Science and Homosexuality: Not a Barrier to Objection

Harold Meyerson is a writer for the uber-leftist LA Weekly, and last week he had a jolly good thrashing Al Mohler in his column. In part, he wrote (and believe me, I edited out the most rantish sections):

Science is stealing up on America's religious fundamentalists, causing much alarm. Consider the dilemma of the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and a leading figure in the Southern Baptist firmament. Writing in his blog this month, Mohler acknowledged that "the direction of the research" increasingly points to the possibility that a "biological basis for sexual orientation exists." Should sexuality be determined in utero, Mohler continued, that still wouldn't justify abortion or genetic engineering...

But once you recognize homosexuality as a genetic reality, it does create a theological dilemma for the Mohlers among us, for it means that God is making people who, in the midst of what may otherwise be morally exemplary lives, have a special and inherent predisposition to sin. Mohler's response is that since Adam's fall, sin is the condition of all humankind.

...Mohler's deity, in short, is the God of Double Standards: a God who enforces the norms and fears of a world before science, a God profoundly ignorant of or resistant to the arc of American history, which is the struggle to expand the scope of the word "men" in our founding declaration that "all men are created equal." This is a God who in earlier times was invoked to defend segregation and, before that, slavery.

...By effectively insisting that God is a spiteful homo-hater, his followers saddle him with ancient phobias and condemn him to the backwaters of American moral life.

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Let's be clear here: the issue for Meyerson is that "fundamentalists" are anti-scientific dimbulbs. They need to be marginalized, and he's the man, er, person, for the job. The issue is not really homosexuality. That being said, what about the evidence that "God" is "making gays"? This is such a stereotypical example of flawed logic that only blind ideology got it past his editor. By this logic, genetic predisposition, no matter how dangerous, is a positive act of God. For example, we have plenty of evidence that alcoholism is partly determined by genetics. So are certain cancers. So is that fact that I have glasses sitting on my nose. In a fallen world, DNA is not excluded.

Personally, I remain a skeptic about the scientific evidence for the simple reason that there's a lot of pressure to cook the data if you want to be in the favor (attitudinally and monetarily) of academia.

Patrick, the Missionary Genius

Patrick (his Latin name was Patricius) was at least a third generation Christian, the son of a deacon and grandson of a priest. He was born in southwest Britain, likely in the 380s AD. Early in his life, however, he did not follow his parent's example. But when he was 16 years old, God found a wat to get his attention.

Fierce Irish raiders broke through the now weak defenses of the Romans, and attacked Patrick's town. He was carried away as a slave, sold to a warrior chief, and was sent to work in Ireland caring for livestock. Suffering from constant hunger, cold and loneliness, he turned to God for strength, and from then on became a man of prayer.

When Patrick was about 22, he heard a voice saying, "You do well to fast. Soon you will return to your homeland." Soon the voice spoke again, "Come and see, your ship is waiting for you."

Taking this as his instruction to escape, he fled 200 miles to a southeastern harbor, where he boarded a trade ship, and eventually made it back to Britain. At home, Patrick had a dream of Irish people calling to him - "Please, holy youth, come and walk with us again." Patrick's heart was moved for his former captors, and he decided to go.

He went to France to study and in time was ordained as a deacon. The church leaders were apparently not confident in Patrick's ability as a missionary, and at first sent another man. But after only a year the first worker passed away, and Patrick, now past 40, was at last allowed to go to Ireland.

When Patrick arrived, aside from a few small churches, most of the Irish were pagans, worshiping everything from planets to plants. Magic and even human sacrifice was practised by the druids and priests. Patrick's strategy was not to take away people's beliefs in spirits, but to expose them as demons and show that God's power was greater.

Of course, he met with stiff opposition, and was constantly in danger of being murdered by the druids. Patrick, however, convinced a local king to tolerate Christianity, and when the king's brother was converted, Patrick was granted land on which to build a church.

Soon he moved on to other unreached areas. When there was a group of new Christians, he would build a guest house and a church, and, if he had the support of a wealthy landowner, he would also build a monastery, as a center of learning and missionary training. The process was highly participative: new converts were enlisted in ministry as fast as possible. In only fifteen years' time he had evangelized across Ireland, and was now well known as a man of God. He planted some hundred churches and baptized perhaps a hundred thousand believers.

The Celtic churches and Celtic missionary movement was largely a part of Patrick's ministry. Women played a large role in the ministry, although Patrick himself was careful not to even accept gifts from women, to avoid any mark on his reputation. Patrick continued in ministry for 30 years, and it's said that Ireland became literate for the first time in his generation. He died in the 460s, in his 70s. By then, Ireland has become roughly 80% Christian.

The learning and Christian heritage that Patrick left is still with us today, even in the area of law. Patrick was instrumental in laying the foundations of law in Ireland based on the ten commandments. Patrick was also among the first to speak out against slavery, with a passion that only a former slave could have had.

After Patrick's death, while chaos was sweeping across a fallen Roman Empire and the illiteracy was becoming the norm, the now literate Irish saved many of the classics of religious and secular literature that would have been lost. Irish clery were called upon to staff churches as far away as Austria! One missionary, in the power of God, made a remarkable difference in the course of history.

In the later years of his ministry, rumours about his past and suspicion about his methods were rumbling around in his homeland of Britain. The Roman church eventually rejected most of the Celtic church's wise missionary strategy in terms of seeking indiginous forms of expression of the gospel.

