The Airport and the Ossuaries and the Brooklyn Bridge

Sunday I went to Zhytomir and Lena came back with me. Those little vans used in inter-city transport in Ukraine are miserable. Besides having no ventilation, it was physically impossible to put my legs in front of me--the seats are so close together. The way back was a little better but not much. Oh how I long for all these vans to be replaced by normal buses.

Monday I went to the airport to meet Jana Ross Perry. We were English majors together at Lipscomb, and she was making her first trip to Ukraine. She brought a suitcase for us, our new glasses thanks to Dr. Jerkins, and a textbook for Lena. She had a "connecting"flight to Donetsk a few hours later, so I sat with her and talked, got her something to eat, and helped her find the other terminal. Kyiv's airport is going to have to work on this little matter of domestic connections. There is no indication anywhere in the airport that there is a separate building around the corner from the main terminal where you connect to domestic flights. It all sort of assumes that only Russian/Ukrainian speakers would be going there and they either somehow already know or they just ask. Exactly who you ask, I am not sure. I finally asked, just to make sure, at an airline window. But why you have to walk outside, through some little buildings, and to the right to get there from a building that is sitting right beside it is beyond me.

On the way back to Kyiv with luggage in tow and a maniac for a taxi driver (you know, the kind that considers red on a traffic light as a mere suggestion), I saw a small dog walking across the Dnipro River. I could not figure out why that dog decided to walk across the river. Maybe the same reason the chicken decided to cross the street? It was also odd to see about 20 or 30 people ice fishing all in one spot. Just didn't seem like a good idea to me.

I was back at the airport today to pick up David Ralston, the UEC's board president. We have meetings with him tomorrow. He got out of customs and passport control in record time.--about 10 minutes after the plane landed. The cab driver on the way to the airport was telling me about Terminal C, the third disconnected Kyiv airport terminal. There, for $120, you can be met at the plane by a van and brought to this secluded terminal to pass customs and passport control. It's a kind of expedition. You can also check in there to avoid the crowds in the main terminal. For those of you who have been to Kyiv's airport, you know what "crowds" I am talking about. Basically non existent. I guess there is something in the Soviet/post Soviet mentality that cries out that there has to be a place for the elite separate from the common people. Though Communism supposedly made us all equal, some pigs are still and always were more equal than other pigs. He also said you could have lunch in the secret terminal for about $10. He was also the driver who thought that large and very deep potholes were best approached by speeding up apparently in the hopes of jumping them. The bump on my head is proof that that theory doesn't work.

I have been getting some questions about the "tomb of Jesus" about to be exploited for profit on the Discovery Channel. Though I don't have formal training in archeology, I have actually read biblical archeology books. They are generally incredibly boring and tedious. Archeology is boring and tedious. So we need Hollywood filmmakers and Indiana Jones to convince us it isn't. But in truth, it is. It's multi-layered and rarely does anything decisive come from archaeological discoveries. It very rarely ever "proves" anything. So it's a little (or a lot) misleading to suggest that somehow these ossuaries (limestone bone boxes from the first century AD) can be proven to hold the bones of Jesus, his wife Mary, his son, and his family. I imagine the incredible popularity of The DaVinci Code is what has brought this filmmaker to supposed evidence of Jesus' relationship with Mary. Might as well cash in before people forget and go back to thinking Jesus was a bachelor.

But what about the facts? Isn't it unfair to criticize something before the documentary is even shown? Well, their website over at the Discovery Channel pretty much tells everything they are going to say and the promoters of the film have been holding press conferences and doing all kinds of promotion, so it's easy enough to know exactly what they are going to claim since it's already on-line.

So, what do they claim? They claim a Jerusalem tomb discovered about 20 years ago by Israeli archaeologists, which contained 10 ossuaries and were later stored in various warehouses and museums (1,000s of these ossuaries have been found) have a high probability of being the ossuaries that contained the bones of Jesus, his wife Mary, their little boy Judah, and other members of the holy family. (And I've got a bridge I would like to sell you if you believe that...).

