The Koppel debate?

I hear a lot of people distancing themselves from a hot potato, but despite denouncing conclusions, no one to my knowledge has disputed key facts.

But beginning with this special (and in the time since) isn't it interesting that ALL of the experts used in the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" documentary other than James Tabor have distanced themselves and disagreed with the conclusions in the movie?

I thought the point of using those experts was because Mr. Jacobovici wanted to convince people that they supported the work. If they don't, there must be some reason why (and considering they are not all Christians, we can throw out the "Church conspiracy" excuse).

Even if you take the tact you're taking that they are just upset how their work was used, at least the documentary can be criticized for making it APPEAR that those folks were on Simcha's side.

There are myriad problems with the claims in the documentary even setting aside it being statistically improbable that this is Jesus of Nazareth's actual tomb.

Christian site, but don't let that throw you, many of the articles are offsite and scholarly: http://preventingtruthdecay.org/historicaljesus.shtml

Of course neither Mr. Jacobovici nor Mr. Camera are qualified experts EITHER, so at best they have ONE biblical scholar on their side (Dr. Tabor), who seems to have held stubbornly to his "wait and see" attitude ever since the Koppel special.

In my own study, I found no evidence that Mary Magdalane was ever called "Mariamne" in the literature. At best we find the SISTER of Philip to have that name, in an apocryphal document written centuries after the New Testament gospels. We also have the wife of Herod. Since neither of those women is likely to have been Jesus' wife and mother of his children, I think we can toss that aside. Why would Matthew (the disciple?) be buried in Jesus' tomb?

It might not be "Jesus" at all (Yeshua) but "Hanun." Totally different name. Of course variants on Yeshua are pretty common.

There's no reason for a "cross" being on the bone box, because the cross was not used as a Christian symbol in those times, and besides, why would a Christian put a "cross" on his bone box? Think about it. That would mean he KNEW that Jesus stayed dead in his tomb for over a year and his body rotted away. Why would they bother to put some kind of faith in his resurrection then? Oh yes, the "Spiritual resurrection only" excuse. The trouble is that the groups who believed in such things came at least a century AFTER Jesus' death (and most such groups didn't gain any sway until the modern period). The documents Simcha wants us to use all either say that Jesus died and was physically resurrected, OR they said he HAD NO PHYSICAL BODY AT ALL and only APPEARED to have died. So either way we should end up with an empty tomb, not one with bones in it. He can't just use the documents to prove one thing and ignore the rest. If he just wants a naturalistic explanation, his best bet would be "someone stole the body and then it was claimed he rose from the dead." The other alternative is to say Jesus didn't really die and just escaped, but that is even more incredible. Mary Magdalane is never called "Mariamne" never mind "the Master." The idea that Jesus was married has ZERO evidence in any ancient source. At best he's concocted this based on the modern romantic idea that all Jewish men got married by age 30 (or to keep it in conformity with MODERN Jewish expectations).

The idea that the beloved disciple was actually Jesus' own son is pretty ridiculous. Why would he say to Mary (HIS MOTHER) that she was to care for this disciple and this disciple was to care for her (the Gospel of John says he took her into his home)? The doco portrays it as a little boy standing by Mary who is "Josi" (sp?), or Jesus Jr. Sorry that doesn't work. The text clearly says that it's his mother, NOT Mary Magdalane. Why would the (by now elderly) mother Mary be entrusted to care for his son, but not his own wife who was standing right there (and presumably already taking care of him)? It's not as if Jesus didn't have other more capable relatives to care for his aged mother, right? Or at least male disciples (the traditional interpretation that it was the disciple John, an adult, though young, at this time). It would make more sense for Jesus entrust his mother to an adult man than a little boy who was her grandson.

So this part is a bit bizarre.

If the tomb was known, how did the early Church get started? Anyone could have visited the tomb and said "there he is!" The tomb was still intact, after all (the bones were taken out in 1981 AD and buried in an unmarked grave according to Jewish laws). How could Paul and these others be teaching a bodily resurrection when everyone know the Tomb held Jesus' bones? How could they teach celibacy if they knew Jesus was a parent and father? How credible would Jesus be if he was preaching celibacy while a family man? If Christianity was a big hoax, how come nobody raised these objections? The New Testament was written very quickly (the earliest texts within twenty years of Jesus' death, the last ones being completed within 70 years). All the ancient "heresies" survive, but apparently the "Jesus as father who is buried down the street with Matthew" doesn't appear. Did "Matthew" write Matthew's Gospel? If he knew about all this, why didn't anybody catch on?

"Oh, Matthew's Gospel? Yeah I remember him, he's buried down the street next to Jesus and his wife and kid!" That would be a strange thing indeed, when that gospel came out, wouldn't it? Absurd.

Anyway, from memory those are the bits that strain credibility for me. He has to fudge the ancient texts quite a bit to make his ideas sound reasonable, and project (anachronistically) modern post-enlightenment ideas onto the ancient situation to make it all "work."

But most of this I see as a bunch of "maybes." Simcha likes to hedge his bets. While it's impressive to see a Jewish layman trying to historicize the Gospel story and pull it off so slickly, but it's just not even logically consistent with the evidence, never mind with the experts.

http://www.historyversusthedavincicode.com/
History vs. the Da Vinci Code

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