So may you have a grand St. Patrick's Day. And may it be a day to remember and to follow the example of one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the church: Patricius the Apostle to Ireland.

TransMin Topples Talpiot Tales

This email was issued from Transformation Ministries today regarding the claims of the Talpiot tomb by James Cameron.

Dear Pastor and Church Leader:

On Sunday, March 4, 2007, James Cameron (Director of the movie "Titanic") aired a program on the Discovery Channel called, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus." In it, Cameron claims to have scientific proof that they have found the bones of Jesus and his family in a tomb in Jerusalem.

I've included here a Christian response as written by Dr. Wes Brown. Please feel free to make this available to your congregation.This past Sunday we were at the First Baptist Church of Pomona where Carl Toney showed a 5-minute video on this subject. You may access this video on his website at http://carltoney.googlepages.com/currentevents.

Sincerely,

Dale Salico, Executive Minister

Transformation Ministries

Christian Response to the Claims of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”
Wesley H. Brown*

On March 4th the Discovery Channel aired a made-for-TV documentary entitled “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” claiming to present archaeological evidence that Jesus of Nazareth’s family tomb was discovered in Jerusalem, including an ossuary (a limestone bone box) with Jesus’ name etched on it. James Cameron, the producer, well known for producing Titanic, showed one of the ossuaries with Jesus’ name in a New York press conference, but failed to mention that Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) was a popular name found on 21 other ossuaries! Some major archaeologists and other scholars who saw the film, agree with archaeologist and author Jodi Magness that “the tomb is not—indeed cannot—be the tomb of Jesus and his family.”[1]


The tomb’s contents and the film’s claims

In 1980, ten ossuaries were found in a tomb in East Talpiot in Jerusalem which dates from the first century. Six of the ossuaries had names scratched on the outside-- the names of people similar to those mentioned in the New Testament—Jesus, Maria, Mariamne (a variant of Mary which they claim was Mary Magdalene), Yose (said to be Joseph), Matia (said to be Matthew), and Judah son of Jesus. “What are the chances of those people being buried in one tomb unless they were the family of Jesus of Nazareth?” the film asks, and then presents statistical studies to try to convince a viewer that it was indeed Jesus of Nazareth’s family tomb.

Director Simcha Jacobovici, claims that this discovery demonstrates that Jesus of Nazareth was actually buried with other family members in this tomb. Furthermore, it asserts that the tomb is evidence that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, by whom he had a child named Judah. (This sounds like someone wanting to give evidence for the theory in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.)

First century burials and what was found

Excavations of the tomb were undertaken by Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner in 1980 when the entrance to the tomb was discovered as contractors prepared to construct new apartment buildings. Many first century tombs, cut into rocky hillsides, have been found around Jerusalem. Almost all of them have places to lay the body of the deceased, called “arcosolia” – shelf-like ledges on which the body of the deceased was placed, or “kochim” (Hebrew, or “loculi” in Greek) -- slots cut directly into the rock wall, about six feet deep, two feet wide, and arched at the top. About a year after the placing of the body for decomposition, the bones were gathered and placed in an ossuary or bone box.

Kloner found ten ossuaries in that tomb, six of them with names scratched on the outside, as stated above. The ossuaries were taken first to the Rockefeller Museum where the bones were carefully removed from the ossuaries, and respectfully reburied. This is commonly done because of the strong objections of Orthodox Jews when any buried human remains are moved. The ossuaries were later moved to a huge Israel Antiquities Authority warehouse in Beit Shemesh, where hundreds of other ossuraries are stored.

Kloner told ABC news that the tomb and ossuaries were “interesting but of no particular archaeological importance.”[2] He said there are many more buried tombs with ossuaries just like the "Jesus" tomb. Of those ossuaries, 71 bear the name “Jesus” and two “Jesus son of Joseph.” The tomb in Talpiyot is one of them. But the inscription, he said, was barely decipherable and therefore questionable.[3]

Why major scholars reject the film’s claims

1. The earliest accounts of the death and burial of Jesus are in the Gospels in the New Testament. Magness says that the Gospel accounts of Joseph of Arimathea placing the body of Jesus in his family tomb cut into the rock, is consistent with practices in the first century revealed in archaeological findings around Jerusalem.[4] Acceptance of the theories of the film demand a rejection of the earliest traditions about Jesus. Assumptions make a very big difference. The film assumes that Jesus of Nazareth, if resurrected, ultimately died, his body deteriorated, and his bones were placed in an ossuary that they have identified. Christians begin with the assumption that the Gospels are historical and reliable, and that an ossuary with the name Yeshua/Jesus must contain the bones of another person of the same name.

2. “Names on the ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb are extremely common among the Jewish population of Jerusalem in the first century.”[5] It is estimated that 25% of women were named Mary/Miriam/Mariamne. Jesus (Yeshua) was also common. Tal Ilan, author of Lexicon of Jewish Names, estimates that about one Jewish man in 20 was named Yeshua (Jesus) in the first century. So we can’t be sure which Jesus this was, and we have no record elsewhere of Yose and Matia being in Jesus’ family.

