Please do not post to this thread unless you either have read, or are currently reading, the author's book.
I just ordered my copy, so I'll join in sometime a few days hence, as time permits.Pellegrino wrote:Throughout the world press (and to an inevitably lesser degree even here on Amazon) there have been nearly 2 million reviews that are largely repeating misstatements of facts and sheer mythology invented by drive-by media types who shouted their condemnations before the film or the book were even available to them for viewing.
Time and time again, I have seen myself and my peers described as being bent on sinking the basic core of Christianity by denying the Resurrection and producing "shoddy" DNA evidence from the bones of Jesus.
To begin, the DNA tests were designed based on doubt, and were intended to disprove this tomb, not to prove anything. They are merely one brief chapter in a series of attempted disproof’s. MORE IMPORTANTLY: There were no bones of Jesus, insofar as my science has been able to tell, from a (still ongoing)cubic millimeter-by-cubic millimeter investigation of the bioconcretion (fossil bed) samples from the bottom of the Jesus ossuary. All I have been able to find are shreds of material consistent with a burial shroud, contaminated with DNA (possibly of globin [blood] origin) and with minute fragments of semi-fossilized wood.
I'll return to the bioconcretion anomaly in a moment. But first, I ask readers to turn to my last paragraphs in the book, on page 192 of a chapter titled "A Crime Lab's Jesus." If you think the book may offend you, then don't buy it from this site - but instead go to the nearest library (libraries are, after all, good places), read just that page, if nothing else, and ask yourself if that passage could possibly have been written by someone who was intending, in any way, shape or form, to deny the founding prophet of Christian faith, and to go against him, or tear him down.
I was (and am) an agnostic - in the literal sense of, "one who lacks knowledge." As I was called into this project (specifically to go at it "Doubting Thomas style, and throw every scientific tool of doubt I could at this tomb - "no expense spared" - to explain it away), I was still working forensic archaeology in Ground Zero, Manhattan; and I was still getting rather distressed over it. The Tomb Project required me, while still working Ground Zero, to study everything Jesus had ever been quoted as saying, whether canonical or apocryphal. How evil could this Tomb project have been, when in one of the most damnable and apocalyptic places on Earth (a crevice in time, as it were), it was something Jesus said almost two millennia ago - which turned out to be the only words that brought me peace?
As for the Tomb itself, and the findings, I discovered (along with my co-explorers) that it does not contradict scripture if one merely steps back and actually reads scripture. First, there is evidence emerging from Pompeii's sister city (Herculaneum) indicating that, despite church teachings in which the Gospels are supposed to have been written more than 100 years after the events, the early first century AD was a time of general literacy in the Roman world and I am coming to the opinion that the Gospels were in fact penned almost as current events - probably to a large degree by the apostles themselves. This might explain Luke's opening passage attesting that the Gospels may sound strange or even contradictory - but that this is how it appeared to each of them to have occurred. As someone who works with people involved major accident investigations and in crime scene investigation, I can tell you that when all accounts are identical (as they clearly are not in the New Testament), that's when you begin to suspect the accounts have been rehearsed or extensively edited. This is perfectly consistent with observations that the very early Gospel of Didymos Judas Thomas echoes Matthew, and yet at the same time is enchantingly different.
As for the Talpiot Tomb being built by a rich man, in Jerusalem: The Roman historians cited in the book made clear that the ministry of James the brother of Jesus, had wealthy followers in Jerusalem. This echoes two early Christian Roman homes now being excavated (one with a prayer to Maria the mother of Jesus, dating from AD 70-79): these homes are what would normally be described as mansions. This is also consistent with the prophecy in Isaiah 53: That the anointed one ("the Christ") would be buried by a rich man, near Jerusalem, with his family, and that he would look down before death from the place of his piercing and see that "his seed" had survived. John refers to this "seed" (meaning a living male heir) as Jesus' Beloved Disciple, who would tarry for a while after the crucifixion. John also references two men named "Judas" at the last super - and the Beloved Disciple is clearly depicted as an adolescent at the time of the crucifixion - where (according to John), he is described as taking his mother (one of the Marys at the foot of the cross, standing with this young man)into his home, at Jesus' direction. In the next chapter (20:2), it is to the Beloved Disciple's home that Mary Magdalene runs, upon finding the holy Sepulcher empty. The enigmatic Beloved Disciple, and the equally enigmatic second Judas (also called Didymos), spoken of as if in code and linked to Didymos Judas Thomas, did not appear to make sense, until we read the inscription, "Judas, son of Jesus." The name, Jesus, by the way, is emphasized, on his ossuary, by two symbols: a cross and a star, as if to emphasize the beginning and end, the alpha and omega, of Jesus' earthly existence. The book points out all of these resonances between the Tomb and scripture - and none of the offended Christian editorial-writers appear ever to have read this. (Note, I am equally disappointed with the atheists who have praised the book to the heavens on their blogs, also without having read it.) History teaches us that when one was condemned by the Romans for being a contender to kingship, the Romans killed wives and even girlfriends and infant children; but siblings were allowed (like James) to live. Didymos Judas Thomas, if in fact he was the Beloved Disciple and son of Jesus, would have been called someone else's child, or (as in John), Judas (also called Didymos Thomas)the brother of Jesus. Remember: James, brother of Jesus, was allowed to survive more than three decades after the crucifixion, until he himself became a contender. The first question for Christians is simply this: Does anything in scripture say or even suggest that Jesus broke bread with his disciples and with his parents, and that he did not as a fully living and breathing and feeling human being, actually digest his food and go to the bathroom like the rest of humanity? Why could Jesus not have lived a fully human Earthly existence, as Isaiah's prophecy and every Christian Bible says he did (including even that most human experience of all - a family); and yet, at the same time performed all those miracles anyway?
Now, back to the Jesus ossuary, and it's accretion bed: This may yet be disproved by continued research (as for example, if we do eventually find a micro-fragment of bone): However, so far, the anomalies with regard to the biological signatures normally found in the presence of powdering and dissolving bones over the course of centuries are suggesting an absence of bones near or on my scores of Jesus Ossuary "fossil bed" samples. At least the major masses of bone appear not to have been in this ossuary for at least a millennium, and possibly all the way back to the beginning. As I stated last week, there are three explanations for the Jesus ossuary anomaly: 1) Someone stole away with the bones in antiquity, and only material consistent with a burial shroud was ever placed in the Jesus ossuary. 2) Someone stole away with the body in antiquity, and only material consistent with a burial shroud was ever placed in the Jesus ossuary. 3) The evidence, so far, may be taken to mean that something else happened - a subject into which my science can probe only this far, and no farther.
All I can do is say, "I don't know" - which is of course the best place a scientist can be. Science and religion are not enemies. It's just that science is based on doubt ("can we try to explain this tomb away as a remarkable coincidence, and see if it stands the tests?"), while religion is based on faith (which occasionally leads the devout to ask, "What's taking the scientists so long to see little glimmers of what we knew all along?")
I'm sure that readers of my books have encountered the names Doug McClean, Don Peterson, Fr. John MacQuitty, and Fr. Mervyn Fernando in my other works. They are among the smartest people I have encountered; and they were specifically sought out for their opinions, as this book was being written. Far from locking Christians out (as has been reported) or attacking them, one of the above is a Franciscan, another is a Jesuit, and another is a Jehovah’s Witness.
This whole process, as reported in this book, is simply the twilight before the dawn, simply the beginning of an exploration into the most mysterious lost world of all. Let us begin. - - C.R.P.
[Mod Note: Sticky Status Added -- Mr. Titanic]