Either I am truly in the “Big Leagues” of the Christian apologists, or we simply have a skeptic with far too much time on his hands.

I received a letter from “John,” who accuses me of only quoting people that agree with my position and not keeping an open mind on the tomb issue.  I was going to respond to it here, but James White got exactly the same letter, and responded to it here.  White said exactly what I was going to, so read his response and, as John said, “Enjoy your day!”

In the first post in this series, I discussed the significance of names to the Jesus Family Tomb. The conclusion by the producers was that it is statistically unlikely for the cluster of names to occur in any other tomb than the Jesus Family Tomb (1 in 600 that it was anyone else’s tomb).

I have already discussed that the statistics can be made to say whatever a person chooses to have them say. What is really important is the underlying assumptions that drive the statistics. I have even demonstrated that by using a different set of assumptions that a person can show that it is more likely to uncover a tomb with that cluster of names than not. Also, this pdf document discusses a correct interpretation of those statistics.

The name that the documentary made the biggest deal about was Mary Magdalene. Everyone seemed to agree that the presence of that name was a slam dunk in identifying this tomb as the tomb of Jesus Christ.

I can’t disagree with them. If they could prove that Mary Magdalene was present in this tomb, while it may not be 100% proof positive, it would certainly create a very compelling case.

While this is the strongest evidence to bolster the case, it is actually the weakest evidential link. Mary Magdalene’s presence in the tomb is based on a theory by Francois Bovon, the Frothington Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard Divinity School. This theory is pure speculation, and it fits well with the conspiracy-laden “reality” presented by the Da Vinci Code. A brief news story is presented here, outlining some of the professor’s views of the early first century church.

The Acts of Philip was discovered in 1972, and appears to be a fourteenth century manuscript. Professor Bovon claims that it was originally from the fourth century. Do I dare dispute a Harvard professor? While I can’t dismiss the possibility, I submit humbly that a story of a dragon being slain fits better with medieval literature than fourth century literature. I submit, humbly, that a quest to slay the dragon fits better with Arthurian legend than with fourth century history.

There are examples of animals talking in the Bible, so I am not going to be so bold as to claim that the leopard and the kid speaking in this manuscript automatically discount it from being authentic history. Instead, I’m going to point to the fact that worship in the Bible was reserved for God alone, and that the only Biblical person accepting worship was Jesus. Then, we’re going to look at the Acts of Philip v. 101: “And they fell and worshipped [sic] Philip and Bartholomew and Mariamne; and all set out together praising God.”

Contrast that with this from the canonical Acts of the Apostles (10:25-6), when someone tried to worship Peter: “When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, ‘Stand up; I too am a man.’” There was no rebuke recorded in Acts of Philip. This is a sharp contrast to the canonical books, and it seems likely to be a later work because of the Catholic practice of praying to and venerating saints (Philip and Bartholomew, as apostles, were also canonized as saints of the Church). This practice would have been unknown earlier, and manuscript support for it would have been unnecessary.

All that said, there is still no support in the Acts of Philip to tie “Mariamne” with Mary Magdalene. Mariamne is identified as Philip’s sister, but nothing in the canonical gospels identifies Mary Magdalene as Philip’s sister. An indirect tie exists, when Mariamne is called “chosen among women” (v. 95). I could believe that Jesus would call the first witness to His resurrection “chosen among women.”

If the author intended Mariamne to be Mary Magdalene, why not just call her such? It seems to me that this is just another example of the producers of this film trying to make the facts fit their conclusion, when this is so clearly not the case.

Try again!!!

Find a very secular reply to the Tomb of Jesus here. Guess what? She arrives at the same conclusion that Christians do!

I have already dedicated one post to debunking the statistics associated with the Jesus Family Tomb. I’m happy to report that mathematicians are also responding to those numbers in far greater detail than I was able to. It’s also nice to see that I remember enough from my Business Statistics class five years ago to raise similar doubts to the experts in the field.

Dr. Joe Mello has written a response to Dr. Andrey Feuerverger’s calculations here.

Download the PDF.

The Discovery Channel’s documentary on the Jesus Tomb aired this evening. Over the next few days, I will be making a series of posts in response to this documentary. The first will focus on the family names that appear in the tomb. The second will discuss the specific name that is the center of their argument: Mariamne, and why they suppose that it is Mary Magdalene. The third will discuss the implications of the patina evidence pulled from the James ossuary.

