It’s getting absurd.
Once again, we have to suffer the annoyance of people with their “proof” that something about the church teachings is deeply flawed and that branch of Judaism now known as Christianity is off the tracks. While I may have some minor doctrinal differences (are condoms O.K. to stop Aids spreading, etc), that is not what I am talking about. There are some actually trying to confuse the facts in attempt to undermine the basic story-this time with the persuasion of a “documentary” to be aired next Sunday alleging Jesus had a kid, a wife and all of them are buried with his mother. To call it a documentary seems, to put it mildly, a misnomer.
The documentary claims that the burial boxes containing the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and his alleged son were found and still exist. In the words of the “church lady”: ‘Well, Isn’t that special.’
Once again we have to suffer the smarter set who proclaim that their statistics prove it and the rest of the world is just ignorant science deniers who don't get it. Notwithstanding this intellectually hubristic presumption, the chances of Jesus, his mother, his follower and an alleged son all being housed in the same place is about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith, Howard K. Stern, Danny and Grandma being buried in the same space- in the yard of the Supreme Court. The statistical probability of their being a Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary or Marie and Joshua his son all in one place depends on how big the place was. The docu-dramatists would obviously have to explain how big the statistical pool is.
For example, the chances of a Jesus, son of Joseph, Marie or Mary or Mirium and Joshua and Matthew being all together in a place where 10 boxes were is more interesting than when in a place where there are 100,000 boxes. Lets assume they explain that and the statistical pool is small enough to matter. The names Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Mirium, Marie and Joshua and Matthew at the time and place are more common than Smith, Stern, Anna, Mary, Marie, and John.
So they found a box with John Smith on it next to a box with the name Mary on it and someone named Joshua is the son of Jesus. And in Mexico City today there are about forty-thousand Jesus's. That ought to shake the foundations of all of Christendom. Catch me, I'm shaking.
No one pretends to think that this "discovery" (which has been hanging around without much attention for a decade) had anything to do with the Resurrection, because Jesus still could be resurrected and leave his bones behind (while the Resurrection body biblical understanding is a bit different) so Easter is still apparently safe from Archeology. Whew. Further, it’s hard to disprove a resurrection theory when Jesus showed people he himself resurrected people, notably Lazarus and the daughter of Jarius and Elijah even resurrected at least one person from the dead. To challenge the possibility of the Resurrection also would challenge a basic Jewish teaching of a portion of Judaism that believed in the possibility of the Resurrection of the dead (an ongoing debate with the Pharisees and Saducees). So to attack Christianity without attacking Judaism (hard to do when Jesus claimed to be the Jewish Messiah) the challengers have to go after the Assumption.
So this challenges only the “Assumption” –a rather unique event which sounds spooky while -wait-Elijiah also it is written somehow "ascended" into Heaven. Hmmm. Note that the attack on the Assumption attacks Protestant and Catholic teaching because Catholic teaching also maintains that Mary had an Assumption (celebrated every August 15th) and her remains are thus not anywhere on planet earth either.
There were people like Saint Paul at the time who converted from being one of the hardest persecutors of the church who would have laid little rocks (a Jewish custom) or flowers at any burial box site were there one any time he was back in Jerusalem. In fact, pilgrimages from all over the world would have come all the time just to see it over the years and we have no recording of any such event ever. Jesus' popularity grew like wildflowers after his resurrection in spite of the persecutions. People from every corner of the Middle East would have come to see the body if there were one. People would have robbed the boxes and sold them to cathedrals and tried to buy their way into heaven with them.
Jesus was considered, inter alia, a great Rebbi (Rabbi) and there is a belief that visiting the tomb or remains of such holy men confers blessings. This is a tradition carried on by Catholics who make pilgrimmage to the remains and relics of Saints. Peter (the first Pope, a Jew) was considered so holy that merely passing by his shadow could cure disease. The mere touching of the fringe of the garmet of Jesus cured a women who had a chronic incurable hemmhorage. A church was built on Peter's remains and the Tomb of Saint Peter currently is in the base of the Vatican itself which is built around it. Yet, in spite of the Crusades to the Holy Land and centuries of relic devotions, we are to believe that Voila! they just discovered the box with the bones of Jesus in it that no one knew about before the BBC discovered it a decade ago. Right.
There are historic recordings that indicate that Mary and John were smart enough to realize that if a lynch mob just hung her son and best friend respectively from a cross bar tree, it was a wee bit uncomfortably hostile in Jerusalem and they might be more secure if they got out of dodge. It has long been believed that they went to the Fifth largest city in the greater Middle East at the time Ephesus (in current Turkey) where they would have been more anonymous and where there was a growing church community thanks to Paul’s missionary journeys and letters to the Ephesians (one of which is in the New Testament.) John in fact wrote letters some of which are comprised in the New Testament well into his old age. Jesus charged him with taking care of Mary after Jesus' death. Someone had to because she was widowed and lost her only son. There is no writing of him or Mary, Jesus mother visiting Jesus' remains or bones at any time after he resurrected from the Tomb.
Mary Magdalene has been through the ages hailed by the French as one of their patron matron saints (hence the great Church of the Magdalene Cathedral in Paris) and she is rumored to have ventured even further North than Ephesus into Aix-en-Provence and other Southern French towns. It’s unclear whether these rumors pre-dated the efforts by the Popes to remain in Provence during the Schism when 13 Popes lived in Avignon on the Cote du Rhone trying to claim their legitimacy there over Rome. Some stories have her with a companion who was later named a Bishop. Her remains have been alleged to be in various places throughout in France.
The attempt to impose myths that Jesus had a child are to say the least wildly far fetched inasmuch as he didn’t have means to support a wife much less a child and relied, it is written on the benevolence of his followers. Neither was his widowed mother wealthy enough to support another family. He left his carpentry trade to enter full time ministry at the age of around 30 for three years of itinerant preaching, and he never stayed in the same place more than a few days and nights as he traveled the countryside preaching. There are zero accounts of his taking along with him anyone like a son and wife when he went anywhere.
Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary Magdalene. She was a demoniac. If he was to be taken seriously, it would not make much PR sense for him to wed the former demoniac. Everywhere he went he would be known as the lover or husband of the former demoniac. It’s kind of like Howard Marshall getting ripped for marrying a young former topless dancer- he might lose a wee bit of credibility at the deacon’s meeting. Jesus had enough trouble convincing people what he was about without laying that on people. And how would the former demoniac get along with her mother in law? She would surely want to be buried with her, the Virgin pious Mary Mother of the Lord. Right. The likelihood of that is about the likelihood of Judge Larry ordering Anna Nicole to be buried with her mom Vergie.
Clearly this is all more or less crazy bunk. It makes more sense that if all these names appear together that someone tried to create an impression that they all ended up together there and did not “Ascend” anywhere to discredit the story that was growing like wildfire. In the early days Christians were rather persona non gratis, hiding in catecombs, thrown to lions and set afire to light Nero’s rose gardens like tiki torches. Jews weren’t fond of losing people to this sad martyrdom- for reasons they thought were meritless. What better way to debunk the story than to claim that Jesus had sex with the former demoniac slut, bore a son and everyone including mom Mary stayed in Jerusalem until they died. Right.
The liklihood of those boxes carrying Jesus's bones along with a son, Mary Magdalene and his Mother the Virgin Mary are about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith being canonized and Howard K. Stern dying a monk, after giving away all his money to charity.
My advice; Don't miss Church to watch the docudrama.
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