Josiah Concept Ministries

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.

James Cameron certainly is getting his debate. Here are some quotes from around the news world on the so-called Jesus Tomb:

Let me just throw this out there for you. If it were something that was attacking another religion, because there’s this idea out there that Christianity is sort of, it’s fine, you know, you can try to debunk anything out there, but if you tried to do this to the Muslim religion or perhaps the Jewish religion there would be an outcry of huge proportions. [Martha MacCallum during a roundtable discussion on The Live Desk, source]

That reflects what my wife and I have discussed about Christianity for as long as I can remember: It’s okay to bash Christianity, but if you try to bash another religion, there are all kinds of consequences and lawsuits and stuff.

One person sums up the DNA evidence nicely:

Except the whole thing seems kind of pointless. DNA comparison only works if you have something to compare the bones to. Last I checked, no one had a Jesus hair follicle in their bathroom hair brush. Sure, someone might claim to have DNA that definitely belonged to the Christ, but there’s no way to prove it. And without absolutely proof positive Jesus DNA to compare those bones to, I don’t see how Cameron can prove anything. [source]

Again, Amos Kloner, the tomb’s discoverer, has had this to say:

“I’m a scholar. I do scholarly work which has nothing to do with documentary film-making. There’s no way to take a religious story and to turn it into something scientific,” he told AFP in a telephone interview.

     ”I still insist that it is a regular burial chamber from the 1st century BC,” Kloner said, adding that the names were a coincidence.

     ”Who says that ‘Maria’ is Magdalena and ‘Judah’ is the son of Jesus? It cannot be proved. These are very popular and common names from the 1st century BC,” said the academic at Israel’s Bar Ilan University.

     Kloner said that of 900 burial caves found within four kilometres (two and a half miles) of Jerusalem’s Old City and from the same era, the name Jesus or Yeshu was found 71 times, and that “Jesus son of Joseph” had also been found. [source, emphasis added]

The Israeli Antiques Authority made no comment on the press conference, “although in 1996 a spokesman said that the probability of the caskets belonging to the family of Jesus were ‘next to zero’” (ibid.).

Tim McGirk, who reported on the story for Time Magazine, says of Jesus: “His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn’t afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names” [source].

Finally, I repeat the words of National Clergy Council President Robert Schenck:

“Today, Hollywood director James Cameron, whose claim to fame is a fictionalized account of the sinking of the Titanic, unveiled a documentary claiming a coffin found in Jerusalem 27 years ago once contained the remains of Jesus Christ. Cameron employed archaeologists and DNA experts to bolster his assertion Jesus was buried along with his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and a supposed son, Judah.

     ”Over the years, Hollywood has attacked and mocked Christianity, providing only negative portrayals of people of faith. It has produced films that undermine moral culture. Hollywood’s production of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ sensationalized a conspiracy theory that the Catholic Church engaged in a cover up of the real story of Jesus operating in the manner of a crime syndicate.

     ”According to Cameron, his film is no mere speculation, but historical fact. By claiming the remains of Jesus returned to dust along with other members of his family, the Hollywood filmmaker is denying the divinity of the Son of God and his victory over death. Cameron clearly intended to drive a stake into the heart of Christianity, since without the Resurrection, Jesus was only a mortal man.

     ”Media outlets should exercise restraint in reporting Cameron’s Hollywood fiction masquerading as scientific fact. All of Jesus’ contemporaries recorded Christ rose after being dead for three days and ascended into Heaven. For 2,000 years people of faith along and countless scholars have pored over the Scriptures, confirming their veracity. A Hollywood director is the least qualified to render any determination of Biblical truth. Not only so, but the people Mr. Cameron has partnered with completely lack credibility. One has been discredited by experts as a charlatan. This is nothing more than a modern day circus sideshow. At best it is pure presumption. At worst, it is pure chicanery.” [source]

It will be very interesting to see what will become of this story. I urge my readers to listen to James White’s podcast, The Dividing Line, Tuesday 2/27/07 at 11:00am Moutain Standard Time (for us Eastern Daylight Timers, that would be 1:00pm). If you can’t make the live broadcast, check out the link to it, which I will post later. You can also find it by clicking on the Alpha and Omega Ministries link on the left side of this page.

