I won’t go on and on about this, but respectfully I will simply say that I disagree with the premise of the book from many standpoints, starting with the Ascension and ending with “money-makers invading the temple” so to speak. If you want to discuss it, feel free to e-mail me or start a new forum. I won’t bring it up otherwise.

That being said, I recently found this blow-by-blow report of the Tomb of Jesus documentary that might interest you. I don’t have cable, so I can’t tell you how accurate this report is, but the web-writer seems to try to be generally fair, even though he makes his bias quite clear. (He doesn't come across derisively.)

Pay special attention to the forum that begins below the commentary. Many thoughts. They also deal with the manipulation of the statistician’s numbers of 600 to 1:

http://ntgateway.com/weblog/2007/03/lost-tomb-of-jesus-documentary-live.html

Review of the ted koppel inquisition afterward:

http://targuman.org/blog/?p=557

By the way, I previewed, that "Morris Avenue" book. Looks intriguing. I think I might have to get me one.

Having read all of the above commentaries as well as the summarization of the documentary and ted koppel commentary I think it is astounding the publicity this entire issue has got.

I mean in all seriousness, if two christians had a documentary about how the ark had been found and had been shown to be real, thereby proving the existance at the location decribed in the bible of an ark capable of carrying humans and 2 of every animal through a 40 day and night flood. Don't you think they would have a field day with the qualifications of the discoverers and evidence described in the documentary?

And here we have a documentary of an archaeological find by two people who aren't even archaeologists (?!!?!?!?) who claim they have found hard evidence that Jesus had a family, and people are just like, "Hey I find this fascinating, wouldn't the church hate for this to get out!" Without ever seriously analyzing the facts.

GIVE ME A BREAK!! Here we have two unqualified individuals try to sloppily (really) put together some evidence and all these people just happily jump on the bandwagon...

And people criticize Christians, because they just believe and are all about having faith. But they will have completely blind faith in something like this without ever even questioning what they've seen and how it was put together!

Look at the facts critically for a moment. As showed by Ted Koppel's critical look by a wide arrange of experts, there are seroiusly MANY things to be looked at and critiqued here before you would ever seriously consider this evidence.

People love to pride themselves in being scientifically minded and love to think "well I don't believe in such poppycock" or nonsense, but they don't even look at the facts!

Here Ted Koppel's critical look brings in a wide array of experts and none of them really think the evidence is strong... NONE OF THEM!

And I mean COME ON. This documentary was 100% meant to make you come to a certain conclusion. If you don't believe me refer to the way the documentary ends with the people coming in to tell them to reseal the ossuaries, and then the credits roll, ... "leaving the viewer to decide for themselves"

Come on, at least give the viewers an unbiased account, not this biased unsubstantiated, poorly put together presentation. Seriously, send some REAL scientists down there and THEN give me a report.

Also, 100% of all denominations believe in a bodily resurrection, not a "spiritual one". This DOES contradict what every Christian believes about the disciples and the girls finding the tomb EMPTY. No ifs, ands, buts about it.

If you know absolutely anything about the bible. There is nothing in biblical text indicating that Jesus had a wife. I am not a catholic, but I know for a fact that the catholic churches does not teach Mary Magdalene was a prostitute! In fact, many of my friends growing up in catholic schools in the past 20 years (well before the DA VINCI CODE) were told that she was not a prostitute but the bible only mentions her AS A WOMEN CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF ADULTERY.

Jesus tells her to go and sin no more and cast several devils out of her according to the bible but there is NOTHING indicating she was his wife.

She was not slandered by the church, she simply did not have a role in the gospel story. The gospels not allowed in the bible which include several blanks in the text were not allowed in the cannon for good reason. Matthew Mark Luke and John all correlate and work together. The others feature outlandish stories such as a walking talking cross mary having to be made a man to enter heaven, and Paul acting like a crazy man and baptizing lions. Dan Brown chose to show (AND THIS HAD BEEN ADMITTED AND PROVEN) what MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAID in the missing TEXT to indicate that Mary was really his wife.

Seriously look critically at facts.

Dan Brown is no scientist either.

Many REAL scientists and archaeologists contest his work.

If you want to criticise Christians for believing in "such things", find out facts yourself and take a critical look at the evidence and whether the person giving it is an expert.

just found out a good friend of mine is drumming for the essex green.

strange six degree type of thing.

oh and as for jesus well...

