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Posted on 02/24/2007 9:14:06 AM PST by aculeus
In a scene worthy of a Dan Brown novel, archaeologists a quarter of a century ago unearthed a burial chamber near Jerusalem.
Inside they found ossuaries, or boxes of bones, marked with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
Then one of the ossuaries went missing. The human remains inside were destroyed before any DNA testing could be carried out.
While Middle East academics doubt that the relics belong to the Holy Family, the issue is about to be exposed to a blaze of publicity with the publication next week of a book.
Entitled The Jesus Tomb and co-written by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, the book promises the inside story of "what may very well be the greatest archaeological find of all time".
Some of the ossuaries will be at the book launch in New York, released by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The story began in March 1980 when Yosef Gat, an archaeologist employed by the IAA, surveyed a burial chamber on the south-eastern approaches of Jerusalem.
The area was being developed into the latest suburb of the city, East Talpiot, and bulldozers had uncovered an archaeological site.
Mr Gat found a standard-looking Jewish tomb dating from the era of King Herod, the Jewish king known for his ambitious building works and for his murder of infants at the time of the birth of Jesus.
After crawling into the necropolis Mr Gat found the main chamber had been silted up with soil and debris, with six "kokhim", coffin shaped spaces leading off the main chamber where human remains were housed.
According to Jewish rites, bodies would be left for a year or so to decompose in the "kokhim" before relatives came back to gather the bones and store them in ossuaries.
Mr Gat found 10 ossuaries bearing inscriptions. Some were in ancient Greek and some were in Hebrew.
One inscription said "Jesus, son of Joseph", another said "Mara", a common form of Mary, and another said "Yose", a common form of Joseph.
The authors were unavailable for comment yesterday but it is understood they base their claim that the burial chamber contained the remains of the Holy Family on their own study carried out inside the structure.
The chamber has been closed for years because a building was constructed on top of it but the authors got permission to break through an apartment block floor.
They claim to have found human material on which they performed DNA testing in a New York laboratory.
"Tests prove the names are genetically of the same family and statistically, there is a one in 10 million chance this is a family other than the Holy Family," the pre-publication publicity for the book said.
However, according to strict Christian teaching, Jesus ascended to heaven, so there would be no bones left behind.
Mr Gat died several years ago. His boss, Prof Amos Kloner said that while the names together had "a certain power" they are standard.
"At least three other ossuaries have been found inscribed with the name Jesus and countless others with Joseph and Mary," he said.
The 10 ossuaries were taken initially to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Nine were catalogued and stored but the tenth was left outside in a courtyard.
That ossuary has subsequently gone missing.
The story went cold until two accounts of the discovery were published by Israeli academics in the mid 1990s. Prof Kloner wrote the second one in the IAA's in-house magazine Atiquot in 1996.
It sparked publicity, most notably a BBC programme shown that Easter produced by Ray Bruce called The Body In Question. However, Prof Kloner said there was no way the tomb housed the Holy Family.
"It is just not possible that a family who came from Galilee, as the New Testament tells us of Joseph and Mary, would be buried over several generations in Jerusalem."
However, in this Dan Brown era, we can't help wondering.
Oh man, where's my popcorn? These threads are amusing.
In all honesty I know nothing about the reference you cited. I was born into a Catholic family and went to a Catholic grade school and high school. I left the church in 1969 when I went to Vietnam and didn't examine the truth in the new testament scriptures until 1985. My favorite scriptures are Eph 2: 8-9 and Acts 4:12. I have indeed been saved by grace and born again as Jesus referenced in the New Testament while talking with Nicademus.
If Mary had indeed been "caught up" before death or immediately thereafter don't you have to assume there would have been a major accounting of it??
Also, just out of curiosity, does your reference make any mention of what happened to Joseph??
The best to you.
The Devil's working overtime lately, ain't he?
Not all, but only one or two. But what does this have to do with your assertion? No one is claiming the Apostles ascended to Heaven, like Christ, after the Resurrection. But it sounded like you are claiming Mary's divine Ascension. Is that right?
lol.
Some of the arguments here, using scripture to downplay or refute this Discovery are as spurious and nonsensical as the So Called Discovery itself!
My Friends .. Scripture says that "Flesh and Bone" CANNOT enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
Heaven is Spiritual.
PLEASE, study harder and use better arguments to refute these kinds of stories or .. you'll wind up looking, uh, just the way that you look now .. Uninformed.
MC
Crossan, a major demytholigizer of the "Jesus Seminar" is throwing his weight behind it, too.
Sorry, MC. It is "flesh and blood" that cannot enter into Heaven and "flesh and bone" that does.
1Co 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption
Jesus was in in His glorified body of flesh and bones when He appeared to Thomas and the disciples in the closed upper room. P>Luk 24:39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
Eph 5:30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
Ours shall be like His at our Resuurection,because we will be like Him.<
1Jn 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
The reason He had no blood is because His blood was poured out for "our sins".
Mar 14:24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many
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According to one authoritative source 24% of the women in Jerusalem in the 1st Century were named with some variation of Miriam, Maryum, all meaning Mary. The source also stated that 7% of the male population was named Joshua, Yeshua, Yehoshua, all essentially the same as the name Jesus.
Tradition has it that it was Yeshua Bar Abbas that was freed by the crowd instead of Jesus. It is an interesting name because it translates to Jesus, son of the father.
They found that in comparing the DNA from the bones in the various ossuaries found in a family tomb that there is a 1 in 10,000,000 chance that these family members aren't related to each other... In other words, no body in the tomb was fathered by the milkman...
OK...and that does nothing to identify who they are...only that they were related to each other.
Exactly.
"counterfeit bones of the Holy Family suddenly appear in the
Bahamas."
With a fake parchment written in Aramaic reading..."Inter us with Anna Nicole Smith"
Because Jesus' name is NOT Jesus..
Hebrew and Aramaic have no "J's"..
"J's" come from Latin..
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