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Year after year in spring, a new crop of religious dandelions pop up in our post-Christian culture. Like the real ones growing in my yard, they make a colorful splash that briefly captures our attention, until we realize that they are only shallow-rooted weeds, not beautiful flowers planted long ago in the deep rich soil of the past, such as Easter lilies. Last year, it was the Gnostic nonsense of the "Da Vinci Code." We've had the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," written centuries after the eyewitnesses were dead. This year it's a variation on the "Da Vinci" theme. We are...

Filmakers and researchers on Monday unveiled two ancient stone boxes they said may have once contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but several scholars derided the claims made in a new documentary as unfounded... ...Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypotheses holds little weight... Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher... William Dever, an expert on near eastern...

Talpiot tomb Remember the tale of the Titanic? How it was supposed to be impregnable, and nothing could poke holes in it? How it would never be sunk? Well all I can say is that human hubris knows no bounds, and that hasn’t changed in the last century. On April 15th 1912 the supposedly leak proof Titanic rammed into an iceberg and sank—sank like a giant stone. Sank quickly, with great loss of life. Why do I bring this up? Because in one of the interesting ironies in recent memory, James Cameron the movie director who made the enormously successful...

Harvard researcher Karen King today unveiled an ancient papyrus fragment with the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The text also mentions “Mary,” arguably a reference to Mary Magdalene. The announcement at an academic conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian world. The Smithsonian Channel will premiere a special documentary about the discovery on September 30 at 8 p.m. ET. And Smithsonian magazine reporter Ariel Sabar has been covering the story behind the scenes for weeks, tracing King’s steps from when a suspicious e-mail hit her in-box to the nerve-racking moment when she thought...

Harvard researcher Karen King today unveiled an ancient papyrus fragment with the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The text also mentions “Mary,” arguably a reference to Mary Magdalene. The announcement at an academic conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian world. The Smithsonian Channel will premiere a special documentary about the discovery on September 30 at 8 p.m. ET. And Smithsonian magazine reporter Ariel Sabar has been covering the story behind the scenes for weeks, tracing King’s steps from when a suspicious e-mail hit her in-box to the nerve-racking moment when she thought...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ” The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.” The...

Every Easter season the anti-Jesus crowd comes out of the woodwork creating some "controversy" about Jesus. This latest one, like many, is years old and was dusted off for the latest round of baseless attacks on Jesus' historicity. Historian Paul L. Maier explains further: Thanks for the profusion of e-mails I’ve received over the last two days regarding the Talpiot tombs discovery in Jerusalem, a.k.a., “the Jesus Family Tomb” story. Some of you also suggested that “life seemed to be following art” so far as my A Skeleton in God’s Closet was concerned. Believe me, this is not the way...

Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity. In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene. No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true. Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building...

....Two weeks ago, on April 10, in a manner reminiscent of King’s carefully controlled original unveiling of the fragment, the Harvard Divinity School issued a press release declaring that a “wide range of scientific testing indicates that a papyrus fragment containing the words ‘Jesus said to them my wife’ is an ancient document” and that “its contents may have been composed as early as the second to fourth centuries.” Harvard had given an advance viewing of the test results and an interview with King to reporters for just three newspapers—the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Harvard student...

We saw the documentary yesterday thanks to an advance copy from The Discovery Channel, and our Amy has read the book released in conjunction. We've seen all their evidence. Simcha Jacobivici, the documentarian, has been saying in interviews that they’re just connecting the dots. I’d say it’s more like first arranging the dots to get a certain picture and then connecting them. Their reasons for arranging the dots in their particular order is full of speculation at each step. They tell a coherent and affecting story to account for the information, but there’s no rationale for why that story is...

Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity. In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith--and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene. No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true. Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in...

My sister was talking to me about this author Dan Brooks who wrote "Angels and Demons". In his second book he contends that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, but that Constantine ommitted any books from the Bible that made reference to this. Has anyone else heard of this? Is this a veiled attack on Christianity? The contention is that women were liberated prior to Christianity and that it was Constantine's version of Christ's history that stole that liberation away from women. This seems to be another liberal attempt to rewrite history. I had always believed that ancient societies to...

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A relic of Saint Mary Magdalene, often referred to as the Apostle of the Apostles, is making its first North American tour. The relic, a major piece of her tibia, will be carried in a reliquary to the United States by Father Thomas Michelet, a French Dominican priest. Its first stop is on October 22nd in Gainesville, Georgia at Saint Michael's Catholic Church where it will be venerated all through the night. The purpose of the tour, which continues through November 30th, and travels to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, New York and Florida, is to...

A controversial document that suggests that Jesus of Nazareth had a wife is most likely ancient and not a modern forgery, according to a paper published today in the Harvard Theological Review. The papyrus fragment, known as the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," has been the subject of widespread debate since it was discovered in 2012 because it includes the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'." It also mentions that "she will be able to be my disciple," which led some to question whether women should be allowed to become Catholic priests. The Vatican has previously said that the document...

‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ Fragment Is a Fake, Vatican Says September 28, 2012 VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - An ancient papyrus fragment which a Harvard scholar says contains the first recorded mention that Jesus may have had a wife is a fake, the Vatican said on Friday. "Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery," the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian. "In any case, it's a fake." Joining a highly charged academic debate over the authenticity of the text, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, the...

Archaeologists have discovered vases of perfumed ointment which may have been used by Mary Magdalene to anoint the feet of Jesus. The Italian team have been digging for several months at the ancient Palestinian town of Magdala – from where Mary gets her name. The archaeologists of the Franciscan academic society Studium Biblicum Franciscanum found the unopened vases dating to the first century AD conserved in mud at the bottom of a swimming pool in Magdala's thermal complex. The town is on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and Mary Magdalene is mentioned several times throughout the Bible....

Before the “Left Behind” series catapulted to the top of the bestseller list, the idea that Christians could be lifted bodily into the clouds during the Rapture was an idea that only obscure theologians studied. These days, of course, lots of people believe that's what will happen the day the world ends. Now a new novel is forcing people to confront another biblical puzzle. The DaVinci Code, a thriller by Dan Brown, tells the story of a Harvard professor summoned to the Louvre Museum after a murder there to examine cryptic symbols relating to DaVinci's work. During the course of...

A leading US TV news reporter has said her network is taking a risk with a news special which asks whether Jesus Christ had a wife. ABC's Elizabeth Vargas said Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci, to be shown in the US on Monday night, was being made "as respectfully as we can". But she admitted: "You can't talk about this subject without intriguing people or offending people." The programme is partly based on the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. The book alleges Mary Magdalene - a biblical figure widely thought to have been a prostitute - was actually Jesus's...

NEW YORK — ABC News correspondent Elizabeth Vargas concedes her network is stepping into a theological minefield with its one-hour exploration of whether Jesus Christ had a wife. The ABC News special, "Jesus, Mary and DaVinci," is scheduled to air Monday at 8 p.m. ET. "You can't talk about this subject without intriguing people or offending people," Vargas said Thursday. "We're trying to do it as respectfully as we can." ABC screened the special for some reporters and religious leaders on Thursday. The program is based on the best-selling novel, "The DaVinci Code," which claims to be partly grounded on...

The Steilacoom woman pointed to biblical stories as evidence: Mary anointed Jesus in a wedding nuptial and was the first person the resurrected Christ appeared to. "I believe that the Gospels portray Jesus and Mary Magdalene as a couple," Starbird said. "They were married."