3. The name “Mariamne” (Greek) on the ossuary is followed by “Mara,” meaning Master, but which the film said should be interpreted “leader” or “teacher”. The film proposes that this is Mary Magdalene, referring to “The Acts of Philip” fromthe 2nd or3rd century. This is a big leap of speculation. Why was the name in Greek while others were in Aramaic or Hebrew? The filmmakers, says Magness, “transform the small Jewish town of Magdala….into ‘an important trading center’ where Greek was spoken.”[6]

4. People who were buried in rock-cut tombs were from wealthy families or benefited by wealthy friends’ making a place, even temporary, for their burial.

This is consistent with the Gospel accounts that say that Joseph of Arimathea made his rock-hewn tomb available for Jesus’ burial. Magness comments, “Jesus’ family, being poor, presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb, as even the more ‘modest’ ones were costly.” She suggests that Jesus’ family may have had a burial place in Nazareth or Bethlehem, but it would be unlikely in Jerusalem. Poor people were usually buried in a trench-type grave, and covered with dirt. Few of these graves have survived from the first century, but ossuaries from first century rock-hewn tombs around Jerusalem are numerous.

5. The Discovery Channel website about the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” supports the
theory that the disciples came and stole the body of Jesus-- to bury it in a permanent family tomb! Matthew (Matt.28:12-15) calls this a lie that was circulated. But the website also claims that the film does not challenge the belief in the resurrection! The website says, “Even if Jesus' body was moved from one tomb to another, however, that does not mean that he could not have been resurrected from the second tomb.”[7] So what happened? Did he later die a second time, was buried, and ultimately his bones were placed in an ossuary with his name?? Most Christians believe that after Jesus’ resurrection, he never died again but is forever alive.

6. Scientific American, on its website, has gotten into the debate about the tomb because of the involvement of Andrey Feuververger, a professor of mathematics and statistics in the University of Toronto. The Discovery Channel’s website claims that Feuerverger's calculations show that the odds are "600 to one in favor of this being the JESUS FAMILY TOMB." But which Jesus? Director Simcha Jacobovici assumes that the ossuary found in that tomb was of Jesus of Nazareth, with his bones in it. Most Christians would not talk about statistical odds because they do not believe that Jesus’ body remained in any tomb, but was resurrected and later ascended. To be sure, a man named “Jesus” died, and was buried, and his bones were finally placed in an ossuary, but it was not the Jesus of the New Testament!

7. Fragments found at the bottom of the ossuaries of “Jesus” and “Mariamne” were examined for their DNA, and it was shown that they did not have the same mother. The film speculates from that information that they must have been a couple who married and bore the person whose ossuary identifies the bones of “Judah son of Jesus”. There is no evidence that the bones of these two had originally been husband and wife. But even if they were, the Jesus whose bones were found was not the Jesus of Nazareth of the Gospels. Ultimately, most Christians trust the historicity and basic reliability of the Biblical record more than the speculative proposals of the filmmakers.

As Magness writes, the film is “a sensationalistic claim without any scientific basis or support.”[8]

8. If Jesus was not buried in the tomb in East Talpiot in Jerusalem, where was he most likely buried until his resurrection? The best scholarship points to the Church of the Resurrection, its Greek name (a.k.a. the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). The Biblical Archaeology Society has just released an excellent ebook entitled The Burial of Jesus. Go to http://www.swiftpage5.com/SpeClicks.aspx?Acc=TransMin.Lorena&SPCED=C070312125100&LNK=0&UId=569 where there is information on how to access the ebook. The article by Dan Bahat, “Does the Holy Sepulchre Church Mark the Burial of Jesus?” is the best I have seen on the history and archaeology of that location and why it should be considered the real place of the tomb of Jesus. If one visits the church, it is important to remember that there is nothing that remains of the original rock-hewn tomb because in 1009 A.D., under orders from the fanatical Muslim caliph Khakim in Egypt, the cave and tomb of the resurrection were destroyed, down to bed rock. Most of what people see today around the tomb is reconstruction from the early 19th century.

Many evangelicals prefer the Garden Tomb because of its uncluttered, open air environment with evidence of an ancient tomb and garden. The Biblical Archaeology Society has two articles about the Garden Tomb in the ebook which were written by the two best authorities on the archaeology of that area, Gabriel Barkay and Jerome Murphy-O’Conner. Ultimately, it is not the location of the tomb, but the fact of the resurrection that is the most important. Thanks be to God that the tomb was empty and the Lord is risen indeed!

*Wesley Brown served as American Baptist representative in Jerusalem for almost 12 years, wrote “Christian Comment” in the Jerusalem Post for eight years, and was on the staff of the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research, Tantur, Jerusalem. He has returned to Jerusalem often, leading seminars. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Ethics at the Univ. of So. California.

[1] Jodi Magness, “Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?” online, Biblical Archaeology Society, http://www.swiftpage5.com/SpeClicks.aspx?Acc=TransMin.Lorena&SPCED=C070312125100&LNK=1&UId=569 March 5, 2007. Magness, who teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of No. Carolina at Chapel Hill, received a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the Univ. of Pennsylvania, and has participated in more than 20 excavations in Israel and Greece. She is the author of the award-winning The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans, 2002) and “Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James,” in the Journal of Biblical Literature 124(2005).
[2] Matt Gutman, “Bones of Contention: Archaeologist Disputes Claims in James Cameron’s ‘The Lost Tomb of Christ,” ABC News on line, Mar.7, 2007 http://www.swiftpage5.com/SpeClicks.aspx?Acc=TransMin.Lorena&SPCED=C070312125100&LNK=2&UId=569= 2905662&page=1
[3] Ibid.
[4] Jodi Magness, “What Did the Tomb of Jesus Look Like?” in The Burial of Jesus, ebook of The Biblical Archaeology Society, March 2007, p. 13
[5] J. Magness, op.cit., p. 4
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/theology/theology.html
[8] J. Magness, op.cit., p.5

TransMin Posts Resouces on Talpiot Tomb

A Righteous Separation

This was posted today on the Christianity Today website. The statements regarding the ABCUSA or Cornerstone aren't 100% accurate, but the thrust is on target.

