Book Discussion: "The Jesus Family Tomb"

A well known polymath whose published works range far and wide, including (but not limited to) Archaeology, Paleontology, Astronomy, Space Propulsion systems, and Science Fiction.

Official Website: http://www.charlespellegrino.com

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Charlie P.
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Post by Charlie P. »

Hmmmmm... cola-salined meat... must eat cola-meat...

(Sorry. I just fell out of the evolutionary tree again... and hit a few branches on the way down.)

Amazon has restored most of the reviews and discussions; yet despite my request more than two months ago that they not remove the occasional name-callers who admit openly that they never read the book before reviewing it, some of those have been deleted by Amazon. I would have preferred that they leave the ranters posted, to shine the light on themselves, showing what they do and how they really think.

In any case, while the popular assertion-and-counter-fact discussions with the author and others seemed to keep the book's Amazon rankings hovering around the top 2000 - within 48 hours of the reviews and discussions being pulled, "The Jesus Family Tomb" had plummeted more than 20,000 places. No one has explained how or why the review section was yanked.

There will indeed be a new paperback edition of the book, with some added material.

Much of my ink, however, is going into the new results coming out of the microbiology lab. These will not be appearing in the book because results must first pass further confirmation of reproducibility and pass internal peer review (the new edition takes final form this weekend). I will say that the laboratory work is turning out to be more fascinating, even, than descending into the tomb itself - and certainly ranks with sitting in a submersible outside a deep-ocean hydrothermal vent (and I will say that the "Lost City" vent zone outclassed even the Titanic).

Still... watch this space. The story of the Talpiot Tomb will never be fully told, or understood.

- C.R.P.
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Post by Charlie P. »

P.S.: Amazon, Fye, and Barnes and Noble are among the only places where the unedited version of the DVD can be found. If you buy the DVD from the Discovery Channel, you are buying the version from which an hour was cut, during the three weeks leading up to the March 4, 2007 broadcast. - C.R.P.

PSS: I notice that Amazon has eliminated my initial posting addressing many of the misstatements of fact reported in the press (particularly the assertion that out team was hell-bent on "sinking" Christianity and that we were dessicrating the bones of Jesus). From the very beginning, and throughout the month of March 2007, Amazon did bring to my attention that they received many Email protests calling my letter "abusive" and even "unethical." It survives, now, as my very first entry at the top of this discussion thread. - C.R.P.
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Post by Mr. Titanic »

This is an exchange that took place between Critic Q and Charles Pellegino on Amazon. By request, I have added it to this thread as reference. Names changed.
Critic Q wrote:User,

"How scholars examining the facts can be so easily construed as making "ridiculous assertions" tells us something scarry..."

What's scarry is that you assume to know more than established scholars, particularly when you are willing to toss aside eye witnesses to the life of Jesus in favor of a couple of masquerading archeologists who use a fourth century comic book as the very heart of their claims. THAT would be more akin to the rationale of superstition and arrogance that launched the Inquistion.
Pellegrino wrote:
Education. There is no substitute.

I do not have any colleagues who would call me a "masquerading" archaeologist, or who would dismiss the "Acts of Philip" as a "comic book," or who would say that the earliest preserved text of that particular ancient scripture places its earliest occurrence in the 4th century (we have references to this and "Mariamne" dating back to the second century). Most of the objection to the Acts of Philip seems to center on the author's use of parables (notwithstanding the fact that Jesus himself often spoke in parables - some of which, though later removed from church canon - are preserved and still actively "canonical" in the Koran) - and especially objectionable to those claiming (falsely) that the Acts of Philip is "the very heart of" our hypothesis, seems to be an Acts Philip parable that includes talking animals. Note that the talking serpent in the Book of Genesis and the seven headed beast in the Book of Revelation are no less astonishing than the animals in the Acts of Philip.

Note that the Acts of Philip is not the earliest text to refer to Mary Magdalene, the sister of Philip, by the Greek name, Mariamene (or Mariamne): Philip's mention of the same name found in the Talpiot Tomb (and identified as the "Mara," or master of the congregation), is preceded by the early Christian traditions of Hippolytus, Origen and Greek fragments of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Interestingly, the repeated dismissal of the Acts of Philip as a "comic book" (while ignoring the numerous other identifications of Mariamene with Magdalene) becomes a tool on which to drive home a claim that Mariamene does not mean Magdalene and never has, and therefore the whole tomb is falsified and any connection with Jesus of Nazareth cannot be correct.

