Tomb Of Jesus

[Amanda]

So when you say something like "maybe these teachings didn't fall suit to the popular positions of that area at the time?" I'd have to ask "Which time?" Lumping everything together is just muddying the issue from my point of view.

MWC, it really doesn't matter from what point of time, I'm just talking about what access I have now to what these teachings say. We can all agree that isn't the primary resources.

 

Clearly there were embellishments and myth intertwined, yet IMO, there are some impressive teachings in there if it is NOT taken literally. It seems evident to me that at least two ways people can look at these teachings is literally and/or metaphorically/allegorically. Sure, there may be a blend in there... and I suppose that's why we don't use it in our history books. It's difficult to sort through all that, especially since our cultural surroundings include it in more aspects than we often realize.

 

Some people don't want to be "spiritual" nor does "fire" temper them in the manner you expect (or should I say prefer?). It hardens them most completely. They must be removed for the good of the whole. But all this is reading in to the text.

Prefer? I assure you, I am no sado-massachist! I try to avoid the fire as much as possible! Or was that a hint at some other interests you think I might be willing to engage in MWC? Are you going to share with me the dynamics of how one might enjoy receiving pain?

 

I understand how life's problems with no hope of escaping hardens people. That is what I think are the intentions of these teachings, to give coping skills to overcome these problems, so that their hearts are softened. It's just that if someone lies, eventually no one believes anything they say. If someone steals, then no one is going to invite them over. These natural repercussions are the fire that changes us... hopefully, eventually anyway.

 

I did a quick Google just now and all I could find equated to this: "This is an English version of an Urdu treatise written by the Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908)." So basically a couple hundred years ago someone claims that they have something from several thousand years ago that prophecies that jesus will come. A German guy from a couple hundred years ago also claims that he went to India and spoke to the people jesus hung out with (the descendants of rather) and this is evidence, how?

It really doesn't matter, as the message should speak for itself. If these teachings themself don't mean something to people in a self empowering way, then perhaps they should move to another method. It can't be based on a person, but on the message. I'm sure the theory of relativity makes sense to a lot of people if Einstien really existed or not. I would hope that not only these teachings would be beneficial, they have to be reasonable too. I like sacred teachings, and I like many philosophers, and even what many physic scientist have to say too. There's lots of ways and methods to learn many things, give reverence to something, and not all ways are appropriate for all people. I understand that.

 

Lets say that for some reason we ex-c's get put into a colony and for the same strange reason I get made leader. One day I decide that at noon everyday we will go outside, stack bricks into a pile, kill a chicken on top, then unstack the bricks. My decree is made and written down. So we do this everyday.

 

Hundreds of years go by and our descendants start to wonder exactly why it is they have to do this "thing" every day at noon. So they start to apply meanings to this whole act. Well, maybe the bricks represent this and the action of stacking and unstacking them represent that. The killing of the chicken means this and doing it all at noon means some other thing. They work it all out. The just want meaning in these meaningless, pointless, actions they have to do. God told them to do it is a handy way of dealing with some of this.

MWC, all this seems to be similar to what may have happened. That's why I think the thrust of the NT teachings is to THINK of the reason, to understand intent... as to being okay to heal people and to get your oxen out of the ditch on the sabbath. The whole idea is to understand intentions rather than just words on the paper.

 

It makes more sense once you take the letters off. Then you take the first chapter or two from the beginning and end off (since they're xian...along with a few other bits), then the rest is primarily Jewish. Read it with a Preterist mindset (even if you're not Preterist). If you know Josephus and the First Roman War it helps since you need less Preterism to get in your way. Then a little Philo and other Jewish mysticism for the "magic" numbers (like seven) and other symbols. Realize that at least two to four books have been glued together to make the whole and "walla!" you have an easy read. It makes perfect sense at that point.

 

mwc

Well, we could just simplify things and say that everyone that believes anything is dead, or going to die.

[Mythra]

It does sound like he could have left a body.... but what about that doubting Thomas thing? Could you stick your hand in a hole in a ghost? The answer will be; "With god all things are possible."

 

And, can a flesh a blood JC with bones and tissues and organs walk through a solid wall and simply float up into the air?

 

Maybe, if we're talking about Criss Angel. But Jesus is no Criss Angel.

 

Sure would be funny if everyone is doing all this debating - and what we're trying to make sense of is nothing more than a first-century comic book.

 

Maybe 1,000 years from now, they'll be trying to figure out exactly how the Incredible Hulk got his massive strength, and why he was so pissed off.

[Grandpa Harley]

There is (was?) a school of thought that the whole mess was a Gnostic satire on Orthodox Judaism that, rather like the pseudo conspiracy in Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum', wound up not only with people believing it, but being prepared to kill or die for it...

 

I confess, I like the idea since it appeals to my general low opinion of people and my high rating of their irrationality...

[mwc]

I think it can be recognized by writing style in which a deeper meaning can be seen to appear. I would think one way to recognize this is by what it refers to. If it refers to something that cannot happen in reality, then it must be a metaphor. A metaphor wouldn't be something along the lines of, you float like a could, a metaphor would be, you are a cloud. The former is a simile and the latter a metaphor.

 

When the metaphor refers to something of this world, maybe it is recognized by the writing style?? I have to do more reading on that.

If I read this correctly then metaphor can be recognized by it's deeper meaning? This sounds very subjective. One man's trash is another man's treasure? It seems to defeat the point if the reader decides all of this without any real criteria. I mean, if you find meaning in something that's great, but it really begins and ends with you with this definition.

 

If it depends on cues in the text then it seems that metaphor would be nearly impossible to recognize in a translation unless the translator specifically pointed it out or you can read that language yourself (and know how to pick out the cues)?

 

Also, if it depends on the "impossible" then we need to know what the original author thought was, and was not, possible. If he thought that snakes could talk at some point then we can no longer say the story is metaphor. People today believe that snakes could talk roughly 6000 years ago. It's not unreasonable to think that about 3000 years ago there was a man that thought snakes could talk and wrote a story about it. It's not unreasonable, based on what we can see people believing today, to say that people believed such things...and possibly even more "absurd" (to us) things...3000 or so years ago and they believed them literally and not figuratively.

