Name:sadinoel •
Title: New Evidence!!! •
Date posted: 12/13/07 16:26
Q: Psyche.
I see that it's all the same pseudo intellectuals expounding on the same old garbage.
You want to know why there has not been any new discoveries, follow ups, or conclusions on this topic? Because guess what? Simcha CASHED IN. All of you bought his book, fell into the hype, probalby bought the DVD, Towels, actioin figures, and whatever other promotional objects he could get cash for.
Wake up people. This whole story was a device to make money. Why do you think there has been no updates on this site? No followups or testing on the tomb or (drum roll) DNA TESTING the bones of the "son" to that of "Jesus" or other "family members" to see if they are a match!!! LOL!
It's funny to think, that so many people here, all puffing each other up in their self righteous indignation, have simply bought into a marketing ploy.
The real irony, is that I'd bet many of the people who buy into this, are the same who detract from religion in general (or just Christianity) as being a "scam" or ploy or bogus... and that accuse Christians or members of other religions of just believing everything they hear and not really seeking truth.
Don't you see? You have all fallen into the same trap as what you accuse Christians of... just on the other side of the trap. LOL. Simcha scammed the hell out of you people, and you are STILL lapping it up like a hungry kitten, so many months after the fact, and after nothing new has been updated or investigated.
Simcah is a business man, not a scientist. His objective is to make money, not some altruistic mission to save the world through exposing truth. Get real. Wake up.
The reason people just keep buying into this, is simply because it aligns with what you already believe, and makes you all feel JUSTIFIED in living your lives the way you have. Kind of makes you feel like "yes I was right all along!"... which is exactly what Simcha was counting on... so he could count your change.
I feel bad for people who are unable to critically analyze something without removing their personal bias to a great extent.
Of course I don't expect my message to impact anyone here. You are all too busy telling each other how great you are and how wrong millions of other people are. I guess whatever it takes to make you feel good is fine.
Good Luck in life, and don't fall for those Nigerian email scams ok?
Name:Panluna •
Date: 12/13/07 19:13
A: Sadinoel,
Same old argument---just different words---OY !!! Ye who is a skeptic !!!!! Psyche means Soul--what does your's tell you? Do you listen to the facts? Or are you trying to expose yourself as an self-important debunker?Get an education and learn respect in regards to scientific facts and religious truths and beliefs.You've insulted everyone who posted on this forum but you only shoot verbal blanks anyhow !!!!! Follow ups weren't necessary because all of the work presented in the evidence was finished before the book was written and the movie was produced.You need to search for the truth in your Psyche(Soul).Wake up or I'll zaappp you with a seeing-the- truth spell--MUUhahahaha!!!!!!
Happy Holidays if you celebrate any that doesn't revolve around your puffed up self-importance and opinions.BAHHHHH!!!!! It's not worth arguing with you.
Name:Panluna •
Date: 12/17/07 16:29
A: BONA SATURNALIA, Seasons' Greetings and Happy Holidays to all and Bright Blessings for the New Year.
Bona Fortuna,
Panluna
Name:betty47 •
Date: 12/19/07 6:33
A: See below from Dr. Tabor's blog. There has been a lot of talk that this topic wasn't peer reviewed, but it's getting the peer review it finally deserves. Quote:
"That Professor James Charlesworth of Princeton has put together a large academic conference that will discuss both the Talpiot tomb and the James ossuary, in a proper scholarly context, this January in Jerusalem, is all to the good and says much for his own courage and integrity. He too has taken his share of “lumps” for maintaining that neither the tomb nor the ossuary has yet had a proper hearing. So let’s hear it for responsible academic standards when it comes to “biblical archaeology,” but let’s not dismiss or ignore the body of responsible discussion on both the Talpiot tomb and the James ossuary."
Name:Panluna •
Date: 12/19/07 20:40
A: Betty47,
Are they planning to publicise the results and where will this take place?
Happy Holidays.
Name:sam •
Date: 12/22/07 21:36
A: To my friends Panluna, Roy, Betty47 and to all who joined in the debate & discussion on this forums.
"I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR THE COMING YEARS. HAVE A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY. GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
PEACE, LOVE, THESE ARE TWO MAGICAL WORDS WHICH LEADS THE WORLD TO HAPPINESS & PROSPARITY.
Name:Anchorite •
Date: 02/02/08 2:16
A: you go it sadi baby
Name:Yakblather •
Date: 02/12/08 0:00
A: You're right, it won't impact me in the least. There aren't any updates because archaeology moves at a snail's pace, particularly in Israel, where it is looked upon as tomb-robbing by some people. That's just the way it works, amigo. I firmly believe the Tomb is simply what it looks like - the family tomb of Jesus. Certainly, there will be those whose faith will be shaken or tested by this, according to the degree of their education and ability to see the facts for what they are. It won't affect the religious beliefs of fundamentalists who think that the resurrection was some kind of re-animation of the body. They'll just make the claim that it's all fake. No surprises here.