This is great stuff! It brings me great joy to see God working in this world, and to know that He still uses us sinful creatures for His purposes.

A while back, I blogged on the Blasphemy Challenge, which is a disservice being done to the community by the oxymoronic Rational Response Squad. The challenge is to declare, on a YouTube video, that you deny the existence of the Holy Spirit. I’ve covered this in the past, but it bears repeating: the Unforgivable Sin is a sin of action, not of words. In committing this sin, you are continuously denying God by your lifestyle, thoughts, choices, actions, and condition of heart; not by making a one-time verbal declaration. Obviously, this isn’t what the folks who have taken the so-called challenge are actually doing–they are making the declaration, but we don’t know what they really believe or how they live their lives.

Well, now a series of websites has risen up to answer the Blasphemy Challenge. I love what they are doing in the name of Jesus, and so I provide their sites here.

• Challenge the Blasphemy: praying for all the folks who have accepted the Blasphemy Challenge.
• Challenge Blasphemy: collecting testimonies of former atheists. I can’t endorse the prophecy links on this site.
• The Christian Challenge: have you read the Bible?

Religion News Blog picked up a story on the Blasphemy Challenge, from our friends Brian Flemming and the Rational Response Squad. The significant thing, to me, is that the item comes from the Jan 8 issue of Newsweek magazine. Unlike those of us concerned with preserving the Christian faith who will not provide links to such garbage, Newsweek gives the full web addresses for the Rational Response Squad and Brian Flemming’s The God Who Wasn’t There video.

Check the article out for yourself. I’m glad that they quote one of our people who says that the words aren’t the Unforgivable Sin; it’s the denial of God’s active work in the world and in our own lives.

The flippant remark at the end of the article shows which side Newsweek is on. That comment fell far short of “funny” and smack into “patently offensive.”

Perhaps we should call for a boycott of Newsweek, at least until they decide to be fair and journalistic in their approach to stories.

The Bible has this to say about God forgiving the sin of blasphemy:

Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. [Mark 3:28-29]

The mental midgets over at the Rational Response Squad are giving away 1,001 copies of the video The God Who Wasn’t There to anyone who will upload a video of themselves saying “I deny the Holy Spirit” to YouTube. They have creatively named this The Blasphemy Challenge. At the time of writing, 560 such videos are posted. This makes my wife physically ill. But I see only amusement here.

These folks have accepted the Blasphemy Challenge, but they haven’t completed it! You see, saying the words isn’t the sin. Living a lifestyle, a consciously chosen lifestyle, that denies God’s active hand in your life and in the world around you, that is the Unforgivable Sin. Read the verse in context and see for yourself! The key to the entire passage is verse 30: “for they [the scribes] had said ‘He [Jesus] has an unclean spirit.’” The scribes are saying that Jesus is from the devil! They are doing far more than denying the existence of God: they are now denying the work of God.

Denying the work of God in the world around us is not a condition of words or expression; it is a condition of heart and will reflect in the things you do, think, and speak.

The Rational Response Squad fails to understand the passage. The folks who accepted the Blasphemy Challenge fail to understand what they are denying. Therefore, they can still be forgiven this sin if they choose to repent. Something tells me they won’t, but perhaps if enough people pray for them God will draw them into His flock and they will understand the true implications of what they denied.

LATE BREAKING ADDENDUM: In my study of Catholic Mass for Got Questions Ministries, I stumbled on a verse that is important to understand the concept of the Unforgivable Sin. The Holy Spirit is the personified work of God in all of Creation, right? Well, check out John 6:29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.” Once again, this underscores the importance of a person’s condition of heart. Belief in Jesus as the Son of God is the very work of God! Not believing this is the core of the Unforgivable Sin.