Does finding Jesus' tomb=Christianity is disproven?

Question

Just want to get your thoughtful responses on this.

Answer 1

1) Nothing is new here: scholars have known
about the ossuaries ever since March of 1980, so
this is old news recycled. The general public
learned when the BBC filmed a documentary on them
in 1996, and the “findings” tanked again.. James
Tabor’s book, The Jesus Dynasty, also made a big
fuss over the Talpiot tombs more recently, and
now James Cameron (The Titanic) and Simcha
Jacobovici have climbed aboard the sensationalist
bandwagon as well. Another book comes out today,
equally as worthless as the previous.

2) All the names – Yeshua (Joshua, Jesus),
Joseph, Maria, Mariamene, Matia, Judah, and Jose
-- are extremely common Jewish names for that
time and place, and thus nearly all scholars
consider that these names are merely
coincidental, as they did from the start. Some
scholars dispute that “Yeshua” is even one of the
names. One out of four Jewish women at that
time, for example, were named Maria. There are
21Yeshuas cited by Josephus, the first-century
Jewish historian, who were important enough to be
recorded by him, with many thousands of others
that never made history. The wondrous
mathematical odds hyped by Jacobovici that these
names must refer to Jesus and his family are
simply playing by numbers and lying by statistics.

3) There is no reason whatever to equate “Mary Magdalene” with “Mariamene,”
as Jacobovici claims. And so what if her DNA is
different from that of “Yeshua” ? That
particular “Mariamme” (as it is usually spelled
today) could indeed have been the wife of that
particular “Yeshua,” who was certainly not Jesus.

4) Why in the world would the “Jesus Family” have
a burial site in Jerusalem, of all places, the
very city that crucified Jesus? Galilee was
their home. In Galilee they could have had such
a family plot, not Judea. Besides all of which,
church tradition and the earliest Christian
historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, are unanimous in
reporting that Mary, the mother of Jesus, died in
Ephesus, where the apostle John, faithful to his
commission from Jesus on the cross, had accompanied her.

5) The “Jesus Family” simply could not have
afforded the large crypt uncovered at Talpiot,
which housed, or could have housed, 200 ossuaries.

6) If this were Jesus’ family burial site, what
is Matthew doing there – if indeed “Matia” is thus to be translated?

7) How come there is no tradition whatever –
Christian, Jewish, or secular -- that any part of
the Holy Family was buried at Jerusalem?

8) Please note the extreme bias of the director
and narrator, Simcha Jacobovici. The man is an
Indiana-Jones-wannabe who oversensationalizes
anything he touches. You may have caught him on
his TV special regarding The Exodus, in which the
man “explained” just about everything that still
needed proving or explaining in the Exodus
account in the Old Testament! It finally became
ludicrous, and now he’s doing it again, though in
reverse: this time attacking the Scriptural
record. – As for James Cameron, how do you
follow the success of The Titanic? Well, with an
even more “titanic” story. He should have known
better, and the television footage of the two
making their drastic statements on Monday,
February 26 was disgusting, and their subsequent
claim that they respected Jesus nauseating.

9) Even Israeli authorities, who – were they
anti-Christian – might have used this “discovery”
to discredit Christianity, did not do so. Quite
the opposite. Joe Zias, for example, for years
the director of the Rockefeller Museum in
Jerusalem, holds Jacobovici’s claims up for scorn
and his documentary as “nonsense.” Those
involved in the project “have no credibility
whatever,” he added. – Amos Kloner, the first
archaeologist to examine the site, said the
conclusions in question fail to hold up by
archaeological standards “but make for profitable
television.” -- William Dever, one of America’s
most prominent archaeologists, said, “This would
be amusing if it didn’t mislead so many people.”

10) Finally, and most importantly, there is no
external literary or historical evidence whatever
that Jesus’ family was interred together in a
common burial place anywhere, let alone
Jerusalem. The evidence, in fact, totally
controverts all this in the case of Jesus: all
four Gospels, the letters of St. Paul, and the
common testimony of the early church state that
Jesus rose from the dead, and did not leave his
bones behind in any ossuary, as the current sensationalists claim.

Bottom line: this is merely naked hype, baseless
sensationalism, and nothing less than a media fraud, “more junk on Jesus.”

Answer 2

Many of the beliefs of Christianity would be disproved if ever a tomb is found that can be proven to be that of Jesus. Of course millions of people have died and were buried in the "holy" lands. Finding "a" tomb proves nothing.
A great many people in those days had the same name, so a name on a tomb would mean that a Joseph or a Daniel was buried there, but which one.
Another problem is the great desire to make a name for ones self. Fakes can be made. Highly eroded words can be made into something else. As Shakespeare says " things are not what they seem ".

Answer 3

Not really. None of the people studying it have actually said it is the tomb of Jesus.
Even if it was "The Tomb" there is still plenty of ways to get around any problems it might create.

The real danger is in leaving it as question for people to discuss and think about.