Name:QuebecIndieAnna •
Date: 02/13/08 15:19
A: .
Below, a re-pasting of interview excerpts of David Horovitz Jan 24th interview of Dr. James Charlesworth.
(Dr. Charlesworth, in Jerusalem on sabbatical for close to a year, reterns to the US in 2 months.)
Updated Jan 25, 2008 17:57
Article in the Jerusalem Post, by David Horovitz
TITLE OF D.H.'s ARTICLE :
_______________" It should have elicited a 'Wow'! "________________
Journalist- David Horovitz :
Q : And that's what you're now going to set about doing?
Dr C: Yes. I'm here till April. If we get a permit, I'm going to set up a committee, including [archeologist/anthropologist] Mark Spigelman...
I plan non-invasive exploration... Contamination [of sites and their contents] has been rife in every archeological excavation.
Now we have the insight of hindsight. We need to recognize what questions we have and how can we obtain the best answers.
How, for instance, can we obtain DNA without contaminating it?
We need to get the best minds.
No one should be involved who has strong feelings, who think they know the answers.
And we need to ask :
1) Is the tomb related to Jews in the time of Hillel and Jesus?
2) Is the tomb related to people known in literature - in Josephus and the Mishna, in the New Testament and in rabbinic writings?
I'm convinced we'll never have definitive conclusions, but we'll have better questions. We'll have a vastly improved historical reconstruction.
What is exciting for me is that we have Jews, Roman Catholics and Protestants working on this together, and their faiths are not a factor...
I'm on sabbatical at Hebrew University. I'm here. I'm open [to work seriously on this] if people are willing, and everyone seems to be willing.
Q : Can you elaborate a little on some of the wider context in which you're looking at the Talpiot Tomb.
A : We have more and more people, Jews and Christians, admitting that the "Palestinian Jesus Movement"
- something that was going on in Palestine, was relating to Jesus and was a movement -
was much more significant before [the year] 70 than we thought.
Almost everywhere you go
-at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, at Ein Kerem, at Philip's Fountain-
you have Hadrianic structure.
Why would [Roman emperor] H a d r i a n have wanted to build something over celebration of the Jesus movement?
The provisional answer : He wanted to suppress it.
That's a fingerprint.
If he wanted to suppress it, it may have been s i g n i f i c a n t.
The historical span is the period from 27 [in the three years before the crucifixion] to [the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans under Titus] 70.
Why would there be such an interest in putting a stop to this movement?
It was the politics...
Jesus was clearly put to death by the R o m a n s, not the Jews. They thought he was leading an insurrection.
Jesus was surrounded by crowds - at the feeding of the 5,000, at the entry into Jerusalem. That's a dangerous sociological institution ; people working together. If you're a Roman soldier, you see danger. There's something in the air that's very dangerous - the polemical ambience.
It was like a fire on which gasoline was being poured.
Jesus seems to know that open revolt against Rome would be disastrous - as indeed it proves in 70.
Jesus said : 'If they do this to the green wood, what shall they do with the dry?' He's the green wood, being taken to his death.
Jesus was warning :
Please be careful or everything will be destroyed.
In Luke, his followers talked of him predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, the greatest city ever built, with t h e g r e a t e s t t e m p l e e v e r b u i l t.
We've found stones up to 570 tons [the 'Western Stone']!
The heaviest in the pyramids are 70 tons;
at Stonehenge, 35 tons.
A 100-ton stone can't be moved with wood, rollers, pulleys, brakes.
It's an amazing temple.
Archeology gives context to our text.
____________________END OF QUOTES FROM ARTICLE_______
Indie's addition :
Dr. Charlesworth mentions H a d r i a n, an Emperor who build Greek building OVER Christian buildings.
Why is this significant?
Let's look at some dates :
H a d r i a n
Roman, born in 76 CE
Becomes Tribune of Mecedonia in 96
Serves in Trajan's wars in Dacia 101-106
Govenor of Syria in 114
Becomes Emperor in 117
One war fough during reign as Emperor :
- Jewish revolt in Judea, which he put down in 134.
Hadrian was a great admirer of Greek architecture.
He built great public buildings throughout the empire.
Dr.- Charlesworth m e a n s that if Hadrian fought only one war during his reign, and it was to put down a Jewish uprising, and if Hadrian built Greek building on top of Christian building,
then the i m p o r t a n c e of the Palestinian Church was b i g g e r than previously thought.
