Posted on 11/01/2002 10:45:35 AM PST by Polycarp
COMMENTARY
A Discovery That's Just Too Perfect
Claims that stone box held remains of Jesus' brother may be suspect.
By Robert Eisenman Robert Eisenman is the author of "James the Brother of Jesus" (Penguin, 1998) and a professor of Middle East religions and archeology at Cal State Long Beach.
October 29 2002
James, the brother of Jesus, was so well known and important as a Jerusalem religious leader, according to 1st century sources, that taking the brother relationship seriously was perhaps the best confirmation that there ever was a historical Jesus. Put another way, it was not whether Jesus had a brother, but rather whether the brother had a "Jesus."
Now we are suddenly presented with this very "proof": the discovery, allegedly near Jerusalem, of an ossuary inscribed in the Aramaic language used at that time, with "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." An ossuary is a stone box in which bones previously laid out in rock-cut tombs, such as those in the Gospels, were placed after they were retrieved by relatives or followers.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
2. Why should Polycarp answer your question since you do not answer questions posed to you and have so much trouble keeping a set of civil fingers on your keyboard.
3. Regard #2 above as the answer to each of your apparent intended attempts to repeat your question. Don't bother asking me once or a thousand times because I don't operate on the ahistorical fantasy that everything worth knowing is contained in Scripture.
The problem is that after Christ there were TWO traditions. One started by Jews who accepted Christ and converted other nations and the other one which rejected Him and developed Talmudic Judaism.
The first of those two traditions kept the deuterocanonical books for many centuries. Only in XVI century Protestants arose who trusted more the second tradition in matter of Old Testament. For some reason Protestants could not get the New Testament that way and they had to rely on the first one :)
The leaders of future Talmudic Jews met in the 2nd century and rejected the books like Maccabbees (where the Hanukkah is described) or Wisdom. Around year 800 AD Jews split into radical Talmudists (the majority today) and into Karaits who reject the authority of Talmud. This led to the further redactions, especially that diacritical signs were added at that time. The Masoretic/Talmudic version of that time is the source of the Protestant versions.
I see no reason to give substantive answers to someone who claims, in Jack Chick/Lorraine Boettner fashion, that the original Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself upon Simon bar Jonah as Peter is "the whore of Babylon." Go work out your adolescent obsessions and fantasies elsewhere and begone before you attract more attention from the grownups than you are likely to desire!
You also should get to know Fr. Martin Luther a little better. Mercifully, his desire to reject James as canon was thwarted by those Lutherans who had a better education than he did.
A couple of quick comments, however:
What you refer to as the Apocalypse, Protestants refer to as Revelation and it most assuredly is a book in our Bible.
Luther was nothing if not occassionally intemperate, but his "epistle of Straw" comment is generally not placed in its correct context by his distractors. He was actually making a scriptural reference to 1 Corinthians 3:12. (as an aside, Luther is often referred to as the Lutheran Pope; he isn't. Lutherans do not believe him to be infalible and acknowledge he was a sinner, just as we believe all men but one were sinners)
Luther believed that the Gospel provided the solid foundation upon which Chritian faith could be built; that straw could be placed upon the foundation, but that a foundation could not be built upon straw. And, yes, the book of James IS in in the Protestant Bible.
You know, it's entirely possible that Catholic teachings about the Lutheran Church can be as misguided as I'm sure can be Lutheran teachings about the Catholic Church.
You've gotta be kidding. You can't think of a reason?
Either way Talmudic Jewish canon was established at Jamnia council AFTER the destruction of the Temple and establishment of the Church. Also present Hebrew version derives from around 800 AD (time of Karait/Talmudic schism) and even concrete passages do not match New Testament quotes. On the other hand the Christian (pre-Protestant) tradition derives from Septuagint - the earliest translation of the Old Testament done by the Jews, for the Jews and used by the Jews long before coming of Christ.
So we have two main versions of the Old Testament. One of which matches perfectly with the New Testament. I will give you one example:
For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.(Mt:3:3)
And this from Masoretic version:
A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our Lord (Isa:40:3)
You see in the Christian/Septuagint tradition the wilderness location is applied to the voice, while in the Masoretic/Talmudic version the wilderness location is applied to what needs to be made straight. New Testament agrees with the first.
Read more about at: Canon of The Old Testament
The thing is, one has to consider WHO placed the bones in the ossuary? And of course, WHO removed the bones and why? At the time of the death of James, there was a power struggle going on for control of the 'church'. James lost obviously.
The victor gets to write or re-write history. It's quite possible that the very same people that wanted James obscured in the Bible, also wanted his burial obscured as well, since to the followers of Jesus and later to Jesus' successor, James, the grave of James and his ossuary would or could become the site of a martyr. Those that opposed James the Just may have felt it better to obscure James' ossuary by leaving off Zaddik or Just.
If the person whose bones were once in the ossuary were someone unimportant, one might think the bones would have been left in the ossuary. But, just as the tombs of ancient Egypt had been ransacked, it is possible that the bones were removed from the ossuary, to protect them from grave robbers, because they belonged to someone of importance.
The same people that may have left any sign of importance out of the inscription, may not have been the ones that removed the bones. The bones may have been removed by those that KNEW their importance, and placed them elsewhere for safekeeping.
I guess someone forgot to tell this to Jerome. In his Preface to "Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs," he wrote:
"As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church. "Jerome plainly set aside the so-called "deuterocanonical" books apart from the rest of the Vulgate and it remained that way in most editions. This fact was understood up until the time of the Council of Trent. Indeed, the famous Cardinal Cajetan, in his "Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament," wrote:
"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus.Remember, if you accept the "deuterocanonical" books as Scripture, you have to believe the following passage:
"If the Devil, or an evil spirit troubles anyone, they can be driven away by making a smoke of the heart, liver, and gall of a fish...and the Devil will smell it, and flee away, and never come again anymore." (Tobit 6:5-8)I stand on the side of Jerome, Athanasiusm, Origen, Epiphanius, Basil the Great, Melito, Gregory of Nazianzen, Hilary of Poitiers, and many others in rejecting these kinds of superstitions.
There is more than one possibility here. The second part of the inscription could have been added by a pilgrim in the first centuries for whatever reason if the ossuary were a recognized relic then; the inscription could have been added by the finder of the piece or by the dealer he sold it to in order to get a higher price for it.In the first instance could we call it a hoax? If the second supposition is true then analysis will surely show that. I will wait for the articles and controversy that are sure to come in the next few issues of BAR. Alone, "Jacob son of Joseph" proves nothing as there were many Jacobs and Josephs and Joshua was one of the most common names of the time.
As far as reporting me for abuse, (if you consider asking a question to be ABUSE -- sounds like something Hillary clinton would say) anyway, FYI, polycarp has been banned from this site for abusive attacks.
Thus far, I've never been. Have at it.
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