‘Christians Aren’t Perfect: Just Forgiven’ – Another Example of Miserable Sub-Christian Pseudo-Theology

Doubtless you’ve seen the miserably inaccurate and misleading bumper sticker sporting the phrase- ‘Christians aren’t perfect: Just forgiven.’

The first phrase is completely accurate.  The second is a miserable failure and completely misleading if not heretical.  Why?  Because the use of the word ‘just’ fails to appreciate the cost of redemption and the price of forgiveness.  ‘Just’, in the context of the sticker, can only mean ‘simply’ or ‘merely’ or ‘only’.  None of which measures up to capturing the full truth of the horrors which salvation required.

Jesus was crucified and died on the cross for our salvation.  Can any of us with any sensibility say that Jesus was ‘only’ crucified or ‘simply’ crucified or ‘just’ crucified?  Only madness would lead us to answer yes.

Indeed, the early church understood so clearly the abject horror of Jesus’ salvific act that it correctly appropriated Isaiah 53 as a description of that deed.

3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. 9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. (Isa 53:3-10 KJV)

Anyone who can read that passage, and view the execution of Jesus in its light, who can still say ‘just forgiven’, show that they lack any sense of the high price of redemption.

This is why it’s best to get one’s theology from the Bible, and not from soundbites or bumper stickers or Christian bookstore pins or mottos.

The Telegraph and the Guardian on the Question of ‘The Jesus Nails’

The Telegraph reports Simcha’s suggestion that the nails of Jesus’ crucifixion have been found.  Dan Bahat responds

“Nails can be for example of a wooden sarcophagus in which the deceased was laid until his body decayed and decomposed and then put into an ossuary. So the possibility of finding nails […] is not something which should have too much meaning.”

More than that, the suggestion is nothing more than supposition piled on top of fantasy.  There’s just NO WAY that a couple of nails found in the back drawers of the IAA can be connected with Caiaphas’ ossuary and EVEN if they could be- there’s NO WAY to connect those nails to the crucifixion of Jesus.  It’s all just nonsense.

And why’s it being mentioned again unless there’s a TV special coming out or a book about to be published?  This nonsense was debunked by everyone 8 moths ago.

It’s nothing more than the misuse of archaeology for the sake of personal profit.  There’s no way to spin it otherwise.

The Guardian (back in April) did a better job than the Telegraph in showing this absurdity absurd, cleverly linking these nails with such rubbish as the Turin Shroud and the Jesus Towel.

Canadian-Israeli director Simcha Jacobovici’s The Nails of the Cross is the veteran investigator’s second film claiming to have discovered artefacts linked to Christ. He also directed 2007’s The Lost Tomb of Jesus. But experts have poured scorn on the latest findings, suggesting that the film is little more than a publicity stunt. However, this time around, Jacobovici says he has historical and archaeological context for his claims.

“What we are bringing to the world is the best archaeological argument ever made that two of the nails from the crucifixion of Jesus have been found,” he told Reuters. “Do I know 100% yes, these are them? I don’t.”

The Nails of the Cross suggests the artefacts were found in the grave of Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who according to the New Testament sent Jesus to his death after handing him over to the Romans. They disappeared centuries ago but were later tracked by Jacobovici to the Tel Aviv laboratory of an anthropologist who is an expert on ancient bones.

And

The Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversaw the excavation of the tomb – it has since been resealed – cast doubt upon suggestions that the grave was definitively the burial place of Caiaphas, and said nails are commonly found in such locations.

“There is no doubt that the talented director Simcha Jacobovici created an interesting film with a real archaeological find at its centre,” said a spokesman. “But the interpretation presented in it has no basis in archaeological findings or research.”

The last sentence says it all.  So if you want to buy Simcha’s theory go ahead.  Just know, it’s a cotton candy spun whole cloth out of a non-naked non archaeologist’s imagination.  It is the equivalent of von Daniken’s ‘Chariots of the gods’ as legitimate interpretation of the evidence.

Related articles

• Why is Simcha Jacobovici Suing Joe Zias? (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Robert Cargill on Simcha’s Suit (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• They’ve Found the Sword that Pierced Jesus’ Side and the Lamp that the Author of Revelation Saw! (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• More on the ‘Miriam Ossuary’, Or at Least Catching Up (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)

Shut Up, Shut Up, Just SHUT UP!

It really is beyond tiresome that news organizations continue to talk about the ‘Miriam Ossuary’ as a ‘clue to the crucifixion of Jesus’.  It DOESN’T.  And those researching it have NEVER said that it does.  EVER.    So, news outlets, please, please for the sake of my sanity, SHUT UP about biblically related things.  It would be preferable for you never to report them than to report them wrongly (as you do 99% of the time).

Joe Zias on ‘Nails in Jewish Tombs’

In which he demonstrates that recent claims to have found the ‘souvenir nails of Jesus’ crucifixion on the ossuary of Caiphas’ are bogus.

Following the Jesus Nails film by Jacobovici in which he attempted show that two nails found in the tomb of the Caiaphas family were those used in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, after the remorseful High Priest, according to Tabor and Jacobovici, became a messianic Jew, L.Y. Rahmani phoned me to discuss the totally absurd premise of the film. Rahmani, as many of you know, a man of integrity,  intellectually brilliant, now 92 years of age, had written the standard reference for Jewish ossuaries, a work that will remain a classic for generations to come.  We arranged a meeting at his apartment and in but a few minutes he was able to explain clearly and concisely the most probable reason for the finding of nails in Jewish tombs. Had Jacobovici and Tabor, who quoted freely from the catalog of Jewish ossuaries, read the short (61 pages) introductory remarks of the catalogue, they would have been able to see that A, the finding of nails in Jewish tombs is not all that rare; B, the most obviously reason why; and C, while the nails in question, from an unknown context, were most likely to have come from a Jewish funerary context.

Read the rest.

Related articles

• Could it Be?: The ‘Discovery’ of the Tomb of Jonah (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• The IAA Press Release on the ‘Jesus Nails’- The Official English Version (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)