Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Wasn't Jesus Buried Next to Judas?

Coming to the Tomb Next to You! James Cameron and his associates are airing a documentary claiming that they've found an ossuary or box that was the tomb of Jesus in a Jerusalem suburb, that Mary Magdalene is buried in an ossuary next to Jesus, and that their son Judah was buried in an ossuary next to them.

Evidently the Jesus family moved out to the burbs so they could have a bigger yard for young Judah. All that commuting must have been tough!

What About the Virgin in the Pan? The main evidence that Jesus was buried in the ossurary was the fact that it was labeled "Jesus." Theologians are dismissing the idea that the "Jesus" inscription meant that the "Jesus" in the tomb was the Jesus because everybody and their brother was named Jesus in the first century. This is understandable except that one of the scholars making the claim is Ben Witherington of Asbury College in Kentucky. Just a couple of years ago, it was Witherington who made the sensational claim that an ossuary he found contained the bones of Jesus' brother James. The importance of the James discovery was that it was supposed to bring us that much closer to Jesus. But if Witherington can still maintain that he found James, why can't James Cameron claim that he found Jesus and Mary Magdalene?

Besides if Cameron is right, that means that Jesus was not resurrected and that he was not the Son of God portrayed in Christian accounts. It would also mean that yesterday's story of the Virgin Mary in the pizza pan in Texas isn't true?

And we can't have that.

What About Judas? I have to admit that I don't buy into Cameron's account myself. I don't think that Jesus was resurrected any more than Cameron does, but having Jesus and Mary Magdalene buried in the same place is too much of a coincidence given that they probably died years apart and relatively far from their home towns.

Besides, Jesus would have been buried next to his best friend Judas.

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