Jesus Tomb Found

Let's hear from the archaeologist who found the ossuaries.

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But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. "It makes a great story for a TV film," he told The Jerusalem Post. "But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

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Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that "Jesus son of Joseph" inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

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"There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb," Kloner said. "They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE." *

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Please give me any example whatsoever of any person who has done as you have just described. You describe the phenomenon as "interesting"; may we take it, then, that you have actually witnessed it, rather than just making it up?All the people I've talked to who deny the existence of Jesus, and who have an opinion on the "Jesus tomb" are in fact maintaining that this can't be his tomb 'cos he didn't exist.---In fact, I have yet to hear any non-Christian of any stripe accepting that this is in fact the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is a good question, but of course we can't answer it. It's like asking for a list of conspiracies which never got uncovered; or of murderers who were never even suspected of their crimes. By definition, we can't answer questions like that.However, "fooled the world" is too strong a requirement. The Gospels, if they are a hoax, didn't "fool the world": ask any non-Christian. How about "fooled a lot of people"?Let me give you some examples. First, Carlos Castaneda's creation Don Juan Matus. Despite having miracles in them, no hard evidence whatsoever to corroborate Carlos Castaneda's story, and strange inconsistencies in the narrative, there are still people who believe this stuff (I've met 'em) and you will notice from the wiki article that for six years his claims fooled anthropologists. He got caught out by the sort of narrative inconsistencies that Biblical apologists are so good at arguing their way round.Other "testaments" of Don Juan have been produced by pals of Castaneda, who also claim to have met him.My second example is the narrator and characters in the Celestine Prophecy. When I first read this rubbish, I didn't see the point of the allegory, so I asked the woman who'd lent it to me to explain. She said "what allegory?" I pointed out the foreword where the author points out that it's an allegory. Despite being knee-deep in miracles, totally unlifelike, and full of glaring narrative inconsistencies, she'd accepted it as true. Now, here's the interesting bit: in current editions of the Celestine Prophecy the note saying that it's allegorical no longer appears. Its readers tend to believe it to be the literal truth.The Celestine Prophecy is still selling rather better than the Gospels did in St Paul's day.My third example would be Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, another fictitious miracle worker. Despite the exposure of the fact that the book The Third Eye was not written by a Tibetan monk called Lobsang Rampa, but by an Englishman named Cyril Henry Hoskin, there are still people who believe Hoskin's explanation that he is the reincarnation of Rampa.---Of course, since these examples happened within the last hundred years, and we can observe them in detail, they are microhistory and so they Don't Prove Anything About Macrohistory.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Cheers. It does now. No, as I said, fans of the book generally seem to believe it. I remarked on this particular person because she managed to believe it even when it had a foreword saying that it wasn't true. He didn't mention this convenient reincarnation until he was tracked down by a private detective. Despite claiming extraordiarily detailed memories of his previous life, he couldn't speak a work of Tibetan, and, to quote Agehananda Bharati :

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Every page bespeaks the utter ignorance of the author of anything that has to do with Buddhism as practiced and Buddhism as a belief system in Tibet or elsewhere. *

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Hello? I thanked you for pointing out my mistake. You don't need to say sorry for stuff I thank you for. But, you see, there must have been a biggest hoax ever. And you could always point to the biggest hoax ever, and say "if that was a hoax, it was the biggest hoax ever". And that wouldn't be an argument against it being a hoax.

Well of course the more successful a hoax is, the less likely you are to know that its a hoax. Perhaps some historical hoax was so successful that it fooled everybody. Julius Caesar never existed, but there was a big cover-up.These epistemological questions aside, consider Islam. If Muhammad wasn't really hearing God talking to him, but was just making stuff up as he went along (as you and I presumably both believe) then he successfully pulled off a hoax which has fooled people for 1400 years and currently has 1.4 billion dupes.You've got to admit, that's quite a big hoax. Christianity has 2.1 billion believers: that's only half as many again.By the way, did you say: "withstood 2000 years of relentless scrutiny"? I think you'll find that quite a lot of those 2000 years were spent saying "Certum est, quia impossible est" and burning anyone who disagreed. Also, as I have pointed out, it is not clear that Christianity can be said to have "withstood" scrutiny, since clearly most people don't believe it. The hoax which has withstood scrutiny is the one no-one ever doubts.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Christianity and Islam can't both be true: either 2.1 billion people have been fooled, or 1.4 billion. Or both. So are a lot of other things which I don't consider to have "withstood scrutiny".How relentless was that scrutiny, anyway? What sort of thing are we talking about?

The idea that the First Council of Nicaea determined the canon of the New Testament, though widespread, appears to be spurious. Creeds and Canons of the Council of NicaeaIn fact, the Church didn't need to decide what was canonical until St Jerome translated the Vulgate, and by then the canon was pretty much fixed by tradition, and the main outstanding question was whether to include the Apocrypha. (St Jerome didn't want to, but was over-ruled.)

I gave you a link to what they actually decided there. None of it refers to the canon of the New Testament or to Gnosticism. Their main business seems to have been the condemnation of Arian Christology, and Arians used the same canon as more orthodox Christians. That's my point. When they came to decide what went into the Bible, they didn't even consider Philip.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I should like to see some evidence for that.I've heard a lot of smack talked about Eusebius, but most of it turns out not to be true.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.