Sunday, February 25, 2007

The Tomb of (a) Jesus(Yeshua)

I owe this one to Huw Raphael.(also Globe article.) Apparently (and I seem to remember having read something about this before in more academic settings, I think about the time the ossuary with the inscription of "James" upon it, that may have been a forgery) in 1980 a tomb was discovered during the construction of an apartment building in Jerusalem, there were ten ossuaries discovered in the tomb, and six of them had inscriptions, with names that fit with Jesus and his family, including "Yeshua bar Yosef"(Jesus son of Joseph). Of course Yeshua was a common name at the time as was Mary, and Joseph. As stated in both the Globe and Star articles, there is perhaps something to this collection of these common names. From the above articles it is hard to evaluate from a scholarly and archaeological perspective.

However, I do have a several thoughts and comments. First the documentarian Simchat Jacobovici's claim that this claim to have discovered Jesus Christ's tomb should not be troubling to devout Christians either is a joke or shows the greatest ignorance of the Christian faith I have seen exhibited in quite awhile. If there are remains of Jesus of Nazareth, then pretty much what is believed by Christians about Jesus is not true. Though there seems to be the suggestion that perhaps Jesus was crucified raised and then lived a normal life afterwards. Which seems a strange claim if it is in fact being made. But as I see it one would have to conclude that if there is a family tomb with Jesus of Nazareth's remains in it all of stories of Jesus that were passed on including "Gnostic" texts, have no basis in the actual person of Jesus.

There are several problems I see with those involved with this interpretation of the archaeological evidence of these ossuaries. First, what is pretty much agreed is that Jesus Christ, is Jesus of Nazareth, one would expect to find the family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth in Nazareth and not Jerusalem. Jesus being buried in Jerusalem has everything to do with him being crucified in Jerusalem.

There is also issues surrounding the early development of Christianity, the writing of the Gospels and most importantly the conversion and letters of the Apostle Paul. One has to wonder if there people who know this Jesus who married and lived a normal life how the Gospels could have emerged, especially if they are written within 40 years of Jesus' itinerant ministry in Galilee and Judea. Of course that is the early dating, if one pushes back the writing of most of the Gospels into the second century (which few if any current scholars do) I suppose there would be no one who would know to object or even know if the claims about Jesus were of this particular Jesus. But even if the Gospels are written 70 to 100 years after the time Jesus' crucifixion there is still Paul, and his writings.

Paul is key here because he isn't a follower of Jesus and we have his writings and certainly if his claims about Jesus were false he'd have run into people with an alternative claim, also, it makes little sense for Paul to have visions about a Jesus who is still walking about Jerusalem, while Paul is supposedly persecuting the followers of this Jesus. I don't know what this documentary is seeking to say, but I am having trouble figuring out what they think this discovery means. Is Jesus supposed to have been crucified but survived? Actually died but resurrected and then stuck around and eventually after marrying Mary Magdalen and having a son died of natural causes and old age? What would seem most likely an interpretation of these ossuaries if one were to take them to be of Jesus of Nazareth and his family is that somehow a quite ordinary citizen of Jerusalem somehow (in ways that are now lost to us) became the center of a mythology of about this itinerant teacher (though the actually Jesus wasn't an itinerant teacher from Nazareth) who ended up getting all the Religious and Roman leaders in Jerusalem pissed enough to have him crucified (which did not happen to the actual Jesus). Somehow this actual Jesus was never able to dissuade Peter James, John, Paul etc. that nothing like that ever happened to him. In short we have stories about a guy that have no relation to his life, except the names. The names have been kept the same but the events have all been changed to protect the innocent. If this is so could one actually say that the tomb was of Jesus Christ? If this Reconstruction and interpretation was true could one actually say Jesus of Nazareth actually existed?

What I find interesting about this is that the interpretation that seems to be given of these 6 ossuaries is dependent on the orthodox interpretation of Jesus of Nazareth and the stories of 4 canonical Gospels. Yet, this interpretation undermines that version of events, and possibly even the existence of the person who is supposed to be Jesus Christ, that is an itinerant preacher from Nazareth in the 1st century CE who was crucified. These osuaries may bear names that match that story but everything else contradicts that story. In that sense there would be no Mary Magdalen, no Jesus of Nazareth. Rather we have a Jesus of Jerusalem whose father is Josef and who married a Marriamne. I would say that this collection of ossuaries in fact suggests circumstances of the Jesus and Marriamne so dissimilar to the Gospels account of Jesus of Nazareth that one could hardly say that Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus son of Joseph of this tomb could be the same person.

There is a sense in which this discovery is no discovery unless there is something true about the Gospel account but these ossuaries contradict that story.

What one would have to ultimately explain even if one could prove Jesus of Nazareth and the Jesus of this discovery were the same one would still have to explain how the story of Jesus of Nazareth ever emerged from the life of a man Jesus whose family was from Jerusalem, and who must have lived a quite normal life at the time that the early strata of the stories of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ. Especially since it is hard for me to see how such a Jesus could have ever been crucified.

