When you refer to scientific evidence as "scientific evidence"- your parenthesis speak volumes.

Whether or not these are the remains of Jesus Christ will be an interesting piece of academic speculation. Sorry, "academic speculation".

But thats all it is, except to the cult.

It doesnt matter if these are his bones or not. If they are in not in this hole, they are in another.

Not necessarily. I think by your own definition, your definitive statement could be considered..."odd".

Again, human nature, I guess.

Jesus lived and died, that he was historically significant and important figure. I accept the physical evidence of his existence, and therefore his inevitable human death.

Others believe he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Now, no one has done that before. No one done since. No one alive today, or for 2000 years, has any reason to accept that this happened, except that it says so in the Bible. Thats your faith.

I defend your right to believe this nonsense. But I do not respect your superstitions because they are irrational and stupid. Nothing personal, its just that if you buy this stuff, Christian, Moslem Hindi, pagan, devil worship whatever- there is some of intellectual disconnect occurring.

Reclaim your intellect. Its not too late.

Surely you know, Stuart, that I could turn all of that around on you. Just because it hasn't happened before or since, just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I'll ignore the snide remark about intellect except for this: I will certainly admit to a limit to my intelligence as, according to my last Weschler, at least five percent of the population greatly exceeds mine in quantitative terms.

Christianity isn't necessarily as many here paint it to be. I happen to believe that evolution is one of the coolest things God created. I happen to believe the Old Testament was basically a guidebook allowing less than advanced people to survive. I believe some Biblical writings are rhetorical - meant as a message rather than a rule in stone. Just because a whack-job lunatic says something is "Christian" does not make it so. As Z-Man mentioned, God wants us to question and come to our own conclusions. Again, that is why there is no giant cosmic gun pointed at your head. You want proof? You aren't going to get it - and that is very much the intent. You decide for yourself.

Perhaps for you, as well, it is not too late to enhance your intellect. You could start by opening your mind.

I see several possable ways for the man to reapear
but donot believe in dead coming back to life

1 fake or fix, the rich burial cave[#1] owner Nick bribed pilot
this we know from the bible, they said he asked for the body [you ask a roman offical with a tip [bribe] at that time] pilot was surprized at the quick death
but allowed the body to be taken down and given to Nick
now roman law required a body to rot in place on the cross, that was part of the punishment, and the rotting body surved as a example to others too
so a bribe was need to take down the body
but was it a body or a man in a coma, past out, or druged and was that part of the bribe?
note, aloe was used on JC now that is not a jewish burial
substance but a healing oinment
so he came back ''from the burial cave'' but no god or rebirth just tricks
and later died and was buried for real and for good
with the family

2 the whole son of god thing was added later by saul/paul
who never meet JC but wrote much of the new "T"
and was at odds with james and the other jewish followers of JC over his revised ideas for ''their'' religion
he may have added extra bits like rebirth ,virgin birth, and son of god bit, all taken from other religions

so JC's body may have only gained religious status long after he died

No intent to be snide- consider it an impassioned plea.

A flaw in the religous mindset is often that if only the non believer were to open his mind, he would be convinced of its merits. The Christian Church still sends out missionaries (and conquering armies) after all to convert the godless.

Well, many of us do in fact come at this from an informed POV. We have examined it, turned it over, lived it, breathed it. And found it utterly bereft.

Fair enough, Stuart.

But a flaw in your reasoning is your generalization. I mentioned opening your mind because you made a definitive statement that you can not possibly make. You may well assume his bones will be found. But that, as of yet, is not fact. It may well never be fact. As such, your statement indicates a closed mind. You've already decided that an assumption is fact.

No, no, not all. I think the odds of JC remains being found or conclusively identifed are so small they need not even be considered. If these indeed PROVE to be them, I will be as stunned as anyone else.

My point is- it doesnt matter whether they are found or not . To me. JC is or was buried somewhere.

To you, howver, this would pose quite a dilemma.

Indeed it would - to a degree. I think there are things technically suspect Biblically. Some of it could be attributed, perhaps, to a heart being in the right place, I suppose. For the time, at least. The NT message, however, itn a non-corrupted, non-for-personal-or-egotistical-behavior-and-power-justification sense, is good. Basically, don't be a dickhead. Try to be decent. Try to give a damn about something other than yourself.

Returning to the subject of faith - I guess you could say I have faith that He is not actually buried somewhere.

But then, like me, you don't really know for certain. Faith.

Faith -the ability to believe things for which there is no material evidence. Jesus rose to heaven.

There is material evidence to suggest that the remains of every other of the n billions of humans beings that have walked this rock are still here.

So, on balance.....

That would be a very cool thing about being an astronaut and expolding in space, actually.

Well now you've shifted the argument from evidence to statistical probability.

Faith comes in many forms. I have faith that you do not possess all of the answers of the universe. Nor do I. As such, you don't really know what happened. Nor do I. That's where faith comes in.

