26 February 2007

"Tomb of Jesus found" oh yeh?

I saw this in the newspaper today. I was skeptical.
10 coffins, six of which bore inscriptions, which - translated into English – included the names “Jesus son of Joseph,” twice “Maria,” and “Judah son of Jesus.”

Now you might say my skepticism is down to an a priori faith commitment. And, in large part, you'd probably be right. However, having already had one of these burial site things with a supposed Jesus connection, I guess we should all be aware that the names Maryam, Y'shua, Yosef, and a few others, were pretty common. So unless there's some other connection, why would we take mere coincidences of names all that seriously?
As the head honcho of Israeli archaeology says:
“It’s a beautiful story but without any proof whatsoever,” Prof Amos Kloner, “The names that are found on the tombs are names that are similar to the names of the family of Jesus. But those were the most common names found among Jews in the first centuries BCE and CE.”

You might want to mark this report though for dealing with the inevitable post-Da Vinci code skeptics.
Documentary makers claim tomb of Jesus found: Filed in: , , ,

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