LUCAN VERSE FOUND ON EARLY SHRINE

An unusually early use of a Gospel verse, this from Luke, has been discovered on an ancient shrine to Simon the Just, a prophet who held the infant Jesus:

A barely legible clue -- the name "Simon" carved in Greek letters -- beckoned from high up on the weather-beaten facade of an ancient burial monument. Their curiosity piqued, two Jerusalem scholars uncovered six previously invisible lines of inscription: a Gospel verse — Luke 2:25....

The inscription declares that the 60-foot-high monument is the tomb of Simon, a devout Jew who the Bible says cradled the infant Jesus and recognized him as the Messiah.

It's actually unlikely Simon is buried there; the monument is one of several built for Jerusalem's aristocracy at the time of Jesus.

However, the inscription does back up what until now were scant references to a Byzantine-era belief that three biblical figures -- Simon, Zachariah and James, the brother of Jesus -- shared the same tomb.

I'm sure he's not buried there, of course, as these shrines were a dime a dozen to erect. They were early tourist traps in many respects. And, as the archaeologists note, the builders of the Simon shrine were by no means professional masons although they "knew their Greek and their Luke".

The anonymous AP drudge who wrote the piece did throw in a common misconception about Biblical texts, however:

The inscription says the monument is the tomb of "Simeon who was a very just man and a very devoted old (person) and waiting for the consolation of the people." Simeon is a Greek version of Simon.

The passage is identical to the Gospel verse Luke 2:25, as it appears in a 4th-century version of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, which was later revised extensively.

Now, I was previously unaware that the Codex Sinaiticus was ever "revised extensively." The articles author offers nothing to back up that off-hand charge, nor does he tell us in what way the texts were so revised. Who did this mysterious revising? Was it part of the Da Vinci Code plot? The fact is that despite textual differences between text families, there is little to no substantive disagreement among Biblical texts.

It's a fascinating discovery, but a gullible public will see references to Biblical revision and simply assume this is commonly accepted, thus further eroding the popular confidence in Scripture.