On July 1, biologist Richard Dawkins summed up (in the New York Times) the quirky logic behind the fashioning of such tools. I have seen this same tool used as a style of argument for some 25 years, now, by creationists, to keep Darwin continually in the cross hairs.

As a style of argument, Dawkins wrote, "It commits the logical error of arguing by default. Two rival theories, A and B, are set up. Theory A explains loads of facts and is supported by mountains of evidence. Theory B has [little or no] supporting evidence, nor is any attempt made to find any. Now a single little fact is discovered, which A allegedly can't explain. Without even answering whether B can explain it, the default conclusion is fallaciously drawn: B must be correct. Incidentally, further research usually reveals how A can explain the phenomenon after all."

In this case, the single little fact leading to Talpiot Tomb default conclusion B (the whole tomb can be explained away as being wrong) rests on the dismissal of the Acts of Philip on the basis of it being declared heretical or apocryphal in the time of emperor Constantine. Simply because something has become apocryphal and not canonical does not mean it was not once important and instructive to early Christians, and that it does not give modern readers a window into the thoughts of the first generations of Jesus' followers. Indeed, the thoughts expressed in the Acts of Philip reveal an abolitionist revolution within the early church (What did Philip do in his own part of the Greek world? He "freed the slaves"). This is uniquely consistent with the activities of the people who lived in the "House of Justa" in Herculaneum, in AD 79: They were against slavery (according to the legal documents preserved there), in a house with a shrine containing a wooden cross, on the wall above an altar, and all of this still within the lifetimes of the apostles. As for texts removed from canon being somehow automatically of no merit, the Christian churches are still struggling today with the question of what should or should not have been removed. The Book of Macabees was removed as recently as AD 1611 from the Protestant Bible - yet it remains intact in the Catholic Bible. The debate continues, even into the 21st century.

So much for default settings.
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Post by Darb »

It's always enjoyable to watch a skilled verbal surgeon at work. Nice reply, Charlie.
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Post by Charlie P. »

Yeah - well, the latest lab results are really beginning to make my brain hurt. A lot.

I really love a good mystery - but lately I'm thinking often about Ma Pellegrino's warning to the child who always wanted to probe beneath the Earth's skin and find all the great questions: "Be careful what you wish for. You may get it."

Still... I think she'd be happy.

- CRP
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Post by voralfred »

Charlie P. wrote:Yeah - well, the latest lab results are really beginning to make my brain hurt. A lot.
Could you tell us what those latest lab results are, or must this be a secret till you publish?
Human is as human does....Animals don't weep, Nine

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Post by Mr. Titanic »

They're confidential, I'm afraid.
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Post by Charlie P. »

My apologies. The project is going dark again; but only for a little while.
- - CRP
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Post by Mr. Titanic »

The following is an interview with João Ricardo from a Brazlian newspaper and Charlie regarding the Jesus Family Tomb:
João Ricardo wrote:- I´ll start asking you about what you just told me on the other e-mail: what, in your opinion, does not finding any bones in the suposed Jesus´ ossuary means ? In which kind of humain remaininhs of the same coffin were the globin proteins and DNA ?

- Did the research of the relation of the names with the gospels (gnostic and regular) and probability advance since the documentary was aired ?

- Why Jesus would be buried in Jerusalem if he was raised on Galilea ?

- How do you expect that the book and the movie will be received here in Brazil, a country where 89% of the total population declare itself Christian ?

- How did you receive mr. Amon Kloner opinion about your researches after the documentary was aired and the book was published ?

- Did your researches change your point of view of christianity ? Don´t you fear that your researches will get people to give up their faith ?

- Since it´s very beginning, the book cleary defends the position that finding the content of the lost tomb is primordial to prove Jesus´ existance. At the same time, the discovery would attack one of the Christianity pillars, the belief in Jesus´ resurrection. How do you deal with this discussion ?

- It´s been 5 months since you announced the discovery. How´s the neighbourhood of the tomb now ? Is there any tourism increase there or crownth of religious peregrination ?

- Do you follow any religion ?
Charles Pellegrino wrote:Dear Joao: As I said, many things have happened during the five months following the publication of the book. Fascinating things. (Five months. Is that all it's really been?)

