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To: annalex

The second bullet point is why I’ve never leaned towards its authenticity.


67 posted on 02/24/2020 11:18:29 AM PST by william clark (Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: william clark
The second bullet point is why I’ve never leaned towards its authenticity.

The second bullet point is the burial practices.

That problem only arises when you read the Gospel in English. When the Gospels are read in the original Greek, and then read and understand the Jewish Mishnah, the written record of the oral traditions, about the “manner of Jewish Burial Customs” that problem goes away. The English Translations misuse the Greek word for BINDINGS as “bandages,” which is a secondary Greek meaning for the Jewish usage of small ropes or pieces cloth as bindings to tie the wrists, arms, ankles, legs, to keep them from flopping akimbo, and jaw closed in death, and to place a potsherd on the eye lids to keep the eyes closed. Some people put a small coin on their dead relative’s eyes as a heavier weight.

People assumed on reading that transliterational use of “bandages” incorrectly assumed then that the manner of the Jews meant they buried their dead like their neighbors to the Southwest, the Egyptians, especially when thousands of mummies were being found in the 18th century, and being shipped to Europe—did you know that mummies were actually used as cordwood fuel for heat?—swathed in yards and yards of tape-like bandages. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Although several Jewish cemeteries have been excavated, not a single one has ever been found where there were bodies found where there were traces of swathed, bundled bodies such as those described by the skeptics. The only one where there has been a body in a niche found, was one found at the end of the last century, in a 1st Century Jewish Cemetery in Jerusalem, where the niche had collapsed in an earthquake before the bones had been removed, and they found the body covered by the remnant of a full body covering sail.

There was literally NO TIME for such a burial practice among the Jews nor would they want to. The Jews had to put their dead into the tomb before sundown. The body had to be ritually washed as much as possible, annointed, and placed in the tomb. Doing such wrapping is a tedious, long process. Then, they have to also see to their own ritual cleansing. In addition, one year later, that body’s bones have to be cleared from the tomb’s stone niche and placed either into a communal bone pit, or the family’s ossuary bone box, readying the niche for use of the next occupying body. They would not want that necessary task complicated by entangling masses of rotting bandages intertwined with the bones. For the Jews, the idea was not to preserve the body, but to allow it to reduce to bones so they can be “gathered unto their ancestors.”

115 posted on 02/24/2020 7:12:02 PM PST by Swordmaker (My pistol self-identifies as an iPad, so you must accept it in gun-free zones, you hoplophobe bigot!)
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To: william clark

See Swordmaker’s post down in the thread. Yes, it matches the burial practices of 1c AD in the Holy Land.


138 posted on 02/25/2020 5:03:55 AM PST by annalex (fear them not)
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