 

I think there are signals to us and I'm not to learned on those yet. I think it would have to do with meaning. It has to point beyond itself in order to gain full understanding. I would think a disconnect would appear in the story if it were to be taken literally. There is a huge disconnect with a literal interpretation of a talking snake, IMO.

To us there is a disconnect in a talking snake but to some person 3000 years would there be? 4000 years ago? The natural world was a mystery to them. If you heard a story that said a long time ago there used to be talking animals and everyone said it was true...you'd probably believe it. You'd have no reason not to. Especially if you became educated and read it in a library somewhere (especially a great library like Babylon). As I said people in this day and age believe it. We can take a snake apart and show they never had the ability to speak...ever! And they will invoke magic to explain it away. When magic is practically part of your everyday world 3000 years ago this explanation is not hard to swallow.

 

If I had someone from 3000 years ago and someone from today together in front of me and I asked both if animals, at any time in the past, could talk I would not be surprised to hear the ancient say "yes." But I'm still shocked to hear someone from today do so (and not mean a parrot or something).

 

This is where if we were to take the metaphor as what was meant to the people of that time, they would do no good for us. They are meant to evoke a feeling in the reader that causes a person to recognize something in themselves and their lives at the time they are reading it. If they don't, they are of no use to us.

Then what's the point of discussing them? We have modern tales that are more applicable to us and our situation.

 

This is why some people will say that we need a new myth that is applicable to our day and age. We could use the same symbols, such as the snake, but it would be surrounded by our cultural themes. The symbol of the snake as rebirth could still be applicable to us.

While the symbols could be re-used, such as the snake, would it be as powerful? How many people really encounter snakes anymore? Sure they're "explained" to them possibly in a classroom type setting but people who live in cities are unlikely to encounter one (except maybe as a pet) which diminishes their impact and usefulness.

 

The cheribs gaurding the garden could still work for us as an acceptance of both good and evil in the world. Isn't one of the cheribs smiling and the other growling? Or maybe that's in a buddhist temple...I get confused sometimes!

A flaming sword that turned every way guarded the entrance to the garden as I recall. Angels were simply messengers (to the Jews...they even see the burning bush as an angel and not as god for instance). In other cultures angels were seen as things that more resembled creatures that we might consider griffins. They were quite varied.

 

We really can't appreciate the story fully because we are so removed from it. Although the symbols are still there we can only interpret them as to what it means to us. We can get an idea what it meant to them if we understand their culture and way of life. But, in order for the symbols to have meaning to us, we have to apply them to our lives.

Which is part of what I think is the problem. If we can't appreciate the story then the story is of little to no value. We can appreciate it on different terms perhaps but that changes the parameters. We miss the original intent and simply insert our own. The same could even be said of the symbols. If we don't fully understand the symbols then we are, by the same reasoning, simply able to insert our own meaning into them until they suit our purposes. We see what we want to see and not what was intended to be seen.

 

Yes, there are many places the bible uses snakes as metaphor. Moses and his rod, Jesus calling people vipers. It has an evil meaning in many places, but it also has one of power and energy and divine connection.

Unless the stories with Moses, having their basis in the Egyptian, were akin to spells. Then they weren't really so much metaphor. Then they truly were believed to have had magical healing powers just as written.

 

It does matter though because this is what speaks to the psyche. Like a poem does. It sucks to analyze a poem because it then doesn't mean a dang thing! I usually sit there and go...what the hell does that mean. Although I do write some myself, but I don't know what anyone else would get out of it.

 

It is culturally dependent, but yet universal to humanity. I hope that little bit of seemingly nonsensical statement made sense!

This seems to be a having your cake and eating it to type of discussion. The desire to tap into some "ancient" symbols and meaning (wisdom) but at the same time applying a modern interpretation to these same items ignoring whatever the original intent behind these things might have been.

 

I see what you're saying, although I think it depends of what they are talking about. Aren't there morals to most stories? I usually miss most of the morals myself though!

It seems that modern stories apply to modern audiences. If they borrow from the past then so be it (how many have outright stolen from Shakespeare?) but to apply our standards to the past seems dishonest. Those were stories for another time and another audience. We need to take them on that level. We need to put ourselves into their mindset and understand them as they would have understood them. If we can take anything away from them after doing that, then the story had a deeper meaning for the ages. If not, then it wasn't meant for us and served its purpose long ago.

 

mwc

[HuaiDan]

....And hopefully they will change tradition till it becomes closer to the truth. Maybe this recent tomb will cause it to happen a bit faster. It's been awhile since Galileo's influence. Gosh, they're still struggling with Darwin's too.

 

It does sound like he could have left a body.... but what about that doubting Thomas thing? Could you stick your hand in a hole in a ghost? The answer will be; "With god all things are possible."

 

Some good may come out of all this; "True Believers" will not change their beliefs, however some liberal believers on the edge may see all the backpedaling and changing stories and they'll no longer be able to keep holding on to straws and give up the ghost so to speak.

So it was meant to be the holey ghost rather than the holy ghost, is it now?

[Dave]

And, can a flesh a blood JC with bones and tissues and organs walk through a solid wall and simply float up into the air?

 

Maybe, if we're talking about Criss Angel. But Jesus is no Criss Angel.

 

Standard answer; he was/is god. he can do anything he wants and your questions just show that you hate god and have hardened your heart against him. You're going to hell.

 

Sure would be funny if everyone is doing all this debating - and what we're trying to make sense of is nothing more than a first-century comic book.

 

Maybe 1,000 years from now, they'll be trying to figure out exactly how the Incredible Hulk got his massive strength, and why he was so pissed off.

 

That reminds me of a SciFi short I read about some archaeologist, a few thousand years in the future, was trying to figure out our society from a motel (1950's style) that they had dug up in the desert. They knew that we worshiped a box with a glass front since everything they had dug up from that time period had that box with a glass front as the centerpiece of every home, and this motel.

[Dave]

So it was meant to be the holey ghost rather than the holy ghost, is it now?

 

Do you know why jesus can't walk on water anymore? Holes in his feet.

[Amethyst]

That reminds me of a SciFi short I read about some archaeologist, a few thousand years in the future, was trying to figure out our society from a motel (1950's style) that they had dug up in the desert. They knew that we worshiped a box with a glass front since everything they had dug up from that time period had that box with a glass front as the centerpiece of every home, and this motel.

 

LOL! I wonder if that will change to a box of glass with a keyboard and mouse attached to it.