Extracting new information from known historical facts,
arriving at new conclusions be reexamining known historical facts,
and revisiting what we know about Primitive Christianity in Palestine is part of what Dr. Charlesworth has been working on while on sabbatical in Israel.
He, and other scholars are continuing to extract information from known historical facts in order to fine tune hypotheses that can help us better understand Primitive Christianity in general, and this tomb as well.
As was well said above, doing the work is snail paced.
The statement that because there are not sensational new declarations every 36 hours (as was the case during and immediately following the conference) necessarily means that "every one has gone home to nurse on their bank accounts" is iether true, or, the constant, pains-taking work is going forward.
We live in a culture that is holliwoodized : we think real archaeology is a Harrison Ford, aka Indiana Jones, non-stop, from beginning to end, adrenaline rush.
Real archaeology can be that, but only in spurts. The reality is that it is more like trying to figure out who shot Kennedy, or is it true that Elvis still lives, or what lasting effect will Martin Luther King have had on Occidental culture, or, .... who will win the US primaries?
It's a 'wait and see' kind of reality.
Those who are stuck on the "he is getting so rich from this", two suggections :
Visit the "Naked Archaeology" site. See what Jacabovici is up to now.
He obviously is still interested in the outcome of the work yet to be done on Talpiot. But, he's done, more or less with Talpiot. He's moved on.
I wonder if he does not wish, in some ways, he'd never opened up this can of worms. He'll never know the peace of anonimity again.
He could quietly go stick a cable camera down a pipe without anyone noticing. He'll never be able to do that again as long as he lives.
I do not envy his position.
All the money in the world cannot give a person the peace of being able to just live one's life, without constant recording of every word one utters.
If a person is curious as to what is new in archaeology, subscribe to a magazine. Don't expect this forum to be the earth-shaking center of archaeological news. This forum is a miracle in another sense : it is a place where Jews, Muslims, Christians, Humanists, Secularists, can exchange on issues of belief, hope, faith. The real miracle of this forum is that such exchanges are occuring in an atmosphere of respect, curiosity about the other, genuine need to share what our innermost beliefs are, and the joy that comes from finding a listening ear that is attached to a truly curious mind, wanting to know what the other understands of her or his tradition.
I've learned from Sam, and Panluma and Anchorite... I am grateful for that.
In snowstorm stricken, home from work for the day, Quebec,
Indie
.
Name:sojourner •
Date: 04/17/08 16:34
A: Talk about being unable to analyze anything without removing personal bias! I notice you didn't claim Simcha fabricated the site. The tomb exists, guy! That is the incontrovertable fact.
Name:Sassy •
Date: 04/23/08 0:45
A: Per the Jesus Dynasty/James Tabor blog:
April 16, 2008
Inside the Numbers on the Talpiot Tomb
There is a new article on the Web by historian Mark Elliot and mathematician Kevin Kilty. It is titled “Inside the Numbers on the Talpiot Tomb,” and is available for downloading on the Web. I quote here their modest opening paragraph:
Inside the Numbers of the Talpiot Tomb
By Mark Elliott and Kevin Kilty
March 20, 2008
The Talpiot Tomb has generated controversy, scholarly debate, and analysis over the past year. It created an academic stir that shows no sign of ceasing just yet. Lately, some scholars have made comments that we view as doubtful and others have made assertions in some instances not supported by the data at hand.
If you have not read their former contribution, that has become absolutely essential to understanding the quite technical discussion of the frequency statistics of the names, it is also available for downloading on the Web and can be read with great profit.
It is unfortunate that the work of qualified scholars such as Feuerverger, Elliot, and Kilty has not yet been factored into the mainstream discussion of “The Tomb” by the scholars. This was widely evident at the Princeton Seminary conference on the Talpiot tomb that met in Jerusalem in January. It has also become abundantly clear in subsequent Web and media comments thereafter by various Talpiot tomb “gainsayers.” I think this misunderstanding stems, in most cases, from a lack of understanding of how statistics work with regard to the Talpiot tomb names. Accordingly, Elliot & Kilty’s latest is a welcome breath of fresh air in this regard. It is written in plain language and is accessible to the non-specialist.
