American Uproar Over Jesus's Tomb

Carrera

If anyone has serious objections, I don't mind dropping this thread as it may be too offensive but I thought maybe I'd test the waters and see what people think.
The fact is I just got back from another website where it seems some people are in uproar over this tomb of Jesus that's been discovered. In the U.S.A. especially, there is real anger directed against James Cameron and his team over the discovery of this tomb and the idea Jesus fathered a son called Judah.
What worries me is we're witnessing the same kind of irrational reaction to these claims as you witness in Iran (for example when Salmon Rushdie published his book). Americans are simply digging in their heels, covering their ears, yelling the words "fraud", "liar" "sham!" but do we see these folks even reading the evidence or making any rational defence?
Nope!
I'm sorry folks but there is plenty of evidence to suggest the scientists and archeologists are now hot on the heels of the 3 world religions, discovering texts the Church wanted to destroy and exposing insertions, distortions and mistranslations in all these ancient texts.
The Da Vinci code, we are told, is just a fantasy story - the author himself backs down probably due to the uproar.
Nope, that's not quite the case. The Da Vinci code may have been exaggerated to make a good novel but it's also based on a certain amount of fact taken from the rediscovered coptic manuscripts that offer a new perspective of Jesus. For example, this extract taken from a coptic text that refers to Mary Magdalene:
"That is why He (Jesus) loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said."
As for the tomb, this is currently being debated with claim and counter claim. However, there's a good deal of evidence to suggest Jesus did have family, did read Hebrew scriptures in Jewish synagogues and, more to the point, ancient sources outside of the Bible paid little attention to the claims made by the early Christians about Jesus's burial.
Even hotter evidence is exposing the void between early Christianity and what the Church began to teach as orthodoxy around 300 A.D. Did Jesus really teach the doctrine the Church claimed he taught or has there been a huge cover up, a series of distortians and outright deceit?

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

Scotty_Dog

As we speak, there is an angry mob marching down my street. They have an emblazened effigy of James Cameron and are demanding he be executed immediately.

Seriously though, this is basically tabloid news in the USA. Don't let a few people from a website sway you into believing this is a critical topic here. Next...

__________________
"There is alot of blather here that does not float the hooey barge." boudreaux 11/22/2005

Carrera

Hmmm, but it's been going on for some time in America. Even John Lennon feared assassination after he made his comments about Jesus and you had these Southern mobs burning Beatle records.
James Cameron is in a whole heapload of trouble and hasn't he just rocked the boat!!
The problem with religion (all religion) is this modus operandi of the belief system which rejects rational analysis. The nitty gritty of the matter is these evangelical churches teach their adherents that "doubt" (i.e. rational investigation") is "Satanic" or "of the Devil".
It's a convenient way to simply step back and state, "I believe no matter what anyone else says!" You see no attempt to even address the issue.
I recall an interview on T.V. between a BBC journalist and a Bush Administration neo conservative advisor. The journalist spent 30 minutes explaining how ancient Greek and Hebrew texts differed from one another textually and how certain paragraphs were either juggled, reinserted or modified.
The Bush guy simply replied he believed in the total word of God and that was that. End of story.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

Carrera

There is growing anger. Take this comment:
"If the Discovery Channel fails to cancel this slanderous documentary, it will have to explain why it is intentionally misleading the public," Brent Bozell, president of the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, told the trade. "They should be embarrassed by this plunge into sensational speculation masquerading as science. The Discovery Channel will have dug its own grave if it doesn't pull this documentary."

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

cheapie

i haven't seen anything on the issue. i think i recall something a while ago but i just searched most of the big news outlets and nothing came up on their homepage.

oh wait. here's something: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/En...=2905662&page=1


yup. us americans are going ape over this. woohoo! get out the pitchforks and start the tar boiling and go git us some chickens. we're going to need the feathers!

sometimes you might want to step back and see if your claims are based in reality...oops. just a sec. someone just sent me a meeting request for a jihad kaizen event. it's on baby!!!!

sogood

Rocking the foundation of a person or a group's theological belief can bring out the worst in a person or group.

__________________
Morphed Bianchi Camaleonte IV 2006, Ridley Damocles 2006, Garmin, Mac

wolfix

This is no news in America....... Good tabloid news.

