Those Mysterious Dead Sea Scrolls

The War Scroll

Courtesy of Matson Photo Service 

Have you ever wondered what's really in those Scrolls? Yes, the Bible but what else? Yesterday someone asked me this on Quora. True, it's not "Christ and him crucified" but the Dead Sea Scrolls are still cool. They give us an idea of what was going on in the background while Jesus and his students trod the dusty pathways of Judea.

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Q: What are the other books that were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls besides the books of the Old Testament?

A: Of the 944 scrolls found at Qumran, 211 are “biblical” and 733 are “nonbiblical.” This latter group contains all sorts of writings. For example books from the Pseudepigrapha were found such as Jubilees and 1 Enoch along with apocalyptic books related to Enoch, such as The Book of Giants (1Q23) and Melchizedek (11Q13). (FYI, the notations with a Q in them tell you what cave they were found in and the manuscript number. This is how scholars denominate the different scrolls and fragments. “Etc.” after a notation just means there are too many copies to list them all).

There are numerous songs and liturgies thanking God for his deliverances, while other psalms claiming to be authored by David and Solomon are for exorcising demons causing various ailments, such as a "fever demon" or a "chest-pain demon." The Psalms Scroll contains not just the biblical psalms but a number of others, some of which were already known from different sources while others were entirely new to us.

The community that produced the scrolls (we’re not as sure it was the Essenes nowadays) penned several scriptural commentaries using a particular type of interpretation called "pesher" so as to find themselves featured in the Hebrew scriptures. The Commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab) is an example of this. They also wrote directly about themselves, producing procedures and regulations such as the Rule of the Community, The Halakhic Letter, and the Damascus Document. There are many copies of these, and Damascus Document was originallly found in the 19th century all the way up in Syria, long before additional copies were discovered among the scrolls.

They produced their own apocalyptic prophecies, the most famous of which is The War Scroll which details the final battle between "the Sons of Light" and "the Sons of darkness." Wisdom literature has been found, including Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184), Mysteries (1Q27, etc), and Instruction (1Q26, etc.). A copy of Sirach (aka Ecclesiasticus), which has long been known through the apocrypha, was there. A set of beatitudes, rather different from Jesus', was discovered there too (4Q525).

This really just scrapes the surface but should give you an idea of what was found besides the biblical texts.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library has all the scrolls and intends to provide complete transcriptions and translations in the future.

Two excellent translations of the nonbiblical scrolls are The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated by Florentino Garcia Martinez, and The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation by M. Wise, M. Abegg, and E. Cook.

Does the Bible Teach Anything Clearly?

Photo courtesy Rushay (RUSH) Booysen

"Well, that's an odd title for a Christian blog," you may say to yourself.

Maybe, but a scholarly blog I ran across recently (thanks to Twitter) quotes Wayne Meeks, a famous biblical scholar, who believes we should stop using the phrase, "The Bible clearly teaches..."

So let us renounce the phrase, “the Bible clearly teaches” (says Dr. Meeks).  And every time we hear it let us immediately be on our guard... In our situation, when people say, “the Bible clearly teaches,” instead of, for example, “we can learn from the Bible if we stand within a certain community’s tradition,” or “we can find these ideas in Scripture if we construe Scripture in such-and-such a way”… when they do that, they are really masking the locus of the authority they are claiming.

Now, I have to agree with Dr. Meeks in one sense. Most of the times that Christianity has had egg on its face over the last 2000 years have been times when we weren't actually insisting on some scripture but on our own explanation of it. Handy example: the legendary conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church. What the Church actually ended up defending was the greek scientist Ptolemy's idea of how the universe works -- not that "God the Father Almighty [is the] maker of heaven and earth," as the old creed says. Galileo himself believed that too, after all.

Teachers of Christianity always have to make sure that what we're defending is what the Bible itself says and not our explanation of what the Bible says.

That isn't my main point today but it would make a good topic, so I may post on it in the future.

Fuzziness

That doesn't seem to be Dr. Meeks' main point either. He appears to be saying that the Bible itself isn't clear, that you can't say the Bible clearly teaches anything because it clearly doesn't. To get anything worthwhile out of it at all you must "construe" it or draw its meaning from a "certain community's tradition."

But think about this: All of the things the Bible contains were written by people who knew what they meant at the time. And much of it was written to other people who also knew what they meant. And although we live at a 2 to 3 thousand year remove from their time, it is still entirely possible to recover what they meant. Historians and textual critics and archaeologists do it all the time and with all kinds of books -- not just the Bible.

