No Rest for the Wicked
I’m writing this on Sunday morning. Tomorrow, according to the press, James Cameron will announce that he has found the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. And that Jesus is still in it.
Maybe you should read that again. After all, it may be the most earth-shattering assertion since…well, since the man from Galilee first said what he said. For 2,000 years, western civilization has been defined by this single belief: That Jesus Christ was the son of god, that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind, that he rose on the third day and ascended to heaven. Everything we are as a people, as a culture, revolves around this belief. Whether any given individual is a Christian or not, he lives as the product of a Christian society, in which Christian moral teachings are held to be supreme, whether they are believed to be inherently divine or not. He is immersed in it in a way that is inescapable, so that it is part and parcel of his nature, whether he likes it or not. So, to make the understatement of the last two millennia, what Mr. Cameron has to say is hardly without consequence. While it is obviously far too early (as of the time of this writing, the official announcement has not yet even been made.) to make any judgment, much of what Cameron has to say, scientifically, seems to be spurious at best. He claims to have DNA evidence proving that the body he has found is the body of Jesus Christ. What, exactly, he is going to compare this DNA to for confirmation, he has kept us in the dark on. He says that the tombs he has found are marked with the names Jesus, Mary, and Jonas. These are, of course, some of the most common names of the region at that time, and would prove nothing on their own. And as for the claim that these are Jesus’ remains, how, exactly, those remains could have survived for the last 2,000 years seems to defy explanation. Unless the corpses have been mummified (Cameron has released no information regarding this) such a feat would be, seemingly, impossible. Indeed, the tomb that the corpses are buried in is far too elaborate to have been afforded by Jesus' family or by the early church, and the stone coffins in which the remains are enclosed are indicative of a Roman, not Jewish, tradition.
It is worth noting that Cameron’s director in this venture, Simcha Jacobovici, was also behind The Exodus Decoded, an earlier work of biblical archeology, for which the historicity is, to say the least, highly controversial. He is also a devout Jew, for whom disproving the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth is a duty of faith. However, for all involved, whether they be Christians, Jews, or otherwise, the importance is far more than one of historical curiosity. For nearly half a century now, the west has been living through, surprisingly quietly, one of its defining moments as a civilization. The culture war is more than a few spats about the legality of certain substances or behaviors. It is a conflict over whether the defining ethic of our culture in the west should be the moral teachings of the Christian faith, which have sustained us for the last two millennia, or some sort of as yet ill-defined secular philosophy of “do what thou wilt”. Don’t be surprised if the hard evidence for what Mr. Cameron and Mr. Jacobovici have to say turns out to be false. For all their talk of reverence for science and reason, there are ideologues on both sides of the aisle, and anti-Christians ideologues are no different from any other kind: Their belief in strict adherence to reason ends where their strict adherent to their own doctrine, religious or otherwise, begins.
Maybe you should read that again. After all, it may be the most earth-shattering assertion since…well, since the man from Galilee first said what he said. For 2,000 years, western civilization has been defined by this single belief: That Jesus Christ was the son of god, that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind, that he rose on the third day and ascended to heaven. Everything we are as a people, as a culture, revolves around this belief. Whether any given individual is a Christian or not, he lives as the product of a Christian society, in which Christian moral teachings are held to be supreme, whether they are believed to be inherently divine or not. He is immersed in it in a way that is inescapable, so that it is part and parcel of his nature, whether he likes it or not. So, to make the understatement of the last two millennia, what Mr. Cameron has to say is hardly without consequence. While it is obviously far too early (as of the time of this writing, the official announcement has not yet even been made.) to make any judgment, much of what Cameron has to say, scientifically, seems to be spurious at best. He claims to have DNA evidence proving that the body he has found is the body of Jesus Christ. What, exactly, he is going to compare this DNA to for confirmation, he has kept us in the dark on. He says that the tombs he has found are marked with the names Jesus, Mary, and Jonas. These are, of course, some of the most common names of the region at that time, and would prove nothing on their own. And as for the claim that these are Jesus’ remains, how, exactly, those remains could have survived for the last 2,000 years seems to defy explanation. Unless the corpses have been mummified (Cameron has released no information regarding this) such a feat would be, seemingly, impossible. Indeed, the tomb that the corpses are buried in is far too elaborate to have been afforded by Jesus' family or by the early church, and the stone coffins in which the remains are enclosed are indicative of a Roman, not Jewish, tradition.
It is worth noting that Cameron’s director in this venture, Simcha Jacobovici, was also behind The Exodus Decoded, an earlier work of biblical archeology, for which the historicity is, to say the least, highly controversial. He is also a devout Jew, for whom disproving the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth is a duty of faith. However, for all involved, whether they be Christians, Jews, or otherwise, the importance is far more than one of historical curiosity. For nearly half a century now, the west has been living through, surprisingly quietly, one of its defining moments as a civilization. The culture war is more than a few spats about the legality of certain substances or behaviors. It is a conflict over whether the defining ethic of our culture in the west should be the moral teachings of the Christian faith, which have sustained us for the last two millennia, or some sort of as yet ill-defined secular philosophy of “do what thou wilt”. Don’t be surprised if the hard evidence for what Mr. Cameron and Mr. Jacobovici have to say turns out to be false. For all their talk of reverence for science and reason, there are ideologues on both sides of the aisle, and anti-Christians ideologues are no different from any other kind: Their belief in strict adherence to reason ends where their strict adherent to their own doctrine, religious or otherwise, begins.
posted by Ben-T | 2:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home