THERE IS NO ARCHAELOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS
There was a tomb found in a Jerusalem suburb in 1945 and inside it there were
ossuaries or jars of bones and on two of them the name of Jesus appears. The
first has Jesus help in Greek. The second has Jesus let him arise in Aramaic.
The tomb was believed to have been closed in 50 AD.
Dishonest Christians like Michael Green (Runaway World, page 26) take this to be
proof of the historicity of Jesus and others go as far as to take the Jesus let
him arise to evince first century awareness that Jesus himself had risen and so
was able to raise the dead. But these references prove nothing like that. You
can pray to an imaginary god and ask him to raise people up. The pagans did that
all the time. And one would wonder why only two jars were written on when there
were several in the tomb. If only two jars contained Christian bones it is
impossible to believe that the relatives who would have been Jewish would have
agreed with such inscriptions which were religiously offensive to most Jews. It
was a Jewish tomb. And the inscriptions appearing on two jars and not them all
seems to be sectarian and offensive. And why one in Greek and the other in
Aramaic? And why different prayers? It would have been more natural for the
prayer for resurrection to appear on both. And why pray to Jesus to make the
person arise as if he wasn’t going to do it anyway? The prayer hints that Jesus
did NOT rise again for he never proved that he could raise people up or would do
it. But nevertheless the problems suggest to me that some pair wrote the
inscriptions long after 50 AD particularly when they are just crude scratches.
They were scribbled in a hurry and whoever did it made no effort to do it right.
The Catholic newspaper, The Universe (October 27, 2002, page 3), discusses the
find of an ossuary made of limestone which contained an Aramaic inscription
running, James, Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus”. The ossuary was found by a
French archaeologist from a collector who bought it from a man who said he stole
it from a cave in Jerusalem. Some scholars believe that the find is genuine.
Andre Lemaire thinks the inscription refers to Jesus Christ. He dates the box to
63 AD.
Many scholars of the highest calibre think he was being hasty. The paper admits
that if this inscription is genuine it is the only physical artefact related to
the existence of Jesus that has ever been found. Lemaire thinks that because the
brother being mentioned is very unusual this Jesus must have been someone
unique, someone famous like Jesus Christ. The writing style seems to indicate a
first century origin. There are plenty of college educated people who could have
inscribed on the ossuary. The origins of the ossuary are obscure and there are
no bones inside it which does not bode well for the authenticity of the
inscription. And if it is real, there were plenty of Jameses who had fathers
called Joseph and who had brothers called Jesus. And as for the reference to a
brother called Jesus, if there was another James in the same tomb who was the
son of another Joseph the first James would have to have his brother mentioned
to avert confusion. The most plausible answer for the problem of why the brother
Jesus was mentioned was because Jesus was the owner of the tomb. Most experts
prefer this idea. If so, then the Jesus was not Jesus Christ who had to be
buried in a borrowed tomb. It is a fact that brother of Jesus could have been
added to the box for the handwriting of the inscription indicates the
possibility that two men put the inscription on. And there was no way James who
was so loved by the Jews would have had Jesus mentioned on his ossuary. The Jews
did not like Jesus and wanted heretics like him to be forgotten.
The Catholic Church opposes the discovery’s authenticity fearing it undermines
the Catholic claim that Mary was always a virgin and that Jesus was her only
child.
The ossuary when its inscription is so bizarre could be evidence that there was
no Jesus for somebody could have scribbled on it in the first century to provide
some.
Ossuaries often have no names on them. There was no need to for nobody needed
the names on a box that was never going to leave a tomb. All that mattered was
knowing which family the tomb belonged to. That is why inscriptions are very
often very suspect. Joseph as spelt on the ossuary is an error. The ossuary of
Caiaphas uses a different spelling. Part of the James inscription is illegible
which is odd for this illegibility starts in mid-sentence as if there was some
inept tampering person at work. The ossuary even uses Yeshuwa for Jesus which is
a bit unusual and there is no evidence that this name was ever used for this
person, Jesus Christ.
How convenient that the bones are not available for DNA comparison with the
Turin Shroud too! If James and Jesus were related we could soon prove that if
the Shroud and the bones are authentic. Many scholars particularly in Israel are
adamant that the second part of the inscription is a forgery for it is so poor
and different from the rest that it must have been the work of another carver
perhaps from the third century. Rochelle I Altman and the palaeographer Ada
Yardeni have declared the second part to be a poor amateurish fake. If it is
from the third century then we must ask why somebody then had to do such a
seemingly bizarre thing. Was it to provide evidence for Jesus that was lacking
meaning there were scholars then who were saying there was no reason to regard
Jesus as a real historical person? It cannot be doubted that the early
Christians were demons when it came to scribbling graffiti so even if there was
no evidence for the inscription being unreal it could still be the case that it
is just another bizarre example of Christian scribbling. Christians always were
eager to produce fake relics of revered saints.
On June 18th, 2003, the news came from Jerusalem that Israeli Officials stated
that the James inscription and a few others were inauthentic. The reference to
brother of Jesus was recognised as a later addition for it was not inscribed at
the same time as the first bit. The owner of the James ossuary tried to sell it
and the investigations were the result of police interest as well. The Israeli
Officials are definite that the reference to Jesus was added to the inscription
in modern times. It was found suspicious that the ossuary appeared in a year in
which there was a spate of interest and books about James.
Some have been saying that the inscription on the ossuary being of recent origin
does not mean it is inauthentic because somebody might have re-written it to
make it clearer! Desperation is a terrible scourge.
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BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible
The King James Version