Christ In A Box?
February 27th, 2007 | by Ken Grandlund |So the latest flap in the world of Christianity concerns the upcoming James Cameron movie about the possibility that some first century ossuaries are the actual burial boxes of not just Jesus Christ, but of an entire Christ family.
Critics have condemned the yet to be seen work as fraught with conjecture, based on mistranslations, and against accepted Christian doctrine. But does that mean that Cameron’s film is wrong?
Of course, the whole idea of questioning established Christian doctrine is seen in and of itself (by religious leaders at least) to be blasphemous at best. After all, the story of Jesus (both as a man and as a God) has remained basically unchanged for about two millenia. Official doctrine was laid down at the Council of Nicea and it’s held firm ever since, at least within the Church. Even those denominations who have splintered off from Catholicism hold the central story in similar regard, differing on the message and meaning of Jesus’s teachings rather than the biography of the man himself.
Jesus married? Nonsense, isn’t in the official book. So what that it would have been unusual for a middle-aged Jewish man to be unmarried in ancient times.
Jesus had a kid? Ludicrous, since he wasn’t married, and we all know that God looks down on sex out of marriage. It’s somewhere in the book too.
But most troubling is the concept that instead of rising bodily into heaven after three days of death, Jesus may have been buried in a box like everyone else. That definitely goes against the whole Son of God-resurrection thing. And that is one of the central tenets of the faith- that Jesus was really God in human form, dying for our sins, rising to heaven to return another day. Without the resurrection what else is left?
And there is the rub. How could a faith continue to hold itself aloft if it is proven to be based on a falsehood? How could the church survive such a reckoning of ‘fact’ with faith?
Well, they’ve managed to hang on this long, so I don’t think this will shake the foundation of many people’s faith. And though it is no more ridiculous to believe that Jesus was buried in a box like pretty much everyone else than it is to believe that people can rise from the dead and float up into space, any time someone brings up alternative Jesus stories the religious leadership comes out in force to condemn them. Don’t these people have flocks to tend to?
This is Hollywood folks. Regardless of whether this film is based on fact or made of whole cloth, its primary goal is to make money. How many who deride this film also praised Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ for it’s realism; for giving them an empathetic opportunity? I remember hearing many voices saying they now ‘know how it felt to be Christ’ after seeing that film. Why is Mel’s vision any more valid than that of James? At least James is a biblical name…
Critics point to the location of the ossuaries and say that is all the evidence they need to prove the whole thing is a farce, as if Jerusalem town plots and burial records exist from the time of Jesus. They too are only relying on heresay and imperfectly passed down information. They point that all the names on the boxes were common names of the time and could belong to anyone- anyone but Jesus that is. How do they come to these conclusions? Why, they just know it to be so because that is what the church has always said.
Of course, the church also insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe, that the earth is only 6000 years old, that scientific knowledge was heresy and punishable by death, that certain people are enjoined by God from rising to a better station in life, and on and on and on…so they don’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to factual information or rational thought.
Let’s face it folks…there can be no confirmation of Jesus as Christ and God short of a reappearance from above in a very visible way. Beyond that, it’s all faith, conjecture, wishful thinking…
So, are these the tombs of The Jesus and his (unofficial and unrecognized by the church) family?
Does it really matter?
[tag]tomb+of+Jesus, James+Cameron, Passion+of+the+Christ, Mel+Gibson, religion, ossuaries, dogma[/tag]
22 Responses to “Christ In A Box?”
By Jersey McJones on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Well, like you said, it isn’t going to matter much to “the flock.” They’re just going to say “baaaaaaa” to whatever they are asked. Then, of course, we’ll hear about all the “lies” and the “inaccuracies” and the “historocity” and the “plageurism,” etc, in the James film. f course, all of these complaints will be grounded specious, semantic bullshit.
Oh well. Sounds like a fun film.
JMJ
By Jet Netwal on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Ah hem. We do not all Baaaa, Jersey. I for one am looking forward to watching this film. Not so much for the Tinsel but for the science. Should be fascinating.
By Craig R. Harmon on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Well, I can chant “baaaaa” with the best of them, in Latin if I wished, but this does not particularly trouble me because it proves nothing other than that the names appearing on these ossuaries were very common in this region at this time and I don’t need a documentary to tell me that.
