Bible Scholars: Ten Reasons Why Jesus Tomb Claim is Bogus





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		(2/26/2007) Bible Scholars: Ten Reasons Why Jesus Tomb Claim is Bogus Professors identify problems with film claims Feb. 26 /Christian Newswire/ -- The claim of James Cameron and the Discovery Channel that a tomb contains the bones of Jesus is bogus, said leading Biblical and archeological scholars today. "Unfortunately, this is a story full of holes, conjectures and problems," said Dr. Ben Witherington, author of What Have They Done With Jesus? and New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary. "It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically, this is old news with a new interpretation. We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980. There are all sorts of reasons to see this as much ado about nothing much." Witherington and other leading biblical scholars and archeologists say there are at least 10 reasons why the "Jesus Tomb" claim is completely bogus: There is no DNA evidence that this is the historical Jesus of Nazareth The statistical analysis is untrustworthy The name "Jesus" was a popular name in the first century, appearing in 98 other tombs and on 21 other ossuaries There is no historical evidence that Jesus was ever married or had a child The earliest followers of Jesus never called him "Jesus, son of Joseph" It is highly unlikely that Joseph, who died earlier in Galilee, was buried in Jerusalem, since the historical record connects him only to Nazareth or Bethlehem The Talipot tomb and ossuaries are such that they would have belonged to a rich family, which does not match the historical record for Jesus Fourth-century church historian Eusebius makes quite clear that the body of James, the brother of Jesus, was buried alone near the temple mount and that his tomb was visited in the early centuries, making very unlikely that the Talipot tomb was Jesus' "family tomb" The two Mary ossuaries do not mention anyone from Migdal, but simply has the name Mary, one of the most common of all ancient Jewish female names By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty, making it highly unlikely that it was moved to another tomb, decayed for one year's time, and then the bones put in an ossuary "In light of all the incredible number of problems with the recent claim that Jesus' grave has been found, the time-honored, multi-faceted evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is more convincing than ever," said Dr. Gary Habermas, an expert on the resurrection of Jesus and author of The Case for the Resurrection. "Even the early opponents of the Christian message acknowledged that Jesus' tomb was empty. And the evidence for Jesus' bodily resurrection appearances has never been refuted."