# A Major Archaeological Find.



## Perpetual Man (Mar 29, 2011)

I saw this reported on the News today and thought it was interesting to say the least. The report contains a lot of ifs and maybes, but fascinating all the same...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12888421


http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9434000/9434907.stm


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## Interference (Mar 29, 2011)

Thanks for sharing this.

I can't wait to hear what comes of this and hope it's legitimate.  Until the era of time-travel-tourism the truth of that influential era can't be known with any certainty, but I hope this will help fill in some blanks.


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## Parson (Mar 29, 2011)

Perpetual Man, 

Thanks for this! I had yet to hear the first whisper of this "new" find.


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## Perpetual Man (Mar 29, 2011)

Glad you found it interesting Parson.

The only problem about this type of thing is that it takes so long to get any information back... and then you wait and wait and wait....


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## J-WO (Mar 29, 2011)

I'm gonna lean toward caution here. It all looks too good to be true. The holyland is rife with modern archaeological fakes- firstly, because everyone has an agenda out there that they desperately want to be true and, secondly, there are people who know they can make money out of the former.

Only a decade back we had that coffin of one of the apostles (can't remember who) that took a lot of people in.

Mind you, if this book is a fake it is very well researched...


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## Starbeast (Mar 30, 2011)

J-WO said:


> I'm gonna lean toward caution here. It all looks too good to be true. The holyland is rife with modern archaeological fakes- firstly, because everyone has an agenda out there that they desperately want to be true and, secondly, there are people who know they can make money out of the former.
> 
> Only a decade back we had that coffin of one of the apostles (can't remember who) that took a lot of people in.
> 
> Mind you, if this book is a fake it is very well researched...


 

I agree, there are people who still believe that the _Shroud of Turin_ is real even after it was discovered to be fake that was made with paint hundreds of years ago.


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## Perpetual Man (Mar 30, 2011)

Starbeast said:


> I agree, there are people who still believe that the _Shroud of Turin_ is real even after it was discovered to be fake that was made with paint hundreds of years ago.



Unfortunately I think this is the case with quite a lot of the religious finds. They look fascinating, and from a pure historical viewpoint it would be incredible if they were real. But... there are people out there who will quite happily fake things. And they are prepared to take an awful lot of time and effort (and money) into faking these things. 

Or they were faked centuries ago for whatever reasons.

Still, we can only wait and see.....


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## Vertigo (Mar 30, 2011)

If you check Wiki on the Turin Shroud you will find that there have been as many proofs as disproofs and it would appear that nobody has yet managed to fully replicate it. I believe the closest to replicating it has been a photographic approach using photsensitive materials and techniques that were around during the middle ages. However they didn't manage to get it quite right.


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## Parson (Mar 30, 2011)

J-WO said:


> I'm gonna lean toward caution here. It all looks too good to be true. The holyland is rife with modern archaeological fakes- firstly, because everyone has an agenda out there that they desperately want to be true and, secondly, there are people who know they can make money out of the former.
> 
> Only a decade back we had that coffin of one of the apostles (can't remember who) that took a lot of people in.
> 
> Mind you, if this book is a fake it is very well researched...



The James ossuary (bone box not coffin) even if it were legit, which I give it about a 35% chance of being, proves nothing. It has incised on the side  "James son of Joseph brother of Joshua" (Jesus). These were the most common Jewish names of the first century. I give it 35% chance because it was found in a home of a private collector, who also "happened" to have another great archeological find. (memory fails me and time prohibits me from looking it up.)

The science used to prove/disprove it is mixed.

The Shroud of Torin if it were legit would seem to be an evidence of the resurrection. Here the odds of it being legit are something less than 99.99% All of the science points to a middle ages date. Those who want to hold it as a true relic are reduced to looking for holes in the science -- (the Carbon 14 date is wrong because it came from a rewoven piece of the shroud, etc.)

The theologian in me wants to protest that God doesn't prove himself in that way. "It is by faith we are saved."


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## J-WO (Mar 30, 2011)

If one follows the logic of the Turin Shroud and says 'Yes, this is a miracle and God is giving us a message' then what is the message? It can only be Jesus Christ's skin produced photosensitive chemicals. 

There's gotta be better ways to express some divine truth. Unless God is Salvador Dali, of course...


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## Interference (Mar 30, 2011)

No physical object can represent evidence of God.  God is beyond symbol or artifact.  The reality of God is in existence and our connection with all existence.