[mwc]

There is (was?) a school of thought that the whole mess was a Gnostic satire on Orthodox Judaism that, rather like the pseudo conspiracy in Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum', wound up not only with people believing it, but being prepared to kill or die for it...

 

I confess, I like the idea since it appeals to my general low opinion of people and my high rating of their irrationality...

Yeah, and wasn't G.John supposed to be the response to all this or some such thing? I remember hearing something like this as well some time back.

 

BTW, welcome aboard.

 

mwc

[Dave]

LOL! I wonder if that will change to a box of glass with a keyboard and mouse attached to it.

 

It just might..... people were too shy, or didn't like other people, to actually communicate verbally or in person. They only connected through computers.

[Grandpa Harley]

There is (was?) a school of thought that the whole mess was a Gnostic satire on Orthodox Judaism that, rather like the pseudo conspiracy in Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum', wound up not only with people believing it, but being prepared to kill or die for it...

 

I confess, I like the idea since it appeals to my general low opinion of people and my high rating of their irrationality...

Yeah, and wasn't G.John supposed to be the response to all this or some such thing? I remember hearing something like this as well some time back.

 

BTW, welcome aboard.

 

mwc

Elaine Pagels states that, in her opinion, that the Gospel of John was edited as a rebuttal of the Gospel of Thomas. Could that be what you're thinking of?

 

Thomas puts forward strongly that personal salvation is possible, whereas the post-Marcionite/Pauline view was that one needed 'The Church' to be able to do that sort of thing. Thus there are interpolations in the plot line that was strung around the Johanite Sayings gospel source to discredit this idea, more or less implying the Thomas isn't an apostle but an apostate.

 

The idea of The Sayings Gospel of Thomas being Gnostic in the Dimurge sense is excrement, if you read it. Thomas is 'Gnostic' in Irenaeus sense of 'Heretical nonsense I don't want you to read'. In the Emergent Movement they use the word 'Unitarian' in very much the same way. The Gospel of Thomas' 'sin' is that it's Jamesian not Petrine.

[Grandpa Harley]

as an Addendum...

 

The Gospel of John 'Doubting Thomas' portions of the narrative, as a part of the 'proof' that Jesus got better from being dead, fulfilled not only the idea that Thomas lacked faith, but also made a neat 'proof' for the great unwashed.

 

As a comment from my admittedly shaky knowledge of physiology, the thing that *could* have saved Jesus on the cross was the wound to the side, since it would have lanced the collection of blood and fluid collecting around his lungs. This MUST have been known to people who worked the Crucifixion fields. Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea had a Roman Solder his pay too.

 

BTW, one thing I've seen mention of on xtian sites is that 'it's the worst death'. Actually Jesus, if he died, had it easy. The average length of time it took for a victim to die was a day and a half. Some lasted three days. Three hours, although longer than I'd want on the cross, is a cake walk compared to THREE DAYS. And Pilate didn't give two shits about 'Passover' or anything else Jewish. He was there to keep order, so if people were going round breaking knees to kill people quicker it was that the needed them dead or had been bribed to do it, not because of some Hebrew festival.

[Grandpa Harley]

The ever fragrant and lovely Robert M. Price has commented upon the whole sorry mess...

 

Mausoleum of God

 

 

 

A Crowded but Empty Tomb

 

I doubt you have been able to escape the news of the discovery (actually several years ago) of what some claim is the tomb of Jesus—and his family! The chamber housing several ossuaries, bone boxes, was found in Talipot, in Jerusalem, while engineers were working on new construction. They blundered into the unsuspected site. Upon close examination, the ossuaries bore scratched-in names including Jesus (or so some think) son of Joseph, Maria, Joseph, Judas, Matthew, and others from the New Testament period. James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty and a colleague of mine in The Jesus Project, argues, backed by professional statisticians, that, given the estimated population of Israel at the time, the chances of finding all these names, though common in themselves, combined in a single family, are six hundred to one. This means, they say, the tomb is that of Jesus Christ, his parents, his brothers, and quite possibly, his wife Mary Magdalene and their son Judah.

 

Who should be upset about this and why? First, remember, if you will, that many trumpeted the supposed James ossuary a couple of years ago as evidence of a historical James the Just and so of his brother Jesus (since the inscription there was “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”). That one turned out to be one of many recent products of an artifact forgery lab, the forgers found out and arrested. One might guess that the disappointed fans of the James box would rejoice at this “new” find (again, actually a few years earlier, but given new attention now thanks to James Cameron’s documentary). But then, uh-oh!, this set of ossuaries would seem to prove too much! It would mean that, a la Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, Jesus survived or escaped crucifixion, got married, and fathered children—much as happens in Jesus’ dream-escape from the cross in The Last Temptation of Christ. No saving death, no resurrection. Yikes.

 

Thus the James ossuary and the vault full of bone boxes would seem to stand or fall together. Both identifications depend upon name and population statistics. Both sets of artifacts have the same physical characteristics (patina quality, etc.). Tabor points out that the James ossuary and the others very likely come from the same site. Without it, the set lacks the requisite name pf James, a famous sibling. And at Talipot, there were empty spaces set aside for three more ossuaries! Tabor proposes that someone snuck into the vault and absconded with the James box. His theory implies that the James box and the “new” ones are all genuine. Tabor is among the few still defending the authenticity of the James ossuary (one of the many dubious features of his book The Jesus Dynasty).

 

But suppose he is right about the seeming connection, the James box looking like the missing piece of an incomplete puzzle set? Then, as R. Joseph Hoffmann (also of The Jesus Project) points out, the lifeboat must sink along with the ship. All of them would appear to be fakes. One thing’s for sure: you have no business appealing to the James box as proof of a historical Jesus if you don’t also accept a larger family unit including Mrs. Christ and Jesus, Junior.

 

 

 

Built on Sand

 

There is a larger issue here. And that is the issue of faith and history, of faith based on history. All the proud claims of theologians that Christianity, unlike, say, Hinduism, is inextricably based on historical facts, carry with them an inevitable compromise of intellectual honesty (on which yet another of our Jesus Project team, Van A. Harvey, has written the definitive book, The Historian and the Believer). From then on, the believer has a vested interest in certain historical assertions being true. He will have reason to worry if the latest archaeological discoveries don’t go his way! He will cheer if they do, but he will worry deep down that the next round may go against him. No momentary, seeming vindication of the Bible will settle the question, since one never knows what may come to light next. Will Father Guido Sarducci discover the check for the Last Brunch?

