PREACHING THIS MORNING...'Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Found: Is It True? Does It Matter?' Obviously, it's a look at the claims of the recent James Cameron Discovery Channel documentary. Well, the tomb of a guy named Jesus was found, but it's most certainly not Jesus of Nazareth. This is also the first of a possible series of 'Invitation Sundays' in which particular emphasis will be made on inviting others to services, with--we hope--a sermon with that in mind.

'ARCHAEO-PORN'

Ben Witherington has the Discovery 'Jesus tomb' documentary post-mortem. His blog is the best I've seen for detailed (and I do mean detailed) refutations of the Jesus tomb nonsense. Witherington writes:

You can tell things are coming unraveled when every Biblical archaeologist, save possibly one, interviewed either in the Discovery Channel special or in the hour long debate thereafter repudiates or is unpersuaded by the findings of the show. Both William Dever and Jonathan Reed were not merely dubious about the findings of the show. Reed actually called it archaeo-porn, the worst sort of misuse of archaeological evidence to support a tendentious theory that is so speculative it requires linking one weak hypothesis to another to another to reach a conclusion.

In addition, both Amos Kloner and Joe Zias, two of the original archaeologists involved in the project, have openly on television and in the public forum repudiated the findings of the show in strong terms. I have had a strongly worded email from Joe Zias in the last 24 hours saying that the data was deliberately manipulated at various points.

Take some time and read this latest post, as well as scroll back for some of the earlier ones (The Smoking Gun and Problems Multiply).