Have you ever read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey?  You may not have gotten every cultural nuance but did you pick up the main points? Doesn't the Iliad clearly teach that Agamemnon and Achilles, both full of pride, quarrelled over the captured princess Briseis causing Achilles to leave the battle (trust me, it does).

What about Plato and Aristotle? Do we know pretty clearly what they taught? Yes. Why? Because we know a lot about them, their world, and can read their language. Sort of like any other book you read. Including the Bible.

If we read it intelligently, the Bible is quite clear on most things. True some passages are a bit obscure (nobody is sure what St. Paul is getting at here, for instance. Or here.). But it is not a fuzzy, obscure book, and there are a disturbingly large number of things that 'the Bible clearly says'.

Planting Sycamore Trees

Photo courtesy of Tomorrow Never Knows

There's more than one revolution going on.  Just as they did with the more high-profile Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, I sometimes feel that the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere help us keep the disparate parts of the Christian movement aware of each other too.

However that may be, the Society of Biblical Literature conference, happening in San Francisco right now, is being blogged and tweeted continuously. For a lot of people that could elicit a yawn but if you are seriously interested in what the Bible is and says, the SBL is where you find the movers and shakers. Were he suddenly catapulted into our era, St. Paul would probably be there making a presentation on his latest Epistle -- and blowing everybody else away, no doubt, with is incandescent mind. Through the Internet those of us unable to attend are still able to pick up nuggets of wisdom (and sometimes the opposite) that drop from the attendee's scholarly lips...

Ancient Writers Who Mention Jesus

Many people aren't aware of just how much evidence there is for Jesus in ancient documents outside the New Testament. In fact, considering that he was to all appearances just a wandering peasant teacher in a backwater of the Roman empire the evidence for Jesus is quite good.

Here are some of the main documents (A growing collection):



Julius Africanus

Thallos (fl. AD 55) Roman Historian, as cited by Julius Africanus (c. AD 160-c. 240) Christian Historian (translated by Robert E. Van Voorst, Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary)
“In the third [book] of his histories, Thallos calls this darkness [at the death of Jesus] an eclipse of the sun, which seems to me to be wrong.” (Jesus Outside the New Testament, pg. 20, Robert E. Van Voorst, William B Eerdmans Publishing, © 2000)

Flavius Josephus (AD 37-c. 100) Jewish Historian (translated by Paul L. Maier, Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University)
Jesus (Longer Version)
“About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.” (Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII, 63, from Josephus: The Essential Writings, pg. 265, translated by Paul L. Maier, Kregel Publications, © 1988)

Jesus (Agapius Version)
“At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.” (Ibid, pg. 264)

[Note on the Agapius version: “Although the passage is so worded [as in the first version given above] as early as Eusebius (c. AD 324), scholars have long suspected a Christian interpolation, since Josephus would not have believed Jesus to be the Messiah or in his resurrection and have remained, as he did, a non-Christian Jew. In 1972, however, Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced his discovery of an Arabic manuscript by the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius, in which this Josephan passage is expressed in a manner appropriate to a Jew, and which corresponds so precisely to previous scholarly projections of what Josephus originally wrote that it is substituted in the text above. While the final sentence is not in Agapius, Pines justifiably concludes that it was in the original Josephan text.]

The Stoning of James
“The younger Ananus, however, was rash and followed the Sadducees, who are heartless when they sit in judgment. Ananus thought that with Festus dead and Albinus still on the way, he would have his opportunity. Convening the judges of the Sanhedrin, he brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law, and condemned them to be stoned to death.

“The people of Jerusalem who were considered the most fair minded and strict in observing the law were offended by this. They secretly urged King Agrippa to order Ananus to desist from any further actions of this sort.” (Antiquities of the Jews, XX, 200-201, from Josephus: The Essential Writings, pg. 276, translated by Paul L. Maier, Kregel Publications, © 1988)

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (AD c. 55-c. 117) Roman Historian (Translated by Michael Grant, Historian, President and Vice-Chancellor of the Queen’s University of Belfast)
“But, neither human resources, nor imperial munificence, nor appeasement of the gods, eliminated sinister suspicions that the fire [i.e., the great fire which burned down much of Rome] had been instigated. To suppress this rumour, Nero fabricated scapegoats – and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius’ reign by the governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this temporary setback the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect and flourish in the capital.

