In case you’re one of the people who thought I was a moron for posting about the Jesus Tomb, you’ll appreciate this article at Beliefnet, which debunks the whole Jesus Tomb story pretty effectively.
It gets into many reasons for why this is just silliness, among them some historical inaccuracies:
- The ancestral home of Joseph was Bethlehem, and his adult home was Nazareth. The family was still in Nazareth after he was dead and gone. Why in the world would any member of Jesus' family be buried in Jerusalem other than James and Jesus?
- One of the ossuaries has the name "Judah, son of Jesus." We have no historical evidence of such a son of Jesus. We have no historical evidence he was ever married.
- By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty—even the Jewish and Roman authorities acknowledged this. Now, it takes a year for the flesh to desiccate, and then you put the man's bones in an ossuary. But according to historical record, Jesus' body was long gone from Joseph of Arimathea's tomb well before then. Are we really to believe it was moved to another tomb, decayed, and then put in an ossuary? It's not likely.
- In order to argue that Jesus remained buried after his death, you must accuse James, Peter and John (mentioned in Galatians 1 and 2, our earliest New Testament document) of fraud and cover-up. Are we to believe that they knew Jesus didn't rise bodily from the dead but perpetrated a fraudulent religion, for which they and others were prepared to die? Did they hide the body of Jesus in another tomb? The James in question here is Jesus' brother, who certainly would have known about a family tomb.
It also goes into why DNA testing is silly, and how common the name Jesus was back in the day… And if you want even more, you can check out the author’s blog.
But I’ll say in defense of my initial post… I never claimed to BELIEVE any of this stuff. I just thought it was interesting, and I like when public outcries and bad TV (which both go well with popcorn).
Do we have to fight about the inaccuracies of WifeSwap too?