Church Divorce Done Right

Denominational splits just aren't what they used to be.

Ted Olsen posted 3/07/2007 09:09AM

When I asked Orlando Sentinel religion reporter Mark Pinsky if he'd covered the February meeting where as many as 150 Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations made plans to leave the denomination, I wasn't terribly surprised when he answered no.

Related articles and links

The New Wineskins meeting was within walking distance from his office, Pinsky said, but "we sense some fatigue among general readers on the 'maybe this mainline denomination will split' story. Editors are saying, 'Get back to us when there is a split.' It's the Lucy and the football thing from Peanuts."

It's a sentiment shared widely by religion reporters, including many of us here at CT. Rarely does a week go by that we don't hear rumors of denominational departures. But discussion and dissatisfaction typically trump actual decisions to leave.

Not that the mainline exodus is a myth. Within the past year, entire regions of the American Baptist Churches USA, representing hundreds of churches, dropped their ties to the national body. Due to a few dramatic votes, the departures got more attention than 225 congregations that left the United Church of Christ (UCC). They left after the UCC adopted a resolution in July 2005 that endorsed same-sex marriage. The 67 "Faithful and Welcoming" orthodox churches who work from within the UCC face an uphill battle for mere tolerance: The denomination's official blogger, on the UCC's site, characterized one such group as dedicated to destroying the UCC from the inside.

Though not universal across the mainline, the exodus seems to be happening on a scale not seen since the fundamentalist-modernist battles of nearly a century ago. That's fundamentalist in the historical sense, referring to the group of orthodox Protestants who opposed the rise of scientific naturalism in their churches and held to the fundamentals of the faith, like the reliability of the Bible and the reality of miracles.

When theologian J. Gresham Machen led traditionalists out of the Presbyterian Church, they created a new denomination: the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But today, New Wineskins rejected such a plan and instead has begun negotiations to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Likewise, many churches that split with the Episcopal Church in earlier times accepted broken ties with the worldwide Anglican Communion. Today's orthodox exiles, by contrast, make membership in global Anglicanism non-negotiable. A mélange of archbishops leads them from abroad. Thanks to these archbishops' efforts, some of the earlier breakaway groups are now pursuing reunion with the global body.

It's not that today's evangelical evacuees are less entrepreneurial than yesterday's; it's that they're less satisfied with independence and informal parachurch networks. Even those who form new networks don't shape them like those of their fundamentalist predecessors, who equated leaving with disfellowshipping. Some fundamentalists attacked orthodox believers who stayed in denominations as betrayers and collaborators. By contrast, the new Cornerstone Church Network, the successor to the renewal group at the center of the American Baptist exodus, is open to both current and former American Baptist congregations.

There are many reasons for such magnanimity between the orthodox who leave and those who stay. Remembering the antipathy from earlier departures is surely one of them. But so is hope. The walkouts know that mainline renewal from the inside can be successful, as seems to be happening in the United Methodist Church, for example. And recent events in the Anglican Communion belie the narrative of continual decline toward liberalism.

Episcopal bishops' reaction to the February meeting of Anglican primates may reveal the biggest difference between the fundamentalist exodus and today's. Machen lamented that liberals of his day were dishonest in reciting "I believe" creeds they did not really believe. That's still true. But now Episcopalians are complaining that they're forced to choose between "staying true to our understanding of the inclusive gospel or staying true to our commitment to being a constituent member of the Anglican Communion."

They're starting to get it. It is they, not conservatives, who have been leaving all along.

Burying the Talpiot Jesus Tomb Myth

Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Writing today on the Biblical Archaelogy Society Website, she weighs in the the current claims of Jacobovici and Cameron regarding the Talpoit Tomb. She does not write from the standpoint of accepting the authority of Scripture on historical matters, and I would distance myself from her statements regarding the accuracy of the Biblical text. I reproduce her comments here to demonstrate that it's not just the "fundy right" that sees huge problems with the Talpiot claims.

In the new documentary film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus (which appeared on the Discovery Channel on March 4th), director Simcha Jacobovici and producer James Cameron claim to have identified the tomb of Jesus and his family in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiot. The tomb itself is not a new discovery; it was excavated in 1980 and published by Amos Kloner, an Israeli archaeologist. What is new is the sensational claim that this is the tomb of Jesus and his family. Although Jacobovici and Cameron are not scholars, their claim is supported by a handful of archaeologists and religious studies specialists. On the other hand, many archaeologists (including Kloner) and scholars of early Judaism and Christianity reject their claim. Having seen the film, I agree with Kloner and the others; the Talpiot tomb is not—indeed, cannot—be the tomb of Jesus and his family.