“First, Nero had self-acknowledged Christians arrested. Then, on their information, large numbers of others were condemned – not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies (or, ‘because the human race detested them.’ Latin: ‘odio hunani generis’). Their deaths were made farcical. Dressed in wild animals’ skins, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or made into torches to be ignited after dark as substitutes for daylight. Nero provided his Gardens for the spectacle, and exhibited displays in the Circus, at which he mingled with the crowd – or stood in a chariot, dressed as a charioteer. Despite their guilt as Christians, and the ruthless punishment it deserved, the victims were pitied. For it was felt that they were being sacrificed to one man’s brutality rather than to the national interest.” (The Annals of Imperial Rome, XV, 44, (pp. 365-366), translated by Michael Grant, Penguin Books, © 1971 [1981 ed.])

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 70-c. 140) Roman historian.  (Translated by J. C. Rolfe)

Disturbance During Claudius’ Reign
“He [Emperor Claudius] allowed the people of Ilium perpetual exemption from tribute, on the ground that they were the founders of the Roman race, reading an ancient letter of the Senate and people of Rome written in Greek to king Seleucus, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance only on condition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from every burden. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Latin, ‘Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit’), he expelled them from Rome. He allowed the envoys of the Germans to sin in the orchestra, led by their naïve self-confidence.” (The Lives of the Caesars, Claudius 25, translated by J. C. Rolfe, from The New Testament Background: Selected Documents, pg. 14, ed. by C. K. Barrett, Harper & Row San Francisco, Revised edition ©1987)

Christians Punished by Nero
“During [Nero’s] reign many abuses were severely punished and put down, and no fewer laws were made: a limit was set to expenditures; the public banquets were confined to a distribution of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands in the taverns was forbidden, with the exception of pulse and vegetables, whereas before every sort of dainty was exposed for sale. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. He put an end to the diversions of the chariot drivers, who from immunity of long standing claimed the right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by cheating and robbing the people.” (Ibid, Nero 16, pg. 16)

Pliny the Younger (c. AD 61-c. 113), Roman civil servant and writer, governor of Pontus-Bithynia from AD 111-113. Book 10, Letter 96 of his Letters (translated by Robert E. Van Voorst, Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary)
“Since I have begun to deal with this problem, the charges have become more common and are increasing in variety, as often happens. An anonymous accusatory pamphlet has been circulated containing the names of many people. I decided to dismiss any who denied that they are or ever have been Christians when they repeated after me a formula invoking the gods and made offerings of wine and incense to your image, which i had ordered to be brought with the images of the gods into court for this reason, and when they reviled (or “spoke ill of,” or “cursed”) Christ. I understand that no one who is really a Christian can be made to do these things.

“Other people, whose names were given to me by an informer, first said that they were Christians and then denied it. They said that they had stopped being Christians to or more years ago, and some more than twenty. They all venerated your image and the images of the gods as the others did, and reviled Christ. They also maintained that the sum total of their guilt or error was no more than the following. They had met regularly before dawn on a determined day, and sung antiphonally a hymn to Christ as if to a god. They also took an oath not for any crime, but to keep from theft, robbery, and adultery, not to break any promise, and not to withhold a deposit when reclaimed.” (Jesus Outside the New Testament, pg. 25, Robert E. Van Voorst, William B Eerdmans Publishing, © 2000)

Did He Exist? What Scholars Say

Once in a while you see a website or book insisting that Jesus never existed. Strangely, they're never by professional historians. That's because Jesus' existence and the basic outlines of his life are among the more secure facts of ancient history.

Here is what some scholars say:

(If you have a favorite scholar quote on the historicity of Jesus, feel free to leave it in the comments. I collect them!)

Michael Grant, Late world-renowned Historian, (Expert on ancient classical civilization)

“If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.”

"In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." (Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels, pp. 199-200, Charles Scribner’s Son’s, 1977)

Geza Vermes, late Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, U.K. (Noted scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls and expert on the historical Jesus)
"Jesus of Nazareth (c. 6/5 BCE - 30 CE) was a Jewish charismatic prophet, healer, exorcist, and teacher whose message was centered on the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God..." (Note: Vermes' entry is based on the conclusion that Jesus existed and that we can know a considerable amount about his life using historical methodology). (Who's Who in the Age of Jesus, pg. 130, Penguin, 2005)

Bart Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (leading american New Testament scholar and an agnostic atheist).
"Few of these mythicists (i.e., people who say Jesus is a myth) are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology...

"With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it...

"Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed."  (Ehrman, Bart D. (2013-03-20), "Did Jesus Exist?" huffingtonpost.com).


Robert E. Van Voorst, Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI
“The theory of Jesus’ nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.” (Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, pg. 14, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000.)

