[UA] Holy Bones!

[Chris Cooper]

There's something UA in this - especially after that
Virgin Mary Mystic Hermaphrodite Parthogenesis.

UA: If Jesus didn't ascend, who did? Was it Barrabus
the Rebel.

>From the Daily Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/24/wjesus24.xml

Mysterious bones of Jesus, Joseph and Mary 
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 12:29am GMT 25/02/2007



In a scene worthy of a Dan Brown novel, archaeologists
a quarter of a century ago unearthed a burial chamber
near Jerusalem.

Inside they found ossuaries, or boxes of bones, marked
with the names of Jesus, Joseph and Mary.

Then one of the ossuaries went missing. The human
remains inside were destroyed before any DNA testing
could be carried out.

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While Middle East academics doubt that the relics
belong to the Holy Family, the issue is about to be
exposed to a blaze of publicity with the publication
next week of a book.

Entitled The Jesus Tomb and co-written by Simcha
Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, the book promises
the inside story of "what may very well be the
greatest archaeological find of all time".

Some of the ossuaries will be at the book launch in
New York, released by the Israel Antiquities
Authority.

The story began in March 1980 when Yosef Gat, an
archaeologist employed by the IAA, surveyed a burial
chamber on the south-eastern approaches of Jerusalem.

The area was being developed into the latest suburb of
the city, East Talpiot, and bulldozers had uncovered
an archaeological site.

Mr Gat found a standard-looking Jewish tomb dating
from the era of King Herod, the Jewish king known for
his ambitious building works and for his murder of
infants at the time of the birth of Jesus.

After crawling into the necropolis Mr Gat found the
main chamber had been silted up with soil and debris,
with six "kokhim", coffin shaped spaces leading off
the main chamber where human remains were housed.

According to Jewish rites, bodies would be left for a
year or so to decompose in the "kokhim" before
relatives came back to gather the bones and store them
in ossuaries.

Mr Gat found 10 ossuaries bearing inscriptions. Some
were in ancient Greek and some were in Hebrew.

One inscription said "Jesus, son of Joseph", another
said "Mara", a common form of Mary, and another said
"Yose", a common form of Joseph.

The authors were unavailable for comment yesterday but
it is understood they base their claim that the burial
chamber contained the remains of the Holy Family on
their own study carried out inside the structure.

The chamber has been closed for years because a
building was constructed on top of it but the authors
got permission to break through an apartment block
floor.

They claim to have found human material on which they
performed DNA testing in a New York laboratory.

"Tests prove the names are genetically of the same
family and statistically, there is a one in 10 million
chance this is a family other than the Holy Family,"
the pre-publication publicity for the book said.

However, according to strict Christian teaching, Jesus
ascended to heaven, so there would be no bones left
behind.

Mr Gat died several years ago. His boss, Prof Amos
Kloner said that while the names together had "a
certain power" they are standard.

"At least three other ossuaries have been found
inscribed with the name Jesus and countless others
with Joseph and Mary," he said.

The 10 ossuaries were taken initially to the
Rockefeller Archaeological Museum outside the Old City
of Jerusalem. Nine were catalogued and stored but the
tenth was left outside in a courtyard.

That ossuary has subsequently gone missing.

The story went cold until two accounts of the
discovery were published by Israeli academics in the
mid 1990s. Prof Kloner wrote the second one in the
IAA's in-house magazine Atiquot in 1996.

It sparked publicity, most notably a BBC programme
shown that Easter produced by Ray Bruce called The
Body In Question. However, Prof Kloner said there was
no way the tomb housed the Holy Family.

"It is just not possible that a family who came from
Galilee, as the New Testament tells us of Joseph and
Mary, would be buried over several generations in
Jerusalem."

However, in this Dan Brown era, we can't help
wondering.
 


 



 
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