This is pretty much, I think, what Jesus was talking about.  What the people who spread his word after he died were talking about is anybody's guess.


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## Wybren (Mar 31, 2011)

This will be an interesting one to follow, I just hope that it doesn't take a few more years to deliver findings.

I think with this it will become like other possible religious artifacts in that there will be those (depending on the findings) that will say its a fake and those who will say it is real.


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## Perpetual Man (Mar 31, 2011)

I think it might come down to what the books actually say as well. If they turn out to be just a historical document of the time, then they might just be quietly accepted.

If on the other hand (as seems to be the theory at the moment) they say something (controversial) about the life of Christ one way or another, then the arguments really begin.


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## Vertigo (Mar 31, 2011)

The presence of controversial material will not necessarily be a problem. When it comes down to it it is amazing how much the Catholic church (primarily the Catholic church though not exclusively) manages to suppress. I don't want to start a huge argument here as very often the reasons for such suppression were very valid at the time.

Take the Nag Hammadi scrolls for example. I don't think anyone doubts their authenticity and yet we still seem to manage to almost completely ignore their content. Are you aware that from them we have:

- There is a Gospel of Mary (yes that is Mary Magdalene)
- after Jesus died there was a fight for control of the emerging church, which of course Peter won. But did you know the person he struggled against and who hearly took control was again Mary Magdalene.
- There was a gospel of Peter, which the Catholic church rejected (despite the fact that he was the first leader of the church). Why? Because Peter stated in his writings that Jesus was not God made man but was god and therefore did not actually _suffer_ on the cross which contradicted the churches chosen philosophy of salvation through suffering (very necessary to get themselves through those early years of persecution).
- There are many others such as Thomas's gospel which reads like a zen buddhist script.

Now I'm not saying what the rights and wrongs of this are; the interpretations of the dead sea scrolls are many and varied (particularly in the area of whether Mary Magdalene was Jesus' lover/partner/wife) and I am no expert theologian (or even an inexpert one for that matter). However most of my comments above are fact and not interpretation and my real point is that even if the books contain controversial information about Jesus it can and will be interpreted differently to suit different people whether for or against religion.

Incidentally if you are interested in translations of the gospel fragments from the Nag Hammadi scrolls then you can access them for free here: Gnostic Society Library: Sources on Gnosticism and Gnosis


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## Wybren (Mar 31, 2011)

I was actually watching a documentary the other day on the "Other" gospels. At first I thought it was a good and impartial look at the the Gnostic texts but then it seem to bias towards the church.

Should this prove to be anything other than an ancient and elaborate instruction manual on the care and maintenance of palm trees, I think it will be a muck fight between experts especially if it seems to say things that people don't like. In the end though people will believe what ever they want to regardless.


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## Vertigo (Mar 31, 2011)

Unfortuantely I think you are probably right there Wy!


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## Parson (Mar 31, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> Take the Nag Hammadi scrolls for example. I don't think anyone doubts their authenticity and yet we still seem to manage to almost completely ignore their content. Are you aware that from them we have:
> 
> - There is a Gospel of Mary (yes that is Mary Magdalene)
> - after Jesus died there was a fight for control of the emerging church, which of course Peter won. But did you know the person he struggled against and who hearly took control was again Mary Magdalene.
> ...



It is doubtful in the extreme that those books were authored by the authors that are attached to the books. They may represent someone's reconstruction of the events of Jesus and his disciples, but it approaches certainty that they were written at least a century after the accepted Gospels and they clearly are trying to support Gnosticism* which was (and in many ways still is) an insidious attempt at combining Christian teaching with acceptable Greek thinking.

*Gnosticism is not a coherent religion and it shown with different thoughts, different rituals and different stories depending on the group.


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## Vertigo (Mar 31, 2011)

Yes I would agree with you Parson in as much that the problem we have with any archeological find of this nature is that not only do we have various vested interests today that muddy the water but there were also plenty around at the time the artefacts were created. Certainly the Nag Hammadi scrolls (sorry I noticed I once referred to them as the Dead Sea scrolls) were translated from Greek to Coptic and, assuming they came originally from the people they are credited to, they were almost certainly translated to the Greek from Hebrew. Each time this happened there will likely have been a certain amount of interpretation going on (read political editing ). Also it is very clear that the different branches of Christianity adopted different texts to suit their needs. I believe (but may be wrong as I'm moving very much out of my depth here!) that this was one of the reasons for the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. 

