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To: ReignOfError
What the hell kind of question is that?

The kind that needs to be answered, in order to help correctly interpret what was in the tomb.

It is the kind of question that is relevant.

Was the apparent order of burials changed?

Was the "The name on Jesus's ossuary was scrawled on, like graffiti. There was no ornamentation. And there should have been. After all, his followers believed he was the Son of God." added to the ossuary soon after the burials (many centuries ago) to discredit the budding Christian movement?

Was it about seven or eight centuries later, by "Kilroy was here" Muslim tomb raiders?

Were the things found still pretty much as they originally were, and 'only' valuables taken, without disturbing the placement & order of the ossuaries themselves?

Plenty relevant to ask, as well as others, since there don't seem to be answers; but such missing answers could have large bearing on correctly interpretting what was found. Wrong/missing data = wrong conclussions.

31 posted on 01/18/2008 12:50:25 PM PST by ApplegateRanch (2 John: 9-11 Too often ignored. Short Books are equally important parts of the Bible!)
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To: ApplegateRanch
Valid points, all. I read your comment as trying to peg the individual grave robbers, which is obviously impossible to the point of being absurd; but pegging the rough time frame and the likely culture of the folks involved is both reasonable and necessary.

It's much the same problem as with Egyptian tombs. where explorers usually find that grave-robbers were there long before. That's why King Tut got so much hype, and still does 80-some years later; it was a rare case where the grave was found as the builders left it.

Because the tomb is relatively undisturbed, closed off from the elements, it's actually pretty feasible to get a decent approximation of when and how it was disturbed last. I fired off my question too quickly, without thinking it all the way through.

I'll just toss in that even if the tomb is found by some scholars to contain Jesus' bones -- which, last I heard, seems highly unlikely -- that doesn't invalidate Christianity. It doesn't even do much damage to the claim that He ascended bodily into heaven; the counter-argument is that he ascended in a new, perfected body, leaving the old one behind --as the rest of us are promised one day, at least in some readings of the Gospels.

Was the "The name on Jesus's ossuary was scrawled on, like graffiti. There was no ornamentation. And there should have been. After all, his followers believed he was the Son of God." added to the ossuary soon after the burials (many centuries ago) to discredit the budding Christian movement?

The questions: and I don't know enough about the Jewis funerary practices at the time, is whether any tomb would have such adornments; the ornaments might have been left austere for religious or cultural reasons. Remember also that Jesus' followers were not wealthy, and if there wasn't a disciple close by who happened to be a stone mason, they might have had to make do with a DIY job.

Another possibility is that the ossuary was prepared for Jessu' bones, but after his body disappeared, it was reused for someone else; the original Christians were not wealthy people, after all.

Of course, the leading possibility is that the grave has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus -- He wasn't the only Yeshua who died in the Jerusalem area around that time frame. It would be like archaeologists a thousand years hence finding the grave of a "George" in northern Virginia and concluding they'd found Washington's remains.

34 posted on 01/19/2008 12:38:43 AM PST by ReignOfError
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