 

The poor Mormons have repeatedly been kicked in the privates, first, by the utter absence of any relic of the supposedly widespread Nephite and Lamanite civilizations of pre-Columbian America, and now by DNA texts which show a lack of any genetic overlap between Semites and American Indians. Denials of the facts at this point become exceedingly shrill, with believers having, so to speak, put bags over their heads like videotaped felons headed for the cop car. There they are in the police line-up next to Holocaust deniers and “Scientific Creationists.”

 

Too bad for the Book of Mormon. The archeological verdict on the Bible is equally damning. Once a new generation of archaeologists threw off the blinders, the circular methodology, of Presbyterian apologist William Foxwell Albright, it became clear that virtually all of what even a skeptic like me had supposed to be actual history in the Bible was instead legend and fiction. No splendid Davidic empire or Solomonic wonders of the world. No damn Exodus. No genocidal Conquest (well, I can’t say that’s too dismaying!), no first-century Galilean synagogues, or, to keep going, no commercial hub of Mecca—pretty much no nuthin!

 

Two great nineteenth-century theologians, Martin Kähler and Wilhelm Herrmann (who both happened to be Paul Tillich’s teachers), saw the danger of faith with historical commitments, faith with historical strings attached. Given the necessary uncertainty and unpredictability of historical evidence, such a faith must be either eaten away by a growing cancer of doubt or corrupted by another cancer, that of intellectual dishonesty, an a priori decision to spin, twist, ignore, or discredit every bit of contrary evidence as soon as it appears. This is PR, not scholarship, and it is the business of apologists for the gospels and the Bible and the historical Jesus and the resurrection. Things have to be a certain way for them, or they are cooked, up the fiery creek .So they spin. So they issue the Holy Harrumph. Why can’t they see that, if anything, it is precisely this dishonesty that is going to damn them? They are sacrificing their own integrity on behalf of the faith that is melting away beneath them even as they continue to pettifog and prevaricate in its defense.

 

We don’t even need a definitive refutation of dogmatic faith for such faith to be refuted. The mere condition of uncertainty and the high cost of defending it are themselves fatal refutations of such faith!

 

 

 

The Booming Voice

 

And, don’t you see, it is the same in what might at first appear to be a different issue altogether, namely a scripture-based theology or ethics. The attraction of biblicism is the appeal it allows to an infallible sourcebook for answers. “We know there is life after death, and that it is like so-and-so because the Bible says so. We know that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so. We are not left to the endless debates on these issues that can never be resolved as long as we base them, as unbelievers do, on mere speculation.” But the immunity is illusory! Because Luther was wrong: scripture is simply not “perspicuous,” clear on important matters, so that all intelligent, sincere readers will agree. Various biblical passages yield radically different beliefs about life after death, including that there is no such thing (“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”).

 

And homosexuality? It all hinges on whether or not Levitical bans on a class of acts deemed ceremonial transgressions continue on into the Christian dispensation (the ban on eating shrimp is one of them; homosexuality is another!) and on the meaning of three ambiguous verses in the epistles, two of these using rare Greek words so seldom appearing in extant literature that we cannot be sure what they mean. So what happens to the clarion-like proclamation of the word and will of God? One just cannot be dogmatic on the basis of an ambiguous text! How anticlimactic to hear from the pulpit, “There is about a fifteen per cent chance that God hates homosexuality! So you might want to repent--or maybe not.” Clearly, one must not pretend to tell people how to live their lives, one must not start punching tickets to heaven or hell, based on what experts or non-experts think the text might mean! The appeal to the Bible is no less victim to death by a thousand speculations than the blind gropings of unaided human reason. Because that’s all any of us have anyway, even if, like Bible preachers, you’d like to pretend otherwise.

 

Don’t you see? This is what we mean when we proclaim the death of God! And why we must proclaim it and furthermore rejoice to proclaim it! We are without a definitive sun of authority and infallible will around which to orbit! We have come of age by realizing not only that there is no court of appeal above ourselves, but that there never was! And why! Are we “reduced” to reliance upon our own “guesswork”? Yes, we are, and that means we have become gods ourselves. We no longer seek to evade responsibility for our ethical decisions by saying we are “just following orders,” the commands of God in the Bible or the Koran. We were childish when we unthinkingly idolized the speculations, the ad hoc judgment calls, of our ancestors, who did the best they could. We will be mature when we dare to wipe the Mosaic tablets clean and to write upon them anew with our own best wisdom. And if we in turn should become idols, our words the scriptures of a future generation, we can only hope that such a generation will raise up its own Zarathustras to send the idols toppling from their pedestals,

 

So says Zarathustra.

[Amanda]

Grandpa Harley, thanks for sharing this with us!

Because of the limited amount of quotes I'm allowed, I just want to state that I'm referring to and responding to the post you made yesterday of Robert M. Zarathustra Price here:

. What he said is in royal blue, me in green.

 

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price") <snip> Who should be upset about this and why? First, remember, if you will, that many trumpeted the supposed James ossuary a couple of years ago as evidence of a historical James the Just and so of his brother Jesus (since the inscription there was “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”). That one turned out to be one of many recent products of an artifact forgery lab, the forgers found out and arrested.

What I've read is the jury is still out on this, and I'd hate to think the guy was arrested! The main problem with the James ossuary box, that I've read, is that it was NOT uncovered by professional archeologist. It seems these professionals have chains of command that validate each step of their unearthing of these findings. Maybe the guy was arrested because he did not handle this relic legally, but I doubt that it has been proven to be a forgery. It seems the inscription, brother of Jesus, may have been written on it centuries later, and therefore did not authenticate the guys claims in trying to sell it for something there was no preponderance of proof?

 

Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price") <snip>Thus the James ossuary and the vault full of bone boxes would seem to stand or fall together. Both identifications depend upon name and population statistics. Both sets of artifacts have the same physical characteristics (patina quality, etc.). Tabor points out that the James ossuary and the others very likely come from the same site. Without it, the set lacks the requisite name pf James, a famous sibling. And at Talipot, there were empty spaces set aside for three more ossuaries! Tabor proposes that someone snuck into the vault and absconded with the James box. His theory implies that the James box and the “new” ones are all genuine. Tabor is among the few still defending the authenticity of the James ossuary (one of the many dubious features of his book The Jesus Dynasty).

