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The Tomb of Jesus
By James | February 26, 2007
According to this
article, a documentary that will air on the Discovery Channel March 4th, will claim to have discovered the burial site of Jesus. The Jesus. Not surprisingly, there has already been a lot of criticism of this finding, despite none of the critics having yet seen it.
How can such a claim be made? According to the documentary’s page, the probability was carefully calculated to be about 600 to 1 in favor of the the tomb belonging to Jesus of Nazareth. What went into the analysis, I could not find. Being unable to find this information was frustrating. I’d be really interested in finding out how such a probability could possibly be determined.
Assuming it is Jesus, what are the theological implications? There is a brief discussion of the theological implications on the website that states the findings “do not challenge” belief in the resurrection. Oddly, the discussion doesn’t even mention the implications of Jesus having a wife - probably Mary Magdalene - and a son named Judah.
An interview with the film’s director, Simcha Jacobovici, can be found on the documentary’s page on the Discovery Channel website.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:01 am
I’m just sticking with the actual tomb story. Not if Jesus is the Son of God. If you’ve seen an image of the burial box that is supposed to be Jesus of Nazareth there is scribble on it. Most scientists (Christian or not) have said that they can’t make out what the name really is.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, etc. were very common names back then. There are multiple Jesus (I don’t know what the plural form is) in the Bible. The same goes for Mary and Joseph among others.
It would also seem like if you could walk up to the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth that easily, all you would to do to debunk the resurrection would be to say, “Hey, here he is.”
One other thing. BBC did this same kind of documentary in 1988, I believe, about the same tomb and it was shown to be false after the documentary was shown.
I’m sure you know I’d be skeptical no matter what but to try to tell me that this is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth with that kind of evidence isn’t very convincing no matter who you are.
That 600 to 1 probability thing frustrated me too. How in the world do you figure that out?
One last thing. Something you may be interested in-I believe it was the History Channel that did a special on the 10 Plagues. James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovic also did that one. They went through each plague one by one and gave physical evidence through hieroglyphics and science that the plagues did happen. It was quite interesting and pretty believable.