The funniest aspect, I think, is the DNA evidence that’s being touted. Now the promoters might like people to think that this evidence is as probative of the fact that this ossuary held the body of the Jesus of Nazareth of the New Testament Gospels as DNA evidence in court proves that a defendant was or was not guilty of a crime, but of course it means no such thing. In order to prove that the DNA procured from this box belonged to that Jesus, we would have to have a DNA sample that was unquestionably from that Jesus or from some other family member who shared DNA with that Jesus. We have no such thing.
In my opinion, this is nothing more than an interesting find. It proves or disproves exactly nothing about the Jesus of the Gospels.
By Ann on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
I’m certain you’ve said other things I’ve agreed wholeheartedly with before, Craig - but never more so than on this thread. I saw this story on the Beeb’s website last night and, without even bothering to read through to the last line, thought exactly the same thing.
Surely noone could really believe that, if archeologists were to find something that ‘could’ be the remains of Jesus - let alone his entire longforgotten (or well hidden) brood - that they’d leave it to some Hollywood producer to tell us the story!
Jesus Christ!!! (a rather appropriate profanity in the circumstances I’m thinking…).
I don’t know whether you got it there but, here. we had an entire ‘live’ weekend devoted to the opening of a door in a previously unexplored tunnel in one of the pyramids in Egypt a year or two back. How could anyone reading this story not think the networks would have shut down their entire schedules for the forseeable future and given us back to back, point by point, blow by blow speculation (like they do for any ‘big story’ ) on ‘what’s iiiiin the box’ if there was any remote chance whatsoever that the ‘Jesus ossuaries’ where genuine? I’ll say again:
Jesus Christ!
By Jersey McJones on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Jet, you may be a part of the flock, but you are no sheep. Craig, same for you (right? I don’t recall. I guess that just proves that you’re not a sheep anyway…). Oh, and is it “Baaaaeeee” or is it “Aaaabaaay” (pigs, sheep - it’s all good! - made a great novel and Pink Floyd album!)
Craig, two points -
1) I understand that they brought in a statistician who showed that the particular combination of names is highly improbable. I have to see this first.
2) I agree that there is no way to positively identify these corpses. I believe the show projects that point, from what I’ve heard.
Ann, my fine friend, if, just plain if, you could be convinced that modern man has found the bones of Jesus, would that bother you?
Let me say this - I would be thrilled to think that there was a real Jesus - a real man, person, named Jesus, who walked and talked and did what he supposedly did. Now, I don’t care about the “miracles” and all that voodoo, so maybe I’m biased about this, but the thought that a real, regular, you-or-I-type person preached the doctrine of love and patience, loyalty and charity, separation of church and state - of faith and logic, now that’s something.
Peace, JMJ
By Jersey McJones on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Oh, and sorry Ann, I meant to say that you’re no “baaaa” either!
JMJ
By Ann on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Jers (I feel I can call you ‘Jers’ seeing as we’re now friends an’ all): nope not at all. I’d be delighted, in fact - it’d make my Grandmother’s lifetime devotion to a faith I no longer share, worthwhile. I don’t mind admitting when I’m wrong - especially about ‘big’ stuff!
Sadly, though, I don’t believe these are likely to be anything more than the remains of people who just happened to share the names of a possibly mythical family who appear in a very popular, very old, book. Or our media are even worse than I actually thought….
By Ann on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Ta.
By Tom Baker on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
I wholeheartedly agree that using DNA without a definitive sample from the family line that the person commonly meant when someone says Jesus is kind of silly (at least to a non-geneticist). If you don’t have an authenticated DNA sample how can you tell if the DNA there matches?
Still, is that any sillier than the various religious leaders all claiming that the find HAS TO be false because it contradicts the bible? They claim, wrongly, that the bible is the “best historical record” from that time period (I think that was Father O’Connor from Catholic University this morning one of the talk shows) ergo anything that contradicts said record is wrong. That circular logic runs rampant in “religious scholar” type circles. As if the bible were some sort of newspaper report from the scene instead of various stories put together long after the actual events….
The point of all of this is that none of us today have any clue what really happened then. None of us. No biblical scholar, no archeologist and certainly not James Cameron. We don’t KNOW if Jesus even existed (sorry people, that bit of “fact” is highly disputable), we don’t know if he rose from the dead, married and had a family or if he partied like a wild-man during the last super. It’s all faith. If you chose to believe it, it doesn’t matter what James Cameron says. You’ve already thrown your hat into the belief without evidence ring. If you choose not to believe it, then you’re not going to be convinced either.