I'll answer your questions in order:

Question 1: The work continues in the Crime Lab, and in two microbiology labs. I should note, as for my own background, that I was brought into this project in the first place partly because I was one of the scientists working in forensic archaeology at Ground Zero in New York. Simcha knew upon first meeting me that my eyes had seen too much. Among other horrors, people around me (colleagues along Publisher's Row, in New York), had concocted a terrible hoax about a group of firefighters - whom my work at Ground Zero had helped to vindicate, by revealing that the story was a lie. (See "The Battle over Ladder 4," in the discussion group connected to Charlespellegrino.com, if you want more details). The relevance is that when I came into this project, I had, by seemingly improbable coincidence, been prepared for an encounter with the Talpiot Tomb by being forced to sacrifice (for three years) the publishing side of my career to vengeful colleagues when I insisted that truth mattered, and blew the whistle on their hoax. So, at the time of my introduction to Simcha, I had been wrestling with three of the eternal questions one finds in the bible: (1) Job's unanswered question about the enigma of senseless evil in the world. (2) Cain to God: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (3) Pilate to Jesus, "What is truth?" As written, the answer of God was always silence - and it might be said, I told Simcha, that our job, as a human civilization that hopes to survive and excel, is to find, within the silence, the answers to those three questions.

When Simcha brought me into it, he had studied the "Ladder 4 case," and he concluded that he needed people who would follow the evidence trail wherever it led, even if he might be troubled by our answers.

Which brings us back to the contents of the Jesus ossuary: The truth is that the evidence indicated, and continues to indicate to me, that all or most of the bones have been absent from the Jesus ossuary - for many centuries or perhaps all the way back to the beginning. There are bio-concretions (ancient mineral formations) that look like bone; but under microscopic examination, every one of these sent to me has turned out to be mineral concretions that have formed around ancient fragments of cloth and in some cases flecks of wood. The cloth is consistent with two types of burial shroud but in the samples extracted so far, there are no traces of deteriorated bone and I have observed a complete absence of the usual indicators that the burial shroud fragments from various points inside the ossuary have ever been in contact with the decay products of primary burial.

At this point in time (bearing in mind that future evidence may alter the picture), all I can say is that whoever this "Jesus, son of Joseph" was, his bones appear not to have been here, in this ossuary, in this Talpiot Tomb. I consider the two most likely explainations to be that (1) the rumor mentioned in Matthew 27:62 about someone stealing away with the body was true or (2), if there were bones inside the ossuary, the terra rossa people removed them (about the time of the Crusades, probably). There is of course a third possibility, pointed out by two of my old Jesuit teachers, who note that the suggestion of, "he's not here," is an interesting congruence between the Jesus ossuary and scripture.

The mystery deepens. Critics have pointed out that the Jesus ossuary (which has the additional curious congruence of a cross-mark attached to Jesus' name, and a star on the lid - as if to mark the alpha and omega of Jesus' earthly existence) is so plain and ordinary that the name itself is inscribed over a deep scratch in an ossuary that appears to have been damagd and perhaps even rejected by the stone cutter before it was assigned. Critics have also wondered why one of the burial cloths was of a crude, burlap-like material - "hardly fitting for the king of kings." To me, this is not a contradiction but a finding perfectly consistent with what Jesus preached ("show me the stone that the stone-cutter rejected: That is my cornerstone"). Even the people Jesus chose were in some way broken or imperfect - like the rest of us. Jesus did not choose the giants of hois time, like Pliny and the great philosopher engineers. He chose Peter as his "rock" - Peter who would three times deny him - and yet, look what Peter became. Archaeology simply does not get more interesting than this.

About those fibers: I should note that burial cloths from the Mariamene ossuary and from other tombs tend to be wool. The Jesus ossuary has yielded a plain, burlap-like material, and a second cloth of flax (linen) that appears to have been contaminated on its loom with cotton fibers (which Simcha notes would have made that particular piece of linen "ritually impure," and rendered it rejected, like the damaged ossuary). An additional mystery arises from the fact that the fibers are so pristine (as are the wood fragments) that as we extract them, we leave them inside the natural mineral formations that enclose them; because this is the only means we have of demonstrating that they are in fact ancient. Note that this was a damp tomb and that in such environments - even in the absence of primary burial biological residues - the Jesus ossuary's fibers, like other fibers in the tomb, should have been deeply penetrated by black mold in only a couple of decades. We have been examining this anomaly microbiologically - and naturally, this has proved very fractal: like opening a door and trying to answer a question, only to find that it opens up to reveal ten new questions.

