{"id":2810,"date":"2007-02-26T08:35:29","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T08:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/okay-the-jesus-tomb.html"},"modified":"2007-02-26T08:35:29","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T08:35:29","slug":"okay-the-jesus-tomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/okay-the-jesus-tomb.html","title":{"rendered":"Okay, the Jesus tomb"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Titanic <\/em>wasn’t reason enough to despise James Cameron, he’s now given us another meglomaniac fantasy: that he’s single-handedly debunked Christianity. Yay! Thanks, James! <\/p>\n

Because, you know – using DNA tests to determine if remains belong to Jesus, Mary or Mary Magdalene is…totally doable.<\/em> And of course, Jesus (Yeshua, Joshua…etc..etc..) or Mary (actually Miriam…) weren’t common names in the 1st century. Or, as my husband pointed out last night, "It’s not like Judah<\/em> wasn’t the name of the whole, you know..people…" <\/em><\/p>\n

It’s nonsense, but you know what…Easter is coming!!! <\/em>So, in the tradition of such things, someone must profit from the season, and Lord knows, it shouldn’t just be Russel Stover. <\/p>\n

(You probably remember that the "Gospel of Judas" excitement was played by National Geographic right before Easter last year)<\/p>\n

Scripture scholar Ben Witherington’s got the goods. Read him and be on your merry Lenten way:<\/a><\/p>\n

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2) there is no independent DNA control sample to compare to what was garnered from the bones in this tomb. By this I mean that the most the DNA evidence can show is that several of these folks are inter-related. Big deal. We would need an independent control sample from some member of Jesus’ family to confirm that these were members of Jesus’ family. We do not have that at all. In addition mitacondrial DNA does not reveal genetic coding or XY chromosome make up anyway. They would need nuclear DNA for that in any case. So the DNA stuff is probably thrown in to make this look more like a real scientific fact. Not so much.<\/p>\n

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3) Several of these ossuaries have very popular and familiar early Jewish names. As the statistics above show, the names Joseph and Joshua (Jesus) were two of the most common names in all of early Judaism. So was Mary. Indeed both Jesus\u2019 mother and her sister were named Mary. This is the ancient equivalent of finding adjacent tombs with the names Smith and Jones. No big deal. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More from Scripture scholar Mark Goodacre<\/a><\/p>\n

Archaelogist Dr. Leen Ritmeyer:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Will the world take heed to the comments of Amos Kloner, quoted in the Jerusalem Post<\/a> who said that the documentary\u2019s claims were \u201cimpossible\u201d and \u201cnonsense\u201d and that there was \u201cno likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb in Jerusalem\u201d? Jesus and his family hailed from Nazareth in Galilee, as anyone with a shred of Bible knowledge knows and there was no reason for them to have a family tomb in Jerusalem. It is worth knowing that Jacobovici and Cameron are not original in their claim. The assertion that the family tomb of Jesus has been located was made in James D. Tabor, \u201cThe Jesus Dynasty, The Hidden Story of Jesus, His Royal family, and the Birth of Christianity\u201d (2006).<\/p>\n

Watch this theory go the way of all such contrived \u201csizzling\u201d and \u201cstaggering\u201d \u201cdiscoveries\u201d!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Titanic wasn’t reason enough to despise James Cameron, he’s now given us another meglomaniac fantasy: that he’s single-handedly debunked Christianity. Yay! Thanks, James! Because, you know – using DNA tests to determine if remains belong to Jesus, Mary or Mary Magdalene is…totally doable. And of course, Jesus (Yeshua, Joshua…etc..etc..) or Mary (actually Miriam…) weren’t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOkay, the Jesus tomb - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/okay-the-jesus-tomb.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Okay, the Jesus tomb - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If Titanic wasn’t reason enough to despise James Cameron, he’s now given us another meglomaniac fantasy: that he’s single-handedly debunked Christianity. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}