Surprise biblical discovery
by stillstuckcruz 39 Replies latest social current
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botchtowersociety
Here is the preliminary report:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Tabor2.pdf
I'm about halfway through it. Very interesting.
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No Room For George
Thanks BTS, and StillStuck.
This stood out to me.
"Accordingly, depending on the
wider context of this tomb, if it does indeed relate to early Jesus followers, they might be appropriating
the divine name Yahweh in referring to Jesus, as Paul does numerous times in his authentic letters."- page 16
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MeanMrMustard
...nice! marking for later reading...
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james_woods
I hate to say it, but with so many fakes in the past few years, I am just about more skeptical (if possible) of these kind of announcements than I am of JW new light.
Remember the phony lead-bound book from last year?
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glenster
Too soon to say.
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Leolaia
Well, unlike unprovenanced finds like the fake lead codices, this is an actual in situ tomb that has been examined non-invasively by an actual archaeologist (James Tabor). As this is a sealed tomb that would not have otherwise had its secrets revealed to the world, this is an important find. But...the place for skepticism is in its interpretation. The team bringing this to light, Tabor and Jacobivici, is the same team that brought us the "Jesus Family Tomb" hoopla several years ago. Scholarship has largely dismissed their claims. And some have criticized Tabor's interpretation of the evidence as unduly skewed by a preconceived theory (his theory of Jesus' family), rather than being a truly objective analysis (Tabor would disagree). Jacobivici, on the other hand, I don't trust at all. He is the creator of that godawful pseudohistorical documentary The Exodus Decoded which is one of the worst popular programs I have ever seen on the Bible (I would call it dishonest, but it might simply be utterly incompetent with the evidence); his Naked Archaeologist series also had similar flights of fancy. But in this present case, it is clear that the interpretations of the new tomb are strongly shaped by Tabor's earlier conclusions about the Talpiot tomb (which Tabor had already controversially linked with Jesus and the Christian community). So one would definitely want to wait to see what scholarship as a whole has to say about these new finds. The biblioblogs are a good place to see this discussion happen.
Just glancing at the preliminary report, there appears to a lot of uncertainty. The reading of the inscription ΔIOΣ.Ι?AIO.ΥΨΩ.A(?)(?) is uncertain, and its interpretation seems to allow for other possibilities: (1) Dios is the genitive or adjectival form of "Zeus" which has a sense of "divine" as an honorific applied to people, heroes, and other things, but applied to God himself? It seems belittling (and is there evidence eslewhere of this usage?). Is there any possibility of taking this as a reference to Zeus? (2) IAIO is unusual as a form of YHWH; the most common Greek form was IAΩ and it isn't straightforward as a transliteration. Is it possible that this could be an (abbreviated) Yahwistic theophoric name? Or is the reading of the initial letter correct? (3) ΥΨΩ could mean anything from "lift up" to "exalt" to "glorify"; it is far from certain this has anything to do with a resurrection. (4) The final word is largely unreadable, which makes the inscription as a whole uncertain. The other features of the ossuaries and tomb, such as the supposed fish and other geometrical designs, are interpreted in a particular way that does not exlude other possibilities. Is the Jonah connection eisegetically read into the ornamentation, which then forms a basis for connecting the tomb to Jesus (drawing on NT uses of the Jonah metaphor)? And even if there actually is a connection with the story of Jonah, what about all the other Jewish uses of the story apart from the Christian one found in the NT? Similarly, if there is a reference to resurrection in the inscription, that is not specifically Christian either; the whole practice of ossuary burial reflects the general Jewish hope of a bodily resurrection. What's missing are unambiguous Christian references, such as the phrase "Jesus Christ", a depiction of the crucifixion, MAPA NAΘA in an inscription, or other more solid clues.
But of course this will be press released to the media and the web will be deluged with many news articles reporting the discovery of an early Christian tomb.
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Leolaia
Some scholars are weighing in:
http://asorblog.org/?p=1642 (Christopher Rollston)
Interesting comment here:
Tabor and Jacobovici have contended that one ornamental motif is to be understood as a fish. But they did not stop there. Rather, they have argued that this ornamental motif is not just any fish, they have actually argued that it is the dag gadol (the “big fish”) of the book of Jonah (Jonah 1:17)! But they went still further, as they speculated that the etchings at one end of the motif are a graphic depiction of Jonah himself, as he is being spewed from the mouth of the big fish! In addition, they have also contended that this symbol should be understood here as the earliest reference to “Jonah as a symbol of the Christian resurrection,” citing the following text from the Greek New Testament: “For just as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so also shall the son of man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matt 12:40), as well as later Christian usage of the Jonah motif.