“The nonhistoricity thesis has always been contoversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds. Moreover, it has also consistently failed to convince many who for reasons of religious skepticism might have been expected to entertain it… Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.” (Ibid, pg. 16)

Otto Betz, Professor in Residence of New Testament, University of Tubingen, Germany (Respected Qumran scholar)
“No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus.” (What Do We Know About Jesus? pg. 9, Westminster, 1968)


Rudolph Bultmann, late professor of New Testament studies at the University of Marburg (Influential scholar, major proponent of Form Criticism and "demythologization" of the Gospels)
“The doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community. But how far that community preserved an objectively true picture of him and his message is another question.” (Jesus and the Word, pg. 13, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934, 1958)

“By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.” (“The Study of the Synoptic Gospels,” in Form Criticism, translated by Frederick C. Grant, pg. 60, Harper and Brothers,© 1962)


J. M. Roberts, Historian, Warden at Merton College, Oxford University
“Into this electric atmosphere Jesus was born in about 6 BC… The evidence for the facts of his life is contained in the records written down after his death in the Gospels, the assertions and traditions which the early Church based on the testimony of those who had actually known Jesus. The Gospels are not by themselves satisfactory evidence but their inadequacies can be exaggerated. They were no doubt written to demonstrate the supernatural authority of Jesus and the confirmation provided by the events of his life for the prophecies which had long announced the coming of Messiah. This interested and hagiographical origin does not demand scepticism about all the facts asserted; many have inherent plausibility in that they are what might be expected of a Jewish religious leader of the period. They need not be rejected; much more inadequate evidence about far more intractable subjects has often to be employed. There is no reason to be more austere or rigorous in our canons of acceptability for early Christian records than for, say, the evidence in Homer which illuminates Mycenae.” (History of the World, pp. 209-210, Oxford University Press New York, 1993)


Ian Wilson, British Journalist. Degree in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford, 1963
“On the most rational grounds, therefore, we may be confidant that Professor Wells [a modern Jesus skeptic] is wrong, and that Jesus did indeed exist.” (Jesus: The Evidence, pg. 65, Harper & Row, 1984)


N. T. Wright, Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey, leading historian on Jesus.
“We know for certain that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. That is one of the most secure facts in the history of the world.” (The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary, pg.18, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1996)

“If Christianity is not rooted in things that actually happened in first-century Palestine, we might as well be Buddhists, Marxists or almost anything else. And if Jesus never existed, or if he was quite different from what the Gospels and the church’s worship affirms him to have been, then we are indeed living in cloud-cuckoo-land.” (The Challenge of Jesus, pg. 18, InterVarsity Press, 1999)

Richard A. Burridge, Historian and Dean of King's College, London.
"There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." (Jesus Now and Then,  pg. 34, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004

I. Howard Marshall,  Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis and honorary research professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland
"To explain the rise of this tradition [of Jesus' life] without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible. It is significant that the vast majority of modern writers who are interested in disputing the truth of the Christian religion are content to argue for an unorthodox picture of Jesus rather than to argue that he never existed." (I Believe in the Historical Jesus, pg. 16, Eerdmans, 1977).


F.F. Bruce, Late Rylands professor of biblical criticism and exegesis, University of Manchester, U.K.
“Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.” (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, pg. 119, InterVarsity Press, 1972)


Werner G. Kummel
“The denial of the existence of Jesus… [is] arbitrary and ill-founded.” (The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems, pg. 447, note 367, Abingdon, 1972)


Kenneth S. Latourette, Late Sterling Professor of Missions and Oriental History and Fellow of Berkeley College in Yale University
“Although our accounts of Jesus are brief, they enable us to know him and his teachings as well as we can know any figure of like antiquity. He made so profound an impression upon those who were his intimates that their memories of him, some of them put into written form within a very few years after the events they record, enable us to have a vivid picture of him and his characteristics. His sayings, given as they were in pithy sentences or in stories of extraordinary beauty and imagery, could not fail to fasten themselves in the memories of the more thoughtful who heard them. They lent themselves to the kind of repetition which did not blur or distort them and were early collected in written form. Even if we did not have the four brief accounts which we call the Gospels we could gain a fairly adequate impression of him and of the salient points of his life, teachings, death, and resurrection from references in letters of his followers written within a generation of his death.” (A History of Christianity, Volume I: Beginnings to 1500, pp. 34-35, Harper San Francisco, 1975)

“It may seem to be a banality to say that Christianity cannot be understood apart from [Jesus]. Yet repeatedly through the centuries and in our own day there have been those who have regarded Jesus as unimportant in the origin and initial growth of Christianity. In contrast to this view, the author is convinced that without Jesus Christianity is not only unintelligible: it would never have been. The fashion in which Jesus Christ has shaped the faith which bears his name and the degree to which his professed followers have embodied him or departed from him never ceases to be both fascinating and significant.” (Ibid, pg. xxi).