Finally, if enough interest exists, I will exapand and edit these posts into an e-book, which will be for sale at a modest price. If little interest seems to exist, I will still combine them into an article and post it on my articles page. I am also collecting links to other sites that refute the Jesus Tomb, and will be posting these by the Da Vinci Code refutation sites and the Blasphemy Challenge answer sites.

The first issue that the documentary touches on is the names that appear within the tomb on the inscribed ossuaries. The statement that Jesus son of Joseph, Mary, and Jose (a nickname for Joseph) appearing individually would be nothing of significance. However, seeing all of these names together in the same tomb increases the liklihood that this is Jesus’ family, since according to the gospels His family all had these names.

The film does its best to stick to the sensational, rather than the facts. As the best surviving historical records from the time of Christ, the gospels cannot be discounted, ignored, or left out. To their credit, the film uses the gospels whenever it helps them out, as it does with the name Jose. Indeed, according to Mark 6:3, Jose (or Joses) is one of Jesus’ brothers.

Another ossuary carries the bones of Matia, or Matthew. Nowhere in the gospels is a Matthew referenced as the brother of Jesus. However, in the geneology of Luke 3:23-38, several Matthews (or variants of the name) are noted in the line. The film says that this is Mary’s lineage, and that since the ancestral name “Matthew” was prominent it is therefore likely that she named a son Matthew.

The gospel accounts do not bear this out. As indicated earlier, the gospels are regarded as the best historical testimony to Jesus’ life; therefore, the fact that they do not record Jesus having a brother named Matthew is a major problem. Just moments ago, the film states that the tomb attests to the gospel account. Now, they stretch the gospel to support their conclusions. Sherlock Holmes stated that conclusions must support facts, facts cannot be twisted to support conclusions. It seems clear that this documentary is not sticking to the facts that are presented.

I don’t know if everyone reads the comments section, so I wanted to call attention to an excellent reader comment that expounds upon my analysis of the DNA sample in the last post. A reader calling himself Aelli had this to say:

Can I just add a little about the DNA sample? It really should be thrown out of the project completely and can have no bearing at all upon any results obtained. The reasons are this:
     aDNA is notoriously difficult to obtain due to degradation and the strong likelihood of contamination with other DNA in the environment. DNA literally floats in the air around us and is the reason for strict sterilisation controls in university human DNA sample labs.

     There is absolutely no way of knowing if the DNA samples tested were actually those of whoever was named on the ossuary or not as, firstly, the tomb is known to have housed about 18 individuals (possibly as many as 35) raising the prospect of the ossuaries being re-used. Additionally, the DNA samples might even be of the person/s who placed the bones in the ossuaries in the first place. There is no way of being sure about this either way, without other samples to compare, and of course this is impossible.

     Additionally, since the tomb was opened in 1980 it has been subject to repeated contamination from the environment and the number of people who have all handled the ossuaries. We must be looking at least at several dozen people over the past 25 years or so, and again, the DNA sample could be that of anyone of those people.

     Even if we could, by some most enormous stretch of the imagination, be sure that the samples were those of the two people named on the ossuaries, we again run into difficulties. They should have been tested against the DNA of all the other ossuaries in order to examine every possibly relationship permutation, the better to arrive at an honest and scientifically valid set of data. We know from a quote by Jacobovici that the only reason they didn’t do this is simply because they couldn’t be bothered to, not because it wasn’t possible.

     As such, the DNA results obtained can have no bearing on any of this, and deserve to be thrown away. Scientifically they are completely invalid.

Very well said, and I couldn’t agree more! I will say it one more time: DNA, in this case, is completely irrelevant. Anyone who says otherwise is completely unaware of the limitations of DNA analysis.

For more on this topic, James White has exchanged e-mails with Dr. Carney Matheson, the scientist who conducted the DNA test for Jacobvici. Read Dr. Matheson’s response to White here. It is very enlightening!

Okay, looking over my last post, I realized that I spent more time berating Christians for poor treatment of non-Christians as well as for lack of basic skill in apologetics than I actually spent answering the specific charges that David Boles presented in his blog post here. So that is what I will do with this post.

As I previously stated, Mr. Boles has an overall tone of vindication, as if this discovery somehow kills Christianity. His lead not only reveals his position, but presupposes the conclusion: “Big news was broken yesterday: Jesus and his family have been founded [sic] dead in their graves in Israel.” This statement is very true. A man named Jesus was found dead in his grave with his family. That does not mean that this is the Lord Jesus, which is (of course) what Mr. Boles is aiming to say, especially in light of the distasteful graphic on his page.

