Mausoleum
of God
A Crowded
but Empty Tomb
I doubt
you have been able to escape the news of the discovery (actually several years
ago) of what some claim is the tomb of Jesus—and his family! The chamber
housing several ossuaries, bone boxes, was found in Talipot, in Jerusalem, while
engineers were working on new construction. They blundered into the unsuspected
site. Upon close examination, the ossuaries bore scratched-in names including
Jesus (or so some think) son of Joseph, Maria, Joseph, Judas, Matthew, and others
from the New Testament period. James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty and
a colleague of mine in The Jesus Project, argues, backed by professional statisticians,
that, given the estimated population of Israel at the time, the chances of finding
all these names, though common in themselves, combined in a single family, are
six hundred to one. This means, they say, the tomb is that of Jesus Christ,
his parents, his brothers, and quite possibly, his wife Mary Magdalene and their
son Judah.
Who should
be upset about this and why? First, remember, if you will, that many trumpeted
the supposed James ossuary a couple of years ago as evidence of a historical
James the Just and so of his brother Jesus (since the inscription there was
“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”). That one turned out to
be one of many recent products of an artifact forgery lab, the forgers found
out and arrested. One might guess that the disappointed fans of the James box
would rejoice at this “new” find (again, actually a few years earlier,
but given new attention now thanks to James Cameron’s documentary). But
then, uh-oh!, this set of ossuaries would seem to prove too much! It would mean
that, a la Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, Jesus survived or escaped crucifixion,
got married, and fathered children—much as happens in Jesus’ dream-escape
from the cross in The Last Temptation of Christ. No saving death, no resurrection.
Yikes.
Thus the
James ossuary and the vault full of bone boxes would seem to stand or fall together.
Both identifications depend upon name and population statistics. Both sets of
artifacts have the same physical characteristics (patina quality, etc.). Tabor
points out that the James ossuary and the others very likely come from the same
site. Without it, the set lacks the requisite name pf James, a famous sibling.
And at Talipot, there were empty spaces set aside for three more ossuaries!
Tabor proposes that someone snuck into the vault and absconded with the James
box. His theory implies that the James box and the “new” ones are
all genuine. Tabor is among the few still defending the authenticity of the
James ossuary (one of the many dubious features of his book The Jesus Dynasty).
But suppose
he is right about the seeming connection, the James box looking like the missing
piece of an incomplete puzzle set? Then, as R. Joseph Hoffmann (also of The
Jesus Project) points out, the lifeboat must sink along with the ship. All of
them would appear to be fakes. One thing’s for sure: you have no business
appealing to the James box as proof of a historical Jesus if you don’t
also accept a larger family unit including Mrs. Christ and Jesus, Junior.
Built on
Sand
There is
a larger issue here. And that is the issue of faith and history, of faith based
on history. All the proud claims of theologians that Christianity, unlike, say,
Hinduism, is inextricably based on historical facts, carry with them an inevitable
compromise of intellectual honesty (on which yet another of our Jesus Project
team, Van A. Harvey, has written the definitive book, The Historian and the
Believer). From then on, the believer has a vested interest in certain historical
assertions being true. He will have reason to worry if the latest archaeological
discoveries don’t go his way! He will cheer if they do, but he will worry
deep down that the next round may go against him. No momentary, seeming vindication
of the Bible will settle the question, since one never knows what may come to
light next. Will Father Guido Sarducci discover the check for the Last Brunch?
The poor
Mormons have repeatedly been kicked in the privates, first, by the utter absence
of any relic of the supposedly widespread Nephite and Lamanite civilizations
of pre-Columbian America, and now by DNA texts which show a lack of any genetic
overlap between Semites and American Indians. Denials of the facts at this point
become exceedingly shrill, with believers having, so to speak, put bags over
their heads like videotaped felons headed for the cop car. There they are in
the police line-up next to Holocaust deniers and “Scientific Creationists.”
Too bad
for the Book of Mormon. The archeological verdict on the Bible is equally damning.