Gary R. Habermas, Professor and Department Chairman of Philosophy and Apologetics at Liberty University
“Comparatively few recent scholars postulate that Jesus never lived. Such positions are usually viewed as blatant misuses of the available historical data.” (The Verdict of History: Conclusive Evidence for the Life of Jesus, pg. 31, Thomas Nelson, 1988)

“Virtually no writers have asserted that Jesus did not exist or have attempted to cast virtually total doubt and obscurity on his life and ministry. But, such efforts are refuted by the early and eyewitness testimony presented by Paul and others, by the early date of the Gospels, by the corresponding historicity and trusworthiness of the Gospels, and by the failure of the mystery religions to explain the Christian faith.” (Ibid, pg. 36)


Peter Jennings, late Journalist, ABC-TV Network Anchorman (Not a scholar but still an interesting perspective)
“Though in the special (Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus, broadcast 6/19/00) we don’t deal at length with the Resurrection, I’m struck by the intenseness of the debate and the intensity of belief: something happened after Jesus was executed that created this momentum that led to Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire.” (“Jennings on Jesus,” Christianity Today, June 12, 2000, pg. 72)

Jesus' Family Tomb?

Last Sunday the Discover Channel ran a documentary that claimed a tomb found near Jerusalem in 1980 is actually where Jesus and his family -- including Mary Magdalene, whom he supposedly married -- are buried.

First century middle eastern people had the rather macabre custom of letting the dead rot for a year, then gathering up their bones and putting them in a limestone box called an ossuary. Sometimes they scratched the dead person's name on the box, but in most cases they left it blank. If a particularly honorific person's bones were inside they might put some effort into the inscription (as was the case with the famous "James Ossuary"). Usually, it was just chicken scratchings.

The main reason the show gave for this being Jesus' tomb seemed to be that the names on the bone boxes found inside were, with a little stretching in some cases, similar to the names of some people in the Gospels -- names like Joseph, Mary, Jesus, among others. There was also some DNA evidence introduced from 2 of the boxes (the bones were long gone, buried when they were first discovered), which was only able to show that they weren't genetically related.

And quite a lot was made of the odd version of the name "Mary" on one ossuary because it appears in a book written at least 300+ years later possibly referring to Mary Magdalene. This was followed in the inscription by the word "Mara," taken by the producers to be the aramaic word for "Master" and to refer to Mary Magdalene as well. Linguistic scholars say this much more likely the name "Martha" and was either a second name or the name of another person whose bones were put in the same box -- a baby daughter, for instance.

As Dr. Ben Witherington points out in his blog, virtually all historians and biblical scholars -- including those interviewed during the program -- do not accept it's conclusions. The scholarship on the show was mediocre in my opinion -- on the level of the search for Atlantis or the Da Vinci Code. But most people do not have the time to deeply study ancient greek and aramaic scratchings on 2000 year old bone boxes. An exciting TV show backed with selective use of facts and cool reinactments can seem quite convincing.

Something that weighs more heavily with me is this simple fact: This was not a secret tomb. In the 1st century, as all admit, this was an easily seen tomb sitting in a field near the major city of Jerusalem. As you can see in the photograph, it was even nicely decorated.

But the Christians asserted that Jesus of Nazareth had come back to life and that this verified he was really the long-awaited Messiah. Rather than go through a lot of trouble, all the Powers That Were had to do to stop the Christian movement was produce his body. If it could be demonstrated that Jesus hadn't come back from the dead but was actually still lying among them, the whole thing would go to pieces.

This was not lost on the early Christians. As St. Paul said, writing 20-something years after the crucifixion, "If Christ hasn't come back to life, our message has no meaning and your faith also has no meaning, " (First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, verse 14).

I'm not going to make the more obvious point that nobody -- Jew or Roman -- ever claimed back then to have found the body of Jesus. Those who opposed Christianity always had to do so on other grounds. But I will point out that if the truth actually was that his followers spirited their crucified master's body away and reburied it so they could rather pathetically continue spreading his teaching and pretending he was alive, they certainly wouldn't have done so in this tomb.

If you're trying to say a dead man is alive, you do not put him in a visible tomb near the place his enemies killed him. You also do not have his relatives and supposed wife interred there in their own burial ceremonies over the years, acting as pointers to the location. And you don't write his name on his ossuary.

If the body of Jesus is in a grave somewhere (which, incidentally, I do not for a moment believe), it is in an inconspicuous hole far away from Jerusalem, and his bone box, if he got one, is anonymous.

To quote Paul again: "But, in reality, Christ has risen from among the dead, being the first to do so of those who are asleep. "