By Craig R. Harmon on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
I’m not Ann, of course, but Jersey asked an interesting question:
Paul placed great importance on the Resurrection. He wrote:
Paul goes to great length to state the case for the resurrection of Jesus. His case is: many people who were alive at the time he wrote, including himself, actually attest to having seen Jesus after he was crucified. There were, Paul says, hundreds of eye witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. His point being that one of three things is the case: 1. Jesus didn’t die on the cross, only appeared to die and later left the tomb in which he was buried to be seen by hundreds of people; 2. hundreds of people are either deluded, were tricked into believing that they saw what they did not see or are lying about what they saw; or 3. Jesus died and rose again from the grave.
Why is this so important? If Jesus was not raised, I would pretty much hang it up. Paul then wrote:
All rests on the resurrection. Either Jesus rose from the dead or it’s all a pack of lies.
By Tom Baker on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Not to pick on anyones belief system ( I do believe in personal faith if one chooses, I’ll even fight for it if you want), but if you are going to question “either Jesus rose from the dead, or it’s all a pack of lies” because of Paul, why not ask the real question - did Paul really write it or is it a case of the writings being pseudepigraphic. We have no way of really knowing. The usual sources for confirmation of the historical events are all highly debatable and many are out-and-out wrong. If you can prove Paul was really there, and that that Paul wrote the letters and that he was telling the truth (independent corroboration by some of those other eyes) then you make a strong case for having evidence that Jesus lived, died and came back. If you can’t prove Paul, then using Paul’s accounts as a way to prove or justify your faith is a bit circular.
I find it odd that people are debating the “authenticity” of the Jesus Box without bothering to debate the authenticity of all the other biblical stuff. If something in you rings an alarm about how improbable and unverifiable the new findings are, take a deep breath and ask yourself why you don’t view the bible the same way.
For some very interesting (though possibly uncomfortable reading, try this)
By SteveIL on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Ken Grandlund said:
That is all it was ever about: faith.
Ken Grandlund said:
Well, I’ll let Ken answer his own question with his final question:
By Tom Baker on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
Ah yes, but if you can prove an article of faith wrong, then you start unraveling the entire faith structure. Then faith is replaced by fact and facts have this nasty habit of altering your entire world-view. People who are “believers” really don’t want their “faith” messed with.
By Jersey McJones on Feb 27, 2007 | Reply
I hear both of the points you made to me, Ann. To the former - thanks. To the latter - who the heck knows, and wouldn’t it be great if Jesus was a person like you and me? Wouldn’t it be great if we really could all be like Jesus? At least without the synoptic-bible bullshit. Right?
JMJ
By Craig R. Harmon on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Tom,
Fine, we can debate that too but most of the letters that purport to be by Paul are also accepted as Paul’s letters by most scholars and that’s about as determinative as it gets. There’s almost no field of study over which all scholars agree about anything. All I’m telling you is, this is my faith. If it were proven to me that Jesus was not raised, I would conclude that I had been wrong to believe the Christian gospel. That doesn’t mean that I would stop living my life pretty much as I live it now, I would just jettison the Christianity part.
I’m not saying what I did supposing that it is probative for you or for anyone else. I’m saying that I buy his preaching. I don’t believe that Paul would be saying that there are hundreds of people who personally witnessed Jesus resurrected if there were, in fact, nobody making that claim.
Since none of the early Christians were particularly wealthy or likely to get particularly wealthy from pawning off a lie that they knew to be a lie, I buy the argument. I’m not saying that it’s anything like proof positive. I am saying that most scholars working in the field of biblical studies think that a man named Paul wrote the letters to the Corinthians.
As for whether Paul was lying? It’s possible. Sometimes you just gotta decide whether a guy is telling the truth or lying. I ask myself, why would he lie? What’s he getting out of it? Wealth? Most of those who believed the Gospel were not wealthy people and Paul had his own source of income: as a tent-maker. Honor? The man was often reviled by those who rejected his gospel and occasionally thrown into jail for preaching his message. Travel? Well, he did travel, all over the Middle East only eventually to be taken to Rome and put to death for his faith and preaching. Being a Christian in the earliest days was no picnic. It could and frequently did get you killed.
Could it all be a lie? Sure. Can I prove it’s not? Nope, not to the modern critical skeptic with and air-tight, irrefutable, unanswerable argument. All I can say is what I believe and why…and why, if it were proven to not be so, I’d give it up.
