“Lets have a moment of silence to rememebr the 2000 victims of Titanic – (pause) – okay, now let’s go out and PARTY TILL DAWN”
Yes, that Oscar Speech faboo is the thing most people hate James Cameron for. Until tomorrow.
James Cameron, Director of t2 and Titanic claims to have found the bodies of Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdelene, and young Judah, the son of Jesus.
See the article HERE
Now, to be clear, I am outraged, but I cannot allow, in this forum, that to be my sole impetus. The unwritten rules state that I must follow the dictates of logic and philisophical argument, which is to say that I must respond as unemotionally as I can.
This does seem to be circumspect at best. DNA cannot prove anything, because we have no definitive DNA of Christ or his family. There’s nothing to compare it to. The article also seems to note that it would be like finding a grave that said “James, John, son of James, Mary, Mary, and Michael son of John” in the middle of Ireland. Not hard to do.
To be clear, I don’t think any one will ever be able to find the bodyof Christ, much less his son, because the fact of his crucifixion is almost unquestioned, even in non-religious circles. Additionally, there was no mention of his having a son – and especially in the Gospel of Matthew, which is directed to 1st century jewish audience, having a son would be JUST the kind of thing the early Church would want.
Further, it is unlikely that the early Church would have tried to keep the existence of the Grave a secret while ALSO allowing this family to be buried together.
It seems too far fetched (“says the man who believes in rising from the dead”.. yes, I know). But even if you reject that idea of resurrection.. it seems unlikely that these could be what Cameron (Mr. ALIENS) claims.
I smell baloney!
I smell baloney! Sure, he found the tomb of Jesus. Just like I could go out and find 10,000 tombs of John Smith here in the US.
I see the chief problem not as one of archeology, but one of historicity. We don’t even have a firm bead on who Jesus was in the records. There are at least three contemporaries who might have been him, and one not-quite-so-contemporary whose cause of death is closer than those three.
There are a couple of Biblical markers we could use to figure out which one is which, though: 1. A 3-hour eclipse and simultaneous earthquake is recorded at the time of his death in Matthew 27:51-54 and Luke 23:44-45, from around 6 AM to 9 AM. Unfortunately, there is no record other than this which describes this event. 2. Herod ordered the infanticide of all children under the age of two in Bethlehem according to Matthew, chapter 2. The Romans kept meticulous records, and we have several histories written by contemporaries. Unfortunately, here, too, there is no record of this order or the resulting slaughter.
Given the dearth of contextual clues indicating the identity of the historical Jesus, I am skeptical of any claim surrounding this famous historical figure.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
A brief post from Bruce Feiler
If you’ve not read Walking the Bible or Abraham or Where God was Born, all by Bruce Feiler, I highly recommend them. Start with Walking. (There was an awesome PBS series on Walking, too.)
And on the controversy of the day, Bruce and his fellow traveler Avner Goren, exchanged some interesting information, worth a quick read. Follow this link http://www.brucefeiler.com/blog/2007/02/feiler-faster-exclusive-report-from.html and enjoy.
For me, I’m too much of a cynic; when I saw the first stirrings of this story on the wires, all I smelled was Jim Cameron’s publicity machine. It makes for good TV, it will get Cameron and a bunch of others in these various fields all over morning TV and Larry King for a few days. In the end, does this sort of ‘news’ shake the faith of the devout? Or, does it increase the ratings share of a cable network for one night? (Also, note that the program is supposed to air AFTER the ratings period ends – an interesting sign of confidence in their program?)
Like I said, I’m too much of a cynic.
Tim
Either Way..
Jim Cameron is done. His HUGE budget movies need a strong fanbase.. and there will be boycotts. AVATAR is budgeted at over 200 mil, it will be hard to make back.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Oh Man
I bet that Mel Gibson/James Cameron collaboration I’ve been waiting for will never happen now! 😉
My $.02 Weed
The real irony
The real irony is that Jesus was buried in Al Capone’s vault. Next to Jimmy Hoffa and Walt Disney.
— Ben
Geraldo
Hey, wait, I watched Geraldo open that vault. It’s empty! It must be true!
Actually, I have memories from my childhood of the massive publicity campaign prior to opening the vault. How on earth did Geraldo end up with his own talk show after blowing it so spectacularly?
Oh. Wait. Monica. Never mind.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
I’m not sure what these
I’m not sure what these filmmakers, or all those in involved in the historial Jesus project, are trying to accomplish.
I suppose there is the drive to discover the authenticity of all historical events, not just the religious ones, which is valid and commendable.
But we’ve all been down this road before, and we will be again. Some historical scholar or archeologist comes out with something that says “Aha! This proves that Jesus Christ was / wasn’t the Son of God!” Then everyone in the other camp gets all pissed and starts constructing equally valid arguments for how “That doesn’t prove a thing, instead look at the proof that WE have for how Jesus Christ was / wasn’t the Son of God!”