I've heard there is suppose to be the test of the DNA of the ossuary box supposedly to be James, brother of Jesus also. That should be interesting.

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")But suppose he is right about the seeming connection, the James box looking like the missing piece of an incomplete puzzle set? Then, as R. Joseph Hoffmann (also of The Jesus Project) points out, the lifeboat must sink along with the ship. All of them would appear to be fakes. One thing’s for sure: you have no business appealing to the James box as proof of a historical Jesus if you don’t also accept a larger family unit including Mrs. Christ and Jesus, Junior.

However, it has long been thought that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. If one researches some of the references he has made to her, they were common names addressed to one to whom they were betrothed. Also, I think the bible says that Jesus would kiss her on the lips. IMO, if this tomb finding is considered to really be of 'the' Jesus, it may bring out the lies, twists, and turns these teachings have undergone by people who were only interested in using the power that had accummulated behind this for their own selfish agendas. Political figures and religous institutions alike. Perhaps these lies just took a life of their own?

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")<snip>There is a larger issue here. And that is the issue of faith and history, of faith based on history.

Doesn't it seem that some of faith can be based on history, and some not. Sure, the fact that Jesus even existed can be challenged by historical facts and accounts. However, some things, such as if there is a place within that has a sense of what deserves respect and reverence can not be determined by historical facts, can it?

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")<snip> The archeological verdict on the Bible is equally damning. Once a new generation of archaeologists threw off the blinders, the circular methodology, of Presbyterian apologist William Foxwell Albright, it became clear that virtually all of what even a skeptic like me had supposed to be actual history in the Bible was instead legend and fiction. No splendid Davidic empire or Solomonic wonders of the world. No damn Exodus. No genocidal Conquest (well, I can’t say that’s too dismaying!), no first-century Galilean synagogues, or, to keep going, no commercial hub of Mecca—pretty much no nuthin!

IMO, proof of a real person being Jesus doesn't necessarily credit everything to be true, nor discredit everything to be false.

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")<snip>Two great nineteenth-century theologians, Martin Kähler and Wilhelm Herrmann (who both happened to be Paul Tillich’s teachers), saw the danger of faith with historical commitments, faith with historical strings attached. Given the necessary uncertainty and unpredictability of historical evidence, such a faith must be either eaten away by a growing cancer of doubt or corrupted by another cancer, that of intellectual dishonesty, an a priori decision to spin, twist, ignore, or discredit every bit of contrary evidence as soon as it appears. This is PR, not scholarship, and it is the business of apologists for the gospels and the Bible and the historical Jesus and the resurrection. Things have to be a certain way for them, or they are cooked, up the fiery creek .So they spin. So they issue the Holy Harrumph. Why can’t they see that, if anything, it is precisely this dishonesty that is going to damn them? They are sacrificing their own integrity on behalf of the faith that is melting away beneath them even as they continue to pettifog and prevaricate in its defense.

 

We don’t even need a definitive refutation of dogmatic faith for such faith to be refuted. The mere condition of uncertainty and the high cost of defending it are themselves fatal refutations of such faith!

Okay, okay... I agree with this. However, IMO, the bible actally predicted this to happen, and their downfall was to be inevitable in just this manner.

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price") <snip> Various biblical passages yield radically different beliefs about life after death, including that there is no such thing (“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”).

Ummm... I think biblically it says 'dust to dust, spirit to spirit.'

 

Ec 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")<snip>And homosexuality?

I do know with a great deal of certainty that the NT does NOT claim homosexuality to be a 'sin'. There was a custom of pedastry, a type of prostitution starting at youth for males, that biblical teachings are claiming to be against. NOTHING against two grown people who do what they want, without coersion or disrespect. I think I remember reading about even premarital sex amongst those that decided to live together till the rabbi came to their village and married them officially was common, and even when the rabbi finally came, she was still considered a virgin. It seems they were mostly considering illegitimate children... since women had no resources of earning an income, and the husband had the right to leave his inheritance to his official offspring.

 

("Robert M. 'Zarathustra' Price")<snip>Clearly, one must not pretend to tell people how to live their lives, one must not start punching tickets to heaven or hell, based on what experts or non-experts think the text might mean!

 

<snip>Don’t you see? This is what we mean when we proclaim the death of God!

 

<snip> Are we “reduced” to reliance upon our own “guesswork”? Yes, we are, and that means we have become gods ourselves. We no longer seek to evade responsibility for our ethical decisions by saying we are “just following orders,” the commands of God in the Bible or the Koran. We were childish when we unthinkingly idolized the speculations, the ad hoc judgment calls, of our ancestors, who did the best they could. We will be mature when we dare to wipe the Mosaic tablets clean and to write upon them anew with our own best wisdom. And if we in turn should become idols, our words the scriptures of a future generation, we can only hope that such a generation will raise up its own Zarathustras to send the idols toppling from their pedestals,

 

So says Zarathustra.

 

I don't agree with the death of God, for IMO God is within us ALL, and works through us, and is a place in which we find reverence for life and earth, and a place of strength beyond what we thought we had. Sheesh, other than that, it seems to me that all these things are assertions of these very same teachings attributed to "Jesus."

 

Joh 10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

[mwc]

Elaine Pagels states that, in her opinion, that the Gospel of John was edited as a rebuttal of the Gospel of Thomas. Could that be what you're thinking of?

 

Thomas puts forward strongly that personal salvation is possible, whereas the post-Marcionite/Pauline view was that one needed 'The Church' to be able to do that sort of thing. Thus there are interpolations in the plot line that was strung around the Johanite Sayings gospel source to discredit this idea, more or less implying the Thomas isn't an apostle but an apostate.

 

The idea of The Sayings Gospel of Thomas being Gnostic in the Dimurge sense is excrement, if you read it. Thomas is 'Gnostic' in Irenaeus sense of 'Heretical nonsense I don't want you to read'. In the Emergent Movement they use the word 'Unitarian' in very much the same way. The Gospel of Thomas' 'sin' is that it's Jamesian not Petrine.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner but I'm really hard pressed for time all of a sudden.