What is the evidence? Inscriptions on the ossuaries. One says "Jesus, son of Joseph." Or at least supposedly it does. The Israeli archaeologists who discovered the tomb originally has repeatedly states that the name "Yeshua" or our Jesus is difficult to read and may actually be another name. It's just not clear. His original article is in the 1996 edition of Antiqot, a publication of the IAA (Israeli Antiquities Authority). I would love for someone to go to a library and tell me what this says. Does he indicate there that Yeshua is hard to read? (The inscription is pictured here for you to take a look at yourself.) If he does, this whole thing is definitely "nonsense" as the Jerusalem Post reported Kloner, the original archaeologist, as calling it.

Another ossuary has "Mariamene, the master" according to some translations. Some recently discovered text in Greece has made one professor think that this is Mary Magdalene. Now, mind you, the inscription doesn't say it's Mary Magdalene nor does it mention Magdala nor is it actually the name Mary. All because of what this one guy thinks a 4th-century text states about Mary Magdalene we have to conclude that this inscription is about Mary Magdalene in the Bible. Again, I still have that bridge if you are interested in purchasing public landmarks.

The folly goes on. To get the odds to make it appear the best for their case, the filmmakers introduced the most likely scenarios to generate odds that make it appear the odds are 1 to 600 that this is the tomb of Jesus Christ. Wow--what a leap. We aren't even certain a Jesus was buried there and they are concluding that any intelligent person has to believe that Jesus Christ was, according to the odds, most likely buried there.

They offer some other DNA evidence (which is basically that Yeshua and Mariamene aren't maternally related). How trustworthy such testing is, I don't know. No one knows where the bones are. Jewish authorities bury all bones found in digs and so no one knows where the bones are and the bones were not tested. Just whatever was left in the lining of the ossuary.

It gets a little more complicated, but there are some questions to be asked of the filmmakers:
1. Jesus was killed in Jerusalem but his family most likely wasn't. Jesus used a borrowed tomb according to the gospels. (But apparently not for long....). Anyway, isn't it unlikely that Jesus's family was buried in Jerusalem since they weren't from there, didn't have a lot of money, and there is not a single story, legend, myth, tale, or any shred of historical evidence to indicate that anyone at anytime every believed or suggested that they were buried in Jerusalem. It's long been held that Mary was buried in Ephesus where John was buried. Was this hushed up so well there could be no stories about passed down to eager Christians who hoped possibly someday to visit the tomb of Mary? or Jesus?

2. Was the tomb sealed permanently since the time of the burial of the holy family? Do we have any proof that all these ossuaries were placed there by the same people at the same time? Weren't tombs expensive? Isn't it possible tombs were shared (this tomb is a pretty big one) or that later some ossuaries were moved from one tomb to another? Is there any reason at all to believe that these ossuaries are all connected? No DNA testing was done to determine whether or not the other ossuaries contain remains of people who were maternally related. That could have really confused things. Asked why those tests weren't done, the producers responded that they had done enough to prove their case. But not beyond a shadow of a doubt. Did I forget to mention a nice bridge in Brooklyn that has recently come on the market?

So the story goes on. Archeology will never definitively prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's just no way to "prove" it in the sense of convincing, indisputable physical evidence. There are historical arguments to be made for the resurrection. I think they are quite good. I have never heard objections solid enough to make me doubt them. But archeology is not where I go looking to "prove" my faith. Archeology illuminates. It rarely "proves" anything very specific.

One other note: I don't think we should run away from "arguments for the resurrection" just because some guy finds a bunch of old bone boxes. I have read several bloggers saying things like "it still doesn't matter to me if they prove Jesus didn't come back from the dead. I will still believe." Well, they might still believe but I can imagine Paul abandoning the faith the moment he learned it was all a hoax. No reason to have faith in a hoax, and that's what Christianity would be if the physical, bodily resurrection of Christ didn't happen. Early Christians repeatedly claim Jesus came back from the dead physically, not just spiritually. Even 1 John 1 makes this argument. It's not something we should throw away lightly. the whole faith is wrapped up in this one moment in space and time. For a nice intro to those arguments see an article by Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor at Boston College,

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/resurrection-evidence.htm

(I can't get this to link for some reason.)