Look at the answers expressing deep denial. They are usually the ones with the most doubt and fear that they are tryiong to hide from themselves. They only fuel the conspiracy believers, who wonder what they are trying to hide.
The ones saying maybe really mean they have not thought about it much, and the ones who actually have faith likely never bothered to answer because the question of the tombs reality simply does not make any difference to them.

Religion always loses when people start to think.

choose reality.

Answer 4

No, I believe it was a hoax. They found a box of bones that belonged to someone named Jesus whose mother was Mary. These were both common names at the time of Christ, and do not prove that they are the bones of our Savior. This is actually a regurgitation of an ossuary they found back in 1980; it's nothing new.
If someone from the future visited one of our cemeteries and found a headstone marked "Don Johnson", does that mean it is the grave of the actor? I don't think so. I've seen many gravestones that share a common name with a famous person.
There were several witnesses who saw Christ ascend into the clouds 2,000 years ago. His body is not here. His tomb is empty. He promised He will return in exactly the same way He left - physically, from the sky.

Answer 5

The show that was on recently didn't go into why those bones couldn't have been Jesus the Savior. It's not even close to the way certain people would have reacted back then. What we have are ossuaries with names of people on them. We apparently also have people who were related to eachother. Beyond that, we have speculation.

The defining factor that I contend with is; There is no way the Jews who were Pro Judaism would have allowed the claims of the disciples to be be spread when they had the bones of Jesus right there in Israel. Their religious world was being torn apart. IF they had his bones, they would have used them as an arguement against Christianity in general. There would not have been so many converts to Christianity in Jerusalem. The disciples message was not only that he lived and was crucified, but also that he rose and ascended into heaven.

Bones were not a part of the 'ascended' expectation. The Jews would have the most to gain by exploiting that as a fact. They would have therefore told the Christians, " Be quiet, he's right here." But they couldn't, they didn't have those bones.

Answer 6

You might want to read one of the other 4,327 versions of this question over the last several days. They come in a couple of different types:

1) Did they find Jesus' bones? Nobody really knows for sure, but based on the current evidence, no.

2) If they did find Jesus' bones, would that affect your faith? For me, yes, but I'd have to see how they proved it.

3) Why does everyone believe/not believe (either way) that they found Jesus' bones? Pretty much everyone here, atheist or believer, has said that they don't have the evidence to back up the claim, and most of us don't think such evidence exists. It's a wait-and-see game now, with very little baited breath.

Answer 7

You didn't go far enough. "Does finding Jesus' dead body in the tomb = Christianity is disproven. Well... the main part of Chrisitianity will be disproven. We believe that Jesus was physically resurrected...that after He was crucified He returned and rejoined His spirit with His physical body of flesh and bones. If, indeed, someone did find his dead body it would destroy the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ and therefore would also destroy the doctrine of the Atonement.

However, I know that Jesus Christ was resurrected. I know that He is Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father. If anybody thinks that they have found His body they are wrong. He is in His body, immortalized and glorified, in heaven. You will not find it here on earth.

Answer 8

The only prove for this would be to have a DNA sample of Jesus, and match it with the one in the tomb.

Since we are not able to have those (at least not for now), then there is no final evidence of nothing here.

If one day we can scientifically prove that the body of Jesus was found on Earth, then it will make a big impact on Religion as the Bible claims he went to the “heavens” (his physical body).

Still, a solution will come up if this happens. There are too many believers and the Vatican will not let them down, they will come up with some explanation or excuse. They must if they want to keep order and peace.

Answer 9

IF its actually Jesus tomb (evidence points to "no" given that there are 9 other tombs in the area with the same names and none of those in the tomb are related through DNA testing), then yes it does. Because it then means Jesus is not the divine son of god which throws it all into question.

Answer 10

This is a case of life imitating art. I saw this movie a few years back. Same story called the body starring Antonio Banderas. He played a priest sent by Rome to examine a tomb that was said to contain Jesus body. I would also like to suggest that many of the top legal minds of history have come out in favour of believeing the resurrection story if presented in court would prove to be considered as reliable evidence. This list of names include Sir Lionel Luckhood twice knighted by the queen and considered the most successful lawyer ever having won 245 consecutive murder trials. Hugo Grotius who is considered the father of international law, he also enetered univercity at age 11. Simon Greenleaf wrote a book the Testimony of the evangelists examined by the rules of evidence administered in courts of justice. Then there is Lord Caldecote Lord Chief Justice of England. Wendell R. Byrd, Lord Diploch, Joseph J. Darlington, Lord Chnacellor Hailsham, J.N.D. Anderson, sir Edward Clarke, John singleton Copley(Lord Lyndhurst) who was considered one of the greatest legalminds in British history. And there is a former head of Scotland yard Sir Robert Anderson, knighted by queen Victoria for his utmost skill in exposing the mazes of falsehood and discovering truth and separating it from error. There are many more to add to this list. There are some good books to check out as well. who rolled the stone away and what leading lawyers say about the resuurection.