 

Anyhow, this could very well be what I had in mind. It sounds about right anyway even though it's not the correct answer to the original question. I have inclined to agree with a lot of what Elaine Pagels has said at some point or another so I wouldn't doubt that influenced my thoughts. I appreciate the clarification.

 

mwc

[Amanda]

Well, I just watched the documentary on the Tomb of Jesus, and then on Noah's Ark, on the Discovery Channel. Maybe I got to see them ahead of everyone because I live on the east coast. It looks like the truth is coming out, and much of what we've already concluded here was exposed.

 

I am curious as to how people on this site felt about the presentation of the Tomb of Jesus, and the critique offered by host Ted Koppel that followed. Also, the documentary on Noah's Ark was quite enlightening, and plausible, in that it included Babylonian renderings, and the story of Gilgamesh too.

 

What was your idea of that, if anyone watched it too. The critique hosted by Ted Koppel seemed to have illicited negative responses by both countering sides in just the manner I had predicted, in that this find can not fly with majority opinion. However, I found the Tomb of Jesus documentary quite accirate. Any other ideas?

 

[Grandpa Harley]

Thomas puts forward strongly that personal salvation is possible, whereas the post-Marcionite/Pauline view was that one needed 'The Church' to be able to do that sort of thing.

 

A clarification on my clarification..... Marcion was the first Paul fan, and a drooling old school Gnostic who thought that the world of matter was 'Evil'. The way I phrased the above implied that Paul followed Marcion rather than Marcion being a Paul Fan boy.

 

 

On Robert M. 'Crazy Bob from the H.P. Lovecraft Glee Club and Temperance Union' Price, he holds that Jesus is wholly a myth, thus the nature of 'God is Dead' comment. I can recommend his scholarly works, and I just like his writing style.

[Ouroboros]

I saw the documentary (or rather last half of it), and I think there are things that could come out of this. First of all I think they have a fairly okay case for what they claim. Of course it's not a 100% slam dunk, but statistically speaking it's fairly probable that this is the tomb of Jesus. Regardless if it is or not, now I believe there could be more people using this as an argument against Christians, and the Christians have to defend their faith even more against evidence and science.

[NotBlinded]

If I read this correctly then metaphor can be recognized by it's deeper meaning? This sounds very subjective. One man's trash is another man's treasure? It seems to defeat the point if the reader decides all of this without any real criteria. I mean, if you find meaning in something that's great, but it really begins and ends with you with this definition.

Yes! That is the whole purpose. This is why the symbology becomes dead...people start telling you what the symbols mean. Everyone interprets the symbols a little differently, but the point is to put you in contact with your own psyche by the way your mind interprets the symbol. But, if they talk to your psyche, they are serving their purpose. If someone told you what the symbol meant and it didn't work for you, then the symbol has failed because it doesn't talk to you the same way as the person that is telling you about it.

 

I'm going to go at this from a different angle because I think I may have pinpointed the problem we are having. (I think...)

 

Let's compare myth with dreams. They both come from a part of our unconscious minds but the images represent something that has to do with being human. They arrise from somewhere deep inside us that we usually aren't even aware of, but yet, it's a place that we all share. Our psyche. It is something that speaks to all of us because of our humanity. It doesn't speak to the mind. These are the mysteries, whether intended or not.

 

Campbell and Moyers:

 

Bill Moyers: Why is a myth different from a dream?

 

Joseph Campbell: Oh, because a dream is a personal experience of that deep, dark ground that is the support of our conscious lives, and a myth is the society's dream. The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. If your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isn't, you've got an adventure in the dark forest ahead of you.

 

Bill Moyers: So if my priavte dreams are in accord with the public mythology, I'm more likely to live healthily in that society. But if my private dreams are out of step with the public -

 

Joseph Campbell: - you'll be in trouble. If you're forced to live in that system, you'll be a neurotic.

 

Bill Moyers: But aren't there visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?

 

Joseph Campbell: Yes, there are.

 

Bill Moyers: How do you explain that?

 

Joseph Campbell: They've moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of orginal experience. Orginal experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off from the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience - that is the hero's deed.

 

Bill Moyers: You say dreams come up from the psyche.

 

Joseph Campbell: I don't know where else they come from. They come from the imagination, don't they? The imagination is grounded in the energy of the organs of the body, and these are the same in all human beings. Since imagination comes from out of one biological ground, it is bound to produce certain themes. Dreams are dreams. There are certain charactistics of dreams that can be enumerated, no matter who is dreaming them.

 

Bill Moyers: I think of a dream as something very private, while a myth is something public.

 

Joseph Campbell: On some levels a private dream runs into truly mythic themes and can't be interpreted except by an analogy with a myth. Jung speaks of two orders of dream, the personal dream and the archetpal dream, or the dream of the mythic dimension. You can interpret a personal dream by association, figuring out what it is talking about in your own life, or in relationship to your own personal problem. But every now and then a dream comes up that is pure myth, that carries a mythic theme, or that is said, for example, to come from the Christ within.

 

Bill Moyers: From the archetypal person within us, the archetypal self we are.

 

Joseph Campbell: That's right. Now there is another, deeper meaning of dreamtime - which is of a time that is no time, just an enduring state of being. There is an important myth from Indonesia that tells of this mythological age and its termination. In the beginning, according to this story {myth}, the ancestors were not distinguished as to sex. There were no births, there were no deaths. Then a great public dance was celebrated, and in the course of the dance one of the participants was trampled to death and torn to pieces, and the pieces were buried. At the moment of that killing the sexes became separated, so that death was balanced by begetting, begetting by death, while from the buried parts of the dismembered body food plants grew. Time had come into being, death, birth, and the killing and eating of other living beings, for the perservation of life. The timeless time of the beginning had terminated by a communal crime, a deliberate murder or sacrifice.

 

Now, one of the problems of mythology is reconciling the mind to this brutal percondition of all life, which lives by the killing and eating of lives. You don't kid yourself by eating only vegetables, either, for they, too, are alive. So the essence of life is this eating of itself! Life lives on life, and the reconciliation of the human mind and sensibilities to that fundamental fact is one of the functions of some of those very brutal rites in which the ritual consists chiefly of killing - in imitation, as it were, of that first, primordial crime, out of which arose this temporal world, in which we all participate. The reconciliation of mind to the conditions of life is fundamental to all creation stories {myths}. They're very like each other in this aspect.