Presupposing that this is the Lord Jesus, Mr. Boles asks the question of how to “translate God,” which I think means how are Christians going to define God in light of this new discovery. Boles’s opinion of God is thus: Read the rest of this entry »

David Boles is the webmaster of a blog entitled Urban Semiotic, which “was founded to address tender questions of human living and rougher matters rotting the urban core.” I have no problem with Boles, his blog, his opinions, or anything of the sort. The comments policy on his site states, several times, that not all comments will be published. Based on the feedback I’ve been receiving from a few readers of this blog, I have no doubt that anything I submit will not be published either. Therfore, I wish to respond to this article, titled “Jesus Found Dead in His Grave” right here so that I will not risk deletion.

Overall, the tone of the article is of someone who is vindicated. At last, we can rest easy since the tomb of Jesus has been found. There was no Ressurection. Now religion can die in peace and we’ll never have to hear from it again. The grotesque picture of Christ is more than enough evidence of that.

His standpoint is evident by the use of the term “Jesus myth” following the lengthy quote that summarizes the Jesus Tomb controversy. I have no intention of restating that here; for a big picture analysis check out the Time Magazine blog on the subject.

I doubt Boles is an actual “Christ myther,” as the adherents to the school of thought that Jesus Christ was never a real, historical person are dubbed by the Tektonics group. Here, I think that Boles simply means that Jesus’ ministry is a modern myth, the way that pantheon of Greek gods is regarded today. In fact, our beliefs about Jesus are called “myth” a few times within the article. This cements for me that Boles does not believe that the stories told in the gospels are true, but a later “mythology” developed by zealous followers.

It should be noted that the discovery of Jesus’ “body” in a tomb is not the “process of shattering of the Jesus myth into Atheism [sic],” but would only serve to bolster alternate positions of how the Ascention occured. The orthodox position is that Jesus ascended body and soul into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. However, there is a school of thought that says only His soul was assumed into heaven.

I am, of course, getting ahead of the issue. There is still no reliable evidence that indicates this tomb is the tomb of Christ and His family. Boles does not appear to be a theologian nor does he have any interest in bolstering either side of that argument. His naive statement betrays that he has no idea other school of thoughts on that matter even exist. The real issue is stated here:

I understand this revolt against the sanctity of the core of Christianity is a direct response to the rise of Christian Fundamentalism in America where Believers now force their myths into mandatory mainstream acceptance: “If you don’t Believe, you’re sinner; if you don’t Repent, you’re going into the fires of hell.”

     The Fundamentalists achieve that punctilious end by poisoning the Political process with their harsh and unloving beliefs and the rest of America — the unmoved middle class who prefer soccer to sacrilege — go along with the movements of the breeze as long as it doesn’t adversely affect their lifestyle.

     With the Far Right Fundamentalists pressing their agenda into Iraq and Iran and even here on the Homeland in the Supreme Court and in the villages and the valleys, the middle class are beginning to see their precious personal rights are winnowing away in the sweaty palms of those who believe in blood and nails and those who worship the implements of death like crucifixes and spears — instead of loving each other just enough to leave people alone.

     If the myth is unwillingly perpetuated into popular culture by the True Believers — sooner or later people, good people, will rise up and fight back for the right to be left alone and to think as they wish and not as others command them to think.

     One of the weapons the mighty ordinary wield against the Myths of the Believers is the scientific process.

Yes, the real issue is that conservatives have control of government, and are attempting to impose morality upon the masses of people. We desire people to live as the Bible commands, as our Creator desires we live. However, that is not how Western culture teaches a person to behave. Here in the United States, people are taught to think for themselves, not to let anyone push them around, and anyone who wants you to behave as part of a collective whole is automatically wrong and you must fight them. It is all about individualism.

The supreme popularity of websites like MySpace is just more evidence of this. With MySpace, a person creates and personaizes a page that is all about him or herself. Is this not the pinnacle of vanity and self-asorbtion? Read the rest of this entry »

I knew that the Jesus Tomb controversy would eventually be a featured blog on WordPress. But I never figured that this would be the featured blog. Urban Semiotic seems unspeakably happy that this discovery has been made, and seems to hope that this will kill the “delusion” of Christianity. Mr. Boles makes that perfectly clear in this statement:

What does this discovery mean for the religious myths that bind us and for the sustenance of the Resurrection ideal to Christians across the world? How does one now translate God?