Stuart - are you a dickhead? Do you actively screw people over? Do you give a damn about anything beyond yourself? I don't gather you fall negatively into any of those categories. Free will is a pretty cool thing. Just remember, that it applies to everyone - not just yourself.

Free will is a paradox.

Either, God knows already what we will choose- and therefore we have no free will.

Or, God does not know and we have free will. If god deosnt know, He is not omniscient.

Sometimes I think life is a paradox.

As for God - perhaps He has the information available, but prefers not to look. Unless asked, of course.

Anyway, it's been good chatting with you, Stuart. Have a good night.

It's tough to do this given your limited use of grammer, syntax and punctuation, but let me try to respond.

The Bible says nothing about any bribes, only a request. If you're going to use the Bible for supporting data, then you need to at least do so faithful to the text. If you don't buy into the Bible at all, then I guess it's not valid as support for your argument. Without the Bible, you only have Josephus's contemporary account(s) and later accounts from which you can draw conclusions about the life and death of Jesus, known as the Christ -- essentially less data then you find in many of today's obituaries.

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...they said he asked for the body [you ask a roman offical with a tip [bribe] at that time] ...

Now you're hypothosizing. What data do you have that a bribe was either offer or accepted, or that it was even normal at that time? You've made the leap from the available evidence to something that you pulled out of your butt. If you're trying to be logical, you can't do that.

Quote:

pilot was surprized at the quick death but allowed the body to be taken down and given to Nick now roman law required a body to rot in place on the cross, that was part of the punishment, and the rotting body surved as a example to others too so a bribe was need to take down the body but was it a body or a man in a coma, past out, or druged and was that part of the bribe?

You're neglecting the fact that by this time Romans were pretty good at crucifixion. The intent was a slow death, and yes, it's fair to say that Pilate was surprised by Jesus's relatively quick death (if you consider something like 3-6 hours a "quick" death). But you're neglecting the other information from the same source that you're quoting (it's bad form to selectively pick and chose the evidence that supports your case) -- specifically that after Nick requested Jesus's body, that Pilate ordered that Jesus's legs were broken, to prevent him from supporting himself -- if in fact he was still alive -- and preventing his asphixiation. This was SOP for a crucifixion. The second piece of information is that a Roman soldier (most likely an auxiliary or soldier out of the provences, but not actually from Rome) speared Jesus in the abdomin after which fluid was seen to pour out. Only after both of these things were done was Jesus taken down off of the cross. So the chances of Jesus surviving all of this, not to mention burial for some period of time are pretty slim. The Romans were not known for being sloppy with their crucifixions.

Quote:

note, aloe was used on JC now that is not a jewish burial substance but a healing oinment so he came back ''from the burial cave'' but no god or rebirth just tricks

Man, if Aloe works as good as that, we should be using it on the wounded soldiers returning from Iraq -- instead of in our shampoos!

Quote:

and later died and was buried for real and for good with the family

Considering how much the Jewish Temple leaders feared or hated, Jesus -- why would they have allowed that to happen after they just got done railroading him through the justice system. What was the crime that Jesus was crucified for? It certainly wasn't for blasphemy. Even Pilate acknowledged that he hadn't committed any capital crimes. But anyhow, why didn't anyone point him out and turn him in? During the entire apostolic period covered in the book of "Acts of the Apostiles", why didn't anyone challenge them about Jesus's apparent false death? Certainly the Romans would not have stood by as a mockary was being made of their execution system.

Quote:

2 the whole son of god thing was added later by saul/paul who never meet JC but wrote much of the new "T" and was at odds with james and the other jewish followers of JC over his revised ideas for ''their'' religion he may have added extra bits like rebirth ,virgin birth, and son of god bit, all taken from other religions

You're once again neglecting "the rest of the story" as reported which was James, Peter and Saul/Paul got together and reached an agreement. You're also ignoring the fact that the 11 remaining apostiles, ran away and hid after the crucifixtion out of fear for their lives. It only appeared to be a question of time before the Temple officials or the Romans came after them. But then for some reason, they went public with vigar. Even before the conversion of Paul, Simon- (I don't know him! 3x) Peter stood up before a crowd and said (Acts 2: 22-24, and 36)

Even the accounts of Jesus' trial before the council of Elders, once again a group of people who could have refuted the account at any time, but did not, include references to how Jesus described himself. For example, Luke 22: 66-71:
After that remark they took Jesus to Pilate's palace.

So once again, you if are going to use the contents of the Bible to support your views, you need to be careful to not cherry-pick the bits and pieces that support your case and discard the rest. It's either valid or not.

Quote:

so JC's body may have only gained religious status long after he died

You're kind of right. There are numerous examples through-out history of great leader's bodies being kept around as objects of respect or worship -- Lenin or Mao are a couple of recent examples. But by all accounts, it was Jesus's lack of a body (and his appearances afterwards prior to his assension in broad daylight) which propelled his followers forward. The authorities in Jerusalom were certainly aware of his follower's claims (supported by the example of Saul's well known career as a "special prosecutor") but yet were never able to produce a body (dead or alive) which would have immediately squashed the movement.