By Tom Baker on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Craig, I’m not trying to pick a fight. I don’t even expect an answer other than “I believe it” I just want to point out some of the problems I have with the thinking. Biblical scholars accept that many of the letters attributed to Paul are written by the same person. That does not mean they were written at the time of Jesus’s death by THE Paul who is supposed to be there. There is no proof of that. It’s not air-tight irrefutabel proof I’m talking about, it’s the complete lack of verifiable, independent proof. Almost all the biblical scholar proof is self-referential. yes we know letters were written, yes we know they are referenced by later people, but we don’t know who, how or why. We don’t even know exactly when.
Why would someone make them up? Well I’m not saying they did, but the Christian community has disregarded several Books of the bible as not being authentic. Why would those have been made up? Why are those “not valid” and the others are? The exist, someone wrote them, but yet we say these are not real, or these are. We also debate which writings are really Paul’s (biblical scholars are in disagreement about this as you know) and which are not. For nearly 2 milinea this was not questioned, but now it is? Why? Once again, I bring this up only because you ask why would someone do it, there is no good reason, therefore I believe. Why would someone have written those things you don’t believe and why don’t you have faith in them? What makes it different? Why would they bother?
Every religion but a persons “own religion” is assumed to be wrong, yet people die for it, live for it, work to grow it etc. Every religion has “wittinesses” to the miracles, yet you don’t believe any of them but yours I’d imagine. I doubt you put much faith in the Koran, but millions of folks do (enough to fly planes into buildings). The motivations for faith aren’t money or power, but the zeal to spread your belief. If every other religion spread falsehoods and lies (since they can’t be right if you are) to increase their reach, why can’t the same question be asked of early (and subsequent) Christians?
I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just pointing out the logical problems I have with religion, any religion. All faith, no evidence. Seems like a crazy way to run a world.
By Craig R. Harmon on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Found an article wherein some archaeologists and others discuss the claims. Some interesting points made, including this about the statistical claim:
Ask me, that’s not saying much at all for the statistical probabilities that this would be any more likely to be the Jesus of the Bible rather than not.
Just my opinion but if that’s all it hinges on, no more than a 1 in 1,000 and maybe as little as 1 in 100 probability that these ossuaries belonged to the family of the Jesus of the Gospels and no others, I’m not impressed.
By ken grandlund on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Craig-
You noted that were you to find that the resurrection were not an actual, literal event, you’d have to jettison the entire Christian philosophy as false. Yet you say you would change little (if anything) about the way you conduct your life. Why then is it necessary for you to hold those beliefs as religion now? Is it more than tradition? If you could so readily discard them if proven to be based on untruths, how can you assert that they are in fact truth to begin with?
As with Tom, not trying to pick a fight or even induce you to defend your faith. I am just fascinated how people come to their beliefs and their rationale for having them. Not having a religion per se (unless you count my belief in anthropogenic climate change, which SteveIL asserts is a religion) I find it easy to understand my point of view on the matter, based more on (what I like to think is) logic and observation than on faith.
Also, if I offer rebuttal to your answer, please do not perceive that as an attempt to ‘prove you wrong’ so much as a conversation from opposing positions, to expand understanding one more bit…
By Craig R. Harmon on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Ken,
Well holding my beliefs is not a matter of necessity, it’s a matter of finding that the overall message of the Bible, at least as I understand it, ringing true to my own internal lights. From the framework of the faith I profess, God has worked this faith in me. From the framework of my experience, the preaching of the faith has the feel of truth to me. It could be argued that that’s just because I was raised Christian but I wasn’t raised particularly Christian or particularly any religion at all. Until College, my attitude was a fairly straight forward “If you can’t prove to me that there’s a God, I ain’t believing in God.” In College I heard a message that rang true to my conscience. In light of my inner experience of the truth of the Gospel, the fact that it wasn’t provable wasn’t particularly troubling to me. I already had all the proof my conscience needed. I guess, to put it into the language you’ve put your question in, it is necessary for me to hold these beliefs as religion because that’s what my conscience tells me is the case. However, were I to be confronted with inescapable proof that what I believed was not true, I would stop believing it. That wouldn’t mean that I’d stop being a decent sort of guy…I was always a decent sort of guy, even before College. That’s really what I mean. I’d stop believing in Jesus as a savior and in the gospel as the truth. There’d be no point to believing what I would know to be untrue. Instead of being good because God loves me and saved me, I’d be good because I’m convinced that that’s the way to live, because it’s the only way for the society of human beings to live, because choosing to live any other way would be to destroy what it means to me to be a human being. In that sense, nothing much would change…I’d just find something else to do with the time I ordinarily spend at Church and I’d probably find other things to read in the place of my Bible reading.