Among the questions arising from the pristine fibers, is the curious fact that they exist only as abundant trace evidence in the Jesus ossuary bio-concretions. There should be much more fiber (cloth) than was discovered inside the Jesus ossuary when it was first unearthed. There is no mention in the original archaeological reports that pieces of burial cloth were found (this would have been big news) - and large pieces of intact cloth should have been present. My guess is that the terra rossa intruders, when they entered the tomb and treated it with unusual reverence in centuries past, removed the cloths from the Jesus ossuary. And, at this point, the biological evidence suggests to me that these cloths comprised all or most of what was buried in the Jesus ossuary in the first place.

It has since been brought to my attention that the Pontifical Academy of Science has identified (as a result I still regard as preliminary until it is replicated in two crime labs) the patina fingerprint (the now increasingly reliable chemical signatures of burial places) from the Talpiot Tomb on an artifact in the Church's possession since about the time of the first Crusade. I've been advised by Jesuits that they were alerted immediately to the symbol in the tombs antechamber - which (beginning in France after the first crusade) came to be a sort of heiroglyph, meaning "Jesus, savior of man." Something about this tomb's discovery appears to have been expected for quite some time.

One other anomaly: one of the scientists on our team had been living for more than thirty years with a crippling, childhood disease that was moving into his heart - lethally. Though new medications were being tried about the time he came aboard, these were meant to maintain the disease, not to cure it. No one really gets cured... until now, possibly. Two years ago, something seemed to have reset the scientist's immune system, and for all intents and purposes, the disease appears to have simply "gone away." He not only walks, he runs - something his children had never seen him do before. Combined with the mystery of the pristine fibers, the change in a scientist who had been exposed to bio-concretions from the Jesus ossuary raised new questions about the biology of the concretions themselves. This, too, has become an area of study full of surprises.

Question 2: Andrey Feuverger has continued with the statistical study of the names, and is presently publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The results are essentially unchanged. I have continued with statistical analysis on the names (based on population dynamics and the 1st century AD ossuary "telephone directory"), testing the hypothesis that this is just a coincidental set of names on ossuaries belonging to a family with no connection at all to Jesus of Nazareth. Jerusalem would have had to exist through an ossuary culture lasting at least 600 years for this combination of names to occur just once. As for the two most controversial names: Mariamene (also called "Mara:" master of the congregation), is identified in several sources antedating the Acts of Philip, as the sister of Philip, Mary Magdalene. These sources range from the works of Origen through Hippolytus. About AD 175, in Refutations (5:2), Hippolytus wrote of Mary Magdalene - whom he called "Mariamene" - being given charge of the discourses and knowledge of Jesus' teachings, by James the brother of Jesus, shortly before the death of James. As for the "Judahs, son of Jesus" ossuary, I had tried to offer the alternate explanation that this could easily have been the child of a man on Maria's side of the family, also named Jesus - more or less divorcing him from the equation. A Jesuit and a Franciscan have told me that the Tomb will not let me get away that easily. The Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John, and the second Judas at the table of the last supper, won't let us ignore this ossuary - which may be referring to "Didymos Judas Thomas," the "twin" - who after the events in Jerusalem went to India to preach and to heal, and who according to the "Discourse of St. John" returned to Jerusalem and attended Mary the mother of Jesus at her death bed, just before his own death in Jerusalem. The "twin" might have been speaking to us all along - as St Thomas and St Jude. Note also that according to these Church traditions, we would expect to find both Didymos Judas Thomas and Mary in the Holy Family Tomb, in or near Jerusalem, along with Matthew, who attended the death of Mary with Thomas, shortly before his own death.

I should add that discoveries in Herculaneum and Pompeii (including a Christian prayer to Maria the mother of Jesus) are beginning to suggest that the Gospels were committed to writing very quickly - and not more than six decades or a hundred years after the events.

Question 3:The logical place for Jesus to be buried would have been in the Jerusalem hills - and note that the Talpiot hill overlooks both the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and also Bethlehem. After the Crucifixion, the church remained in Jerusalem and one can read about this in detail, in the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. James the brother of Jesus was the head of the church. The Discourse of St John locates Mary in Jerusalem at the time of her death (just prior to the AD 70 fires) - along with Matthew and Didymos Judas Thomas. Canonical and apocryphal texts are in agreement on this: and note the congruence with the names in the tomb.