 

Bill Moyers: So the one great story is our search to find our place in the drama?

 

Joseph Campbell: To be in accord with the grand symphony that the world is, to put the harmony of our own body in accord with that harmony.

 

Bill Moyers: When I read these stories, no matter the culture or origin, I feel a sense of wonder at the spectacle of the human imagination groping to try to understand this existence, to invest in their small journey these transcendent possibilities. Has that ever happened to you?

 

Joseph Campbell: I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.

Myths, Dreams and Symbols

The bolded areas are mine.

 

And from the same link, C Jung:

 

If ... we bear in mind that the unconscious contains everything that is lacking to consciousness, that the unconscious therefore has a compensatory tendency, then we can begin to draw conclusions-provided, of course, that the dream does not come from too deep a psychic level. If it is a dream of this kind, it will as a rule contain mythological motifs, combinations of ideas or images which can be found in the myths of one's own folk or in those of other races. The dream will then have a collective meaning, a meaning which is the common property of mankind....C.G. Jung

 

Also, if it depends on the "impossible" then we need to know what the original author thought was, and was not, possible. If he thought that snakes could talk at some point then we can no longer say the story is metaphor. People today believe that snakes could talk roughly 6000 years ago. It's not unreasonable to think that about 3000 years ago there was a man that thought snakes could talk and wrote a story about it. It's not unreasonable, based on what we can see people believing today, to say that people believed such things...and possibly even more "absurd" (to us) things...3000 or so years ago and they believed them literally and not figuratively.

It really doesn't matter if the author thought they could talk or not really. What matters is what the snake is saying, so-to-speak. They only thing that matters is if it talks to the psyche of the hearer. There is a tendency for the symbols to loose this ability when they are taken as facts.

 

When tribes gather around and enact a ritual that has these symbols at heart, they are probably going to allow the thoughts of whatever image it is to do its work on their own psyche. That is the point, not whether the image is actually believed to exist. It is deeper inside the human than the mind alone.

 

To us there is a disconnect in a talking snake but to some person 3000 years would there be? 4000 years ago? The natural world was a mystery to them. If you heard a story that said a long time ago there used to be talking animals and everyone said it was true...you'd probably believe it. You'd have no reason not to. Especially if you became educated and read it in a library somewhere (especially a great library like Babylon). As I said people in this day and age believe it. We can take a snake apart and show they never had the ability to speak...ever! And they will invoke magic to explain it away. When magic is practically part of your everyday world 3000 years ago this explanation is not hard to swallow.

 

If I had someone from 3000 years ago and someone from today together in front of me and I asked both if animals, at any time in the past, could talk I would not be surprised to hear the ancient say "yes." But I'm still shocked to hear someone from today do so (and not mean a parrot or something).

If the symbol talked to them in a way that would connect them with a deeper meaning, then it doesn't matter what they believe about it. But, there are many people today that won't experience a deeper insight into themselves by making the symbol concrete. They project it outward instead of looking to themselves on how the symbol makes them feel.

 

Then what's the point of discussing them? We have modern tales that are more applicable to us and our situation.

If the symbols talk, that's all that matters. The point in discussing them is to see this common theme in myths that relate the person to the phsyce of humanity. This is what we share with everyone.

 

While the symbols could be re-used, such as the snake, would it be as powerful? How many people really encounter snakes anymore? Sure they're "explained" to them possibly in a classroom type setting but people who live in cities are unlikely to encounter one (except maybe as a pet) which diminishes their impact and usefulness.

Yes, I agree. But, if the symbol changes, the underlying intent would be the same because they are trying to relate an aspect of humanity though the use of symbols and metaphor. If the new metaphor invokes the same feeling in a person that the snake did in ancient times, then we have found something that will awaken that same part inside us that was awakened back then. Nothing in the human psyche has changed in that respect but many of the symbols have to change in order to go along with our new understanding of the world and the universe.

 

Which is part of what I think is the problem. If we can't appreciate the story then the story is of little to no value. We can appreciate it on different terms perhaps but that changes the parameters. We miss the original intent and simply insert our own. The same could even be said of the symbols. If we don't fully understand the symbols then we are, by the same reasoning, simply able to insert our own meaning into them until they suit our purposes. We see what we want to see and not what was intended to be seen.

Yes again! If they speak to us, then they are doing their purpose. What was intended to be seen is not with the mind's eye.

 

This seems to be a having your cake and eating it to type of discussion. The desire to tap into some "ancient" symbols and meaning (wisdom) but at the same time applying a modern interpretation to these same items ignoring whatever the original intent behind these things might have been.

 

I see what you're saying, although I think it depends of what they are talking about. Aren't there morals to most stories? I usually miss most of the morals myself though!

It seems that modern stories apply to modern audiences. If they borrow from the past then so be it (how many have outright stolen from Shakespeare?) but to apply our standards to the past seems dishonest. Those were stories for another time and another audience. We need to take them on that level. We need to put ourselves into their mindset and understand them as they would have understood them. If we can take anything away from them after doing that, then the story had a deeper meaning for the ages. If not, then it wasn't meant for us and served its purpose long ago.

 

mwc

We can understand them as they did because we are also human. I agree they were for another audience and many of the symbols and metaphors don't mean much anymore, but the underlying messages in many of the symbols they used are for the ages because what the symbols are pointing to is still applicable to us today. We still face birth, life, death, what happened before and what may lay beyond, and everything that goes with being human will remain inside us and we will still try to express our understandings, desires and beliefs within the frame of humanity, consciously and unconsciously. The symbols may change (they have to), but the message remains the same. Or, to put it another way...the dream images may change, but the dream remains the same.

[Amanda]

I saw the documentary (or rather last half of it), and I think there are things that could come out of this. First of all I think they have a fairly okay case for what they claim. Of course it's not a 100% slam dunk, but statistically speaking it's fairly probable that this is the tomb of Jesus. Regardless if it is or not, now I believe there could be more people using this as an argument against Christians, and the Christians have to defend their faith even more against evidence and science.