I probably wouldn’t give up the prayer though, the sense of communing with the divine. I’d miss that too much.
The assertion that they are truth, is based on that inner certainty rather than on an examination of historical evidence.
By ken grandlund on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Craig- your explanation is what I expected from you…not wishy-washy or full of hyperbole, but rather a personal decision based on personal experience and self awareness. And as such is the essence of what I would consider a true faith.
Too many answer that question with a simplitude and without ever having reached their beliefs through introspection and examination.
For many of the same reasons, I do not share your faith. I was not raised with a particular religion so much as a smorgasbord of religions, most professing to be the one true Christianity, but with a smattering of paganism blended with eastern philosophy, and exposure to the other monotheistic club members. I also had a strong interest in more ancient religions and mythologies and noted the similarities among them all, even as they were dressed in the garments of the dominant ideology of the day.
For sure religion espouses many of the finer qualities of humanity in its basic tenets and teachings. And undoubtably, the efforts of humanity to live up to or impart those tenets while adhering to them as well is too much to ask for; we just can’t get ourselves to become the objective. But as you note, sans religion, you’d still behave in the same manner towards others. It is not so much that religion creates morality. It is morality that created religion.
I deride religion when it becomes an excuse for committing travesties or for controlling minds. I deride religion for it’s inherent superiority towards competing belief systems. And I deride religion where it seeks to constrain human knowledge and advancement. But I understand it’s personal value to individuals, and accept it for the comfort it can provide to those who want or need it.
By SteveIL on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Tom Baker said:
Good luck proving the faith wrong. Personally, I would doubt Cameron found Jesus’s grave for several logical, and scientific reasons.
First, Jesus was a Jew executed by the Romans. Now, taking the Biblical story as accurate (for the moment), he was buried in a cave with a rock covering it. Now, what kind of cave would that be, especially for a man who they said was claimed to be a “king”? It would probably be unmarked except for the nearby guards. They would have probably wanted to keep the site secret to avoid somebody possibly trying to use the site to raise Jesus as some kind of Jewish martyr.
Second, Jesus was a commoner, not an aristocrat. Even if Mary was descended from David (as said in Scripture), the days of any kind of Davidic royalty were long gone (for well over 500 years). And Joseph was reported to be a carpenter, not any kind of a position for an aristocrat. Knowing nothing about the burial rituals of Jews during the 1st Century A.D., I can’t say whether or not they would put bones into limestone boxes. However, it doesn’t seem to make sense as most commoners in almost all ancient societies are simply buried in a hole in the ground, maybe wrapped in cloth; but that would be about it.
Third, from the piece:
Why would there be a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic (the spoken language of Judea at the time) for the inscriptions? That’s very strange. And then Greek? Again, these people were commoners. Only the learned aristocrats and rabbinic class would have possibly learned Greek (and I think Hebrew, although someone might want to double-check this), and only to communicate with the Romans (and possibly for trading). Now, I don’t know anything about “ossuaries”, and maybe this was a common practice. But it does seem suspect to me.
Fourth, Jerusalem was pretty much destroyed by the Romans during the 100 years after Jesus died: by the future emperor Titus during the 66 A.D. revolt; then again by the emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. Granted the Western (Wailing) Wall survived in part, but that is a massive structure. It is quite reasonable to assume that the bones of a family of commoners would not have survived both razings by the Romans. Although not impossible.
Lastly, and Craig mentioned this, the DNA. How could possibly anybody know if the DNA being examined would actually be the DNA for Jesus (or any of the family members) if there’s almost zero chance of finding a DNA match to check it against? Other than the few family members mentioned in the Bible, there is nothing there that says who the offspring were of any of Jesus’s possible siblings, or cousins, or anyone else. And I don’t know if there are any extant Roman records to indicate this (I would doubt it, especially since Judea was such a violent province for the Romans to govern).
By Scott on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
I guess I do not get the big deal. Christ was a man and any way that you look at it his physical body could not go to heaven. Heaven is a spiritual realm with no place for the physical body. If a guy like me who is not big on religion can figure that out what does that say about the so called religious right.