I would first point out that by making this announcement in the popular media, Jacobovici, Cameron, and the others involved have chosen to circumvent the usual academic process. Archaeology is a scientific discipline. New discoveries and interpretations typically are presented in scientific venues such as professional meetings or are published in peer-reviewed journals, where they can be considered and discussed by other specialists. By first making the announcement in the popular media, those involved have precluded legitimate and vital academic discourse. It is impossible to explain the many flaws of their claim in a one-minute segment on TV or the radio, or in two or three sentences in the newspaper, as I have been asked to do repeatedly since the announcement was made. The history and archaeology of Jerusalem in the first century are far too complex to be boiled down to a short sound bite, yet that is precisely what has happened here. This is a travesty to professional archaeologists and scholars of early Judaism and Christianity, and it is a disservice to the public.

Now let us consider the claim itself. We have no contemporary accounts of the death and burial of Jesus. Our closest sources (in time) are the canonical Gospels, specifically the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke), which are thought to have been composed about 30-50 years after Jesus’ death. Although the canonical Gospels may not be accurate in every detail, most scholars agree they contain some historical information. The claim that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus and his family contradicts the canonical Gospel accounts and means that we must reject our earliest traditions about Jesus. Those who identify the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus support their claim by citing later, non-canonical traditions such as the Gospel of Philip.

The Gospel of Mark (15:42-46) describes the death and burial of Jesus: “When the evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council [in a similar account, the Gospel of Matthew describes Joseph as a wealthy man], who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. …he [Pilate] granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.”

How did the Jews of Jerusalem bury their dead in the time of Jesus? The Gospel accounts describe Jesus as having been laid to rest in a rock-cut tomb. Rock-cut tombs consisted of one or more burial chambers hewn into the bedrock slopes surrounding the city of Jerusalem. Burial chambers were lined by single rows of burial niches (called loculi), with each niche cut into the walls about the length of a person’s body. Each rock-cut tomb belonged to a family and was used by the members of a family over the course of several generations. When a member of the family died, his/her body was wrapped in a shroud and placed in a loculus. The opening to the loculus was sealed with a stone slab, and the entrance to the rock-cut tomb was also sealed with a stone. Eventually, over the course of generations, the loculi became filled with burials. When it became necessary to make space for new burials, the earlier remains (consisting of bones and burial gifts) were cleared out of the loculi and placed in small boxes (ossuaries). Sometimes the relatives scribbled the name(s) of the deceased on the outside of the ossuary when they placed the remains in the box.

The Gospel accounts provide an accurate description of Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus’ body in a loculus in his family’s rock-cut tomb. Because rock-cut tombs had to be cut by hand out of bedrock, only the upper classes (wealthy Jews like Joseph) could afford them. The poorer classes of Jewish society—the majority of the population—buried their dead in simple, individual trench graves dug into the ground, similar to the way we bury our dead today. This involved digging a rectangular trench in the ground, placing the deceased (wrapped in a shroud) at the bottom, and filling the trench back in with earth. Usually a crude headstone was set up at one end of the grave. Ossuaries are associated only with rock-cut tombs; bodies interred in trench graves were not dug back up for deposition in an ossuary.

Now let us reconsider the Gospel accounts. Jesus was crucified on Friday. This is consistent with what we know about Jesus’ background, as the Romans generally reserved crucifixion for the poorer classes, who they regarded as common criminals. Why did Joseph of Arimathea request Pilate’s permission to bury Jesus? Jewish law requires burial within 24 hours of death. However, burials are prohibited on the Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday). According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus died on the eve of the Sabbath (late Friday afternoon), just before sundown. For Jesus to be buried in accordance with Jewish law, he had to be buried before the Sabbath started; otherwise, it would have been necessary to wait until Saturday night, thereby exceeding the 24-hour time limit.

Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy follower of Jesus, was concerned to ensure that Jesus was buried in accordance with Jewish law. Jesus came from a poor family that presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been buried in a trench grave. However, there was no time to dig a trench grave before the beginning of the Sabbath. Therefore, as the Gospels tell us, Joseph hastened to go to Pilate and requested permission to take Jesus’ body. He laid it in a loculus in his own rock-cut tomb, something that was exceptional (due to the circumstances), as rock-cut tombs were family tombs.
When the women entered the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on Sunday morning, the loculus where Jesus’ body had been laid was empty. The theological explanation for this is that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

However, once Jesus had been buried in accordance with Jewish law, there was no prohibition against removing the body from the tomb after the end of the Sabbath and reburying it. It is therefore possible that followers or family members removed Jesus’ body from Joseph’s tomb after the Sabbath ended and buried it in a trench grave, as it would have been unusual (to say the least) to leave a non-relative in a family tomb. Whatever explanation one prefers, the fact that Jesus’ body did not remain in Joseph’s tomb means that his bones could not have been collected in an ossuary, at least not if we follow the Gospel accounts.

Although the Gospel accounts of the death and burial of Jesus might not be completely accurate from an historical point of view, they are consistent with our literary and archaeological information about how the Jews of Jerusalem buried their dead in the time of Jesus. The Gospels also show familiarity with Jewish law, conveying Joseph’s concern to bury Jesus before the Sabbath. They make it clear that Joseph was not trying to “honor” Jesus by burying him in a rock-cut tomb (a modern, anachronistic concept, since there was no shame associated with burial in trench graves, which was the accepted practice). Instead Joseph wanted to ensure that Jesus was buried within 24 hours, in accordance with Jewish law.