     Without the Resurrection, doesn’t Christianity become an empty vessel?

And:

This challenge to the Jesus Resurrection will prove interesting as science and technology become even more powerful and infallible. Carbon Dating is hard to render into belief but it easily shatters myths. DNA does not lie or require Blind Faith to be believed.

Perhaps the most telling statement, and the most relevent to my stated mission of helping the science-minded come to faith, is “One of the weapons the mighty ordinary wield against the Myths of the Believers is the scientific process.” Boles insinuates that science will triumph over religion, that deluded Christ-followers like me must inevitably surrender to mounting scientific evidence that we chase dreams and cling to a myth.

I would not be adverse to debating David Boles on that point. But that isn’t the point of this post. I’m not clubbing Boles for his opinion. He has his, I have mine. The point of this post is to club WordPress.

I should have known that no one is interested in reading a reasoned, Christian response to the Jesus Tomb story that is unfolding before us. Instead, they pick the response typical of the world. “Cool! Maybe this will finally be the death of Christiantity.” Of course, the title of the post says it all: Jesus found Dead in His Grave. I doubt that is just meant as a clever headline; it is likely the author’s opinion. Reading the comments section only solidifies that charge.

And it doesn’t help matters when a person calling him/herself “teenfg” posts responses that typify the type of Christian that Mr. Boles rants about:

I understand this revolt against the sanctity of the core of Christianity is a direct response to the rise of Christian Fundamentalism in America where Believers now force their myths into mandatory mainstream acceptance: “If you don’t Believe, you’re sinner; if you don’t Repent, you’re going into the fires of hell.”

Teen’s response oddly mirrors the quote above:

Please do not make assumptions! Once again believe what you want to but Jesus has risen from the dead! The Bible is truth do not question it!!! We disagree with almost EVERYTHING that the Davinci Code says.

Best of all, there is no substance to the argument. I believe in biblical inerrancy, that Jesus rose from the dead, and I disagree with the Da Vinci Code. But I have reasoned responses to each of those topics bred from actual research. I can point to little things like the proper use of titles in Luke that other first century historians got wrong, to the fact that Luke misses not a single village or obscure island in his discussions about geography, that the walls of Jericho fell outward based on the data found at the site, that cultures around Egypt report similar “plagues” and a giant volcanic eruption near the time of the Exodus, that the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah were scorched by fire, fulfillment of prophecy–the list goes on–when I speak of biblical inerrancy. I can demonstrate from Paul’s writings that the first followers of Jesus believed Him divine, despite what the Da Vinci Code wants to claim.

I’m probably being to harsh with Teen. He is, according to his site, only 13. The problem is, he is trying to argue with a professional writer, obvious atheist, and credentialed academic in David Boles, and that might perhaps be a little out of Teen’s league.

I guess it boils down to this essay, which convicted me to start this ministry in the first place. Why are our brothers and sisters in Christ not given at least a basic education in apologetics, something that the Bible commands us to do?

Dee Dee Smith personifies what I’m talking about with this comment:

Any “scientific” information found would not at all affect my choice to believe. As I stated earlier, faith is definitely a choice. If it were based upon scientific findings, I’d be tossed like a ship in the wind - believing today, and not believing tomorrow. Some might consider this to be naivity, and I can understand that thought. Faith in Christ is not something that can be understood intellectually. . . . For me . . . , it’s a knowing and it’s a changed life that makes me sure of what I know.

Dee Dee apparently just blindly believes in Christ without a real reason, and filters out anything that contradicts what she has already decided is true. That isn’t faith, that’s narrowmindedness. The Bible is truth, but Dee Dee still subscribes to the Scientology definition of that word, which is that one defines one’s own truth. She has defined Christianity as true, and a statement that contradicts this worldview is automatically false. Nevermind careful research or refutation. No reasoned argument necessary.

Speaking of Scientology, John Travolta is making news by saying that Scientology’s program Narconon could have saved Anna Nicole Smith’s life. Here we have a perfect example of the marketing prowess of that religion. It irritates me that they have picked a rather sad case to use as a backdrop for their brand of “medicine.”

I can only pray that God will bless the world with more discernment.