So while I understand that you, and many others from that time to this, do not believe that Jesus died and was raised from the dead -- no one has ever been able prove otherwise. Even those who were close enough in time to the event such that it should have been a trivial thing to do, never disproved the claims of the Christians.

Getting back to the original subject of this thread and the specific case in the news today. The case being proposed by the producers of the TV show is such an outrageously bad example of archealogical study that I'm torn between the desire to not boost their ratings by watching on one hand, and watching it with my daughters so that they can see an really life example of shoddy scientific research. There are vasts amounts of fascinating and meaningful archeaology being done in the last 50 years -- but these "Jesus boxes" certainly don't deserve to be grouped with the wider disciplined study of archeaology.

Interesting idea, but your argument does not hold water - literally. I have studied the Roman crucifiction process in detail, and it is quite a gruelling ordeal.

In a nutshell, a person was nailed (sometimes tied) to the cross at three points: his wrists (not his hands like you see in most pictures) where nailed to the crossbeam, and his feet (at the ankles) were nailed to a small platform on the upright. (the wrists and ankles were used to secure a person solidly to the cross - if the hands and feet would have been used, over time, the person would slip off the cross).

Once a person was in that position, he would not be able to breathe unless he pushed up on his feet -- the weight on his arms and shoulders would prevent his lungs from expanding. So the person would push up on his platform to relieve the weight on his lungs. That action would cause terrific pain, and after some time, the person would have to 'rest' his legs and the weight would return to his shoulders/arms and he would not be able to breathe.

So eventually, a person on the cross would die of suffocation on the cross.

Ok - now to the point I'm trying to make:
Sometimes, a person would have greater stamina - so in order to speed up the process, the soilders would break that person's legs - at that point, he would not be able to support his weight with his legs, and would quite quickly suffocate. In Christ's case, they did not break his legs - He died without the soilders having to do that.

However, once a person was thought to be dead, the soilders would do a test - they would pierce the person's side. Rather:
Source: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/articles/cruxf.htm

So after it was thought that Jesus was dead, he was impaled for good measure.

Jesus was not in a coma when they took him down off the cross - He was dead.

While I have faith in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven, there were people who were witnesses to these events. There were those who saw Him die, saw Him after He rose from the dead, and those who saw Him ascend into heaven. So there were eyewitnesses who saw these events.

-Z

You're kind of limiting the choices to those that you have been able to comprehend to date. Kind of like the flat-earthers. If God was omniscient, he'll know what you or I will decide, and what our life will come out to, but he doesn't necessarily mean that he put those decisions in our head. I guess an analogy would be that scientists can tell you how many electrons are in an atom, use that atom (and many others) to build things and do things -- but yet they can not tell you where those electrons are in space and time.

a guy like pilot or a modern pol will do what he is paid to do
same today as it ever was
call it a gift or campaign contributions or bribe what does it matter something was paid or promised
well you both passed on the avg 3 DAYS not 3 hours that the Roman crucifiction took
and the fact that as a big part of the process the body was to rot in place not be taken down but left in place for all to see and fear roman power

the sop is a clue to drugs
as JC ''died?'' right after that!!
spear stabing can be faked or less than fatial if real

''You're once again neglecting "the rest of the story" as reported which was James, Peter and Saul/Paul got together and reached an agreement''

we have a story as told by saul/paul [luke his scribe]
BUT then why was he sent to rome??
after his arrest and what was he charged with if not a dispute with the jewish faction ie James, Peter?? that lead to a street fight or chase and his arrest

Nota, you have a wonderful gift for conjecture, and using to to support your views.

FYI -- the WBUR/NPR radio show Here and Now will be discussing the "Jesus Boxes" tomorrow. If you can't listen to it locally, you can also download a podcast version from their web site after the show broadcasts.

Simple.

The resurrection story didn’t surface until some years after his death. He died and his family, friends, and/or followers buried him as they would bury anybody else. Some time later, they concocted the story of him living on. A simple version of that is that he lives on inside the hearts of his followers. I can see that story getting carried away.

So you are relying on word of mouth?

Doesn’t one of the Gnostic books describe a scene where someone witnessed his body being carried out of the tomb? That book was conveniently left out of the bible. I wonder why… But from my perspective, I put equal weight on this book as I do the other books in the bible. Just because a group of men selected what books are included and what books are not has no meaning to me.

And speaking of other books, the Koran has a verse where they say that Jesus was not crucified at all. Some other guy got it, not Jesus. The Koran says that the report of his crucifixion was a simple mistake.

Again, from a historical perspective, these books all have equal weight in my mind.

Another thought:

Why do you accept the testimony of one set of witnesses over the other?

Remember, the followers of David Koresh thought he was the son of god as well. How is accepting the testimony of Jesus’ followers any different?