Jesus’ family, being poor, presumably could not afford a rock-cut tomb, as even the more “modest” ones were costly. And had Jesus’ family owned a rock-cut tomb, it would have been located in their hometown of Nazareth, not in Jerusalem. For example, when Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers and one of the Hasmonean rulers, built a large tomb or mausoleum for his family, he constructed it in their hometown of Modiin. In fact, the Gospel accounts clearly indicate that Jesus’ family did not own a rock-cut tomb in Jerusalem—for if they had, there would have been no need for Joseph of Arimathea to take Jesus’ body and place it in his own family’s rock-cut tomb! If Jesus’ family did not own a rock-cut tomb, it means they also had no ossuaries.

A number of scholars, including Kloner, have pointed out that the names on the ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb are extremely common among the Jewish population of Jerusalem in the first century. But beyond this there is a bigger problem. Being a Jew in the time of Jesus was not, strictly speaking, a religion, as it is today. Instead, Jews in the time of Jesus were Judeans—that is, people from the district of Judea, the area around Jerusalem. Judeans worshiped the national god of Judea (the God of Israel) and lived according to his laws. Other ancient peoples had their own national deities. During the two centuries before Christ, the Hasmonean kings (a Jewish dynasty descended from the Maccabees) had established an independent Jewish kingdom in Judea (this kingdom was eventually taken over by the Romans). The Hasmonean kings conducted a campaign of expansion, conquering neighboring peoples whom they forcibly converted to Judaism. Under the Hasmoneans, Galilee (to the north of Judea) and Idumaea (to the south) were Judaized, which means their non-Jewish populations began to worship the God of Israel and live according to his laws.

L. Y. Rahmani, an Israeli archaeologist who compiled a catalogue of all of the ossuaries in the collections of the state of Israel, observed that “In Jerusalem’s tombs, the deceased’s place of origin was noted when someone from outside Jerusalem was interred in a local tomb.” On ossuaries in rock-cut tombs that belonged to Judean families, it was customary to indicate the ancestry or lineage of the deceased by naming the father, as, for example, Judah son of John (Yohanan); Honya son of Alexa; and Martha daughter of Hananya. But in rock-cut tombs owned by non-Judean families (or which contained the remains of relatives from outside Judea), it was customary to indicate the deceased’s place of origin, as, for example, Simon of Ptolemais; Papias the Bethshanite (of Beth Shean); and Gaios son of Artemon from Berenike. Our historical and literary sources (such as the Gospels, Flavius Josephus, etc.) often make the same distinctions between Judeans and non-Judeans (for example, Galileans, Idumaeans, Saul of Tarsus, Simon of Cyrene, and so on). If the Talpiot tomb is indeed the tomb of Jesus and his family, we would expect at least some of the ossuary inscriptions to reflect their Galilean origins, by reading, for example, Jesus [son of Joseph] of Nazareth (or Jesus the Nazarene), Mary of Magdala, and so on. However, the inscriptions provide no indication that this is the tomb of a Galilean family and instead point to a Judean family.

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family is based on a string of problematic and unsubstantiated claims, including adding an otherwise unattested Matthew (Matya) to the family of Jesus; identifying an otherwise unknown son of Jesus named Judah; and identifying the Mariamne named on one of the ossuaries in the tomb as Mary Magdalene by interpreting the word Mara (which follows the name Mariamne) as the Aramaic term for “master” (arguing that Mariamne was a teacher and leader). To account for the fact that Mary/Mariamne’s name is written in Greek, the filmmakers transform the small Jewish town of Migdal/Magdala/Tarichaea on the Sea of Galilee (Mary’s hometown) into “an important trading center” where Greek was spoken. Instead, as in other Jewish towns of this period, generally only the upper classes knew Greek, whereas poorer Jews spoke Aramaic as their everyday language.

Taken individually, each of these points weakens the case for the identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family. Collectively these points are devastating, since the statistical analyses presented in the film are based on certain assumptions made about these names.

The identification of the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus and his family contradicts the canonical Gospel accounts of the death and burial of Jesus and the earliest Christian traditions about Jesus. The claim is also inconsistent with all of the available information—historical and archaeological—about how Jews in the time of Jesus buried their dead, and specifically the evidence we have about poor, non-Judean families such as that of Jesus. It is a sensationalistic claim without any scientific basis or support.

Paul Maier Weighs in on Talpiot Tomb

A Skeleton in God's Closet? Paul Maier Responds

Paul Maier, Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University, once wrote a "theological thriller" on what would happen if someone claimed to discover Jesus' bones. It was called A Skeleton in God's Closet. Professor Maier yesterday sent out this email to "friends and readers" regarding the new documentary that has parallels with his fictional scenario:

Paul L. Maier, Ph.D., Litt.D

Department of History

Western Michigan UniversityKalamazoo, MI 49008

February 25, 2007

Dear Friends and Readers,

Thanks for the profusion of e-mails I’ve received over the last two days regarding the Talpiot tombs discovery in Jerusalem, a.k.a., “the Jesus Family Tomb” story. Some of you also suggested that “life seemed to be following art” so far as my A Skeleton in God’s Closet was concerned. Believe me, this is not the way I wanted my novel to hit the visual media!

Alas, this whole affair is just the latest in the long-running media attack on the historical Jesus, which – we thought – had culminated in that book of lies, The Da Vinci Code. But no: the caricatures of Christ continue.

Please, lose no sleep over the Talpiot “discoveries” for the following reasons, and here are the facts:.