Many tombs have been discovered in that area over the years. There has also been hoaxes in the past, contending that they found the body of Jesus. This wouldn’t be the first. Was it discovered by archaeologists. No, it wasn’t. What methods were used for the dating? Was there chance for contamination of evidence? On an issue like this, it would be wise to ask these questions, especially considering they were not archaeologists? Could they date when the cross was “etched in”? I would be interested to see.

I don’t think, we have to look very far. I don’t think Ted Koppel’s analysis was even biased towards my opinion on the matter. I think he simply brought in a wide variety of experts, and had everybody take a critical look examine the credibility of the claims

I think they all leaned towards the side that there was much to be skeptical about. I just think it’s odd that so many people are like, “wow, what an amazing discovery this is!” without looking critically at any of it.

Scientists jumped to conclusions all the time. People use reasoning and logic and they make “educated guesses”, based on their particular understanding of the data. Another scientist comes along and makes a completely different guess. Also, some scientists aren’t as willing to consider other theories.

I have not presented faith-based evidence. I simply said no Christians who actually believe their own faith, believe in a spiritual resurrection and not a bodily resurrection. I was just making a statement of fact, no denomination’s beliefs include that of a spiritual resurrection and not a bodily one. They are all very specific on that point.

I was saying that the double standard was that people who are critical of the bible’s validity as a historical document and subscribe to conspiracy theories like the da vinci code often will accept a documentary like this one at face value, but like I said if the documentary was about a discovery that validated the existence of an ark and a worldwide flood, those same people would have a field day with the qualifications of those involved.

That is a double standard.

As far as the gospels being revised, that is an unfounded statement. There has been much newly discovered evidence with new manuscripts found, especially of Mark dating back to 50 AD (and not only that it was found all the way in Egypt!) All the copies found have been virtually identical.

Now before you scoff at that statement, let me give you some more information. When I say virtually identical, over the years they have found things scholars refer to as Variants. They have recorded every single one found, (and the company’s who do translations today also have access to these variants).

Statistically about 85% of them were names, whos spelling and formation often gets lost or changed in translations. The other 15 % were mistakes and biblical scholars worked hard to study whether they found any serious mistakes that changed the meaning of any passages. None of the mistakes found, were reported to have changed the meaning of the passages.

That is a synopsis of the current scholarly understanding (Christian and non-christian alike) on the validity of the New Testament documents. Again, seriously Dan Brown is not a scientist, archaeologist, or anything close. Please advise if you know of any new discovery on manscripts of the same gospel’s letters that have been mistranslated or have gross errors that change or corrupt the meaning of the text.

As far as the four admitted gospels contradicting each other, that’s not really true. There are small details that are different, as one writer remembers this person seeing Jesus first after the resurrection, and the other one says no such and such saw him when he was walking here. Well, in a court of law, if four people are all asked to give an account of an occurrence, if they all write down the same account and no details contradict, the court considers that evidence that they collaborated on their stories. The details that don’t match up 100% are evidence that they were not collaborated on, and they are genuine accounts of what happened seen and remembered through the eyes of four different people.

While the church authority was all-male, that is because that is what our religion believes is supposed to be the way with the role of “teaching in the church”. The catholic church took Pauls teaching on teaching in the church to mean they shouldn’t be placed in church leadership at all. It wasn’t done out of hate or disdain. Protestants in general contest that, and generally confine it to “teaching roles”. Not that women weren’t smart enough or capable to occupy these positions, but it was not done because of the way we believe God sets us as husbands to protect our wives, sacrifice for them, be the spiritual head of the family and make decisions for the good of our household (again of course this says nothing about who is working).

Jewish rabbis, Pharisees, etc. at that time did not have females in leadership as well, though they did have some cases of female prophetesses, and even a female judge and a warrior in the old testament. So this was also the culture, and not just that darnd Christian church and their conspiracies. This had nothing to do with the fact that the church was dominating women or anything like that.

Now, if you would like to debate which gospels were admitted and which were not that’s another story. Those other gospels were rejected for many, many reasons. Many of them did not have contradictory accounts, so much as weird statements like women could not go to heaven, unless they were turned into men? (gospel of mary). This didn’t just contradict Christianity but Judaism as well. And as you know Christians, especially at this time were just jews whose messiah had come, and gentiles who had been grafted in according to longheld jewish belief that their messiah would come and be a light to the gentiles(means non-jew). But back to topic, the other gospels had problems as not having been around very long, and they had evidence even back then that many of them were very recently written and vastly contradicted the main gospels which had been around for a very long time. The four gospels admitted were found all over the world at the point of early church history. Many of these other gospels didn’t even turn up or had never even been seen until the time of pope Clementine. There are many, many reasons that these gospels were not admitted. Not just because they told the same story 350 years later with different details.

