Blue Cord

During the documentary on the Talpiot Tomb, I jotted down several pages of notes. I thought I would post some of the thoughts I took down. This does not amount to a systematic critique. But even though I think the theory put forth by Jacobovici is pretty much DOA, I want to join with other scholars in driving a stake through its heart.

First, the number of conditionals in their argument was almost laughable. “If X is true and if Y is true and if Z is true, then N must be true.” But when you string together so many ifs, your argument stands or falls on the weakest one, and many of the ifs were very weak.

They asked at the beginning why this discovery has been ignored, implying that other scholars are remiss in not examining this more closely. But when you find ossuaries bearing very common names in an area where hundreds of ossuaries have been discovered, there is not much reason for scholars to pay attention. If the initial reports had indicated that further research should be done, scholars would have paid attention.

It struck me as odd that the names on most of the boxes were written quite well. Mary, Matthew, and Jose were in well-executed script. The Jesus ossuary, however, looked like it was done by someone in Kindergarten writing with a big crayon. The ‘ayin, for instance, finishes with a long line. If you come back a year later to collect the bones of the person you viewed as the messiah (as the film dramatization suggested), why would you write his name in such a sloppy fashion? It’s not like the secondary burial had to be done in haste.

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I finished watching the Talpiot Tomb documentary as well as a good part of the critical look afterwards that was hosted by Ted Koppel. I stopped watching when they turned to discussing the theological implications of this find. As far as I am concerned, the fact that this find has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth means that there are no theological implications.

After the show, I found out that Judy Fentress-Williams from Virginia Theological Seminary was on the theological part of the show. Judy was a classmate of mine and I know her through my adjunct work at VTS as well. Judy is a first rate OT scholar and I am sorry I missed what she had to say.

I wanted to make some comments on the critical look part of tonight’s archaeoporn.¹ I will blog later about the documentary itself.

One of the main things that struck me about the critical look was the way that Jacobovici referred to himself. He called himself a journalist at times, even comparing what he did to what Koppel does. But whenever he was pushed on issues of journalistic responsibility, he would say that he is a filmmaker and was just documenting what happened.

For instance, he said that they did not have time to do further DNA testing and that this should be done by scientists. But he was not under a time constraint the way journalists are. He did not have to get this film out at any particular time. Why not go ahead and do that testing, especially since it would have shown if Miriamne had any relationship to the other men in the tomb. Jacobovici was very disingenuous at times. He talked about not being an archaeologist and just following where the data led, but throughout the film he seems to be the one driving the research. He was the one who decided to follow certain avenues and not others.

It seems also that Jacobovici did not follow standard journalistic procedure of presenting all sides of the argument. Although a few bits of critique slipped in, it was mostly one sided.

Jacobovici also side-stepped questions of presenting questionable results by saying that he was just putting this out there with the hope that this will encourage other scholars to do research. But it seems highly questionable to present his findings as if they are all but indubitable when, in fact, many scholars doubt them. Shouldn’t debate be done first before producing a documentary that makes it seem the argument is over?

Koppel also nailed Jacobovici several times on quotes from scholars that he had taken out of context. William Dever and Jonathan Reed also noted that prominent scholars such as Frank Moore Cross were quoted when they agree with something Jacobovici had said while the fact that such scholars would have disagreed with the conclusions he drew from a piece of data was left out.

One place I was disappointed in Koppel’s approach was that he gave very little time to Dever and Reed. We had just spent two hours listening to Jacobovici’s ideas. Why not give the lion’s share of the time to his critics and let him respond. Instead, Dever and Reed each got called on twice, while Jacobovici and Tabor were given a lot more chances to say things. I think it was also telling that the documentary aired beginning in prime time, while the critical look started at 11:00 when many people would need to be in bed.

1. Jonathan Reed used this term to refer to the documentary, saying it was a guilty pleasure but you knew you shouldn’t be watching it. I felt the same way. [back]

As my readers know, I am currently unemployed working freelance. I have a number of applications out right now for both academic and non-academic jobs. It occurs to me though that the job of President will be available pretty soon, so I thought I might run for President of the United States.