1) Nothing is new here: scholars have known about the ossuaries ever since March of 1980. The general public learned when the BBC filmed a documentary on them in 1996. James Tabor’s book, The Jesus Dynasty, also made a big fuss over the Talpiot tombs more recently, and now James Cameron (The Titanic) and Simcha Jacobovici have climbed aboard the sensationalist bandwagon as well.

2) All the names – Yeshua, Joseph, Maria, Mariamene, Matia, Judah, and Jose -- are extremely frequent Jewish names for that time and place, and thus most scholars consider this merely coincidental, as they did from the start. One-quarter of Jewish women at that time, for example, were named Maria.

3) There is no reason whatever to equate “Mary Magdalene” with “Mariamene,”as Jacobovici claims.

4) So what if her DNA is different from that of “Yeshua” ? That particular "Mariamme" (as it is usually spelled today) could indeed have been the wife of that particular “Yeshua.”

5) What in the world is the “Jesus Family” doing, having a burial plot in Jerusalem, of all places, the very city that crucified Jesus? Galilee was their home. In Galilee they could have had such a family plot, not Judea. Besides all of which, church tradition – and Eusebius – are unanimous in reporting that Mary died in Ephesus, where the apostle John, faithful to his commission from Jesus on the cross, had accompanied Mary.

6) If this were Jesus’ family burial, what is Matthew doing there – if indeed “Matia” is thus to be translated?

7) How come there is no tradition whatever – Christian, Jewish, or secular – that any part of the Holy Family was buried at Jerusalem?

8) Please note the extreme bias of the director and narrator, Simcha Jacobovici. The man is an Indiana-Jones-wannabe, who oversensationalizes anything he touches. You may have caught him on his TV special regarding The Exodus, in which the man “explained” just everything that still needed proving or explaining in the Exodus account in the Old Testament! It finally became ludicrous, and now he’s doing it again. – As for James Cameron, how do you follow The Titanic? Well, with an even more “titanic” story. He should have known better.

There are more arguments, to be sure, but I want to get this off pronto.

With warm regards,

Paul L. Maier

Campolo's Inversion of Values: An Illustration of What's Wrong with the ABCUSA

I first heard Tony Campolo speak back in college (Alderson-Broaddus in Philippi, WV) and was transfixed. Here was a man possessed of the gospel. I have quoted him frequently, use his illustrations (always a compliment from a preacher) and been challenged by him.

But Tony has a tendency to let his enthusiasms overshadow his theology. Almost twenty years ago, he agreed to change a passage in one of his books when he rhetoric about the poor produced an expression of defective theology. His wife is an advocate of the Welcoming and Affirming position regarding homosexuality--something Gordon McDonald alerted me to back in the late 80s when he and his wife attended the church I pastored in New Hampshire.

Then I read this...

From an article in the Pueblo (CO) Cheiftain, Tony Campolo is quoted:

"I think that Christianity has two emphases. One is a social emphasis to impart the values of the kingdom of God in society - to relieve the sufferings of the poor, to stand up for the oppressed, to be a voice for those who have no voice," Campolo said.

"The other emphasis is to bring people into a personal, transforming relationship with Christ, where they feel the joy and the love of God in their lives," he said. "Fundamentalism has emphasized the latter; mainline churches have emphasized the former. We cannot neglect one for the other."

Notes the Baptist minister, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches: "There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed. . . . There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor."

First, I have no argument that the Gospel has a special compassion and message to the poor. The church I pastor disburses between six and ten thousand dollars a year to immediate assistance, and that doesn't could many more thousands in indirect aid.

But for Campolo to maintain that the two grand emphases of the gospel are (1) the social justice needs of the voiceless and (2) a personal relationship to God is specious biblically--especially when stated in that order.

This inversion of values we see in Campolo is exactly what's wrong with the ABCUSA as well. The emphasis on "soul liberty" as a higher value than Biblical authority is what caused the ABC of the Pacific Southwest (now known as Transformation Ministries) to seek separation.

An inversion of values is no small thing. Correct values mixed improperly is a potent poison.

Tony, I love you man, but you are so wrong.

More on Cameron's Titanic Tomb Claims

Reaction to James Cameron's claims to have located the tomb of the unresurrected Jesus has been coming in fast and furious. Here's a skepical article that appeared yesterday in the New York Times, not exactly a bastion of cultural conservatism. It correctly shows the Dan Brown connection in Cameron's mind:

Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film Says

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Boxes said to contain residue of the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdelene yesterday at a news conference in New York promoting a documentary.


By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: February 27, 2007

A documentary by the Discovery Channel claims to provide evidence that a crypt unearthed 27 years ago in Jerusalem contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth.

Moreover, it asserts that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that the couple had a son, named Judah, and that all three were buried together.

The claims were met with skepticism by several archaeologists and New Testament scholars, as well as outrage by some Christian leaders. The contention that Jesus was married, had a child and left behind his bones — suggesting he was not bodily resurrected — contradicts core Christian doctrine.

Two limestone boxes said to contain residue from the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were unveiled yesterday at a news conference at the New York Public Library by the documentary’s producer, James Cameron, who made “Titanic” and “The Terminator.” His collaborators onstage included a journalist, a self-taught antiquities investigator, New Testament scholars, a statistician and an archaeologist. Several of them said they were excited by the findings but uncertain.

“I would like more information. I remain skeptical,” said the archaeologist, Shimon Gibson, a senior fellow at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, in an interview after the news conference.