First and foremost, I must emphasize that I am confident the engraving is simply a standard “nephesh tower motif,” an ornamental motif that is fairly widely attested on the corpus of ossuaries. In fact, in Rahmani’s discussion of the ornamental motifs of ossuaries, the first ornamental motif he mentions is that which has the appearance of a tomb façade or nephesh tower (Rahmani 1994, 28). Moreover, at least in terms of general design, Rahmani’s first exemplar is quite similar to that of Talpiyot Tomb B .... In short, this is not a fish. It is a nephesh tower or tomb façade.
And also about the purported divine name:
Regarding the reading of line two, I must emphasize that I do not consider the reading “Yahweh” (i.e., the Greek form of it) to be convincing at all. Simply put, this reading is wrong. To be sure, the tetragrammaton is attested in ancient Greek (with various spellings) and Iaeo can be considered a viable Greek spelling of the tetragrammaton. However, the problem is that the first letter of line two is not an iota (and, at the very least, this letter would be necessary for reading the tetragrammaton in this line)! .... Here is the reason: for the Greek script(s) of the Late Second Temple period, the morphology of iota is quite consistently a vertical stroke (sometimes with modest curvature), but without distinct top or bottom horizontals.... In reality, this letter is most readily understood as a tau (i.e., a top horizontal and a vertical) or (alternatively) a zeta. However, it is certainly not an iota. Of course, since there is no iota in this line , there is no tetragrammaton here.
http://asorblog.org/?p=1612 (Eric Meyers)
More on the so-called "fish":
Nothing in the book [The New Jesus Discovery, 2012] “revolutionizes our understanding of Jesus or early Christianity” as the authors and publisher claim, and we may regard this book as yet another in a long list of presentations that misuse not only the Bible but also archaeology. in the book (on page 91, fig.30) is very washed out, and any fish imagery is hardly identifiable let alone that of a fish spewing out a human. In fact, the image in the book is so poorly reproduced in my copy that one suspects it has been intentionally altered so that no one could see what the the image really is. Indeed, the image actually seems to resemble a nephesh, or tomb monument, like those found in many places in Jerusalem in the first century CE and depicted on ossuaries of this very period (so for example in fig. 13 or 30 of Rahmani’s A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries, 1994).http://asorblog.org/?p=1654 (Jodi Magness)
As a professional archaeologist, it pains me to see archaeology hijacked in the service of non-scientific interests, whether they are religious, financial, or other...The archaeological endeavor involves piecing together all available information, not just one artifact taken out of context. Context is the reason that archaeologists go to so much trouble to document the provenance of every feature and artifact dug up on an excavation. The current claim is based on finds that have no context, as they have not been excavated. All we have are photos taken by a robotic arm of objects (or parts of objects), the dates and identification of which are unknown or unclear....It is a shame that sensational claims such as this one get so much popular and media attention.
http://asorblog.org/?p=1672 (Robert Cargill)
Cargill points out that images 20 and 21 on pp. 41-42, ostensibly of the same "fish" image, do not match up in the particulars. One of the images appears to have been digitally manipulated/Photoshopped:
In the photo on the left, a portion of the base or "tail" is covered up by another ossuary presumably sitting on top of the carving. The second image has this portion visible and hooked in a way suggestive of a fish tail. The article specifically states in footnote 23 that "we gave our word we would not move or disturb anything inside". So how was this portion of the image revealed when it was clearly covered up? And if it wasn't moved, then is this an artist's rendition that enhances the interpretation of the image as a fish? Also there is an ormamental triangular trim motif on the other side that is absent in the other image.
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Leolaia
Tabor responds, and he clears up the problem with image 21 (it is still problematic that the paper did not explain this) indicating it is a hypothetical reconstruction:
"I should point out here that the right side of the front panel is only hypothetically drawn in here since it is blocked by the adjacent ossuary (see our map of this kokh published in my article and in the book)".
One interesting point that Tabor makes is that if the image depicts a nefesh, it is upside down.
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Terry
Leolaia: You go girl!!
Better than any dozen "famed Watchtower scholars"! :)
