Posted on 02/28/2007 7:58:26 AM PST by dead
AL Capone's vault has met its match.
I'm no scientist, but after watching a bunch of people who are scientists sift through the dust and bones of a 2000-year-old family burial chamber in Jerusalem, I have to offer this unscientific conclusion: There ain't no way them bones belong to Jesus.
Or, if they are his bones, they don't come anywhere near proving it in "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," the Discovery Channel documentary that is supposed to rock Christianity to its very foundations.
Well, I have some good news for Christianity: Your foundations are safe.
Why were they going to be rocked in the first place? Because if the bones turned out to be Jesus', then the long-held Christian belief that he was resurrected bodily from his grave would have to be reconsidered - perhaps limited to a resurrection that was "merely" spiritual in nature.
< snip >
Laboratories from Israel to Ontario were enlisted to analyze genetic material from old bones and train "electron microprobes" on tiny mounds of patina scraped from the sides of the limestone bone boxes (called "ossuaries").
The tests were aimed at determining if the bones belonged to people who were related to each other and whether the ossuaries came out of the same cave. FYI: The results varied.
The whole process began when scholars realized that the names inscribed on these particular ossuaries mirrored those of the known (or suspected) members of Jesus' family.
What are the odds that this group of people with names common to their place and time were the family of Jesus Christ?
Despite the best efforts of a statistician recruited to stand up the show's hypothesis, the odds remain long indeed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I thought He liked Coke :-)
Dead,
You own me a new keyboard, new monitor and whatever it cost for the trip to ER.
My God that was funny.
I watch a lot of documentary programming, and all the channels -- A&E, Discovery, History, TLC, Court TV, and so on -- can be hit or miss. They all feature a lot of "reality TV" and things like ghost stories, "psychic detectives" and the search for Bigfoot that lead me to change the channel.
Most of their programming is good, entertaining, factual and somewhat informative, but not particularly in-depth or insightful. Most of the Bill Kurtis ouevre falls in that category for me. Maybe 10% is really gripping and educational.
I haven't observed that any one channel is consistently better than the others, except that PBS, which has far fewer hours of documentaries than the networks that carry them 24 hours, has consistently more depth and higher production values. To what degree that's offset by bias or agenda is an argument I'll leave aside for now.
At least I know I'm not missing much -- thanks!
The Kerry pic........now that's funny!!!!!!!!
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