Which gets me to wondering, is it even possible to come up with ANY kind of scientific proof that would make a devout Christian stop believing? Seriously. Justin, Christy, can you in any way conceive of any kind of information, or study, or any kind of tangible evidence that would make you say “Wow… I was wrong all this time. There is no God.”
I mean, if someone brought me what they claimed to be the actual bones of Jesus himself, with every bone personally inscribed by the hand of God saying ‘These are the bones of Jesus called the Christ, who died at xxx a time on xxx a day. – God,’ how would I know whether God really did that or if it was some other chick?
Faith and proof rarely mix. Sometimes that’s bad, because your beliefs can get in the way of acknowleding something incontrivertible. Sometimes it’s good, because Faith can also bring the wisdom of knowing that some concepts just can’t be proven one way or the other, so don’t waste time.
The three kinds of faith…
http://barnson.org/node/678#comment-3220
Necessary, harmless, or dangerous? I vote harmless, because necessary faith can usually be “proven” as far as observation can take us.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Proof and God
Obviously a non-falsifiable assertion (speaking of God here, rather than Jesus) cannot be disproven–the definition is too shifty. But even falsifiable assertions can be ignored.
Case in point:
Extremely solid evidence has come out against some of the Mormon canon, yet many apologist remain devout believers. Seriously, if you say God helped Joseph Smith translate an Egyptian document before scholars understood Egyptian, then you find the source document a century later, along with his character-by-character guide to the translation, and none of it matches our post-Rosetta stone understanding of Egyptian, what simpler proof do you need that Joseph made it up? Every generation another Egyptologist confirms the correct translation (agreeing with the last generation’s Egyptologist), but none of these match Joseph Smith’s.
Believe it or not, people can get around this.
The fact remains..
I still believe through historical and anecdotal, as well as personal experience, that jesus is who the Bible says he is. (I dont agree with Mormonism, however.. Matt almost converted me.. imagine what a crisis of faith I would have if THAT had happened).
If there was unequivicable proof that Jesus died and did not rise.. I would stop and reexamine whether or not the whole God thing was for me.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
I have never heard about
I have never heard about this, what is it your talking about, and I am lds, just an unsure one.
The Book of Abraham
Summary:
Joseph made the mistake of attempting to translate an actual historical artifact. The document was once thought to have been destroyed in a fire, but it resurfaced in 1967, and was confirmed both by church and secular scholars to be the actual papyrus from which Joseph ostensibly translated “The Book of Abraham” in the Pearl of Great Price.
Unfortunately, the “translation” was anything but. The papyrus in question turned out to be a fairly ordinary funerary text, granting the bearer (a mummy) the “right to breathe” in the Afterlife. Joseph’s character-by-character translation — with completely made-up, non-Egyptian characters where they were missing in the original text — bore no resemblance to actual Egyptian as translated by scholars since then. There are several very similar samples of this “Book of Breathings” which have been found in the intervening century and a half since Joseph purchased this one.
To sum up, the Book of Abraham has been soundly — and repeatedly — proven* to be utterly fraudulent. The only way in which any reputable LDS apologist can now claim that the Book of Abraham was a “translation” is in the spiritual sense. And a spiritual translation — one which claims to translate something other than the document in question, using the document only as some spiritual focus point to channel this other history — is a supernatural claim beyond the realm of science to prove or disprove.
The Book of Breathings was not written by Abraham, by his own hand, upon papyrus of his own make, but instead a product of the equivalent of a funeral chaplain around 60 AD.
For more information, I recommend reading “By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus”, available from Amazon and elsewhere for about $12.00. You can also read the entire book for free online at http://www.irr.org/MIT/Books/BHOH/bhoh1.html .
—
Matthew P. Barnson
* “Proven” here is in the sense in which anything can be scientifically proven. I mean it’s proven to where the odds against the Joseph’s translation being correct are astronomically, mind-bogglingly high, as much as if I told you “good morning” and what I actually meant was a 10,000 word exposition on “E=mc^2”.
cool
I think it would be awesome if this is truly the tomb of Christ, it would put all of my doubts to rest, and I would then know if Christ is divine or not, I mean if it is his tomb then his bones are there and he did not rise again, and if it is not his tomb then I am back to the drawing board.
Curt
Simple and eloquent..
Exactly my point.. unfortunately, I think this is a sham designed to make $, and it seems unlikely that this is it. So, I guess I’m sticking with my prior assumption.
Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com
Claim of filmaker James Cameron
James Cameron is in it for the money and for the sensationalism!! I don’t know—–did people bury bones in boxes 2000 years ago? I’d like to know how James Cameron can keep a straight face. He can’t be serious but on the chance that he might think(?) he really has discovered the bones of Jesus & His family, he, (Cameron), had “better be right”.