April 6, 2008
Feuerverger’s Paper on Talpiot Tomb Statistics Published
At long last, just over a year after the initial publicity over the Talpiot “Jesus Family Tomb,” the formal paper of Prof. Andrey Feuerverger of the University of Toronto has appeared in The Annals of Applied Statistics, the academic journal of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Vol. 2, no. 1, March, 2008). Feuerverger’s paper, titled “Statistical Analysis of an Archaeological Find,” runs just over 50 pages with notes and bibliography. It is introduced by editor Stephen E. Fienberg and followed by another 50 pages of material from ten professional respondents. Feuerverger then offers a dozen page Rejoinder. Fortunately, for those not near a research library the entire issue, devoted to this subject, is available on the Web through Project Euclid.
This article should put to rest the many spurious claims that Feuerverger subsequently recanted his views on the probabilities of the Talpiot Tomb belonging to Jesus of Nazareth and his family, most recently repeated by Thomas Madden on the National Review Web site over Easter. It will also show the complete inaccuracy of the assertion made by a number of scholars following the January Princeton Seminar conference in Jerusalem that “A statistical analysis of the relatively common names engraved on the ossuaries leaves no doubt that the probability of the Talpiot tomb belonging to Jesus’ family is virtually nil if the Mariamene named on one of the ossuaries is not Mary Magdalene.”
This is decidedly not the case, as Randy Ingermanson quickly pointed out on the Duke Web site: “I am no fan of the Talpiot tomb, but I do not agree with this part of the statement…I have studied Andrey Feuerverger’s statistical analysis in great detail and have done several computations of my own. It is not correct to say that the probability is “virtually nil” if you get rid of the Mary Magdalene hypothesis…The fact is that if you read the Mariamenou inscription as “just another Mary,” then Feuerverger’s calculations lose “statistical significance.” But they most likely still lead to a fairly high probability for the authenticity of the tomb… ” [I should point out here that Ingermanson has his own calculations, with results significantly lower than Feuerverger, that he publishes as one of the responders to Feuerverger in this special issue of Annals, so that his comment here is not about his own views, but an admirable attempt to be fair with Feuerverger.]
Based on the calculations of Elliot and Kilty, whose paper can be downloaded from the Web, and as discussed by Camil Fuchs, who along with Andrey Feuerverger, sat on the panel at the Jerusalem conference dealing with statistics, the name cluster, even leaving Mariamene out entirely, with no assumptions regarding Mary Magdalene, shows a probability factor of .48. This result is far from “virtually nil,” in fact it is very close to 1/2, meaning if we had two tombs to examine, one of them would be the Jesus tomb. Both Ingermanson and Fuchs are among the respondents to the published Feuerverger paper.
It now appears, with Feuerverger’s paper in print, that we have finally reached the point where a more responsible and accurate discussion of the Talpiot tomb name frequencies and statistics can take place. We can at least say that anyone who asserts “the names are common,” as a way of dismissing the evidence, is either completely ignorant of what we now know, or uninterested in an informed and truly academic discussion.
I want to commend Prof. Feuerverger for his thorough work and his doggedness over the past months to remain professional and take the high road academically when so much was being published about him and his views that was so totally inaccurate and even slanderous.
Name:Panluna •
Date: 04/24/08 23:39
A: The truth stands on its own.thanks for the update.
Happy Easter.
Name:laotzu06 •
Date: 05/17/08 11:57
A: can anyone direct me to the information of evidence regarding the "age" or period of the bones?... i mean, this site explains everything from experts, to ossuaries and it's age.. etc. i mean, the most conclusive evidence that these people should look at is the age or period of the bones. if i'm not mistaken, with the James ossuary was considered not the James in the bible because the period of the bones was identified as that of a man living at a later time of Jesus. i mean, scholarly, this site has given so much evidence to the area surrounding the tomb but not on the bones itself which is supposed to be the most important discovery they should be working on. i mean, if the discoverers could identify the period of the bones, and since there is an expert in forensics, could also identify the cause of death, then maybe i should just keep quiet about the whole thing. maybe in addition also, the forensic expert could find out if they died at the same time (lest the coincidence of being in a single tomb) or at different periods, then it could prove so much.
and since this site is highly speculative, let me give an alternative theory. my thinking is that the romans built it to discredit the identity of Jesus. They set up an elaborate scheme that would somehow put the whole Christian community in disarray, since Christians were still a "fresh" breed at that time and could easily be dissuaded. if the romans could prove to the people that Jesus was merely a man, then they could control the whole jewish population by shaking their beliefs. so that would be my theory... the only reason why the romans were not able to "publicize" the tomb was because the jewish revolt broke out and the tomb was totally forgotten. then archeologists find it during our time...
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/18/08 19:10
A: laotzu06,
You can look up ossuary culture on Wikipedia.It was the practice for a century until the Jewish revolt occured for them to bury their dead in limestone coffins and in tombs.Also if you need more info scroll down to the bottom of the page and contact the sponsors.They'll answer your questions.