Fundamentalist Christians defend their faith against the evidence of science?!?! C'mon HanSolo, you know better than that! You should have watched the critics to follow. The theologians said that it could not be true, and tried the ol' slight of hands themselves. They just tried to make this all disappear! The ones who did the documentary defended their position of it just being a compelling case, not 100% for sure. They quit defending themselves, when to their astonishment they found out these people believed in a literal physical resurrection! Once they discovered that, they sat back and let them discredit themselves. Even ol' Ted Koppel, who was trying to be neutral, had to smile at that one. That's how I would interpret the conclusion anyway.

 

I was disappointed the documentary did not have any evidence to indicate if this was the tomb donated to Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea (sp?). The 'earthquake' happened to me when I became quite sure that if this is the tomb of Jesus, that would be the case. I had suspected... Jesus survived the crucifiction, to live a great life and died later, as there criteria for death was different than ours. Jesus never leaving this tomb seems to indicate otherwise. :ohmy: I suppose this finding is a bit of a shock for everyone, one way or another! I can just imagine what these poor fundamentalist are going through!

 

The Noah's Ark was a great story too! I was wondering if someone from here was a contributer to these documentaries. I think Dave, the Webmaster, should put himself out there for having a wealth of resources concerning these legends. Gosh, I'd like to see him and these other founders of this site get some kind of significant monetary compensation for their generosity of sharing their vision in this free form of expression. I already suspect Heimdall as having published at least one significant book a long time ago, and his debating style is incredible. If they had him on one of those shows, the other guy should just be quiet... including the host of the show.

[NotBlinded]

I was disappointed the documentary did not have any evidence to indicate if this was the tomb donated to Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea (sp?). The 'earthquake' happened to me when I became quite sure that if this is the tomb of Jesus, that would be the case. I had suspected... Jesus survived the crucifiction, to live a great life and died later, as there criteria for death was different than ours. Jesus never leaving this tomb seems to indicate otherwise. :ohmy: I suppose this finding is a bit of a shock for everyone, one way or another! I can just imagine what these poor fundamentalist are going through!

 

The Noah's Ark was a great story too! I was wondering if someone from here was a contributer to these documentaries. I think Dave, the Webmaster, should put himself out there for having a wealth of resources concerning these legends. Gosh, I'd like to see him and these other founders of this site get some kind of significant monetary compensation for their generosity of sharing their vision in this free form of expression. I already suspect Heimdall as having published at least one significant book a long time ago, and his debating style is incredible. If they had him on one of those shows, the other guy should just be quiet... including the host of the show.

I only saw the last 10 minutes or so with Koppel and I stayed up until 1:00 watching the first hour of the documentary itself. I'll catch the rest tonight...it's on again.

 

Amanda, I am wondering why Jesus couldn't have went on to live a life and then be buried where this tomb was found after he was older? Wouldn't a son of his mean that he possibly did go on or are you saying that he already had a son before he was crucified?

 

I saw the Noah's ark show too and I loved it!

[Amanda]

Amanda, I am wondering why Jesus couldn't have went on to live a life and then be buried where this tomb was found after he was older? Wouldn't a son of his mean that he possibly did go on or are you saying that he already had a son before he was crucified?

 

NBBTB, the bible seems to indicate otherwise, as I said in a prior post on this thread. Researching some of the lexicons for more comprehensive definitions of these KJV words seem to indicate that it was only his spirit that survived, more obvious in the understanding of their metaphorical way of speaking too. But even just the KJV renderings also seem to ultimately validate this position. Here are just a few insights into this conclusion, yet there are many more. It seems once I now see this, it becomes more obvious as I reread these teachings, and sort through what is obviously a subjective/mythological embellishment of reverence for this man.

 

Mark 16:12

After * * that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.

16:19

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

 

Matthew 28:17

And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.

 

Luke 24:30

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

24:31

And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished * out of their sight.

 

Whadya' think NBBTB?

 

I thought that Jesus probably was unaware of Mary's pregnancy at the time of his death. However, the documentary suggests that PERHAPS when Jesus was on the cross and said this:

 

Joh 19:26

When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!

 

And that he was really referring to Mary Magdalene and his own son!

 

The definition of Woman, found here.

 

a woman of any age,

whether a virgin,

or married,

or a widow a wife

of a betrothed woman

 

Anyway, it doesn't appear he was speaking of his own mother...

 

The word mother, which prefaces this statement is said here to mean:

 

a mother

metaph. the source of something, the motherland

 

I'm inclined to think the documentary may be right.

[NotBlinded]

Oh okay. I see what you are saying. But I think it would still have meaning even if he lived. It would still have meaning to me even if he wasn't crucified and the entire story about it was made up to show the suffering people may have to endure.

 

He could have went into hidding or something and these people thought he actually died (he only hung for 3 hours). Then, what they said about seeing him would be known to be something spiritual rather than ghostly or of the walking dead, which is what I believe anyway. It just doesn't matter to me if he lived at all (I'm sure he did) or if he died like they thought. To me, it's the message and not so much the messenger.

[Amanda]

Oh okay. I see what you are saying. But I think it would still have meaning even if he lived. It would still have meaning to me even if he wasn't crucified and the entire story about it was made up to show the suffering people may have to endure.

 

He could have went into hidding or something and these people thought he actually died (he only hung for 3 hours). Then, what they said about seeing him would be known to be something spiritual rather than ghostly or of the walking dead, which is what I believe anyway. It just doesn't matter to me if he lived at all (I'm sure he did) or if he died like they thought. To me, it's the message and not so much the messenger.

 

I had thought there was a core person from which these stories derived, however, like you, it doesn't really matter if he died then or not, if he lived or not. Still these messages, understood in a way for those who have an ear to hear, speaks for themselves. This documentary also suugests that his messages were often coded, probably because of their attempt to stay illusive from the powers that be in control at the time. If so, I think it has two objectives then. It seems there is also a transformation process that happens internally as these metaphors strike a personal meaning, as you discribed in a prior post on here.

 

Although, I will say it was a bit shocking when I came to the realization that he probably did not survive the cross. It seems we are conditioned to want a happy ending, that he went on to live a long prosperous life with his famiy, and happily ever after...

 

If this is his tomb, and the implications are that he probably did die at his crucifiction, then there is something to say about his stand for his beliefs and his cause, IMO. Especially at the cost of a life with his wife and child.

[NotBlinded]

I can't wait to catch it in its entirety tonight. You know, if it would have been on tomorrow instead, I would give up American Idol to watch it! That is a sacrifice on my part!