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April 12, 2012 | Coffin in Jerusalem tomb is 'proof' of Jesus resurrection! |
London: ‘Jesus Tomb’ debate has gone a step further with archaeologists working in Jerusalem finding human bone boxes and inscription on an ancient coffin lid that says ‘Divine Jehovah, raise up’. Using a robotic arm equipped with a camera, archaeologists unearthed human bone boxes and the inscription in a 1st century Christian burial chamber beneath a tower block in Jerusalem. They believe that this is the proof of the site being the final resting place of Jesus. However, other scholars remain extremely sceptical of the find. The inscription is on a limestone box known as
an ossuarie - with another such box carrying a drawing of a fish with a stick
figure in its mouth which is believed to refer to the story of Jonah and the Whale
- one of the very first biblical stories, the Daily Mail reported. The find is
200ft away from a previous discovery known as the Jesus Family Tomb, which led
to a huge amount of controversy after it was uncovered in the 1980s. Archaeologists
then claimed it constituted ossuaries inscribed with names associated with Jesus’s
family. That discovery triggered amazing theories including one that maintained
Jesus had been buried there alongside Mary Magdalene who he had married and raised
a family with. However many leading theologians and archaeologists rejected such
claims as being completely unfounded. The Jesus Family Tomb was only assessed
briefly before protests by Orthodox Jews, concerned about the disturbance of a
grave site, ended the excavation. It was then sealed up, and a tower block built
over it. However James Tabor, a scriptural scholar at the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte and documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici were firm on
continuing the research. The pair was granted permission from the Israeli government
in 2010 to use the robotic arm to drill holes allowing them to explore the surrounding
area. This led to the discovery of a separate chamber, which they dubbed as ‘Patio
Tomb’, as it sits almost directly below the patio of the building. It was inside
the Patio Tomb that they unearthed the inscriptions. The pair has asserted that
the inscriptions discovered inside the Patio Tomb considerably increase the likelihood
that the ‘Jesus Family Tomb’ is indeed, the resting place of Jesus. They believe
that both tombs are part of the same complex, which may have been the property
of Joseph of Arimathea, who, according to the gospels, buried Jesus. One of the
limestone ossuaries features a Greek inscription calling on God to ‘rise up’ or
‘raise up’ someone. Another shows the image of a fish with a stick figure in its
mouth that Tabor has suggested could represent the prophet Jonah. “This inscription
has something to do with resurrection of the dead, either of the deceased in the
ossuary, or perhaps, given the Jonah image nearby, an expression of faith in Jesus’
resurrection,” Tabor said. In the earliest gospel materials the ‘sign of Jonah,’
as mentioned by Jesus, has been understood as a symbol of his resurrection. Jonah
images in later ‘early’ Christian art, like the images found in the Roman catacombs,
are the most common motif found on tombs as a symbol of Christian resurrection
hope. On the contrary, the story of Jonah is not depicted in any first century
Jewish art and iconographic images on ossuaries are extremely rare, given the
prohibition within Judaism of making images of people or animals. The tomb in
question is dated prior to 70 CE, when ossuary use in Jerusalem ceased because
of the Roman destruction of the city. If the markings are Christian, the engravings
symbolize the earliest archaeological record of Christians ever found. So the
engravings were most probably made by some of Jesus’ earliest followers, within
decades of his death, predating the writing of the gospels. “If anyone had claimed
to find either a statement about resurrection or a Jonah image in a Jewish tomb
of this period I would have said impossible -- until now,” Tabor said. “Our team
was in a kind of ecstatic disbelief, but the evidence was clearly before our eyes,
causing us to revise our prior assumptions,” Tabor added. A documentary on the
discovery will be broadcast by the Discovery Channel in spring 2012.
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