In recent years, audiences have demonstrated a voracious appetite for books, movies and magazines that reassess the life and times of Jesus, and there is already a book timed to coincide with this documentary, which will be on the air next Sunday.

“This is exploiting the whole trend that caught on with ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ ” said Lawrence E. Stager, the Dorot professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, in a telephone interview. “One of the problems is there are so many biblically illiterate people around the world that they don’t know what is real judicious assessment and what is what some of us in the field call ‘fantastic archaeology.’ ”

Professor Stager said he had not seen the film but was skeptical.

Mr. Cameron said he had been “trepidatious” about becoming involved in the project but got engaged out of “great passion for a good detective story,” not to offend and not to cash in.
“I think this is the biggest archaeological story of the century,” he said. “It’s absolutely not a publicity stunt. It’s part of a very well-considered plan to reveal this information to the world in a way that makes sense, with proper documentation.”

The documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” revisits a site discovered by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority in the East Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980, when the area was being excavated for a building.

Ten burial boxes, or ossuaries, were found in the tomb, and six of them had inscriptions. The Discovery Channel filmmakers say, and archaeologists interviewed concur, there is no possibility the inscriptions were forged, because they were catalogued at the time by archaeologists and kept in storage in the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The documentary’s case rests in large part on the interpretation of the inscriptions, which they say are Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Joseph and Judah.

In the first century, these names were as common as Tom, Dick and Harry. But the filmmakers commissioned a statistician, Andrey Feuerverger, a professor at the University of Toronto, who calculated that the odds that all six names would appear together in one tomb are one in 600, calculated conservatively — or as much as one in one million.

One box is said to be inscribed “Yeshua bar Yosef,” in Aramaic, an ancient dialect of Hebrew that is translated as “Jesus son of Joseph.” The second box is inscribed “Maria,” in Hebrew. Maria is the Latin version of “Miriam” — a name so common in first century ancient Israel that it was given to about 25 percent of all Jewish women. But the mother of Jesus has always been known as “Maria” (which in English is “Mary”). The documentary says that while thousands of ossuaries have been discovered, only eight have had the inscription “Maria” spelled phonetically in Hebrew letters.

The third box is labeled “Matia,” Hebrew for Matthew, and the filmmakers cite a reference in the New Testament to buttress their claim that Mary had many Matthews in her family and it would make sense to find one in the family tomb.

The fourth box is inscribed “Yose,” a nickname for the Hebrew “Yosef,” or “Joseph” in English. Again, the filmmakers turn to the New Testament Gospels, which refer to four “brothers” of Jesus: James, Judah, Simon and Joseph. Scholars disagree whether these were actual brothers, companions or cousins, but the filmmakers infer that the inscription refers to a brother of Jesus.
DNA testing was commissioned after remains were found by archeologists in this tomb in Jerusalem in 1980.

Perhaps the most shaky claims revolve around the inscription on the fifth box, which the filmmakers assert is that of Mary Magdalene. It is the only inscription of the six in Greek, and says “Mariamene e Mara,” which the filmmakers say can be translated as “Mary, known as the master.”

The filmmakers cite the interpretation of a Harvard professor, François Bovon, of the “Acts of Phillip,” a text from the fourth or fifth century and recently recovered from a monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. The filmmakers say that Professor Bovon has determined from the “Acts of Phillip” that Mariamene is Mary Magdalene’s real name.

The filmmakers commissioned DNA testing on the residue in the boxes said to have held Jesus and Mary Magdalene. There are no bones left, because the religious custom in Israel is to bury archeological remains in a cemetery.

However, the documentary’s director and its driving force, Simcha Jacobovici, an Israeli-born Canadian, said there was enough mitochondrial DNA for a laboratory in Ontario to conclude that the bodies in the “Jesus” and “Mary Magdalene” ossuaries were not related on their mothers’ side. From this, Mr. Jacobovici deduced that they were a couple, because otherwise they would not have been buried together in a family tomb.

In an interview, Mr. Jacobovici was asked why the filmmakers did not conduct DNA testing on the other ossuaries to determine whether the one inscribed “Judah, son of Jesus” was genetically related to either the Jesus or Mary Magdalene boxes; or whether the Jesus remains were actually the offspring of Mary.

“We’re not scientists. At the end of the day we can’t wait till every ossuary is tested for DNA,” he said. “We took the story that far. At some point you have to say, ‘I’ve done my job as a journalist.’ ”

Among the most influential scholars to dispute the documentary was Amos Kloner, former Jerusalem district archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who examined the tomb in 1980.

Mr. Kloner said in a telephone interview that the inscription on the alleged “Jesus” ossuary is not clear enough to ascertain. The box on display at the news conference is a plain rectangle with rough gashes on one side. The one supposedly containing Mary Magdalene has six-petalled rosettes and an elaborate border.

“The new evidence is not serious, and I do not accept that it is connected to the family of Jesus,” said Mr. Kloner, who appears in the documentary as a skeptic.

New Testament scholars also criticized the documentary as theologically dangerous, historically inaccurate and irresponsible.

“A lot of conservative, orthodox and moderate Christians are going to be upset by the recklessness of this,” said Ben Witherington, a Bible scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. “Of course, we want to know more about Jesus, but please don’t insult our intelligence by giving us this sort of stuff. It’s going to get a lot of Christians with their knickers in a knot unnecessarily.”