Wednesday, February 28, 2007

James Cameron Should Have Made Titanic 2 Instead

Here's a quick way to determine whether the latest archaeological find that threatens to disprove Christianity is real or not: if you read about it in a dusty boring journal of archaeology then ti could be real, but if you hear about it at a news conference for a new Discovery Channel documentary it's not.

It seems there's a new documentary out being pedalled by no less than James Cameron of Titanic, Aliens, etc. This one asserts that archaeologists have uncovered the real burial place of Jesus--along with his wife Mary (Magdalene?) and a son.

Pretty much every reputable scholar--Christian and non-Christian alike--have ripped this thing to shreds. Apparently, these ossuaries (little coffins bones of the deceased were put into back in Jesus' day) have been known about for many years and nobody thought much of them. Names like Jesus, Joseph, Mary, etc. were extremely common Also, these little stone coffins were for the very rich not the poor. And so on, and so on...

A similar hubbub over another ossuary claimed to be final resting place of Jesus' brother James occurred in 2002. That one was determined to be a forgery. Apparently, there was another ossuary found back in the 1940's with "Jesus son of Joseph" on it. Back then similar claims were made, then as now, they were dismissed.

Whether it is the Da Vinci Code or a cable TV documentary, there is money to be made in de-bunking Jesus. There's also a lot of bad scholarship and terrible history too.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.