There was no conspiracy.

As far as there being way too many CRAZY things happening in the four main gospels, yes that is true but in a VASTLY different way. These miracles and crazy occurrences (walking on water, the feeding of the five thousand, raising Lazarus from the dead) are different they are done through very specific rules and only for the edification of those watching that many might come to believe. That was the nature of all the miracles. It’s not like Jesus ever took the credit for himself (like he would if he were faking the miracles). He never used them to advance himself. He died willingly at the cross. With many of these other writings, the outlandish things are not of this nature at all.

This being said, the scribes, Pharisees (jewish priests, teachers of the law) even said that Jesus did signs and wonders, but that he did them by the power of Satan, and not God.

I was just talking with a Jewish rabbi the other day and he said “we know that he thought he was the messiah, and it’s not contested that he worked signs and wonders in the jewish community, but it is contested that he is who he said he was Yeshua, the long awaited messiah.

Okay, also there were many people present at the resurrection, not just his mother and mary. . The gospels all mention MANY people present by name, not just those two.

As for the blanks about Jesus kissing Mary. There were more like three or four blanks (which Brown failed to mention to his readers as I recall) And so there was more than one variable there. And yes, if you are a student of history you will recall that jewish tradition included kissing a man or a woman in certain ways. It could very easily be part of a blessing where he kissed her often on the forehead.

Not to mention for goodness sake, the context of the rest of that gospel? Which is incomplete at best, which also hinders us applying the context of what the rest of that gospel has to say about their relationship. This is shoddy evidence at best, my friends! Why are we so easily taken in by these conspiracy theories?

Brown also uses evidence that one of the disciples looks like a girl in the last supper painting. If you look at many religious and other paintings of this time, they all portray men to look like women (see the many paintings of John the Baptist, they all portray him to look more like a woman than the disciple in the last supper did)

I mean I understand okay you don’t believe in the supernatural at all. God is a supernatural idea, I accept that. That is something you can’t argue. But these conspiracy theories and ideas are not proven, not even by experts.

You have to at the very least send experts in before you believe someone on an important “discovery” like this. You have to look critically at the qualifications and the evidence, lack thereof, what opportunities and motives are there before you believe in a story like this.

Mary was never falsely slandered. Scholars over the past hundreds of years, have guessed that Mary, Lazarus’ sister (called Mary of Bethany) was also Mary Magdalene(meaning Mary of Magdela). Pope Gregory put out a sermon in the catholic church saying he believed that Mary, whom seven devils were cast out, mary Magdalene, mary of Bethany were all the same thing. Be it noted also, that Pope Gregory was the first to put out this belief, and he did not caller her a prostitute. It became a “popular belief” later that she was the same woman that was rescued from stoning. However, that has never been confirmed.

She was made a saint by the catholic church not slandered.

She was often portrayed as “penitent” and was referred to by the church as a “sinner” (aren’t we all though right?). This was not so much because it was the “popular belief” of the time that she was the sinner rescued from stoning, so much as it was that Mary of Bethany, lazarus’ sister was the “sinner” who cried at his feet and poured out the alabaster flask of perfume.

In conclusion, sorry this is so long. I apologize if I become passionate, but of course such is the nature of these topics. But there are so many issues here I love to discuss. Really the facts of the matter are that Dan Brown, and Jacobi and James are not scientists or experts, yet many people look at their work and barely cast a critical glance at what they wrote. I think that's sad. They just think, “well that makes perfect sense”. I have done my research on both sides of the issue and believe I have a comprehensive understanding of all issues involved. I just think it is sad that more Christians don’t know how to back up their faith, and that more atheists don’t take a more critical look at theories like these.

retreat to a corner and read "In The Hand Of Dante" by Nick Tsochhes and get back to us...

http://inthehandofdante.com/

and... GO!

sux.

I thought the discussion was handled well. Not a topic I was eager to see on the SAHD site but in general I think the discussion was at least mature. And it never got personal.

Thanks for interesting reading gents.

Josh

SAHD Since August 2005