I am thinking of running a type of campaign that has never been run before. I will tell voters ahead of time the policies that I hope to follow. If they like those policies, then they should vote for me. If not, then they don’t vote for me. I would go without any kind of political advisor, although I would have plenty of policy advisors around. And if I don’t have a position on a topic, then I will say so. I am prepared to listen to the arguments from both sides. I plan to run as a raging moderate.

I will admit up front that I have no political experience. I considered starting out slow by running for president of Moldova and then move my way up, but I decided against it. Besides, I was a political science major in undergraduate, so I should be well prepared. Since I am an OT scholar, I would probably choose a NT scholar or possibly an archaeologist as my Vice Presidential candidate to balance the ticket.

I would need to get a lot of signatures to be able to be on the ballot, so I wanted to do a straw poll here to see how many people would sign such a petition. If you would support Kevin for President, please leave a comment. Please don’t send any contributions at this time. I will hit you up for money later.

Addendum: Someone asked what my policies would be, so I thought I should add this.  Below are a few of my positions.

Domestic policy:

• Solve the Social Security problem by reducing benefits to the wealthy (phased).   I would return Social Security to being a safety net instead of a retirement plan.
• Crack down on exploitation of workers while simultaneously increasing worker freedom from unions (for those who don’t want to join).
• Make the Department of Education more of a resouce than a controlling factor in education.
• Crack down on the flow of illegal immigrants to the US while expanding opportunities for citizenship for those who apply for citizenship.
• Work to control the production of greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming.
• Equalize access to policy makers so that the poor and middle class have as much acces as the wealthy and the big corporations.

Foreign policy:

• First day in office: Executive order banning all torture.  This not only includes torture by the US goverment but also the handing over of prisoners to other countries that practice torture.
• Actually come up with a plan for Iraq, such as the three state solution, leading to a redeployment of troups so that they fight the actual war on terror instead of the Iraqi insurgents.  Work for more international involvement in Iraq.
• Return to more of a George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton style policy of deploying US troups either to defend immediate American interests or to help in conflicts where international intenvention is needed.  I would move away from the preemptive strike policy of George W. Bush, which enforces a type of American imperialism.
• Work to strengthen the UN by having the US pay their dues while also working for some reform.
• Work to repair damaged relations with former allies in Western Europe while continuing to support new allies such as countries in the former Soviet bloc.

Our NT reading today in the Episcopal Church included Luke 13:33-34a. In this passage, Jesus makes the following comment:

Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!

This struck me as rather interesting, because I could not think of a single prophet in the OT who was killed in Jerusalem. None of the major prophets were, although Jeremiah is arrested and treated poorly there. I don’t think any of the minor prophets were either. In the DtrH, neither Elijah nor Elisha were killed there, as they were both active in the north. I don’t recall off hand whether any other prophets in the DtrH were killed in Jerusalem, but if they were they were certainly in the minority and were not very important prophets.

Who are all these prophets that were supposedly killed in Jerusalem? The one NT commentary I have on hand does not answer this question. Can any of the NT scholars who read this blog shed light on this question? Is this a tradition that came about in Apocryphal literature? What is the source of this idea?

For those of you who thought that the Swiss Army was just a marketing gimmick to sell pocket knives, you might want to check out the story “Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein” in the New York Times.   They report that a company of about 170 Swiss soldiers accidentally wandered across the border into neighboring Liechtenstein, which has a population of 35,000.  The Swiss soldiers had guns but no ammo, which wouldn’t matter since Liechtenstein has no army anyway. I supposed they could have called Luxembourg and had them send their tank over. The best part of it is, no one in Liechtenstein had even noticed! I wonder if this means that Switzerland is no longer officially neutral.

I wanted to give a hat tip to a new biblioblogger, Angela Roskop Erisman at Imaginary Grace, who first noticed this story.