Note also that the location of the Talpiot Tomb does not in any way contradict the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the site of the burial of Jesus in the family tomb of Joseph of Aramethia. Archaeological excavations under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are in agreement with the Gospel accounts about the place of the burial. Excavations also reveal that during the two decades after the events described in the Gospels, the population of Jerusalem expanded and the city's defensive walls (outside of which Gogaltha and the burial caves were originally located) expanded right over, and beyond, the burial caves. The new neighborhod above the tombs would have become imure for rituals - and thus all the tombs had to be emptied, and all ossuaries were (as we can see, archaeologically) moved to new locations outside the city walls. The Mount of Olives and the Mount of Talpiot appear (archaeologically and historically) to have been neighborhoods in which the Judeo-Christian followers of Jesus (under the churches of James and Peter) lived and buried their dead. Again - - though raised in Galilee, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem - and his ministry continued in Jerusalem, near Bethlem. In effect, Jesus and his ministry had come home.

On how the film and book will be received: I went into this as a scientific Doubting Thomas. Along the way, I found myself having to read everything Jesus had ever been quoted as saying while I was still working with the enigma of senseless evil in Ground Zero. What can I say? Only what Jesus said was able to bring me peace, in one of the darkest places on Earth. When I went into that crater in Manhattan, I did not believe that the historical Jesus even existed - and yet, as I went after this tomb, trying to explain it away as a mere coincidence, one congruence on top of another began to cry out that this tomb was, to a very high probability, the genuine article. I make no claim that all of my conclusions or suggestions are correct (with regard to Judas Thomas - - and oh, how much simpler this would all have been if those words, "son of Jesus" did not exist). What I am saying is that scientists and theologians should gather now, around this common watering hole of evidence, and start talking.

Question 4, Amos Kloner: Dr. Kloner has always been consistent about doubting this tomb, vigorously. Unlike Stephen Pfann and some of the other name-callers out there, Dr. Kloner never falsifies evidence and he speaks from the principle of legitimate scientific skepticism. He's a credible scientist and his doubts cannot be ignored.

I wish to point out that the key difference between science and religion is that religion is based on faith and science is based on doubt. What this means for science is that if every member of the Talpiot scientific panel agreed, this would be a bad thing, and there could be no progress. I, for one, have never learned anything new from someone who agrees with me (for all I know, there's so much more I don't know). So, what typically happens in a scientific team is that, if we all agree on a conclusion from the evidence (which very rarely happens), someone must volunteer to go at the interpretation from the opposite direction, and vigorously try to explain it away. I've seen the media take shots at "disagreements" between me and Simcha, or between me and James Tabor, twisting this into a conclusion that: "See! The scientists are all disagreeing. Therefore none of them know what they are talking about and the Talpiot Tomb does not really exist in the real world." I can tell you that the little known scientific debates about the water and methane of Saturn's moon Titan have been just as lively (with even the occasional name-calling - "geo-porn" and "literary slut" come quickly to mind). However, I have never heard a suggestion that just because a heated debate exists, the moons of Saturn do not exist.

Question 5: I do not believe that research on the Talpiot Tomb will get people to give up their faith. Nothing in this tomb really contradicts the Gospels, if one takes pause and actually reads the Gospels. In fact, there are more contradictions between the individual Gospels than between this tomb and the Gospels. (And, since much of our work was conducted in a crime lab, a common phenomenon came to the fore: Crime scene investigators usually wonder if multiple witnesses are describing the same event - and it's only when everyone recalls the same identical event in the same sequence, that investigators begin to suspect that the story has been edited and rehersed. Note that the Gospel of Luke starts out almost apologetically about the strangeness and the contradictions; and adds that this is how it seemed to each of them to have occurred.)

As for my own views, I came out of Ground Zero and I came away from the Talpiot Tomb still not knowing who or what Jesus was - only that evidently he really existed (I guess people of faith knew that all along, but in science we often proceed by baby steps). And the humble shroud in the rejected ossuary selected for "Jesus son of Joseph" teaches me that he really did live as he preached. I find myself living, more and more, by what Jesus preached. I've begun to teach this to my children.

I do not think my research will get people to give up their faith. I would be horrified if they did. Richard Dawkins will disagree with me on this (that's what scientists do: we disagree all the time), but I do not think faith should ever disappear, or be squashed. That experiment has already been tried: And I do not believe any of us would have wanted to live in Cold War Era Russia.

Question 6: I do not think this tomb contradicts the resurrection. See above, for some of the reasons.

Question 6: I do not know, presently, what is happening at the tomb, besides the fact that it is sealed under a steel hatch, and guarded. Eventually, I would like to see all of the concretion samples, with their fibers (save for a few microscopic laboratory reference samples), along with all of the ossuaries, sealed in glass climate controlled containers and returned to the Talpiot Tomb - where the family of Jesus, son of Joseph, had meant them to be. According to the Discourse of St John, Mary the mother of Jesus had said no church should be built in her name - only that wherever her name exists (as in the Tomb), people should simply stop, and pray. I can think of no better place for Maria and her family, than under the Talpiot rose garden that was planted on a terrace covering the tomb.