Once a new generation of archaeologists threw off the blinders, the circular
methodology, of Presbyterian apologist William Foxwell Albright, it became clear
that virtually all of what even a skeptic like me had supposed to be actual
history in the Bible was instead legend and fiction. No splendid Davidic empire
or Solomonic wonders of the world. No damn Exodus. No genocidal Conquest (well,
I can’t say that’s too dismaying!), no first-century Galilean synagogues,
or, to keep going, no commercial hub of Mecca—pretty much no nuthin!
Two great
nineteenth-century theologians, Martin Kähler and Wilhelm Herrmann (who
both happened to be Paul Tillich’s teachers), saw the danger of faith
with historical commitments, faith with historical strings attached. Given the
necessary uncertainty and unpredictability of historical evidence, such a faith
must be either eaten away by a growing cancer of doubt or corrupted by another
cancer, that of intellectual dishonesty, an a priori decision to spin, twist,
ignore, or discredit every bit of contrary evidence as soon as it appears. This
is PR, not scholarship, and it is the business of apologists for the gospels
and the Bible and the historical Jesus and the resurrection. Things have to
be a certain way for them, or they are cooked, up the fiery creek .So they spin.
So they issue the Holy Harrumph. Why can’t they see that, if anything,
it is precisely this dishonesty that is going to damn them? They are sacrificing
their own integrity on behalf of the faith that is melting away beneath them
even as they continue to pettifog and prevaricate in its defense.
We don’t
even need a definitive refutation of dogmatic faith for such faith to be refuted.
The mere condition of uncertainty and the high cost of defending it are themselves
fatal refutations of such faith!
The Booming
Voice
And, don’t
you see, it is the same in what might at first appear to be a different issue
altogether, namely a scripture-based theology or ethics. The attraction of biblicism
is the appeal it allows to an infallible sourcebook for answers. “We know
there is life after death, and that it is like so-and-so because the Bible says
so. We know that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so. We are not
left to the endless debates on these issues that can never be resolved as long
as we base them, as unbelievers do, on mere speculation.” But the immunity
is illusory! Because Luther was wrong: scripture is simply not “perspicuous,”
clear on important matters, so that all intelligent, sincere readers will agree.
Various biblical passages yield radically different beliefs about life after
death, including that there is no such thing (“Ashes to ashes, dust to
dust…”).
And homosexuality?
It all hinges on whether or not Levitical bans on a class of acts deemed ceremonial
transgressions continue on into the Christian dispensation (the ban on eating
shrimp is one of them; homosexuality is another!) and on the meaning of three
ambiguous verses in the epistles, two of these using rare Greek words so seldom
appearing in extant literature that we cannot be sure what they mean. So what
happens to the clarion-like proclamation of the word and will of God? One just
cannot be dogmatic on the basis of an ambiguous text! How anticlimactic to hear
from the pulpit, “There is about a fifteen per cent chance that God hates
homosexuality! So you might want to repent--or maybe not.” Clearly, one
must not pretend to tell people how to live their lives, one must not start
punching tickets to heaven or hell, based on what experts or non-experts think
the text might mean! The appeal to the Bible is no less victim to death by a
thousand speculations than the blind gropings of unaided human reason. Because
that’s all any of us have anyway, even if, like Bible preachers, you’d
like to pretend otherwise.
Don’t
you see? This is what we mean when we proclaim the death of God! And why we
must proclaim it and furthermore rejoice to proclaim it! We are without a definitive
sun of authority and infallible will around which to orbit! We have come of
age by realizing not only that there is no court of appeal above ourselves,
but that there never was! And why! Are we “reduced” to reliance
upon our own “guesswork”? Yes, we are, and that means we have become
gods ourselves. We no longer seek to evade responsibility for our ethical decisions
by saying we are “just following orders,” the commands of God in
the Bible or the Koran. We were childish when we unthinkingly idolized the speculations,
the ad hoc judgment calls, of our ancestors, who did the best they could. We
will be mature when we dare to wipe the Mosaic tablets clean and to write upon
them anew with our own best wisdom. And if we in turn should become idols, our
words the scriptures of a future generation, we can only hope that such a generation
will raise up its own Zarathustras to send the idols toppling from their
pedestals.
So says
Zarathustra.
