CADRE Comments

PART 5: OBLIVION-GUSHING DOES NOT HELP We've been doing this a while, starting back here at Part 1. Currently I'm looking at a number of problems that tend to cluster around the Gospel tomb accounts, and how their existence as problems doesn't follow cleanly from the proposal that GosMark's author simply invented the tomb (or even its emptiness). In the previous Part, that problem was women being the first witnesses to the tomb, in the sense of them being women at all. But there are more subtle problems associated with those women: 4.) GosMark's invention of the tomb, and so of the women being at the tomb (or even his invention of the women, too), does not fit the embarrassing GosLuke material of the apostles deriding the women's report as "oblivion-gush". Peter is a partial exception in GosLuke; but the brief verse about him rushing out to check the tomb is late (and meant to clarify something in the Emmaus story itself about people, plural...

Is it Easter Season yet? -- last I heard this was still coming Easter season 2014, but it's been in the process of coming now for several years (since at least 2010). I haven't heard anything new about it being still on the way, but since things are kind of slow here right now I'm bumping this post up again to remind people not to panic if someone tries to make hay out of this along with the (so-called) "Gospel of Jesus' Wife", which was pre-marketed the previous autumn (2012) but referring to a much different text (one likely a modern forgery unlike this text). In fact it was a bit of recent news about the 2012GJW which inspired me to wonder whether the 2013GJW was also still coming this Easter: the Smithsonian had made a documentary on the 2012GJW that somehow didn't get released in the USA after a strong scholarly case was made about the text's forgery. A reader at Mark Goodacre's blog happened to find a French version of the documentary on Yo...

Some readers may remember (or not, it's been four years already) that a sensationalist documentary, Bloodline , came out in 2008 claiming to reveal new evidence that Mary Magdalene traveled to Southern France, that she and Jesus married, and most damning of all that the resurrection was a big hoax. There was just enough to the story to make me worried that this might actually be the real deal, so I did quite a bit of research and wrote a substantial critique soon after the documentary came out. Even back then, the story was already starting to crumble under the weight of very substantial criticisms, which I documented in my critique (not all of the links are still working, this was four years ago after all, nearly a century in Internet time!). But the 'explorer' who had unearthed these 'artifacts', who went by the pseudonym Ben Hammott, kept stringing people along, promising that a full investigation was underway by the French authorities, which however never came ...

The Jerusalem Post put up a story last week, April 11th, concerning various pro-J-Tomb advocates racheting back a bit on their claims, under pressure from critics on every side of the aisle. This is somewhat different than cases where a scholar was interviewed for the film and then later revealed that they were taken out of context. This is more like statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger trying to come up with a more realistic way of keeping that 600:1 odds number (and commissioning alterations to a J-Tomb page on the Discovery Channel website); or DNA scientist Dr. Carney Matheson revising his original statement that "these two individuals [i.e. Jesus bar Joseph and Mary / Mara], if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife." In addition, Professor Francois Bovon--quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene--has now issued a disclaimer. I'm not _entirely_ sure this coun...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) An earlier guest author for the Cadre, Anne A. Kim, aka "Weekend Fisher", has also compiled a slightly different, and slightly more traditional {g}, way of solving for the Resurrection ranges, so to speak, here. ] Anastasis ...now look!--a severe earthquake occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and wallowed away the stone and sat on top of it... ...and his appearance was like lightning, and his garment was white as snow... ...and the guards shook for fear of him... ...and became like dead men... ....... Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene is coming early to the tomb (along with someone else, apparently; the Disciple says that this is "the other Mary", maybe meaning Mary the mother of James and Joses whom he had previously mentione...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) And On That Day He Rested (The storytellers continue in harmony...) Now when all the groups who had come together for this sight, observed what had happened, they began to return (to the city), beating their breasts (in grief). And many women were there; who had followed Jesus from Galilee, waiting on Him--among whom was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Joseph, and Salome the mother of the sons of Zebedee. They stood at a distance, with all His acquaintances, seeing these things. ....... Now, after these things, as evening was already coming... Look!--a rich man from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, named Joseph! A good and fair-minded man, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, who himself had been a disciple of Jesus and who was waiting for the kingdom of God. He had not ...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) The Passing (The storytellers continue in harmony...) Now after they had finished mocking Him, they took off His purple robe and put His garments on Him, and led Him out to crucify. And He went out, bearing the cross for Himself. But as they were going out, they found a man of Kyrene named Simon--the father of Alexander and Rufus (adds the Follower for his audience, who apparently know the boys!)--coming in from the country. They pressed him into service to bear His cross, placing the cross on him to carry behind Jesus. [Plotnote: the Greek for 'cross' is 'stauros'--pole, or stake. The prisoner would not be required to bear a huge plus-sign-looking thing; it would weigh six hundred pounds easily. (Try going outside and lifting a huge limb of wood fallen from a tree during a ...