Question 7: I follow Buddhist philosophy - not very different at all from what Jesus preached. Now, I have to say that this tomb has brought me closer to Jesus' teachings. I'm still agnostic (in the literal sense of, "to lack knowledge, but to seek"). I still try to approach the Tomb with a sense of doubt. (Well, they say, "Only Nixon could go to China"). In a sense, I guess you could say I regard Doubting Thomas as the first scientist of the Christian era.

See you later,
- - Charlie P.
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Post by Charlie P. »

I should probably add that we've received news of rumors about people who have worked on the Talpiot Tomb project being stricken down by weird diseases - with more unexplainable death than the Tomb of Tutankhammen (nevermind, with regard to that earlier myth, that Howard Carter died of natural causes at advanced old age).

Rumors about God's vengeance against so-called "resurrection deniers" appear to be mistaken. Indeed, two members of the team now appear to have experienced medically anomalous reversals of fortune. One of the team's biblical scholars is now on record with spinal cancer that had first crippled him, then moved into his heart, simply having stopped - manifesting as "a sort of chronic disease" for two years, when survival was originally predicted as being a matter of weeks.

I was discussing this yesterday with a priest who arrived from India (and who now knows all the details that cannot yet be printed here); and he found it an interesting "coincidence" that these two medical anomalies should be noted in diseases that crippled, and then moved into the heart. He then noted that after lunch he had an appointment at the United Nations, and was meeting the ambassador from Japan regarding a speech and ceremony related to the 62nd anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. He invited me along to the ceremony, and also to meet with two Nagasaki survivors.

"Interesting coincidence, that you arrived on this day," I said. I had not yet told him that my next project, just approved, involved forensic archaeology and the shock cocoons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"There are no coincidences," said the priest. "Coincidence is just God's way of remaining anonymous."

- - Charlie P.
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Post by Mr. Titanic »

I don't believe in coincidences either. Interesting, Charlie. God has a sense of humor too, don't loose sight of that. :lol:
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Jesus and Humor

Post by Charlie P. »

When I read the apocryphal gospels, I find it interesting ho often Jesus laughs - and especially in his "Origin of the World," when he literally jokes with those who ask if the Earth is attached to a pillar or hanging from a string (Jesus gets the universe right, there - and interestingly adds a few descriptions that are hauntingly consistent with the oscillating universe theory). It seems that one of the first things the editors did under Constantine was to remove all the laughing and make Jesus more stoic, less human. (Fr. Macquitty believes that the only hints of humor remaining are casting of the nets on the sea of Galilee, and Jesus inviting Peter to walk with him on the water.) Evidently, one laughing prophet in the world (the laughing Buddha) was enough. A result of this is that when Elaine Pagels and Karen King interpret the recently discovered "Gospel of Judas," with its laughing Jesus, they conclude that it is a mocking laughter. Not necessarily so. When I read the whole picture, I believe Jesus would have laughed right along with Monty Python - or with Christopher Moore's incmparably funny and reverent novel "Lamb," - the Gospel according to Jesus' childhood friend, Biff.

- - Charlie P.
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Post by mccormack44 »

Charlie P. wrote:
It seems that one of the first things the editors did under Constantine was to remove all the laughing and make Jesus more stoic, less human.
One item of basic Christian faith is that Jesus was simultaneously entirely human and entirely divine. Many, many people seem to have trouble with the first part of that article of faith. It seems that they do not want the Savior to be entirely human. So they deny Him humor, or sexuality, or joy…

The sad thing is that they are attacking the center of their faith. If he was not entirely human, there was no sacrifice at Golgotha.

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Re: Jesus and Humor

Post by voralfred »

Charlie P. wrote: Evidently, one laughing prophet in the world (the laughing Buddha) was enough.
There is a lot of laughing in the Old Testament (King James version)

1 Kings 18, 27: And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

OK, you can call that "gallow humour" considering what Elijah was about to do to "them", nemely the Baal's prophets, but it is still humour!



Genesis 18
[12] Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?
[13] And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?
[14] Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.
[15] Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.


Genesis 21, 6
And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

Moreover, this laugh was about the birth of Sarah's and Abraham's son, whose English name is Isaac, but who is called in Hebrew YiTsH'aK which means "he will laugh".