However my understanding is that the gnostics were still subject to the rulings from Rome at this time and that it is believed that when told to destroy these texts as non-canonical (is that the right word?) gospels, probably by their Bishop, they instead stashed them away.

Certainly all the religious politics both then and now tend to muddy the waters quite badly and that was my real point. No matter what is contained in these new texts they will be subject to the same doubts due to the conditions prevailing at that time.


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## Parson (Mar 31, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> Yes I would agree with you Parson in as much that the problem we have with any archeological find of this nature is that not only do we have various vested interests today that muddy the water but there were also plenty around at the time the artefacts were created. Certainly the Nag Hammadi scrolls (sorry I noticed I once referred to them as the Dead Sea scrolls) were translated from Greek to Coptic and, assuming they came originally from the people they are credited to, they were almost certainly translated to the Greek from Hebrew. Each time this happened there will likely have been a certain amount of interpretation going on (read political editing ). Also it is very clear that the different branches of Christianity adopted different texts to suit their needs. I believe (but may be wrong as I'm moving very much out of my depth here!) that this was one of the reasons for the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.


No, this split came much later than the Gnostic Gospels and are as roundly condemned among Orthodox Christians as Western Christians. And without putting too much info out there it had to do with a lot more esoteric theology than whether Jesus was God in the flesh or not. (Gnostics say no. They believed in Greek Dualism which taught that the spirit was holy but the flesh was sinful. That God should have "put on flesh" was unthinkable to them, or even that he should suffer.) 



> However my understanding is that the gnostics were still subject to the rulings from Rome at this time and that it is believed that when told to destroy these texts as non-canonical (is that the right word?) gospels, probably by their Bishop, they instead stashed them away.


 This is also in error. First, the Bishop of Rome was not yet what we would think of as a pope. I'm not sure how they would have put it, but from our point of view they were trying to make the Christian religion more palatable to the Greek way of thinking. They were serving as a bit of a corrective to the normative Christian theology in that women were beginning to lose their place in the Christian church (the early church ran on girl power but in a patriarchal society that was just too much for many people to take) and the Gnostics often had women priests, prophets, etc.



> Certainly all the religious politics both then and now tend to muddy the waters quite badly and that was my real point. No matter what is contained in these new texts they will be subject to the same doubts due to the conditions prevailing at that time.


On this we wholly agree.


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## Vertigo (Apr 1, 2011)

Thanks for putting me right there Parson, as I said I thought I was getting out of my depth  and I always appreciate a life belt!

It is a shame how predictably everything is likely to go with this. Though you never know we might get pleasantly surprised


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## J-WO (Apr 1, 2011)

Parson said:


> (Gnostics say no. They believed in Greek Dualism which taught that the spirit was holy but the flesh was sinful. That God should have "put on flesh" was unthinkable to them, or even that he should suffer.)



Am I right in thinking the Cathars had a similar philosophy?


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## Parson (Apr 1, 2011)

I am unfamiliar with the Cathars. I looked it up and from what I read I would that in general the answer would be yes. Dualism is always a threat to Christianity. Which is not surprising. It seems so logical that there should be *equal *and opposite forces (Good and Evil). Or in another form Dualism teaches that the earthly is evil and the spiritual is holy. Both of which orthodox Christianity finds to be against God's revealed word in the Bible.


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## Daerana (Apr 8, 2011)

I'd love to read a translation of them.  However, I'd treat these with a lot of caution.


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## Parson (Apr 8, 2011)

This is possible. Look here: The Gnosis Archive: Resources on Gnosticism and Gnostic Tradition then click on "Nag Hammadi library" in the text. This will bring you to a lot of the "Gnostic" texts.


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## Interference (Apr 8, 2011)

Thank you for that link, Parson, I have been looking for something like this (I think - assuming it is what I think it is ) for ages.  It certainly seems to link to a lot of things that will be of undoubted interest.


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## Parson (Apr 8, 2011)

Interference said:


> Thank you for that link, Parson, I have been looking for something like this (I think - assuming it is what I think it is ) for ages.  It certainly seems to link to a lot of things that will be of undoubted interest.



You've got me worried now. Be sure to use common sense when evaluate the materials there. At best they are mis-guided, at worst they are books designed to draw people away from the historical Jesus and the Christian faith.


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## Interference (Apr 8, 2011)

Oh, darn.  Common sense.  Where am I gonna get some of that at this time of night.  Maybe I'd better give it a miss


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## Parson (Apr 9, 2011)

It is rather hard to find when the old clock slides past 11.


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