Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Dead Bones

Matt arrived home safely last night and very helpfully put the children to bed. And then got up with them this morning, so that I could recover some of the hundreds of hours of lost sleep.

I wasted a whole lot of it, in his absence, watching the Jesus Tomb and then part of the Ted Koppel Bit afterwards. Thought the Ted Koppel portion (don't know how to spell his name, embarrassed to say I don't even know who he is) was very good. Especially liked one scholar's characterization of the program as 'DocuPorn' (don't know how to spell that either). Koppel handled the various sides very well, I thought.

Was very disappointed that my adult ed (led by me in Matt's absence) class was not more interested in the program. I came armed with four or five articles and plenty of interesting facts in case of questions and outrage and none were forth coming. When I asked, 'well, why would it matter if we found the bones of Jesus?' I received the correctly pat answer, 'because the resurrection is the cornerstone of our faith and we would not be here without it.' Had all the wind taken out of my sales. Ended up reading the story of Gideon and arguing about whether or not it is OK to test God. It was actually delightful to see how far this group has come in faith and knowledge. Two years ago this would have been a devastating event. Now, I don't think any of them even planned to watch it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's really interesting....I didn't watch it, either. Heard an interview on The Today Show and read a blurb by some archeologists who discredited it immediately. Basically, I remembered something the Rev. Dr. Rufus Womble always said (Rufus died this past Novemeber at 94...still one of the heads of the Order of St. Luke Healing Ministry): "Don't give the devil the time of day." That was my motivation for not wasting my time.... Wonder if your class felt the same.

You must be a VERY good teacher, too! Blessings, Liz Forman

Anonymous said...

Could you give me some links that I could get to and print out? My gardener Nebat (who works for me here in Nairobi) has been worried about this because the news of these bones was on the front page of the Nairobi newspaper in a sensational way, and he's been having great anxiety and arguements with his neighbors. What can I print out that would help him?

Anne said...

Ben Witherington has written hugely on his blog, linked here:

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-tomb-titanic-talpiot-tomb-theory.html

This is just first of many articles. His analysis, as usual, is very careful. That's where I started.