The editors under Constantine did define the New Testament, and also which Deuterocanonical books should be added to the Hebrew Canon, but for some reason they did not dare remove any books from the latter.
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Post by haelwen1 »

I find it difficult to keep a straight face myself.... 8)
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Re: Jesus and Humor

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Charlie P. wrote:When I read the apocryphal gospels, I find it interesting ho often Jesus laughs - and especially in his "Origin of the World," when he literally jokes with those who ask if the Earth is attached to a pillar or hanging from a string (Jesus gets the universe right, there - and interestingly adds a few descriptions that are hauntingly consistent with the oscillating universe theory). It seems that one of the first things the editors did under Constantine was to remove all the laughing and make Jesus more stoic, less human. (Fr. Macquitty believes that the only hints of humor remaining are casting of the nets on the sea of Galilee, and Jesus inviting Peter to walk with him on the water.) Evidently, one laughing prophet in the world (the laughing Buddha) was enough. A result of this is that when Elaine Pagels and Karen King interpret the recently discovered "Gospel of Judas," with its laughing Jesus, they conclude that it is a mocking laughter. Not necessarily so. When I read the whole picture, I believe Jesus would have laughed right along with Monty Python - or with Christopher Moore's incmparably funny and reverent novel "Lamb," - the Gospel according to Jesus' childhood friend, Biff.

- - Charlie P.
My Wife's late Father, who attended Catholic Seminary for several years a long time ago, had a large framed picture of a laughing Jesus. It was my favorite piece of art in their house (aside from my wife's baby pictures).
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Post by voralfred »

Charles Pellegrino wrote: and a second cloth of flax (linen) that appears to have been contaminated on its loom with cotton fibers (which Simcha notes would have made that particular piece of linen "ritually impure," and rendered it rejected, like the damaged ossuary)
Emphasis is mine.
Did you really mean cotton? or rather wool?
Why would cotton make the flax ritually impure? Wool would, definitely, wool and flax together constitute a forbidden mingling, (Lev 19:19, Deut 22:11) but flax and cotton?
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Post by Charlie P. »

I do not understand all the meanings of ritual impurity - and even recently in jerusalem I managed to raise shocked eyebrows and even a gasp by biting into a slice of pizza while some other food was in range. I did, however, manage to find in Jerusalem a Kosher Chinese restaurant run by a Chinese family - who somehow managed to make spare ribs out of goat ribs - - and I must admit that these tasted far better than almost any ribs I had ever eaten, anywhere in the world.

In any case, I would greatly appreciate a more detailed understanding about why a loom used for cotton could not subsequently be used for flax. Also, there is a purple animal fiber in with the "Jesus son of Joseph" trace ('shroud") fibers.

- - Charlie P.
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Post by voralfred »

Charlie P. wrote:In any case, I would greatly appreciate a more detailed understanding about why a loom used for cotton could not subsequently be used for flax.
Well, that was my question.
If it had been used for wool, then unless it is cleaned very thoroughly, it cannot be used for flax, since this would contaminate the flax with wool and constitute the mingling ("sha'atnez") explicitly forbidden, as I mentioned above, by Lev 19:19 and Deut 22:11.
But why Pr. Jacobovici would suggest the same would be the case with cotton baffles me. To my knowledge, any combination of cotton, silk, hemp, horse hair, artificial fiber, you name it, and either flax or wool , in any proportion, is OK.

Charlie P. wrote:Also, there is a purple animal fiber in with the "Jesus son of Joseph" trace ('shroud") fibers.
Purple animal hair? Wool is what you usually dye purple. In the flax shroud, that would make it ritually forbidden. Not impure though, one may own a linen/wool mixture and use it, as a tablecloth for instance, or a wall tapestry, or a carpet, provided you don't wear it as a garment, as only wearing wool/flax mingling is forbidden - just read carefully the two verses I quoted. So in fact one is allowed to use a loom with wool and flax, provided one makes sure the resulting material is not used for garments.).
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Post by haelwen1 »

Dr. P:

I am assuming that you have had access to all the deciphered Dead Sea Scrolls now. I assume this decipherment has been an on-going process since 1947. Are there plans to make this body of work available online. Or is it already available and I have just been overlooking it....

I know Dr. Tabor has provided a link on his blog to some of the apocryphal books. Also, I think he is preparing his Opus, a re-written Bible encompassing the historical facts and Judaism of Jesus. Now, that would be great to take on those trips to Mars and Alpha Centauri....