6 comments:

  1. Larry,

    I like your interpretation and deconstruction of the documentary and its points.

    If the names hold and this is a real tomb of the real Jesus, then the Gospels and their accounts are false.

    But if they are false, then how can you use them to confirm the significance of these tombs?

    This is not so much a theological quandary, but more of a quandary about historicity, logic, and archaeological evidence.

    Quite interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the susinct rephrasing of what I was attempting to get at in my post.
    Yes, I agree it is a quandry of historicity, logic, and archaeological evidence. Stuff like this in far less volatile issues arises not infrequently in history, which lead some historians in the late 80's and early 90's to talk about histsory as literature. I have not kept up with the scholarship so I am not sure where that debate is now among historians.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am going to show myself off as the heathen I am, but does it really matter? Does the veracity of Christ's message really hang on such a slender thread? There were furious debates about his humanity, godhood and the meaning of the resurrection throughout the Western world prior to the Council of Nicea.

    So why does it follow that for part of the story to be true, all of it must be true? I thought it was supposed to be a Mystery.
    -Angeli

    ReplyDelete
  4. Angeli,
    There is quite a bit packed into your thoughts there.
    One question I have is what is Christ's message? Can it be divorced from the ultimate events of Christ's life?
    Sure for certain of the sayings of Jesus or the teachings ascribed to him to be true the entire story doesn't need to be true. For that matter there doesn't need to have been a Jesus at all. But that's not the point of Christianity. I don't believe in a teacher or guru. The Gospel isn't just a message or philosophy, it is about the beginning of the transformation of the very fabric of the cosmos.
    But then my post wasn't directly about that it was more about how this documentary both attempts to discredit (or so it seems from what I have been able to read on it) the orthodox version of as found in the 4 canonical Gospels and is dependent on that version for the "discovery" to make any sense.
    It's about interpretation and the problem that we often make our interpretaions into raw brute objective facts.
    So yes it is true that prior to and even after the Council of Nicea all that you mention was disputed and is still disputed even today.
    I however see no reason to reject the orthodox interpretation, and all other interpretation seem to be in fact dependent upon the orthodox version even prior to Nicea.
    This is what I found interesting, and that we can't ever fully escape interpretation and uncertainty. Mystery may be something different though.

    ReplyDelete
  5. but ... and here we will never agree as such, because we are getting into why, though I admire Christianity very much, I know I'm not one of you ...

    Why ... if you believe that God is capable of this enormous miracle, the transformation of the cosmos, the reordering of man's relationship to the divine ... through the sacrifice and bodily resurrection of Jesus ... why does it then follow that this sacrifice is negated if after the resurrection God was able to give him something as close to Heaven as many come on this Earth ... give him a family, a home, time to watch his children grow? I do not understand this. I cannot understand it. Why would it be preferable, more holy, more miraculous that Jesus simply was ascended into Heaven immediately?

    I may be the only one on Earth, but to me the idea that they might have found Jesus' body, that that might have been the end of the story, just speaks far more about the love and compassion and justice of God than the traditional one.

    Angeli

    ReplyDelete
  6. Angeli,
    I don't know that you are the only one on earth who might think that certainly it seems the maker of this documentary think something like that.

    However, let me be clear I do not believe (nor do I understand the orthodox Christian perspective to be) that the work of God in Jesus Christ on the Cross and through the Resurection and ascencion nesarily is contradictory to Jesus having had a family. However, it does contradict most witnesses about Jesus of Nazareth including the "gnostic" or non-orthodox witnesses. the first historian of the church and Christianity was aware of relatives of Jesus (though no one so far as the record shows claimed them to be direct decendants).

    Here is the crux of the issue: Christianity is an historical faith not in that it is provable by historical methods and archeology, or that its dogmas are subject to change based on an archeologists "discovery" but in the sense that it is a faith that is supposed to be passed down from the Apostles themselves who knew and walked with Jesus saw him raised from the dead and Ascend into heaven. Even those who disagreed in the first centuries of Christianity understood this aspect of Christian faith and thus attempted to show how their version was in fact from the correct lineage either from Mary Magdalene or Peter, or Thomas etc. Orthodox however always claimed to have the story and teachings from all of the apostles not just the secret teaching of one or two of them.

    If the Gospels had recorded that Jesus maried with children and was also the Christ and all, then that is what I would believe. If that was what had been passed down by the community founded by Jesus of Nazareth and the Apostles then that is what I would believe. But we know that is not what the record shows even of most non-orthodox sources. (remeber most "gnostics" were even more anti sex and the body than the orthodox, which at least affirmed God as creator in line with the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish belief and teaching)

    The relational continuity is inextricably part of Christian faith. And that in part expresses the character of God as relational and ultimately love. this also means there is a particularity to Christian faith that does sort of lead one to accept the whole tapestry or not. As I think you have already seen.

    ReplyDelete