Secular Café: Jonah, Jesus or Yo Yo Ma?

Secular Café Discuss atheism, religious apologetics, separation of church & state, theology, comparative religion and scripture.

Jonah, Jesus or Yo Yo Ma? Apr 21st 2012, 10:06 [QUOTE]Christian inscription? Skeptics say they're random squiggles Claims about 'Yonah' markings rekindle argument over Jerusalem bone box By Natalie Wolchover updated 4/21/2012 1:27:11 AM ET A 2,000-year-old box that is being lauded as the earliest Christian artifact ever found has been misconstrued, according to several scholars who were not involved in the box's discovery. They say that the evidence for the box — engraved in Jerusalem, mere decades after Jesus' death — being Christian is extremely frail, and a case of finding meaning in random squiggles. Known as the "Jonah ossuary" (the term for a box made to hold human remains), the artifact is in a sealed tomb that's located below an apartment building in Jerusalem. The tomb has been dated to a time before the year 70. James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and his team recently used a remote-controlled robotic camera to explore the tomb, and discovered an engraving on the ossuary that Tabor says proves it is the earliest known Christian artifact. The robotic exploration of the tomb — and interpretations of the artifacts observed during that exploration — are detailed in a documentary for the Discovery Channel called "The Jesus Discovery." Tabor and his team say the ossuary is engraved with a picture of a fish with a stick figure in its mouth. Upon seeing the engraving, they concluded that the stick figure referred to Jonah, the Old Testament prophet whose story of being swallowed by a whale was embraced by early followers of Jesus. If it really is a picture of Jonah and the whale, this would prove the ossuary was Christian. However, when the team published their analysis, outside experts said the depiction was not a whale swallowing a man at all, but rather a funerary monument. In response to that criticism, James Charlesworth, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Princeton Theological Seminary and a member of the ossuary's discovery team, came back with what he said was better proof that the box is Christian: The "stick figure" in the "fish's mouth" is not just a stick figure, but also forms the Hebrew letters that spell "YONAH," or Jonah. [Images of the Jonah Ossuary] Jonah, Jesus or Yo Yo Ma? Skeptics are calling the new claim "Rorschach test archaeology." Steve Caruso, a professional translator who analyzes inscriptions on ancient artifacts for antiquity dealers, said Charlesworth's interpretation of the inscription is "more of an exercise in reading tea leaves." Robert Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, concurs. "One must do some rather strenuous mental gymnastics to arrive at the letters for the name of Jonah in this image, including ignoring lines that are clearly present but do not fit the desired inscription, joining together lines that are clearly not conjoined, reshaping letters, and eliminating any semblance of linear alignment," Cargill says on his blog. ...[/QUOTE] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47124510.../#.T5KFotWQgoM

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