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Post by Charlie P. »

The animal hair was dyed, evidently with acid assist from urine. There was some excitement about this possibly being part of the Biblical Tekhelet.

I do not think horse fibers could have been mixed with flax and that the orthodoxy would have been happy about it (as in a mention, above); and I'm still not clear on why any injunction should have existed against using the same loom for cotton and flax, with regard to what might ultimately become burial cloths. (At this stage, almost everyone knows more about 1st century Jewish Tradition than I, though I'm getting there...)

I am definitely looking forward to James Tabor's next book.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are widely available. RE Biblical Archaeology Society and Biblical Archaeology Review links.

- CRP
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Post by voralfred »

Charlie P. wrote:The animal hair was dyed, evidently with acid assist from urine. There was some excitement about this possibly being part of the Biblical Tekhelet.
Well, if urine was used, it cannot be the Tekhelet used in the Temple....



Charlie P. wrote:I do not think horse fibers could have been mixed with flax and that the orthodoxy would have been happy about it (as in a mention, above); and I'm still not clear on why any injunction should have existed against using the same loom for cotton and flax
Why not? Horse hair does not count as "wool". Camel I'm not positive, but horse hair is not wool so it can be mixed with flax, just as cotton. Who said a loom used with cotton cannot be used wih flax? I've never heard of such a prohibition. What source supports this statement?
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Post by Darb »

Charlie P. wrote:I'm still not clear on why any injunction should have existed against using the same loom for cotton and flax
I think there's some minor confusion afoot. I think voralfred was talking about an injunction against mixing wool with flax, not cotton with flax. I don't remember the contents of the passages he referred to above, but I'd guess (blindly) that the injunction probably had something to do with mixing animal and plant fibers together in one fabric ... from a magical standpoint, I can sorta see how that might be considered ritually impure, being that it's a blend of very different materials.
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Post by voralfred »

Brad wrote:
Charlie P. wrote:I'm still not clear on why any injunction should have existed against using the same loom for cotton and flax
I think there's some minor confusion afoot. I think voralfred was talking about an injunction against mixing wool with flax, not cotton with flax. I don't remember the contents of the passages he referred to above, but I'd guess (blindly) that the injunction probably had something to do with mixing animal and plant fibers together in one fabric ... from a magical standpoint, I can sorta see how that might be considered ritually impure, being that it's a blend of very different materials.
That is the point I am insisting upon: there is no such generic injuction against mixing any animal fiber (silk, or horse hair, for instance) with any plant fiber (cotton, hemp...). The only specific injuction is against mixing of flax (perfectly well defined plant fiber) with wool (here, there may be some ambiguity as whether in addition to sheep wool, goat hair can also be called "wool", but certainly not horse hair!) The words wool ("tsemer") and "flax" ("pishtim") are explicit in Deut 22, 11.


On a different topic I'm giving my source:
voralfred wrote:
Charlie P. wrote:The animal hair was dyed, evidently with acid assist from urine. There was some excitement about this possibly being part of the Biblical Tekhelet.
Well, if urine was used, it cannot be the Tekhelet used in the Temple....
In the "Pitum HaKetoret", the description of the fabrication of the incense mixture used in the Temple (a rabbinical teaching, a short excerpt from the Talmud, which is part of the jewish ritual and appears in all jewish prayer books), Cyprus wine is mentioned to be used in the preparation. However it is not really an "ingredient", it is used only to prepare one of the actual ingredients, to soften it. A rhetorical question is asked: wouldn't urine serve the same purpose (maybe even better)? Indeed, is the answer, but one does not introduce urine in the Temple, this would be undecorous. Note that urine itself would not have been introduced anyway, only the ingredient softened with urine. Still, this is rejected. Here we have the same situation: urine used as a preliminary to make Tekhelet? A color similar to Tekhelet, used by laymen, why not, but the Temple Tekhelet? Besides, Tekhelet is blue, and you previously said the fibre was dyed purple. That would rather be "Argaman", again not the Temple Argaman, but maybe a layman variant of Argaman, possibly undistinguishable to the naked eye, but ritually unfit for the Temple Service. Please note that I did not say "impure", nor "forbidden for everyday's use", I'm not discussing the fact that urine could be used in dying fiber for a shroud, or even a garment, just not for the Service vestments of the High Priest for Temple use.
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Post by tollbaby »

This may be a case of an uneducated hick venturing into some very deep waters....

but if we're talking about THE shroud...? There was no temple ritual involved there, as I recall (again, I could be entirely wrong). So who would care if there were impure fibers in the shroud?
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