Jesus' Tomb
August 8th 2007 01:54
There's something very wrong with religious journalism. Not only do journalists seem ignorant of religion - they don't "Get Religion" in the words of that famous blog - but they don't seem to get history or science either.
I watched that program on Channel Ten the other night about the alleged tomb of Jesus, bones and all, with a groing sense of incredulity. What sort of idiots do these people think we are?
The evidence as presented was interesting enough. I thought that the use of statistics a la Numb3ers for historical purposes was an interesting departure. Historians of the New Testament have been engaged in prosopography (the study of names) for some time. It would have been nice to hear from some of them.
The DNA conclusions were interesting. Why, though, the focus on Mary Magdalene? Why not prove that Mary and Jesus were or were not related. Likewise Mary Magdalene and the child (thought to be Jesus' boy). While they were at it why not get a few Merovingian mitchondrial DNA scrapings to see if they are related to Mary Magdalene? That would be fun!
The problem is that history is fairly much a closed book - there just aren't enough verifiable facts. Adding up a list of "possibles" and coming out with a "more than likely" doesn't stack up as scientific method. Just because it could have happened doesn't mean that it did.
I watched that program on Channel Ten the other night about the alleged tomb of Jesus, bones and all, with a groing sense of incredulity. What sort of idiots do these people think we are?
The evidence as presented was interesting enough. I thought that the use of statistics a la Numb3ers for historical purposes was an interesting departure. Historians of the New Testament have been engaged in prosopography (the study of names) for some time. It would have been nice to hear from some of them.
The DNA conclusions were interesting. Why, though, the focus on Mary Magdalene? Why not prove that Mary and Jesus were or were not related. Likewise Mary Magdalene and the child (thought to be Jesus' boy). While they were at it why not get a few Merovingian mitchondrial DNA scrapings to see if they are related to Mary Magdalene? That would be fun!
The problem is that history is fairly much a closed book - there just aren't enough verifiable facts. Adding up a list of "possibles" and coming out with a "more than likely" doesn't stack up as scientific method. Just because it could have happened doesn't mean that it did.
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