Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobblehead
That being said, my guess would be that this finding is a coincidence and that it will be impossible to prove that it is THE Jesus beyond any reasonable doubt. Unless someone has DNA that can be confirmed as coming from the biblical characters I can't see how there will ever be definitive evidence (with today's technology).
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I should like to add some things to Davila's blog on the subject. What you say regarding the statistical evidence for the commonplace nature of the names is true, however, what I find so compelling in his discussion is that there is no way to determine the relationships that existed between the names, beyond saying that the people in the tomb were probably related. Also, the very shoddy hypothesyzing by Jacobovici and Cameron around the inscription
Mariamneou e Mara only serves to nullify their own credibility.
On a related note: if this indeed were the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, then it is in the wrong place. Jesus paternal home was in Galilee, and this is where one wouold expect to find the place of his burial and for that of his family. We can know rather definitively that Jesus was from Nazareth, because this is a part of the biblical story that does nothing to enhance the claims of his followers—being from Nazareth in the first-century C.E. was akin to being from Edmonton, or even Fort McMurry!
Furthermore, Jesus was from among the wrong social class to have even had a tomb like the one discovered. Peasants could not afford ossuaries and mosoleums; those that are discovered in and around Jerusalem are those which have belonged to members from the priestly and ruling classes in Jewish society (The tomb and ossuary of Ciaphas, the last High Priest in Jerusalem is a similar find to what has been described in Jacobovici's film).
Finally, it cannot be emphasized enough at this point: the discovery of the tomb happened over 27-years ago, and in that time not a single reputable archaeologist of biblical scholar has come on board and backed the Jacobovici/Cameron hypothesis. The fact that this is a discovery being vigorously promoted by two film-makers smacks of gross, sensationalistic oppertunism. The whole thing suffers from a sever lack of credibility.