__________________
"I rule my world with a cellphone."

Carrera

Basically I'm not an atheist. Neither do I deny Jesus Christ existed or that there isn't a certain amount of accuracy in the Bible.
Neither is Cameron's claim beyond doubt since it's very open to debate.
What I do detect, though, is this gap between the actual teachings of Jesus Christ and the official doctrine of the Church that was established after a lot of argument, fragmentation, wrangling and discord, some 250 years after the crucifixion.
I do know the very early Christians never really had a "creed" and varied in what they believed. Not all of them believed Jesus was equal to Yahweh or that Yahweh was even equal to Jesus. Some believed gentiles should be circumcised, others believed gentiles should follow the Torah and not all groups accepted the Hebrew scripts as canon.
At some point the Church decided upon an Orthodox doctrine and proclaimed the other branches of Christianity as heresy. Books such as the Gospel Of Mary were likewise rejected.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

Carrera

That's because we all know we will die and we all know we're born and die. Logically we have to make some sense out of it all.
I often joke that if my dog was the dominant species on Earth, he would have his particular theory with respect to how we all got here. There would be images of canines in Churches and accounts of the Great Pooch who created dogs after his own image.
Mankind was, of course, made subject to pooches.
Just so much as suggest the world wasn't created by a pooch and he'd bite you and quote from his Holy Scripture that all life was created by a pooch in 6 days.

__________________
"Everybody has a philosophy. However, what philosophy you have is a matter of choice, and most people don't make a conscious choice with regard to what philosophy they accept."

garyj

I'm more active and involved in a local church than most people. I meet and deal with "church people" every day. I've yet to hear any mention of the "Jesus tomb" book or documentary. I also believe it's tabloid journalism at this point. Most people are not aware of the historical and archeological issues involved. There is no real evidence this information should change what anyone believes.

bkaapcke

If it proves out to be Jesus' tomb, It'll be fun watching the more hard core christians try to explainn it away. The BS will really fly. I can't wait. bk

Christian History Completely Discredits The Word.

limerickman

Early Christianity is an interesting topic.

It is accepted that Jesus Christ existed - both in an historical sense and in terms of faith.
Historically, there are records which show that Jesus Christ existed.
The fork in the road appears when the issue of faith is introduced and whether or not people choose to believe that Jesus Christ is (the Son of) God.

The early Christian Church (AD 50 - AD 200) from it's inception was at pains to decide if it was a Judeo-Christian group, or a Christian-Judeo group.
That early debate centred around the issue of whether or not the new Christian Church would be based upon Judaism or one which was completely new and separate.
St.Paul and St.Peter argued over this - for example, could a Gentile be converted to the new Christian Church, did one have to be circumcised to join the new Church, were the dietary customs of the Old Religion applicable to Christianity.
This debate raged for many years.

The question of orthodoxy was established initially at the Council of Nicea approx 300 years after the death of Jesus.
Nicea ruled on issue such as the Divinity of Jesus Christ and it tried to bring a consensus to what had been in place, throughout different locations, for the first two centuries after the death of Jesus Christ.

__________________
.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

limerickman

With regard to Cameron - I think he's drawing the wrong conclusion from what he thinks he may have found.

Not that I have followed to story in any great detail - but I heard an interview yesterday in which Tony Robinson (of Channel 4's Time Team - and the guy who played Baldrick in Blackadder) said that this same "tomb" had been first found in 1996.

So the story of Cameron discovering it - appears to be publicity.

It's a bit like Cameron's Titanic - it wasn't a great film and it was a pale imitation
of the better (and more accurate) earlier 1953 film "A Night to Remember".

__________________
.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets" - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Bro Deal

This is incorrect. There is nothing that is even close to being contemporary with Jesus. The most common reference is Tacitus, but Tacitus was born a generation after Jesus' death and the passage he wrote that references Jesus was written nearly a century after Jesus' death. Authors like Josephus, also born after Jesus' death, seem to be simply repeating the Christian mythology instead of drawing from legitimate earlier records. On top of that there are serious questions about the authenticity of sources like Tacitus and Josephus. In other cases sources that are sometimes siezed upon as proof, refer to persons with the name "Chrestus" which was a common name, and obviously not the Christ in question.

All New Testament writings were produced decades after Jesus' death. The oldest is Mark, dated at 30 - 40 years after Jesus, and the resurrection ending was added later; it does not exist in the earlier copies. The newer gospels not only obviously steal from earlier accounts, they expand upon and "enhance" them. Changes and omissions in the gospels is a fascinating topic.

__________________
"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates