when I die?
I don't know how many saw the Discovery special, but I found this review from a Secular Humanist perspective to be incisive and funny.
Tending to final details.
