March 4, 2007

Jesus, Mary & Joseph!

By Harry T. Cook

It was piously observed in the 1950s that “the family that prays together stays together.” With “The Jesus Family Tomb” being the latest freak show in faux biblical archaeology, I guess we should consider that proposition more seriously.

Newsweek, with editorial tongue deep in cheek, headlined it this way: “A book and movie allege the final resting place of Mary, Joseph and the King of Kings has been found. Controversy to follow.”

More than a quarter of a century ago, a construction crew in Jerusalem came upon an ancient burial plot – not at all an uncommon occurrence in that part of the world. The upshot is that, with a 2+2=5 type of methodology, a show-biz guy named Simcha Jacobovici aided and abetted by James Cameron of “Titanic” fame, has put forth a claim that the plot has yielded up the bones of the biblical Jesus, his “wife” Mary Magdalene and some lesser lights of New Testament fame.

Given popular culture and the predilection of the media for sensation, the television documentary and book will be this year’s DaVinci Code. If it pushes the body of Anna Nicole Smith and the detritus from the 2007 Oscars off the front page, the bones of the Holy Family could be a ghoulish kind of deliverance. Or at least an even quid pro quo: This trash for that trash.

There is no way in hell (or heaven) that anyone at this remove could prove anywhere near conclusively that any set of 2,000-year-old bones was once a skeletal frame for any distinctive arrangement of human flesh. Further complicating such an attempt is the fact that so little of an attestable nature is known about the personages whose bones Messrs. Jacobovici and Cameron claim to have found.

The names (in English) – Jesus, Mary (or Miriam) and Joseph – were common given names in the First Century Palestinian world, so even if the “discovery” is real rather than faked, the bones could be anybody’s.

If one concedes that a real Jesus was really crucified by a Roman cohort around 33 C.E., it is entirely possible that his remains, once cut down, would have been left there as carrion for wild dogs – such was one of the charming Roman customs of the day.

Or if the Jacobovici/Cameron sensation is for real, then their “Jesus” may have been one of thousands listed in the Jerusalem city directory of 33 C.E. And if their “Jesus” is/was the one we’re familiar with from the gospels, then the Nicene fathers had better re-convene to take the resurrection and ascension out of their impossible creed.

Or, we could forget the whole thing and concentrate on the humanist message preserved in the gospels and attributed to a Jesus said to have hailed from Nazareth, a village that may not have existed in the First Century C.E. There is no mention made of it in the Hebrew scriptures, the Talmud or the Mishnah. It is not mentioned by Flavius Josephus, who was not necessarily the best historian who ever wrote, but is the one on whom we have to depend for much of what we “know” about those times.

Some one in the early part of the First Century C.E. is on record as having uttered the following sayings, which, for convenience, I have paraphrased with what we know of their original context intact:

When someone strikes you on the right cheek, don’t strike back. Turn your left cheek to him and see what happens.

If a Roman soldier orders you, as he can, to carry his gear for the prescribed distance, volunteer to carry it for two, perhaps making a perceived enemy into a possible friend.

You are acquainted first-hand with poverty; when someone, who is beyond poverty into destitution, asks you for the coat on your back, give him your shirt, too. He probably needs it more than you do.

Forgive as often as it takes because grudges and resentments are like cankers.

Reach out in kindness to your neighbor, because who isn’t your neighbor?

Reach out in the same way to your enemy, because he’s your neighbor, too.

Treat others in the same way you want to be treated, and see what happens.

The latter saying is surely a riff on Hillel the Elder’s wonderful summary of Torah:
What you hate, do not do to another.

So much energy has been expended on who exactly it was that said those things, whether or not he was the son of any god, whether he performed miracles, whether he was crucified, dead, buried, resurrected and ascended. And so little on just following those gems of ethical wisdom that Christianity has become as desiccated as the recently celebrated bones of whoever.

 © Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.