2007-03-20

Lost Tomb of Jesus (groan!)

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by Neil Godfrey

Oh boy oh boy, and when I first heard of this my first thought was another one of those “oh boy oh boy, only in america” thoughts and waited for it to disappear as fast as a toilet flush. How can anyone take this so seriously! Is no one raising an eyebrow at the rush of archaeological “proofs” of biblical and political claims in recent decades or batting any eyelid over their coincidence with contemporary prominent religious and political “issues”? (Only in america? only among the anti-rationalist, anti-enlightenment, anti-Hume-sceptical, pro-fundamentalist mind-set surely!)

And Jim West of course comes out and says good old hootin tootin shootin style (embarrassingly oblivious and uncaring of the embarrassment he makes of himself to the rest of the world), says, “Let’s get passionate and argue to WIN! Anyone on the sidelines is a boring old insincere fart. If you’re not with us you’re with the enemy! Dispassionate scepticism or disciplined search is for the losers, the time wasters.” (yep, only in manichaean america.)

Anyone looking for the debates over this should check Mark Goodacre’s bloglist and do a search there to find the links to the various discussions.

Some more sceptical links can be found below, plus another good old wikipedia starter.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=199716

http://frdb.talkfreethought.org/thearchives/showthread.php?t=199716

Download (PDF, 192KB)

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=199129

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=198886

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=197833

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=198920

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=200403

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Tomb_of_Jesus

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0 thoughts on “Lost Tomb of Jesus (groan!)”

John Carpbell says:

2007-03-21 02:35:18 GMT+0000 at 02:35

All you have to do is look at the filmmaker’s motivations. You can find the interview here:

http://www.donsausa.com/2007/03/how-credible-is-lost-tomb-of-jesus.html

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"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

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