Jesus' Tomb Info.

Hey everyone,

Still enjoying vacation. I got an email from a friend and scholar Jim Darlack. He occasionally posits comments on the blog here. Typically you all yawn when he does, but I affirm his scholarship. Anyway, he sent me a great and helpful email regarding the Discovery Channel special on the "discovery" of Jesus tomb. My favorite part of the story is that they have matched DNA found in the tomb to be Jesus. Where did they get that sample??? Have fun reading below...
--Ben

Hello,

Unless you've been living in a cave for a few weeks, you've probably heard about the whole "Jesus family tomb" sensation in the news. In essence a team of scholars and scientists claim to have found the tomb of Jesus, son of Joseph, Jude the son of Jesus and Mariamne the wife of Jesus! (Yes, this all starting to sound like the DaVinci Code.) Anyway, I thought you might be interested in looking at a few "no nonsense" links to articles refuting the current media nonsense. Below are various blog responses to the whole "Jesus family tomb" sensation that's been in the news. Some of it may be a bit technical (e.g. full of scholarly jargon and other nonsense), but try to take a glance at a few. I highly recommend the first two posts by Ben Witherington.

Anyway the posts below are written by either "experts" or folks very familiar with biblical studies who have good reason to say that the whole "Jesus family tomb" sensation is hogwash. Not all of the scholars below are "conservative," so don't be too offended if they say something that seems off kilter. On the other hand if they're not conservative and they're saying that the "Jesus family tomb" is hogwash, then that's all the better. It shows that the problem is not with conservative Christians unable to accept any challenge to faith. Rather the problem is with poor scholarship on the part of the documentary producers James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici for the sake of sensationalist reporting!

• Ben Witherington (conservative New Testament scholar):
  http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-tomb-titanic-talpiot-tomb-theory.html
  http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/problems-multiple-for-jesus-tomb-theory.html
  
• Darrell Bock (conservative New Testament scholar):
  http://dev.bible.org/bock/node/106
  http://dev.bible.org/bock/node/107

• Richard Bauckham (moderate New Testament scholar) will be posting a guest blog at chrisendom, Chris Tilling's blog:
  http://www.christilling.de/blog/2007/02/bauckham-guest-post-tomorrow.html (not yet published [as of 2pm Feb 28], but keep an eye out for it - Bauckham's an expert when it comes to the statistics about people's names during Jesus' lifetime)

• Tyler Williams (moderate OT scholar) at Codex:
  http://biblical-studies.ca/blog (good posts with great links to other blogs)

• Mark Goodacre (moderate NT scholar):
  http://ntgateway.com/weblog/labels/Talpiot%20tomb.html (this is a link to all his posts on the Jesus family tomb)

• Jim Davila (moderate Early Judaism scholar):
  http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2007_02_25_paleojudaica_archive.html#117256772472454579 (more from Bauckham - Davila is at St. Andrews w. Bauckham)

• Rick Brannan (an employee at Logos Bible Software)
  http://www.supakoo.com/rick/ricoblog/2007/02/26/MoreOnTheJesusFamilyTombEspeciallyOnTheInscriptions.aspx

• Michael Heiser (resident OT scholar at Logos Bible Software).
  http://www.michaelsheiser.com/ (note the link on the left of the screen to an academic paper he presented [VERY TECHNICAL])

Jim